MONTREAL - An explanation about why there was almost no French spoken at the opening ceremonies of last year's Vancouver Olympics is being picked apart and pilloried in Quebec.
The pile-on has continued today onto Games CEO John Furlong. In a new memoir, he writes that the ceremony lacked French content because Quebec nationalist hero Gilles Vigneault refused to let organizers use his song "Mon Pays."
The ceremony would up including almost no spoken French, one of Canada's official languages, although it did include one French song.
The counter-arguments against Furlong's version of events are flying today, on Quebec's airwaves, in print, and in the provincial legislature.
A veteran Montreal La Presse sports columnist called the explanation shameless, and provided a detailed account of events that differed from the memories offered up by Furlong.
The official languages commissioner of Canada, Graham Fraser, also rejects the way Furlong describes some of the events leading up to the Games.
In the legislature, the province's culture minister called Furlong's explanation juvenile and naive.
Those were the same words used by Vigneault, the songwriter, in an interview with a Montreal newspaper.
For the second time in as many days, the Opposition Parti Quebecois attempted to table a motion reprimanding Furlong but the governing Liberals blocked it, not keen to pursue the debate.
