Come on, now! I don’t think the good people on Canada’s National Post opinions editorial board are as bad as Nazis. They do not advocate the extermination of any identifiable human group. They only want to see those who are wrong (according to them) sternly reprimanded, denied federal funding and stripped of their passports and right of habeas corpus.
I do, however, believe that National Post writers and columnists share with fascists a very inflated sense of their own culture’s achievements and a self-righteous conviction that their own opinions and values are eternal human truths. They also have a very unhealthy fixation on a few bogeymen on which they can conveniently blame for everything they don’t like about the world.
You disagree? Well let’s see if you can tell the difference between National Post columnists and history’s great fascists!
Québec’s TV industry is huge. For a country it’s size, with a potential public of only a a few million viewers, most of whom understand English and are perfectly able to tune in to the American TV networks that make up at least half of the channels of any cable subscription, the vitality of Québec’s TV is simply astonishing.
Québec’s television is also very high quality television with well-written dramas like Les Invincibles, sitcoms like Tout sur moi innovative talk-shows like 3600 Secondes d’Extase. Québec’s TV rarely feels small-time and production values are often world-class. Star Académie, Québec’s weekly reality/talent show, is an extravaganza of massive production numbers featuring American and French guest stars that makes American Idol look like community television. Seriously.
There is only one major problem with Québec’s television. It’s not in colour yet.
This week AngryFrenchGuy talked to Frédérick Isaya, a young community activist and budding actor about this time bomb that is just waiting to blow up in Québec’s face.
Who are you Fred?
I am a community activist on Montreal’s South shore with a 12 to 17 year olds, an actor and the father of two kids. I’ve been a member of Québec’s Union des artistes for three or four years. I’ve been acting since my teens, but never as a full time occupation. It’s something I do, but not something I gave up everything for.
You wrote a memoir for last year’s Bouchard-Taylor Commission in which you said that Québec’s TV does not represent Québec’s identity properly. What do you mean?
When you look at TV today, the socio-cultural image you see is anachronistic. It is the image of a Québec that is gone. Long gone, I should say. At some point we have to come to terms with that because we are creating many different little parallel societies that don’t include each other. The mass media is the spearhead, of the cornerstone of the collective imaginary. It has to look like us or else we are creating division and people will watch their TV somewhere else and not take part in Québec society. It’s not healthy for anyone.
The consequence of this is that people who don’t live in Montreal have no idea what Montreal looks like. If they only see black people on TV who are up to no good, or Chinese people who are in the Asian mafia, or Arabs preparing a terrorist coup… If that’s the only images they have of cultural communities because they don’t know them in any other way, you can’t unify Québec. We have to change this and change it right now. We can’t wait. The clock is ticking.
Why is it like this?
I really don’t know. I’d rather think it’s a form of indifference or of negligence rather than think it’s deliberate, because if it is deliberate it scares me.
How does it work with casting calls? Can you show up for any role or are you only expected to come if it specifically says: Black guy?
We often face closed-minded people who make pretty restrictive casting calls, but, fortunately, it’s more and more common to see some « all ethnicities welcome » castings. There’s a role for a police officer, a mason or a doctor, and the police officer, the mason and the doctor can be anybody. Every time I see that, I’m reassured. But all to often, right after that I see another breakdown that specifically reads « White man » or « White woman », and when you read the role you just can’t figure out why.
You know, if they’re looking for an actress to play the wife of (union leader Michel) Chartrand during the second world war, I can understand they don’t want a black or a Chinese woman! But when there is no reason… if it’s only because the person in front of you imagined a white woman, I think we are getting awfully close to racism.
What are you going to do about it?
I decided if I didn’t get involved, I was going to be responsible for my own failure. I went to the annual assembly of the UDA (Union des Artistes) and brought up the issue. I think I got things started. A committee was formed to look into all groups excluded from television. You should see things starting to move in 2009. Maybe not on television, just yet, but you will hear about people starting to get involved.
Last year you ran in both the federal and provincial elections as a Bloc québécois and a Parti québécois candidate. Many English-speaking people in Canada still associate sovereigntists with exclusion. What do you have to say about that?
I don’t understand why people associate sovereignty with exclusion. Maybe Parizeau’s message has something to do with it, but it’s been 13 years…
You can’t forget that M. René Lévesque is the instigator of visible immigration in Québec. Before 1976 mass immigration in Québec was essentially an immigration of Caucasian people. M. Lévesque did not hesitate to encourage immigration from French-speaking Africa and Haiti because he felt we needed French-speaking immigrants to solidify the sovereignty project.
