Saturday, December 13, 2014

Racist terminology for folks from Portugal

The Falling Downs website had more hits from Portugal today than ever before. Last time I looked there were 25 or something.

While it is never widely acknowledged, that country had wildly sympatico goals vis a vis Canada when it came to fish processing and cement finishing.

We'll do your cement finishing.

You do our fish processing.

Back in the Budd days everybody used to call every Portuguese guy Magellan.

Hey Magellan, got anything on ya?

That's not entirely true; I remember the Vasco di Gamma shtick too...

Hey di Gamma ...

There was a Portugese guy at the shipyard who barely spoke English. Oddly enough, he was a welder rather than a cement guy. Used to go home to Portugal for a couple months every summer. Great guy!

It made a certain amount of sense. The Portugese fishing fleet has travelled across the Atlantic for centuries, probably pre-Columbus. They didn't land because there wasn't any fish on the land...

What are ya, stupid?

But I'm thrilled to see that more people from Portugal than ever before have found the Falling Downs blog.


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