Ad slammed for lack of diversity
Video promoting Montreal’s 375th anniversary shows only whites, not multiculturalism
MONTREAL— A commercial intended to promote Montreal’s upcoming 375th anniversary celebrations has instead left red-faced organizers apologizing because the video included only white-skinned personalities.
The spot was released last Wednesday to promote a Dec. 11 variety show that will be aired simultaneously on four Montreal-based French television networks, as well as two English stations.
The show — Montréal s’allume (Montreal shines) — is the first in a year of planned activities and events celebrating the city’s founding by French settlers in 1642.
The show is touted as including “a wide range of performing artists” that will help viewers “discover a creative, modern, edgy and inclusive Montreal.”
There was a range of personalities and disciplines in the commercial for the show. They included singer Céline Dion, the sketch comedy group Rock et Belles Oreilles, singers Marie Mai, Louis-Jean Cormier, Ariane Moffatt and the legendary performer Robert Charlebois.
But there wasn’t a single person of colour featured in the 44-second video.
“The show, the way it was conceived, is trying to reflect the diversity of Montreal,” said Gilbert Rozon, the founder of the Just For Laughs comedy festival, who is head of the Society for the Celebration of Montreal’s 375th Anniversary.
“But the advertising campaign chose some celebrities to bring the viewers and I didn’t have time to watch it. It went out without me ap- proving it. It’s my mistake and I take full responsibility. It’s going to be tweaked and changed.”
The about-face came after being denounced Tuesday in a column in the Montreal newspaper La Presse.
The variety show is being put on by a production company run by popular Quebec television host Éric Salvail. The commercial was taken down from the web on Tuesday and is expected to be re-released after a more inclusive version is approved.
A spokesperson for the organizing committee said that all contracts that are issued include a clause demanding that the performances and products reflect the city’s diversity. The spokesperson said that even before the appearance of the La Presse column, officials had asked for the inclusion of additional material that would better reflect the cultural makeup of Canada’s second-largest city.
There are any number of A-list ce- lebrities in the province who fit that description, including Gregory Charles, the piano virtuoso and owner of a classical music radio station who was born to a Québécoise mother and Trinidadian father; the Indo-Canadian comedian Sugar Sammy; the Senegal-born pop singer Karim Ouellet; or Adib Alkhalidey, the humorist born to an Iraqi father and Moroccan mother.
The organizing committee says that the variety show will feature more than 100 artists.
Among them are: Kent Nagano, the California-born conductor of Japanese ancestry who leads the Montreal Symphony Orchestra; stage actor Colm Feore, who co-starred in the bilingual comedy film Bon Cop, Bad Cop; Algerian-born comedian Mehdi Bousaidan; the comedian Marina Mazza, who was born to a Lebanese mother and Uruguayan father and the Montreal-born Italian-Canadian singer-songwriter Gino Vanelli.