There are many people in the Parti québécois think integration is a good thing, but there have not been many concrete acts by the governments of the last 30 years. Including the Parti québécois governments. I would be a hypocrite to say anything else.
Maybe that’s why people associate integration difficulties with the sovereigntists. Even though there have been many federalist governments in the last 30 years, in Québec we are having difficulties with integration of cultural communities, and so, by extension, as a kind of doubtful extrapolation, people associate that with the Parti québécois and the sovereigntist movement. But it’s not about a political party. It’s about everyone.
Special Black History Month edition AngryBoys and Girls. It’s the story of Michel Adrien and Ulrick Chérubin, two buddies from the town of Jacmel in Haiti who both ended up as mayors of Mont-Laurier and Amos, two lumberjack towns of Québec’s North West.
The story of both men starts in the late 60 and early seventies when a whole generation of scholars, professionals and intellectuals was chased out of Papa Doc Duvalier’s Haiti. Quite a few of these men and women came to Québec where they found a surprisingly familiar society that spoke French and shared their catholic faith. Québec was also a society that, unlike Haiti, was now moving on after the long reign of it’s own tyrant, Maurice Duplessis.
Michel Adrien came to Québec in 1969 and took a job teaching high school physics for a year in Mont-Laurier, a small city of some 13 000 souls in the Laurentians. Québec’s Quiet Revolution had lead to massive education reforms and there were many jobs jobs for all those who were willing to do a tour of duty in the woods.
He remembers the Mont-Laurier of the late 60’s as an effervescent regional hub. Black people were rare, but not unheard of as many came to work in the many government agencies in town.
« What was funny was the reaction of parents when we has PTA meetings. The students, for the first few weeks had a natural curiosity that lead them to ask questions, but once they got their answers, I’m the teacher. That’s it. Often they would forget to even mention it to their parents who would freeze when they first saw me. But I’m talking about the first few years, here. Young people have a wonderful ability to adapt. »
Adrien made friends and signed up for a second year. Then a few more. He met a girl. Classic. He founded the city’s astronomy club, the bike club and was eventually elected union representative, first at his school, later at the regional level. « You have to remember the era was one of major union militancy in Québec. That position had some kind of power. »
Michel Adrien’s childhood friend, Ulrick Chérubin, came to Canada a few years later, to a New Brunswick seminary where he studied to become a priest. The seminary closed and he moved to another seminary, in Trois-Rivières. There he met a woman that asked him he had ever thought of being a father instead of a priest. « I told her I had never considered it », he lied.
After leaving the Church, which was a very fashionable thing to do in those years in Québec, Chérubin recycled his theology credentials into a teaching career. Like his friend, he headed north, to the small city of Amos in Abitibi. Amos is almost exactly the same size as Mont-Laurier and is also dependent on the forestry industry.
Chérubin’s political career started after retirement, following a dream in which his deceased mother reprimanded him for watching to much TV. In 2002 he was elected mayor with an ultra-thin majority of only 50 votes. A year later his childhood friend Adrien was elected mayor of Mont-Laurier.
In 2005 Ulrick Chérubin was re-elected, his time with a record-breaking 84% of the votes.
Québec’s Haitian community is usually associated with the urban neighbourhoods of North East Montreal, but there is actually a surprisingly long history of Haitians not only living , but becoming political leaders in Québec’s and French-Canada’s remote communities.
The first black mayor in Canadian history was Dr. Firmin Monestime, an Haitian who was elected in the little bilingual logging community of Mattawa in Northern Ontario in 1964, only one year after Martin Luther King’s march on Washington. The first black mayor in Québec was René Coicou, another Haitian who in 1973 was elected in Gagnon, an ultra-remote mining town half way between Montréal and Irkutsk that was shut down and evacuated in 1985. Another Haitian political figure is the Parti québécois’ Jean Alfred, the first black member of Québec’s National Assembly, elected in the Outaouais ridding of Papineau in 1976.
Could being one of the few visible minorities in an area where people from a different postal code are foreigners actually be an advantage in the highly public profession of politics?
