Stephen Scobie - Opening Remarks
Montreal 2000: Leonard Cohen Event Panel Discussion

            Je suis très heureux d'être ici à Montréal, et de parler sur un des ses fils les plus célèbrés.  Je voulais commencer avec ces pauvres mots en français, à fin de reconnaître l'importance, pour Leonard Cohen, des réalités linguistiques et politiques de la ville de Montréal, et de la province de Québec.  Nous nous trouvons ici au coeur des paradoxes canadiens -- bilingues, mais aussi

            unilingual, because I know that many of you haven't yet understood a word I've said!  But I hope that in the course of this weekend in Montreal you will come to appreciate the richly diverse cultural background out of which Leonard Cohen emerges.  This is the reality which formed him, and which created the richness and complexity of his cultural context:

            Leonard Cohen, juif.

            Leonard Cohen, montréalais anglophone.

            Leonard Cohen, québecois.

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             For the past eighteen months or so, I've had the opportunity to survey the current state of critical discourse about Leonard Cohen -- both in Canada and internationally, both through the traditional channels of academia and in the more informal but no less intelligent diaspora of the Internet.

            It began when Robert Lecker asked me to edit a special Cohen issue of Essays on Canadian Writing, which is one of the most important and influential academic journals in the field of Canadian literature.  The timing proved to be fortunate, since we were able to bring the issue out to coincide with this Event.  It's being published both as an issue of ECW, not inappropriately numbered #69, and also as a separate book, entitled Intricate Preparations.  I'd like to share with you here some reflections prompted by the whole process of editing, of putting this volume together.

            We began by p