Maple Syrup = Political Hot Potato

The dumb news story around here this week is about the Muslims at the Cabane a Sucre (Sugar Shack).

From the Montreal Mirror:
On Monday, a Montreal tabloid ran a front-page photo of a group of Muslims, dressed in parkas and tuques, kneeling at prayer on the linoleum floor of a cavernous sugar shack dining room. The headline: “Cabanes à sucre accomodantes.” The two-page spread focused on Sylvain Boily, aka country singer Danny Boy, who became enraged on March 11 when his party was interrupted to allow about 50 Muslims, of a group of around 260, take over the floor for prayer. The prayer lasted about 20 minutes, but Boily was so angry with his aunt being forced to stop playing her accordion that he stormed out. The story also made reference to some cabanes removing pork from their pea soup and beans. The Big Three leaders weren’t quoted in the story (although Boisclair has since said that anyone who runs a ham-free cabane is “going to have a real tough time in life”)...

I KNOW this sounds like a joke, but it did happen. Muslim troubles in the cabane a sucre is really a uniquely Quebecois problem. Prayers are more important than according-playing? I'd like to think not.

Generally people are just griping because there were only beans. They argue that there could've been both plain beans for the muslims and pork-n-beans for non-muslims who were there at the same time. Which I agree with. Why can't they just serve two pots of beans? I dunno.

Well, people are up in arms and apparently the cabane has received death threats because they were too accommodating to the Muslims.

All of this ignores the real problem which is that because of Global Warming winters are becoming too short and warm to produce ample supplies of maple syrup. They should invite Al Gore to the cabane a sucre. At least he'd eat everything on his plate. He'd probably eat everything on Tipper's plate too.