« I don’t think so », says the mayor of Amos. After some years, people don’t see my colour. They see Ulrick, a guy who’s active in the community. I forget I’m black. »
« I would say it can be an advantage », the mayor of Mont-Laurier disagrees. « People go through three phases. First, I’m the Black guy. Then I’m Monsieur Adrien. Then I’m Michel. » That said, Montrealers might find it odd to find a black mayor in Mont-Laurier, but his constituents got over his skin colour a long time ago, he swears. « When I’m in a public forum, talking about Mont-Laurier, no one finds it caricatural or unusual. »
Would Monsieur Adrien or Monsieur Chérubin consider provincial or federal politics? « If I was seven or eight years younger », muses Chérubin. « I have more affinities with the PQ. What happened to me is that in my riding we have François Gendron [of the Parti Québécois] who’s been there since 1976. So I don’t think I’ll have a shot at that seat as long as he’s there. »
The 1970’s were a time of tremendous political and social upheaval in Québec and there were plenty of opportunities for adventurous immigrants like Michel Adrien and Ulrick Chérubin, especially since, at that time, the Haitian community had yet to set deep roots in Montréal, or anywhere else. But times have changed. The forest industry is in crisis. There are few jobs in Amos and Mont-Laurier, today. For immigrants or anybody else.
« We used to have a very cosmopolitan society », reminisces Michel Adrien. We even had an Afghan in Mont-Laurier. But they’re gone. Of my group that came in 1969, I am one of the few who stayed. » He talks of recent statistics that suggest that Mont-Laurier is one of the Canadian cities of over 10 000 people with the fewest immigrants in Canada. « Certainly the fewest immigrants of any city where the mayor is an immigrant! »
It’s been a pretty good week for Québec’s independence movement. For real.
Whilst in the middle of very busy week in which he managed to insult the Prime Minister of Britain, the government of the Czech republic and bring almost every single French man and woman to he streets, Nicolas Sarkozy took the time to squeeze in a few nasty thoughts about Québec’s sovereignty movement.
He dismissed us, the sovereigntists, with the same disdain he used to reserve for the racaille of Seine-Saint-Denis. The president called sovereingtists, without naming them, ‘sectarian’ and ‘inwrad-looking’. He said he did not understand the « obligation to define one’s identity by fierce opposition to the other. »
The right of the Québécois democratically decide for themselves who should govern their affairs was not his « thing ». The world did not need another division, he reasoned with the sophisticated and subtle thinking that has become his trademark.
I’m loving it. Nicolas Sarkozy was elected with the support of an important part of the Front National vote. He opposed the accession of Turkey to the European Union because « if it was in Europe, we’d know about it ». He doesn’t think French colonialism had any negative effects of Africa and that the continent’s problem is that « it never entered History ». And now he feels strongly about a united Canada.
Wow. I doubt you could get a stronger confirmation that the sovereigntists are the good guys short of getting George W. Bush and Robert Mugabe to hold a joint press conference titled « The Canadian federation. Our model and inspiration. ».
But even better, Sarko’s little diatribe completely drowned out any news of Jean Charest’s trip to Europe, arguably the most successful trip to the old countries by a federalist Prime Minister. Ever.
Predictably, the Canadian media nearly choked withself-righteousness, praising the French president’s ‘fresh’ and ‘forward-looking’ thoughts. We’ll see how fresh they think he is when he tells them it’s time Canada gets rid of that anachronistic little border on the 49th parallel. He might just get a real taste of a country that defines itself by ‘detestation’ and ‘opposition’ to the other…
But the real story here is not that Nicolas Sarkozy does not know anything or that Canadians are completely blind to their own hypocrisy. Everybody knows that.
No, the real story is that Québec’s sovereigntists need to get new friends. Fast.
Ever since Québec emerged from the Great Darkness, the forces of light and good in the province have put all their eggs in France’s basket. As if the only recognition an independent Québec would ever need would be that of France.
There is a reason why Québec looked to France and it is not only because of a shared language. France has consistently been the West’s left wing. Cooler, smarter and not afraid to break rank on NATO, Irak and the Occident’s apparent determination to abolish food.
But France is not only Renaud and IAM. It is also Brigitte Bardot and Johnny Halliday. France too has it’s Stéphane Gendrons, Josée Verners and Denis Coderres. It is as it never occured to any of the Parti québécois’ numerous regulars of the bistros of Boulevard Austerlitz that one day one of them might actually take power.
Someone like Nicolas Sarkozy.
But it was bound to happen. As night begets day and life begets death, a well read and inspiring American president begets a reductive twit at the Élysée.
