more bad Montreal English

I was at work today, listening to the godawful 'Ric Peterson Show' on CJAD radio, an embarassment, even for talk radio. Newsreader Kathy Coulombe said ' predictament' the other day, and trust me, that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Anyhow, I get paid to listen to the station. Trust me, it's not a choice. Chris Dimakos was discussing legal matters, and said 'with regards to', which drives me mad. What's wrong with 'about', or, if you insist, with regard to, or regarding. But 'with regards to' is just clunky and inelegant... and then there is local CBC radio, with faux-anglophone Melissa Kent, who, despite her name, obviously speaks little to no English off the job. Like Catou MacKinnon in Quebec City, her pronunciation is good, but her delivery completely lacks any rhythm or flow. Every syllable is stressed identically, and the result is robotic. It's an interesting phenomenon here, you get people with maybe one anglophone parent, and a totally anglophone name, but who probably went to French school, which is totally Ok, but I'm often taken aback by how unusual it is to encounter a Montrealer who speaks both French AND English flawlessly, something one does find in Ottawa, for instance. I hope it is obvious that I am speaking here about people one would expect to be perfectly bilingual, i.e. either those with Anglophone parents and who attended French schools, or grew up in Montreal, or those with one Anglophone parent, the other either Anglo or Allophone, and who went to either French or English schools, but also grew up here. I'm not talking about Francophones who grew up here, although I would expect a certain amount of ease and proficiency in English from them, because of both the easy access to Anglophone pop culture and media, and simple curiosity, especially considering the Dutch and Swedes, who are far more geographically removed from any Anglophone regions, are almost universally fluent in English, and in the case of the Dutch, often have only the slightest hint of an accent: Famke Janssen and Karen Mulder, anyone?