Midsummer Madness in Quebec

...The Separatists are a tiny sect...

...De Gaulle did not exaggerate when he described his passage along the St...

...And Pearson understood, perhaps better than de Gaulle, the distinction between the dramatic ex citement de Gaulle elicited and the true balance of political forces in Quebec and Canada...

...French Canada managed to survive not only independently of France, but against it...

...The Act of Confederation, whose centennial is the cause of this year's celebrations, began to break the stalemate by establishing an autonomous provincial government for Quebec, as for the other eight provinces, under the central regime at Ottawa...

...The Loyalists regarded themselves as aristocrats, adherents of the Church of England...

...Yet, Johnson, who has to live in Canada and not in France, has since announced that Quebec will solve its problems within a Canadian framework...

...Lawrence as exuding an atmosphere similar to what he had encountered in the liberation of France in 1945...

...Quebecers feel that they get the short end of every stick, even if that end is a great deal longer than it used to be...

...As Caouette correctly reminded de Gaulle, Quebec owes nothing to France: "If we have had the heart and courage to save our language and our faith, it is not the fault of France...

...By contrast, the plain along the St...

...Mauriac and Maritain are the philosophers of interest, not Sartre and Camus...

...That was one side...

...In the light of this history, how can the head of the French state come to make claims of a special relationship and to chart a course of independence for French Canadians...

...It also assigned to Quebec permanent minority status as one among nine provinces...

...Its loyalties were to the ancien regime...

...Pearson could also rely on the boomerang effect...

...The Pearson regime has encouraged this trend, partly to offset dependence on America and partly because it supports enlarging the areas of Quebec autonomy in order to maintain the Canadian Federation...

...Nonetheless, the sense of grievance runs deep...

...De Gaulle's excursion into rhetorical political violence notwithstanding, the capacity of a progressing Quebec to shake free from its past and to redefine itself as a cultural entity will be strengthened by closer involvement with France...

...And for its part, Revolutionary France was not concerned with colonies...

...Class differences also intruded...

...To day even the Liberal party of Quebec, as much as any of the other major parties, is French-Canadian in outlook...

...Ours is an age of nationalist passions and the breakup of historic associations of peoples...

...What it has become lacks the depth and richness of France, but there is no question that it is distinctly itself, an almost improbable example of stubborn national persistence within a hostile environment...

...British Canada has only slight natural resistance to American cultural inundation, but Quebec has the advantage of a different language, a different tradi tional outlook, and different institutions...

...In any case, the image is obsolete...

...Quite possibly, caught up in the aura of Gaullist mystique, Johnson allowed himself to blur over the differences between Quebec's autonomist desires and outright independence, thereby misleading de Gaulle in the process...

...Lawrence unfolds a prospect of large, mechanized and prosperous farms...

...Poorly organized, they were caught flatfooted...

...This has given rise to speculation that Johnson oversold himself in Paris by tending to act in a sovereign capacity...

...All of France watches you, hears you, and loves you...

...Autonomist or separatist parties began to emerge in the twenties and by 1936 the Union Nationale victory over the Liberals finally gave Quebec a government it could call its own...

...Regard ing the British as temporary victors, they looked to the day when fortune would return them to the motherland...

...The second event that was to sever the French colonists from France was the French Revolution...

...Rather, the Church functioned for the French Canadians in a way similar to its role in Poland and Ireland, as a center of national and popular struggle...

...Historically, French Canada dates from the settlements of Quebec and Montreal by Champlain in the early seventeenth century, under royal grant...

...And yet de Gaulle is a man of profound political instinct...

...After all, it's one thing for a minority that has long felt discriminated against to identify with de Gaulle and the cultural motherland...

...These attitudes jelled quickly into a pattern of oppressive colonial rule which was to persist for the better part of a century and has not yet evaporated...

...The image I held of French Canada was one of backwardness...

...In particular, it could not accept the disestablishment of the Church, for the Church was the very bastion on which rested their communal survival...

...Autonomy is the desire I encountered, but not a burning hunger to tear loose and form an independent Quebec...

...Having turned their backs on separation from London, they hardly looked with favor on the French settlers—for France had been an ally of the rebels...

...The arrangements were worked out with the Quebecers in such a way as to all but exclude Ottawa...

...These were the Loyalists, landed gentry, well connected in London who opted for remaining British subjects...

...Turning around de Gaulle's proposal of a two-way exchange of scientists and technologists, Caouette was able to state that the French-Canadian standard of living was now superior to that of France, and "that is without doubt why the General made his call for aid from French Canadians in favor of France...

...Vermont and New Hampshire seem never to have recovered from the flight of the textile mills...

...The fact is that French Canadians never had it so good...

...As near as I could see, the cities are doing equally well...

...No wonder he felt justified in climaxing his journey with the slogan of the Separatists, "Vive le Quebec Libre...

...All Canada will thereby be better able to sustain its independence from the United States...

...A visitor to Montreal this summer could be pardoned for being distracted from the wonders of Expo by the political antics of Charles de Gaulle...