The real issue is « why haven’t sovereigntists cultivated more friends in other countries? »
Before the Obama administration actually got the briefing on the aliens of Area 51 and the nuclear missile launch codes, all observers knew exactly how many friends Israel had in the White House and how powerful they were. Canadian Conservatives had mules in Washington before they took power in Ottawa. David Frum, a National Post columnist and the son of Barbara Frum, is the Bush speechwriter who coined the inspiring, in a BattlestarGallactica kind of way, image of the Axis of Evil.
The last time there was anyone with any pull whatsoever in the White House who had ever heard about Québec was when Pierre Salinger served as press secretary for JFK. Other than that their might be a cab driver in Baltimore who has a cousin in Beloeil. That’s about it.
And while were at it, why don’t we have any of our men and women working the pubs of London? There once was a time when Québec’s representatives regularly looked to London as a fair arbiter in their conflicts with English-speaking neighbours and on more than one occasion the cooler heads in London did not hesitate to put the proto-Rhodesians of Upper Canada and Montreal back in their place.
Sovereigntists could send Pauline Marois to hang out with the Queen. I’m sure they would get along splendidly as they both have a taste for expansive rural estates and an entourage keen on palace intrigue and making inappropriate comments. A few shots of sherry and firm commitment to keep her on as Reine du Québec after independence and there is no doubt Betty would get on board.
First of all, she would have no choice but to publicly support her own subjects’ declaration of independence. Second, no Englishman or woman, no matter how blue the blood, who would ever miss an opportunity to stick it to the French!
“I just love Montreal” , I overheard a lady tell her friend in Avenue Video in Montréal.” I’d live here if I spoke French.”
“I don’t speak French” , scoffed a passerby. “Don’t worry about that.”
English is getting stronger in Montreal. I’m not the one saying it. The Montreal Gazette is saying it. There’s just no way around the numbers. Québec’s English-speaking population rose by 5.5% between 2001 and 2006 according to StatsCan.
How did this happen?
“The easy answer to the question of why young anglos aren’t leaving Quebec like they did a generation ago” , writes David Johnston, “is that they speak better French, and aren’t being chased away by political uncertainty.”
You will all remember that the “ political uncertainty” started in the 1950’s and 1960’s when francophones started asking why they were paid less than any other nationality in Québec, why no francophones held any management position in Canada’s banking and finance industry and why they were forbidden to use their language to speak to each on the shop floor.
English-Canada’s business elite responded by moving the country’s entire financial sector and 800 000 jobs from Montreal to Ontario where discrimination against French-speakers was allowed.
But a more important reason, according to the Montreal edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, is that it’s getting easier and easier for English-speakers to live and work in Montreal because there has been a “ cultural shift” that has made English “ acceptable” in the workplace.
“By the 1990s”, continues our man, “speaking English had become more acceptable in Quebec as firms came to see the need to improve the capacity of their workforces to operate in English. This created new opportunities for anglophones.”
As if English had ever disappeared from the Québec workplace! As if the French-speaking majority of Québec that had been forced to work in English for 250 years suddenly found itself unable to communicate with the outside world in the international language of business after bill 101 gave them the right to work in French!
The failure of Bill 101
When I was a truck driver satellites communications between French-speaking drivers and French-speaking dispatchers had to be in English so the English-speaking security team in Toronto could understand what was going on.
In 2005 the Metro chain of grocery stores bought A&P Canada and Christian Haub, the CEO and chairman of the board of A&P got a seat on the Québec company’s board. Thirteen Francophones and one Anglo. Guess what language the board meeting are in now?
Yep. Even when the French businessmen win, they lose.
That’s the way the modern workplace functions. It is entirely structured around the needs of the less qualified people. French-speakers in Québec, and all non-English speaking people around the world, are required to acquire additional language skills so that unilingual Anglos won’t have to.
Québec briefly tried to change that with the Charter of the French language, but the truth is that the rules that were supposed to protect the right of Québec workers to work in their language are broken. They don’t work anymore.
They were designed for businesses that could be contained in a building, to make sure that the 15th floor would communicate in French with the 6th and 2nd floor, all the way down to the shop floor.
But businesses don’t work like that anymore. Management is in Toronto, accounting’s in Alberta and IT is in Bangalore. Toronto’s and New York’s business culture is once again being imposed on the workers of Québec, and the entire world, actually.
Québec’s workforce has always been the most multilingual in Canada, and probably one of the most linguistically versatile in the World. Québec’s business culture did not change, it’s the world’s business structure that changed.
