In an uninhibited projection of his financial might, Cornelius Van Horne claimed he saw nothing less than the Pacific Ocean from his opulent office in downtown Montreal. In his universe, this railroad magnate imagined his empire. The Château Frontenac and the Hôtel du Lac Louise were its brightest stars, united to each other by a long ribbon of iron stretched from one end of Canada to the other.
At the head of this vast network, Sir Cornelius rode powerful capitals. His life, pulled by the horsepower of Canadian Pacific locomotives, allowed him to collect works of art effortlessly. His business ran in a straight line to the Pacific Ocean, 4500 kilometers from Montreal.
Van Horne adopted the posture of a salon Napoleon. Everyone knows at least one story about the French Emperor. These are mostly disguised advertisements launched to reinforce adherence to his figure. One of my favorites is this. One day, Napoleon is irritated by the reservations that Cardinal Fesch, his uncle, formulates towards him. This robed man, who reigns over the Church of Lyons, has enjoined him to take care not to bring upon himself the misfortunes of heaven and earth. Exasperated, Napoleon takes him by the hand to lead him to a window. The night is dark. Napoleon said to him, pointing to this sky: “Do you see this star? No, replies the cardinal. Napoleon insists. ” Look carefully. Sire, I don’t see her. “Well, I see her,” Napoleon told him, to ensure, through such an allegory, his advertising as a visionary.
Under the original impetus of the aristocratic and energetic Cornelius Van Horne, trains, boats and then planes enabled the Canadian Pacific company to travel the world for nearly a century. To ensure its publicity, the company, officially founded in 1881, became a master in the art of favorable exposure. Very beautiful color posters, now prized by collectors, favorably staged it, throwing powder in the eyes. Van Horne himself, like George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, enjoyed a keen sense of business slogans.
Since the days of full-speed capitalism, many companies believe they see the waters of the Pacific Ocean, even between the four blind walls of their offices. This is sometimes illustrated to the point of absurdity. Thus, in an advertisement that has been much mocked on social networks, the air carrier Air France offers these days an unusual image of Montreal. We see two canoeists paddling on a huge lake located at the foot of a high snow-capped peak, which is much more reminiscent of a peak in the Rockies than of the poor curves of Mont Saint-Bruno.
In any case, if this advertising aims to fool retired French travelers, the airline may wait a few more years to take advantage of it. President Macron’s reform aimed at raising the retirement age mobilized a million demonstrators last Thursday, including Air France flight attendants’ unions. The justifications of the French president have the unfortunate air of commercial advertising, as is the case for almost all the slogans that want to convince us, over and over, that by working harder, longer, all the time, we produce necessarily more wealth for all. Above all, everyone is enjoined in this way to keep their mouths shut and row to the top of the vague social hopes placed solely on their private happiness, all the rest being willingly forgotten.
The advertising empire, despite its vulgarities and misinterpretations, continues to be well oiled. Think of all those automobiles, stuck one behind the other on the road. However, advertising continues to praise their qualities, placing them near mountains, on the banks of rivers or wonderful green spaces. Why bother with reality?
The Canadian Pacific Railway, like many other empires, was built by thousands of small hands, of which at least 30,000 were those of unfortunates torn from China, mercilessly exploited along the rails in exchange for wages of misery. Those who signed their checks made the law.
Speaking of China, the show of Shen Yun will be on tour in Quebec in February. It’s hard to ignore it as its advertising is on repeat. Since its founding in New York in 2006, Shen Yun claims to offer a vision of “China before communism”. A big clap of the gong and there are dancers and singers who affect to bring “authentic Chinese culture” back to life.
The artists of Shen Yun are followers of Falum Gong. Li Hongzhi, the spiritual leader of Falun Gong, once explained to the magazine Timein 1999, than since the beginning of the XXe century, “extraterrestrials began to invade the human mind, its ideology and its culture”. The daily Release reports some of the conservative talk projected by this show glorifying an imperial history of composition. A song indicates that “evil [qui] is done to us comes from modern thought”, but also that “atheism and evolution are tricks of Satan”.
The truth of the world rarely has the enchanted colors of the advertisements of those who try to maintain our unbridled consumption there. When Jean Boulet, Minister of Labor, explains around that the minimum wage will be raised in May, he is mainly trying to justify why it remains so low. More would risk companies earning less, he says. In an interview with 98.5 FM, the minister adds that raising the minimum wage too much would encourage school dropouts. All that remains is to produce a nice advertisement to make us forget just how much our education system suffers from poverty.