Remoras are sucking fish that live on the periphery of the shark, if not on the shark. They follow it, stick to it and live off the bacteria and parasites that accumulate on the shark. Nature is a beautiful and great thing.
Do you see me coming?
No, you don’t see me coming, because I hide my game well: you can’t guess that my first paragraph is a metaphor for the Grand Prix, for Canada or elsewhere.
Yet it is obvious: the shark is the race. The sporting event. The paddocks, the full stands, the worldwide broadcast of the race, all that, all the buzz.
Remoras are all the fuss around the race. I’m talking about partieschampagne, streets closed for F1-themed activities.
I’m not a fan of either the Grand Prix or the entire ecosystem of remoras that cling to the shark-vroom-vroom. I never was.
When I was a young reporter at Montreal JournalI preferred going to cover biker funerals where journalists were received like butchers (do you know, that subtle reference to Mom?) at a vegan convention than going to do a vox-pop in Crescent Street the Friday before the race…
But I don’t spit in the soup. I don’t hate it. It’s like rugby, I understand the craze, but it’s just not my thing, if you offer me tickets to the event, I’m going to sell them to the highest bidder. So much the better for those who like it, and all those who define themselves as those. It’s perfect, enjoy yourself as you wish, take out your best clothes to go dancing with a thousand other people in parties exclusive, applaud the exploits of Max and Lewis, all this is fair and good, I have some work to do…
I insist: I don’t hate it, not to the point of writing a column about it. I have virtually no opinion on F1. Besides, this is not a column on F1…
It’s a column about a scumbag. I’m talking about juvenile prostitution.
On this, I have two opinions to submit to the market of ideas.
First opinion: the big disgusting people who pay for underage prostitutes during the festivities surrounding the Grand Prix, knowing that they are minors, or pretending not to know it, are, in fact, big disgusting people.
Big disgusting ones, again: the pimps who drag teenage girls into the quicksand of prostitution. They also deserve a special place in hell.
My second opinion is that I do not understand the criticisms made in such matters about the organization of the F1 race in Montreal. For example, I read a paper1 by Maria Mourani where she involves what she vaguely calls “the actors of the Grand Prix ecosystem”, denouncing the omnipresence of juvenile prostitution around the event and asking the question: these “actors” are- do they know?
I couldn’t argue with Mme Mourani on the ins and outs of the juvenile prostitution ecosystem; As a criminologist, she has developed expertise in this area.
However, the expression “the actors of the Grand Prix ecosystem” does not mean anything. That means absolutely nothing. It’s anyone. Who are we talking about ? It’s not clear. It is a question of the security of the GP site, of hotel employees. Restaurant owners who put up decorations made of checkered flags?
Organizers of the Grand Prix?
I will leave Mme Mourani clarifies her thoughts, but the columnist seems to say indirectly that she includes the promoters of the Grand Prix… without doing so directly.
In any case, she is not the only one to think that the organizers could do more to combat juvenile prostitution. Geneviève Albert, who directed the film Noémie says yes on a teenage girl involved in prostitution during a Grand Prix weekend, took part last year in a publicity stunt to denounce the organization, corner of Crescent and Sainte-Catherine.
I quote Mme Albert2 : “As the Grand Prix does nothing to raise awareness among its customers about prostitution, well, I decided that we were going to invite ourselves and then that we were going to come to this artery which is at the heart of the festivities. »
Two thoughts on that…
One, I think that awareness campaigns can, precisely, raise awareness among the public on certain issues…
But I have doubts about the effectiveness of similar campaigns, given the nature of the target audience: will a disgusting person who buys a minor really have an epiphany when seeing an advertising campaign reminding him that raping a 15-year-old years is bad?
Two, I’m a big fan of “honeypot” police actions that trap those johns who are actively soliciting teenage girls or who don’t hang up when double agents offer them to them. See this Laval police operation3.
I may be naive, but the stick appears to me to be more effective than the carrot in cooling down enthusiasm in such matters. Judicialization and media coverage of big disgusting people: this is also an excellent “awareness-raising” message, it seems to me.
1. Read Maria Mourani’s column in The Montreal Journal
2. Read “Anti-sexual exploitation activists disrupt Grand Prix festivities” in The duty
3. Read “A policewoman tells the story of the undercover operation”