And once again, after only a brief interruption, unilingual Anglos can come back to work in Montreal.
And just in time, as the stellar generation of brilliant financial minds that left Montreal a generation ago have now managed to completely scrap Ontario’s economy and is now ready to come back home.
The British Prime Minister was in China and India last week and in stark contrast with other world leaders who have been in a rather gloomy mood lately, warning us of hard times, deficits and sacrifices, Gordon Brown was in Asia to give out gifts like a pale yet jolly English Santa. One gift, I should say.
The gift of English.
« In total, 2 billion people worldwide will be learning English by 2020. But there are millions more on every continent who are still denied the chance to learn English », said the Prime Minister. « So today I want Britain to make a new gift to the world: a commitment to help anyone – however impoverished and however far away – to access the tools they need to learn English. »
You know times are rough when people start giving away their product.
Because the English language is a product. It is a commodity that is bought and sold on the world markets. In 2005, back when he was chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown himself said that English was the UK’s biggest foreign currency earner. The value of English to Britain’s economy was second only to North Sea oil, according to the British Council.
English language teaching in the strictest sense is a lucrative service industry, with annual global revenues of billions of dollars a year. International education exports like textbooks – twenty-five percent of books sold in China are English learning-related! – and international students who come to study in British universities are worth over 28 billion pounds a year to the British economy.
But that doesn’t even come close to giving you an idea of the value of the English language for Britain and other English-speaking countries.
English on its own is useless, like Microsoft Windows on a computer that doesn’t have any other software. The real value of English is that it is an essential technology for workers and countries that want to access globalized commerce networks and western science. It’s a platform. And just like when you choose a Mac over a PC or the Xbox over the Wii, your choice is a commitment to continue buying other related products and technology built on the English language platform.
When people adopt the English platform they are also adopting English education, English books and magazines, English engineering and English technology.
The 1990’s and the 00’s was a moment of unprecedented profitability for anything related to the English language. « Nearly a third of the world population will all be trying to learn English at the same time », observed linguist David Graddol in a report to the British Council on the state of English in 2006. « These children belong to a moment in world history – unprecedented and probably unrepeatable – at which students throughout formal education – from early primary school, secondary school, and students in college and university – are all learning English at beginner or intermediate level. »
« Unprecedented and unrepeatable ». « A moment in world history. » A bubble?
English, like oil and bandwidth, is inextricable from global commerce and trade. The demand for English and the price people are willing to pay for it rises with the volume of trade in the globalized market. When the market breaks down, as it just did, demand for all the lubricants of global trade – oil, capital, English – drops, and the value of those commodities fall.
But in the case of English, the market broke down just as it was being flooded with new discount providers like the Philippines and Singapore. Everyone was trying to get a piece of the English boom. The United Arab Emirates alone opened at least five English language universities in the last decade. Even France offers English-only programs in its universities, merde!
A market with no room for growth, saturated with way to much capacity is hit by a sharp and sudden drop in demand.
Pop goes the bubble?
Is a near universal skill still valuable? How about when hundreds of millions people across Europe and Asia who have spent considerable time and money to learn English find themselves unemployed?
English is probably too deeply entrenched in the mechanisms of commerce and science to completely lose it’s position as the global language. But during the last few decades just about every country in the world built up its ability to teach itself English through it’s public school system. There is no longer the absolute necessity to purchase English on the private market.
So how do you keep your market share when your product is no longer competitive? You give it away and flood the market.
There are two schools of thought in Québec when it comes to the historical significance of the British conquest of 1759. The so-called Montréal school of thinkers consider it was a historical, economic and social tragedy that stunted the development of French-canadian culture and society. According to the Québec school of thought it spared Québec from the chaos and violence of the French Revolution and gave it access to British government and democracy.
I’m more partial to the second school’s interpretation. The conquest did result in two centuries of rule by a lunatic papist theocracy propped up by a cotery of racist British robber-barons, but at the end of the day, we’re still here, we’re still speaking French and we can only imagine how much bloodier things would’ve been if New France had been conquered by the Spaniards or the Dutch.
The conquest was a thing. It happened. What are you gonna do about it?
We’ll I know at least one thing I wouldn’t do about it is celebrate it.
Yet, that’s exactly what Québec City is getting ready to do.
The National Battlefields Commission is organizing a full-scale re-enactment of both the battle and the siege of Québec this summer to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the British Conquest of New France.
