Originally Posted by
Admiral Ackbar
As I said, I was intimately involved in the asinine language battles of the 70s (fédéraliste vs séparatiste), it impacted my life in very personal and negative ways (my father killed himself in 1978 burned out by the politics when I was 8 years old) so I am very aware of the real costs of these populist battles, unlike a lot of the media commenters that have no skin in the game except keeping their names in the news. No one wins from these battles but people in positions of leadership such as the CEO of a bilingual nations airline should have more common sense expected from them than this person.
I am very sorry about your loss. That is a very tough thing to deal with as a child (or at any age). Having lived through the separatist business as well as growing up in the 1970s and 1980s my sense is that anyone who leads a big company or has a public role in Quebec needs to be finely attuned to the hyper sensitive nature of language politics in the province. The AC CEO clearly was not, and whether or not the strong reaction against his behaviour is justified or not it is a good leader's job to understand the nuances. He did not and that reflects badly upon him and the company.