Anglo angst becomes creative fodder for Josh Freed
‘The more tension there is in Quebec, the more Quebec readers want to laugh’
Josh Freed thrives on tension, so when the rhetoric of separatist hardliners reached comic supervillain-esque proportions during this year’s provincial election, the long-time Gazette humour columnist fought back on behalf of battlehardened anglos with his sharpest épée: laughter.
His latest book, He Who Laughs, Lasts, culls his best columns from recent years, dispensing incisive commentary on the free-floating anxieties currently plaguing our luxurious, technologically dependent lives. Not to make light of the five months he spent updating, editing and verb-tightening his greatest hits, but who’s kidding who: when presented with the opportunity to gab with one of anglo Montreal’s most esteemed representatives, talk must invariably be steered toward the city’s ever-tricky political minefields.
It’s just the Montreal thing to do.
“The more tension there is in Quebec, the more Quebec readers want to laugh,” says the 63-year-old over espressos at Plateau café Laika. “I already get the usual laughs from everyone else with the technology and health worries, but then you have the additional angst: the anglo challenge of having to go through all that we do in Quebec.”
Seeing as this past election lacked a legitimate threat of a referendum, Freed admits he was taken aback by how the anglo community’s seemingly dormant fears were resuscitated over a few spitballed campaign promises designed to placate frumpy nationalists.
“It was tense because we’ve already lived through two referendums and we’d had it,” he says. “Most people put it in their back pockets, then suddenly the PQ woke up and asked, ‘What can we do to annoy the anglo community?’ I think people lying in their post-summer stupor were in utter shock; it was like a referendum acid flashback. We can put up with 5,000 construction zones on the way home — we’re tough — but at that moment the PQ got to us.”
The writer, filmmaker and journalist isn’t camped in one corner, though; since March, Freed has been writing a monthly French column for L’actualité magazine. His initial extension of the olive branch, the heartfelt and autobiographical “Bonjour, mon nom est Josh Freed. Je suis anglophone” has been recommended on Facebook an impressive 17,000 times. “It’s gone extremely well,” he says. “I think many franco readers had never heard an anglophone talk about anglophone life in the city before. If you can make both anglos and francos laugh, that’s creating a bridge. Hopefully that bridge isn’t the Champlain, though, and will stay up.”
That Freed was able to jump into polyglot punditry is perhaps not surprising given that even with his Gazette column he has always striven for universality, where even francophones — those put off by his Applebaum-accented French exempted — can find humour in his anglo work.
He Who Laughs, Lasts hardly even delves into divisive politics, but instead mostly focuses on relatable subjects, from health crazes to the equally amazing and frustrating technological revolution that’s afoot. Far from a curmudgeon, Freed has an iPhone and ensures his techno-jargon is current by consulting with his 17-year-old son. Freed’s also not immune to the distractions of an overactive email account, which makes the difficult two-day process of fashioning inspiration plucked from the headlines into a funny column that much harder.
“Last week I was writing my column, and at the same time the executive committee was online for the first time and I wanted to watch that,” he says. “Technology is exhausting with how it distracts you. Sometimes on Friday at 3 p.m. if I’m not in full control, I’ll go into monk mode and turn everything off. It’s my sacred day. I have a responsibility toward people, so I put an enormous amount of energy into making it good.”
He Who Laughs, Lasts is on sale now.