I get it. The whole thing is historically-minded. There’s going to be conferences by scholars. The website says they are ‘marking’ the anniversary, not having a party. The poster for the event shows two smiling generals shaking hands and the program includes a comedy cabaret with Wolfe and Montcalm impersonators.
Yet you have to be seriously clueless to think that a full-scale re-enactment of the mother of all of Québec’s many historical traumas and unresolved ‘issues’ is going to go down without drama. Come on! It was only a few months ago that some people nearly lost it because Paul McCartney went on the Plains to sing in English!
The Réseau de Résistance des Québécois and filmmaker Pierre Falardeau have already given the organisers an ultimatum: « This is why the Réseau de Résistance du Québécois (RRQ) is as of now on the war path, to be ready to get into action on the 15th of February if the said commission does not back down by then and announce the cancellation of the event. »
I can already imagine the the battalion of Jeunes Patriotes with flags and gaz masks charging the middle aged suburban Americans in tights playing the role of the british troops. Maybe Amir Khadir will attack the Wolfe impersonator with his shoes.
This said, I do think they have a point. The Conquest is a very emotional and significant historical event. In the country with the Occident’s strongest and best organized secessionist movement, you’d think people would take that into consideration.
Compare this to the emotionally charged and masterfully played lead up to Barack Obama’s inauguration. This week we saw the president-elect re-enact the train trip Abraham Lincoln took to Washington on the eve of the Civil War and a massive concert was held in front of the Lincoln monument where Martin Luther King gave the most famous american speech ever. All of this evokes slavery, civil war and segregation, but in the context of the the first black president’s swearing in, America is actually creating a brand new historical moment. A moment of reconciliation.
Over here the Canadian government thinks it can defuse the memory of the Conquest by treating it like the emotional equivalent of the war of the Peloponese and turning it into a vaudeville. This is the opposite of what the Americans are doing. This is trivializing the past. It is disrespecting the many Québécois who still have the memory of the consequences of the Conquest stuck in their throats.
Next year: the re-enactment of the American Indian genocide!
Just about as long as I’ve had this blog I’ve been using Google Alerts, a service that notifies you whenever some word or words of your choice pops up anywhere on the Internet. I’ve been using to cover the AngryFrenchBeat, monitoring what’s being said about Québec, Montréal and Beyoncé on the Web.
One of the words I’ve been keeping track of for a few months is Pure Laine. According to wikipedia, Pure Laine is « a politically and culturally charged phrase referring to the people having original ancestry of the French-Canadians. » Apparently, at least according to Sun Media columnist Micheal Den Tendt, « many « pure-laine » Quebecers have always believed — that they, the descendants of original French settlers, are the only true Quebecois. »
The concept of the Pure Laine (or Pur Laine, I track the two spellings) was at the center of the infamous Jan Wong controversy. In 2006 she wrote in the Globe & Mail about the Dawson College shooter Kimveer Gill: « the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a ‘pure’ francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial ‘purity’ is repugnant. Not in Quebec. »
Well, it seems the English Canadian media has been doing a little bit of projection, here. In the six months or so that I’ve been tracking the use of Pure Laine on the Internet, the racial purity of the Québécois has been an EXCLUSIVELY English-Canadian preoccupation.
The term Pure Laine came up in 56 english-language web pages, that’s more than twice as often as it’s use on french-language websites.
In thirty-seven cases – that’s 70% of the time – Pure Laine is used in English to describe the Québécois of Franco-Catholic ancestry. This seems to be a very important concept in the English-canadian worldview. Whenever Québec, canadian politics or language is discussed, the Pure Laine come up. Not the Québécois as a civic nation. Not French-speakers as a linguistic group. Pure Laine Québécois as an ethnic group. The Québécois as a race.
Of course, the people using the the term Pure Laine deny being the ones preocupied by the ethnic purity of the Québécois. Nearly a third of the uses of Pure Laine were by people who felt they could state with absolute authority that « Pure laine is what some francophones from Quebec like to call themselves to state that they have pure, undiluted French blood and that they can trace their lineage all the way back to the original settlers who sailed over from France in the 1600’s »
What do bloggers know, you say? Well one of them (one of only three english-language sources who challenged the ‘fact’ of Québec’s preoccupation with ethnic purity) kindly dug up a quote from some Calgary West Reform Party MP called Stephen Harper who, back in 1995, declared in the House of Commons: « Obviously, given the ethnic and sociocultural make-up of modern Quebec society, only the pure laine Quebecois could arguably be considered a people. »
Whatever happened to Stephen Harper?
