Some context on _The Question of Separatism_. A lot of Americans had moved to Canada in the decade or so before Quebec's first Parti Quebecois premier. Many of them had come to Canada to escape the Vietnam war - Canada refused to extradite draft dodgers to the US.
Once there, some number of them made public pronouncements in favour of breaking up their adopted country. Even if they were unilingual anglophones themselves, they knew where they stood on any question of oppression. French speakers qualified as an "oppressed minority", and deserved the power to forbid the speaking of English. The French language would surely disappear in Canada without drastic measures, and must be saved. Unlike native born Canadians, they understood all the issues, all the nuance, and were happy to tell us what we ought to do.
I don't know whether or not any of them knew any of the nuance in the situation, let alone the claims popular among English Quebecers of the provincial government eagerly oppressing linguistic and ethnic minorities. (This is roughly the same time there were violent confrontations about building a golf course on Indian land.) At any rate, as an English Quebecer, I regarded these pro-Quebec Americans with extreme contempt.
Eventually my own government sold me down the river, metaphorically speaking. Quebec got to be exempted from any human rights legislation it chose, as part of the price for staying in the country. Signs in English were forbidden. Many children were forbidden to attend public schools in English even if it was their native tongue. Those who were permitted by law tended to encounter bureaucratic obstacles instead. Businesses above a certain (small) size were required to communicate internally only in French.
Montreal - where most English Quebecers lived - lost most of its head offices and research offices, not to mention swathes of customer service business. Real estate crashed, and Toronto gained from Montreal's losses - they were no longer roughly comparable cities, with Montreal having the edge in cosmopolitanism. Lots of English Quebecers left the province. Some ambitious French Quebecers joined them.
I eventually wound up in the United States, having lost any conscious semblance of patriotism in the process - Canada pretended English Quebecers didn't exist, or didn't deserve to be allowed to both speak their native language and live where they were born. But it's a huge sore spot with me still.
It's also worth mentioning that the prime minister of Canada during much of this was himself a French Canadian from Quebec.
At any rate, that's the context for the second of these books.
For the record I now kind of favour Quebec separating from Canada, provided all Indigenous or otherwise non-francophone areas have the option to separate from Quebec, and there are never any transfer payments. I imagine that most of the resource based wealth in Quebec would separate from it, just as much of the research and head office based wealth already did. (And they've been trying to entice it back ever since...) It's too late for Montreal - its non-francophone immigrant communities are probably long gone, along with much of its English speaking population. But I still want revenge, and while the PQ leaders probably wouldn't do too badly personally (much as I'd like to see them suffer), the children and grandchildren of the gullible fools who voted for them would certainly suffer. And giving them what they asked for - but then sensibly don't vote for - would give me that revenge.
Some context on _The Question of Separatism_. A lot of Americans had moved to Canada in the decade or so before Quebec's first Parti Quebecois premier. Many of them had come to Canada to escape the Vietnam war - Canada refused to extradite draft dodgers to the US.
Once there, some number of them made public pronouncements in favour of breaking up their adopted country. Even if they were unilingual anglophones themselves, they knew where they stood on any question of oppression. French speakers qualified as an "oppressed minority", and deserved the power to forbid the speaking of English. The French language would surely disappear in Canada without drastic measures, and must be saved. Unlike native born Canadians, they understood all the issues, all the nuance, and were happy to tell us what we ought to do.
I don't know whether or not any of them knew any of the nuance in the situation, let alone the claims popular among English Quebecers of the provincial government eagerly oppressing linguistic and ethnic minorities. (This is roughly the same time there were violent confrontations about building a golf course on Indian land.) At any rate, as an English Quebecer, I regarded these pro-Quebec Americans with extreme contempt.
Eventually my own government sold me down the river, metaphorically speaking. Quebec got to be exempted from any human rights legislation it chose, as part of the price for staying in the country. Signs in English were forbidden. Many children were forbidden to attend public schools in English even if it was their native tongue. Those who were permitted by law tended to encounter bureaucratic obstacles instead. Businesses above a certain (small) size were required to communicate internally only in French.
Montreal - where most English Quebecers lived - lost most of its head offices and research offices, not to mention swathes of customer service business. Real estate crashed, and Toronto gained from Montreal's losses - they were no longer roughly comparable cities, with Montreal having the edge in cosmopolitanism. Lots of English Quebecers left the province. Some ambitious French Quebecers joined them.
I eventually wound up in the United States, having lost any conscious semblance of patriotism in the process - Canada pretended English Quebecers didn't exist, or didn't deserve to be allowed to both speak their native language and live where they were born. But it's a huge sore spot with me still.
It's also worth mentioning that the prime minister of Canada during much of this was himself a French Canadian from Quebec.
At any rate, that's the context for the second of these books.
For the record I now kind of favour Quebec separating from Canada, provided all Indigenous or otherwise non-francophone areas have the option to separate from Quebec, and there are never any transfer payments. I imagine that most of the resource based wealth in Quebec would separate from it, just as much of the research and head office based wealth already did. (And they've been trying to entice it back ever since...) It's too late for Montreal - its non-francophone immigrant communities are probably long gone, along with much of its English speaking population. But I still want revenge, and while the PQ leaders probably wouldn't do too badly personally (much as I'd like to see them suffer), the children and grandchildren of the gullible fools who voted for them would certainly suffer. And giving them what they asked for - but then sensibly don't vote for - would give me that revenge.