Before I go on, a little background on your author is necessary to understand his biases. My father's side of the family is largely highland Scot with Canadian ancestry dating back at most a century if less, while my mother's side is Irish and French, with the Irish presence being here since the 1880's and the French presence pretty much having arrived on the ships with Champlain as far as we know. This is where things get complicated...
Ever since time began, English folks and French folks have not really gotten along. Sure, England was almost constantly at odds with other powers, especially their Celtic co-inhabitants of the rainy islands, but the arch-enemy of all things English has largely been considered French. During the Protestant Reformation, when things French tended to stay Roman Catholic for the most part, this rivalry turned into bitter hostility. While racial and cultural bigotry that grew into the Black Legend pretty much focused on southern European, and particularly Spanish culture, the people of England and English-speaking North America learned to despise the "freedom-hating, overly Catholic" French as if such hatred were a religion. The Catholic-centric policies of absolute ruler Louis XIV and his would be allies among the deposed Stuarts did little to dispel the Franco-Black Legend, and Americans, to be fair, had every reason to be concerned about French competition in North America, as it hemmed them in and threatened their nice colonial existence with possible annihilation, if not by the French, then by their native allies. Even after the French were defeated, the Quebec act of 1774 still threatened to make the thirteen colonies prisoners of their lands.
Fortunately, the French came to the aid of the Americans in the American war for independence, and Britain now became the grand enemy. Things French slowly became more acceptable in English speaking North America, more so when the country changed hands and became a European bastion of democracy (stop laughing, I know that the Revolution and Napoleon made a mockery out of this). Of course, try telling your average American or newly minted Canadian loyalist of 1800 or so that things French in North America were not still the enemy. Les Canadiens, you see, were still Catholic and might even be out to help France get a new foothold on the continent should the tables ever turn back in Paris. The loyalists in Ontario were particularly concerned that any freedoms that the habitants of the lower St. Lawrence valley might get would somehow undermine their own existence, less an actual concern (because, you know, the government in charge was British) than a continuation of some old bigotry.
As time went by and English Canada became more of a dominant feature of British North America, this fear and bigotry, which should have simply evaporated, grew stronger. Though insurrections by some elements of French Canada did occur in the 1830's and later in the century under Louis Riel, they were usually accompanied by a general dislike of the ruling government (English Ontario also saw rebellion in the 1830's). By and large, French-Canadians, Quebecois included, knew that their survival as a culture depended on the existence of Canada. Had they remained under French control, they (we) might have been sold out as easily as Louisiana was in 1803 (to say nothing of what would have happened to Catholic Canadien culture under Revolutionary rule)! Had the United States ever gained control of Quebec either in the invasion of the 1770's or the War of 1812, well, we can see how well things went over for Californios and Tejans when Mexico lost a lot of her territory.
For a while, then, French-Canadians, including Quebecois, knew that they had a good spot for themselves. Confederation had even been really kind to Quebec, what with all the strong provincial powers being given to help maintain her unique status. Still, resentment, especially on the English side of the Ottawa river, remained. Now, remember back up there where I said things were going to get complicated?
My maternal great-grandmother was as French-Canadian as French-Canadians could ever hope to be. Back at the turn of the 20th century (and until the 1960's), however, French-Canadians outside of Quebec could expect little advancement socially. She married one of the Anglais, actually a Scottish-Canadian gentleman, Mr. Wilson of Smiths Falls, Ontario. Smiths Falls, like much of eastern Ontario, is about as high United Empire Loyalist as any part of the old empire outside of Britain could hope to be! Needless to say, in order not to "create scandal" or make things rough for the family, my great-grandmother had to stop going to Mass, work on flattening out that accent of hers, and was expected to fly the Union Jack off the front porch. She was, however, a little too proud of her grand heritage to abandon it completely. To some of her children she secretly taught a Catholic catechism and spoke French with, one of whom was my grandmother. Though my grandmother, Lillian Cassidy (nee Wilson) was raised Presbyterian and sounded politely Canadian English (despite being Scottish too), she found that when she married an Irishman, "conversion" to Catholicism was a rather simple affair. The French language, however, was a different matter altogether.
My mother was never raised speaking French, because even if sleepy little Orillia, Ontario could ensure peaceful domestic bliss for an Irish-Catholic family (which was remarkable in a town that featured Orangemen parades until recently), being this deep into English-speaking Ontario, even in the 1950's, meant that any domestic use of French would earn a few raised eyebrows. French, they said then, was for the nuns at the local Catholic school to use back at their convent and maybe in class.
Back to non-family history for a moment...
In the 1960's, this sort of thing changed. Vast societal changes were taking place throughout North America. Racial boundaries were being openly and defiantly broken, youth culture was emerging as a fighting force rather than a deviant minority, suits and ties were giving way to jeans and t-shirts, and peace was slowly becoming more attractive than war for the first time in human history. Quebec took part in this upheaval in what has since been known as the "Quiet Revolution" in which the Catholic Church lost her place as a cornerstone of French-Canadian society and nationalistic tendencies rose up for the first time since confederation. All of a sudden, even deep into Ontario, things French became cool and exciting, especially among progressive-minded youth yearning for a new society and world, more so when Parisians started transforming the artistic bent of their city, especially in the Sorbonne. Montreal, long the crown jewel of Canadian commerce and cosmopolitan vitality, was looking to join the ranks of such cities as New York, London, Paris, etc.
Then the walls came crashing down. Rather than ride the wave of new-found popularity, the nationalistic elements of the Quiet Revolution formed the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) and started committing terrorist acts in the name of Quebecois freedom. In 1969, they bombed the Montreal Stock Exchange, and in 1970 started murdering and kidnapping government officials. Ever since this time, the unity of Canada has been called into question by many on both sides of the internal border between Quebec and the rest of the nation. I call these people extremists and just plain dumb. Come by tomorrow when I explain the current (post 1980) situation of independence, but stay for now as I finish the personal history.
While my mother was largely kept in the dark about her cultural inheritance (she did know who her grandmother was and was taught French in school, to be fair), the fact that social pressures against French-Canadians was largely dead and gone by the early 1980's meant that my grandmother was quite eager to not see her heritage disappear. She fed me lots of tourtieres, pea soup, and things both burnt and made of too much butter. We read through saint picture books that prominently featured Joan of Arc, King Louis, and a number of Jesuits. She sang Silent Night to me en Francais when I was a baby and spoke the mother tongue around me whenever we were alone together. By the time I learned how to speak, I was becoming simultaneously bilingual. Because the rest of my family and the majority of my existence in Ontario and other English-dominated parts of my early years surrounded me in English, I pretty much always spoke it without moving between the two languages, but the inside of the noggin was a different matter entirely, and I was a terrible speller until high school, mainly because of the battling languages going on in my head. I laugh at the linguistic dueling, because it is so emblematic of what I strongly identify with as a "home" culture, that of being a Franco-Ontarian.
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| The Franco-Ontarian flag. The above on is flown proudly alongside the Canadian and Ontarian flags in Mattawa, Ontario. |
You would think I would thus be all for Quebecois freedom, non? I again give you a resounding NO/NON to this tragedy of a concept, despite my heritage. Why? Because Quebecois freedom is oppressive to French-Canadian freedom. By no means do some malcontents in politics have a monopoly on the cultural identity of our people. Again, come by tomorrow as I expound on this.
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