In both English and French, Pure Laine has entered the vocabulary as a synonym for ‘true’, ‘old school’ or, more appropriatly, ‘dyed-in-the-wool’. It came up to describe « Pure Laine Montrealers« , « Pure Laine federalists« , « Pure Laine proletarians« , and even Paul McCartney’s « Pure Laine Heterosexuality« . In French the concept of « Pure Laine Shawin » – as in the good people of Shawinigan, the home of former Prime minister and savior of Canadian federalism Jean Chrétien – came up no less than four times…
Such use of Pure Laine accounted for one third of the 25 times the word came up in French. It was also used 33% of the time to discuss the Québécois, and another 33% of the time to describe – get this – WOOL.
In French, the term Pure Laine was used 8 times to describe people of ‘white-french-catholic-north-americans-of-franco-french‘ ancestry. Five of those who used the word, however, would not be considered Pure Laine themselves by that definition…
The word is used, for example, in the journal Voir in a review of a book by Senegal-born comedian and marine biologist (yep.) Boucar Diouf about, precisely, the different prejudice and misunderstandings held by the Québécois, « Pure Laine and also immigrant ».
Imam Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus Al-Hayiti, a black Québécois convert to a radical strand of Islam who’s been in the news lately, uses it to defend himself in La Presse against accusations of racism and hate speech. His mother and grand-mother, he reminded the journalist, are Pure Laine.
Kim Myung-Sook uses the term Pure Laine to describe herself in her fascinating blog about the identity crisis of the children of massive international adoption who are just now coming of age all over the western world. « Rejected/Sold by Korea. Bought/assimilated by the Québécois. I am a transracial adoptee, a reject of korean society recycled into a Québécoise Pure Laine with the appearance of an asian. Ex-Korean, false Korean, Korean assimilated by the Québécois. »
« Un show Québécois Pure Laine » is also used as a caption to a picture of hip hop crew Loco Locass (who’s members are not all, as a matter of fact, Pure Laine) and as the theme of a series of videos by comedian Guy Nantel. Whether Nantel’s objective was the glorification of the Pure Laines’ racial superiority, I’ll let you be the judge of that…
As for examples of Pure Laine Québécois claiming Pure Laine-ness, exalting the purity of their roots and the special privilege that comes or should come with the ability to trace one’s ancestors to Samuel de Champlain and his crew, not a single one. Pas un. Nada. Zéro.
That definition of Pure Laine, it seems, is a purely English-language concept…
At the Dépanneur, the Caisse Populaire and waiting in line at the SAAQ
In business situations, there is one rule and it is the same as anywhere else in the world: The customer is always right.
The Good Faith Clause: For months I had to visit the Royal Victoria Hospital twice a week to se a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist. Both were English-speaking. The Ocupational therapist always greeted me in French, apologized profusely for not speaking it better, and tried really hard. The physio greeted me in English and made no effort to find out my preference. I eventually asked the Occupational Therapist if we could speak English. She had been very respectful and made a sincere effort but my English was better than her French and we mutually agreed that the communication would be easier in English. Because the physio never made an effort, neither did I. I only spoke French with her and she eventually had to deal with it.
At the Yacht club, Bingo and your local chapter of the Bilderberg group
When speaking to Montreal Anglos in social situations, I always speak French. The Anglo usually responds in one of three ways:
French: The Anglo answers in fluent French and that’s that.
Franglais: The Anglo responds in a half French/half English bastard tongue. I can understand him/her, so it’s cool. I, however, stick with French. Franglais is great for Hip Hop lyrics but I have no inclination to trade my ability to converse in two of the world’s greatest international language for the regional creole of Federal government secretaries.
English: My fellow conversationalist answers in English, I respond in French, he continues in English. We both understand each other, we are both speaking the language of our choice. All is good.
The rules above are exactly the same for Anglo-Québécois addressing Francophones.
How to avoid being labelled a Maudit Anglais if you don’t speak French
French-speaker in Québec have very high expectation for their Anglo neighbors. They’ve been telling us they are fluently bilingual for three decades now and, get this, we believe them. That is why some visitors to Montreal and Québec sometimes faced with an aggressive response when speaking English. To avoid this use accents and dress like a tourist. If you can pull off a British or Australian accent people will not expect you to be able to speak French.
