Re: Shape of the US Dollar Sign

From: Alain LaBonté (alb@iquebec.com)
Date: Sat Sep 29 2001 - 14:09:31 EDT


A 09:31 2001-09-28 -0700, Michael \(michka\) Kaplan a écrit :
>I tend to look up on the following site, where such info can always be found
>tucked away:
>
>http://www.uselessknowledge.com/word/dollar.shtml

[Alain] Curiously enough, to add to even more useless and even misleading
knowledge, I will add my two cents: in Québec, we have a hero (during a
certain marxist-leninist period in Québec, some said he was a "bandit",
that made him more proletarian [this idea of a few intellectuals to
deprecate our heroes is now folklore]), Dollard des Ormeaux (Adam Dollard
des Ormeaux was his complete name), whose first name is pronounced "Dollar"
(it is usual in French that ending consonants are mute) and who was killed
in the Long Sault battle by his own mistake (but that mistake generated an
explosion so violent that the Iroquois abandoned their will to attack
Montréal).

   Needlesss to say, Québec (which is not very monarchist, it's a
euphemism) celebrates each year « la fête de Dollard » (Dollard Day) the
same day other Canadians celebrates Victoria Day, in May. I guess that in a
few years, we'd rather celebrate « la fête du dollar » (the dollar day)
instead, as less and less people know their history.

   See http://www3.primary.net/~dollard/ormeaux.htm (English text).

   Of course we have other heroes like this entrenched in North-American
history: Radisson (whose name is pronounced with a French ending nasal « on
», not with the English syllable « son »), indeed, is not only a hotel
chain, but a Quebec hero who discovered upper Mississipi, but also sold his
soul for a few "dollars" back and forth to the king of England and the king
of France: Pierre-Esprit Radisson, a Frenchman born in 1651, was indeed at
the origin of the British (now Canadian) Hudson Bay Company (Compagnie de
la Baie d'Hudson), which still makes many dollars... after having sold the
North West Territories (and what is now Nunavut) to Canada...

Alain LaBonté
Toronto Airport



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