Sri Lankans, Philipinos, Canadians and other Immigrants
There are two schools of thought concerning the proper way to communicate with our new countrymen and women.
The pseudo-cosmopolitans: They believe that everyone who is not from Québec speaks English and that they are ‘helping’ immigrants by communicating with them in English. This school of thought is very widespread in Québec City and other places that have little to no contact with actual immigrants.
The AngryFrenchGuys: We assume immigrants are just like real people and would appreciate to understand the social conventions of their new home as soon as possible, therefore we only speak French with them.
The Switch
English-speaking visitors to Québec frustrated by the Switch – the habit of Francophones of switching to English as soon as they hear the slightest hint of an accent your speech – should refer to the rules above. The Francophone can switch to English if he wants to, but who is forcing YOU to switch with him or her? Just keep on speaking French! That or pretend to be a German tourist.
These are the rules. Put them on the fridge. Carry them in your wallet. Now you know.
It is no secret, when it comes to the situation in the Middle East, sympathies in Québec are overwhelmingly on the side of the Palestinians.
Although it would be unfair to compare the two situations, there is something automatic, almost visceral, in the way people in Québec identify with the conquered people living in Occupied Territories. The images of the uneven war between a makeshift resistance armed with rocks and old soviet rockets and one of the world’s most modern armies echoes with something very profound about the way we see ourselves.
Until Jacques Parizeau asked them to leave in the mid-80’s, the Parti québécois invited representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation at all its assemblies and members of the Front de Libération du Québec trained with the PLO in Jordan in the 1970s. To this day, members of Québec’s sovereignty movement like Gilles Duceppe, Amir Khadir and Pierre Falardeau are staples of any demonstration against israeli aggressions.
I used to feel the same way. Not anymore.
As much as I am horrified by much of Israel’s way of dealing with the Palestinians and as much as I am disgusted by the blatant racism and islamophobia of Israel’s apologists in much of the Canadian media like the National Post and Maclean’s, I have come to understand Israel’s position much better recently, and I did it by – if you will – putting Québec in Israel’s shoes.
Take a step back with me.
After a long and emotional campaign during which all of the past injustices suffered by the French-Canadians, from the deportation of the Acadians to the economic discrimination of the 20th century, have been dredged up, Québec has just become an independent country. At long last a free, independent and secure homeland for French-speakers in America.
The vote and it’s consequences causes fear and panic in English-speaking parts of Montreal. Many leave their homes and move in with family in the rest of Canada, at least temporarily. Quickly, resistance is organized in the West Island and the Pontiac. Heavily financed by Canadian nationalist and patriots in Ontario and Alberta unable to accept any form of independence for Québec, the Canadian Liberation Organisation makes plans for the complete and final reconquest of Québec.
After countless deaths and destruction caused by Canadian terrorists operating out of bases in DDO and Shawville, the Québec government is forced to impose an always tighter control on Anglo areas, including countless check points, curfews and even walls. Further complicating things, ultra-nationalist Québécois factions are building settlements in Pointe-Claire and the Ottawa Valley in the name of a divine right of the Québécois to occupy the whole territory of Québec. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Anglos who left Québec in the days following the referendum are now demanding the right to return and the restitution of their property.
Sympathies in the vast CNN watching North American public are overwhelmingly on the side of Québec Anglos whom they naturally identify with as they are of the same culture and speak the same language. Anglo leaders know this and use it to their advantage as a vast campaign of Québec-bashing is orchestrated and dutifully relayed by the American and Canadian media.
Anglo Resistance leaders also spend much time on American television explaining how they are just a peaceful people trying to establish a peaceful homeland for Anglo-Quebecers, conveniently overlooking the fact that just yesterday they vowed to destroy the State of Québec and drive every last French-speaker in the St.Lawrence River.
And so it drags on, for years and decades. Québec, with scarcely a friend (except for France, which doesn’t exactly help in North America) continues to protect its security and defend its citizens in the face of worldwide criticism. Meanwhile, Anglos in the West Island and the Ottawa Valley suffer indignities that are simultaneously the cause and consequence of their support for always more radical leaders.
Of course, all of this is political fiction and I certainly don’t believe there is any reason to think things could ever breakdown so badly in Québec. And I certainly don’t want to trivialize the pain and suffering of the people of the Middle East.
But I also think the people of Québec, and especially my friends in the sovereignty movement, should be careful before they throw their first stone at the State of Israel.