...That all this fit into de Gaulle's own thinking probably made the mutual deception easier...

...Economics aside, I found that the French Canadians have created a virile French culture of their own, not an aping of metropolitan France...

...The political parties of Quebec largely compete around the issue of greater autonomy vis a vis the central government, which in effect means also against British Canada...

...For the last century the politics of French Canada has focused on easing the consequences of this minority position...

...While the central government in Ottawa at first acted as if de Gaulle hardly existed and later seemed to wish only that he would go away, the Quebecers responded with emotional fervor...

...What began as separation became mutation...

...Highly aware of its economic dependence on the American colossus, Canada attempts to define its nationhood in juxtaposition to the U.S., just as the long history of Quebec's struggle for survival was defined by resistance to economically and politically dominant British Canada...

...As if to brush away any ambiguities, he assured the Quebecers that control of their own destiny was what other peoples around the world also wanted, and that such control need not prevent "your cooperation with neighbors and different elements...

...Johnson invited de Gaulle on behalf of the government of Quebec rather than the government of Canada...

...The technological remolding of Quebec, the organization of the industrial base of its present prosperity, was the work of American and British capital, French and FrenchCanadian capital had little to do with it...

...Precisely because it is freer and more self-assured, Quebec is now able to turn again to France...

...Even today, Church adherence is not at all the formality largely limited to women that it has become in Italy, France, and elsewhere...

...That de Gaulle did not create the schism between French and British Canada, but came merely to exploit it, was apparent to everyone...

...Grievance, hurt pride, hunger for recognition that would erase the stigma of inferiority, sensitivity to every restriction, real or imagined, awareness that survival and unremitting struggle have been synonymous— these were the deep veins of feeling which de Gaulle mined...

...Quebec became a poor agrarian enclave, resistant to change, forever behind the times...

...The French colonials were chiefly fur traders, small farmers, Roman Catholics, who were inclined toward miscegnation with the Indians...

...As Quebec unmoors more and more from its tradition-bound culture and enters the modern world, the desire to refurbish its French heritage along modern lines has increasingly offset its historic distaste for postrevolutionary France...

...While France surrendered its Canadian colonies to Britain in 1763, this was not necessarily decisive as far as the colonists were concerned...

...The price was backwardness...

...For example, importation of French books and periodicals are not only welcomed in Quebec but fostered as a matter of provincial policy...

...their pleasant valleys are spotted with the ugly legacy of the industrial revolution...

...I must admit to being caught by surprise...

...Until quite recently, there were no significant cultural ties between the two peoples, and even now, although one can get Le Monde and Elle on newsstands even in the smaller towns, indigenous experience and talent nurture Quebecers' attitudes...

...The Canadian experiment in binationalism offers a democratic alternative...

...Still, Prime Minister Pearson played it cool, fearful of fueling the incident into a separatist conflagration...

...it is quite another for a foreign head of state to launch an independence movement in one's own front yard...

...While France proceded to become a modern society, the French in Canada clung to the past as the only possession by which they could retain their identity...

...Ironically, La Nouvelle France could not accept the revolution...

...In a situation which severely limited political activity and with power monopolized by the British, the Church assumed all leadership —not only political, but intellectual, educational, moral...

...However, while such cooperation with English speaking Canadians was desirable, the real danger lay to the south, and here de Gaulle had no hesitation in suggesting a foreign policy to his New France by which it could "safeguard their substance and their independence in contact with the colossal neighboring state...

...De Gaulle failed to distinguish between the two...

...Thus, Real Caouette, head of the Social Credit party and quondam enfant terrible of Canadian politics, could say: "We are of French descent, but our country is Canada, not France...

...Two other events that followed soon after were to determine the fate of the French Canadians...

...The French language would no longer be proscribed, the Church could function freely, the Quebecers could preserve their cultural separateness...

...Yet one cannot help marveling at the change upon crossing the border...

...I realize now that this simply represented the dominant Anglo-Saxon view, sifted to me by like-minded American textbook writers and teachers...

...On the other: "France welcomes Quebec's will to take its destiny into its own hands...

...At that point, the storm broke...

...By the time de Gaulle had reached Montreal, they flocked to his public appearances, carrying banners of endorsement...

...I do not wish to underrate the problems of urban blight and other manifestations of modern society which infect all of Canada...

...De Gaulle's automobile trip between Quebec City and Montreal became a triumphal procession...

...His error lay in confounding them with a movement for independence...

...and this became the basis for FrenchCanadian grievances ever since...

...That they had nothing whatsoever to do with what de Gaulle was saying was evident...

...Even Belgium and Switzerland fear for their ancient unities...

...Ottawa could no longer ignore his intervention...

...The Rule of Reason, the new laicism, the permeation of French life with secular values were repugnant...

...There is no doubt that de Gaulle miscalculated...

...First, the American revolution brought a flood of refugees seeking sanctuary under the British crown...

...To be sure, the kinds of French thought deemed acceptable conform to Quebec's tradition...

...British Canada kept recalling that the Expo, and indeed even de Gaulle's visit itself, were part of the celebration of Canada's 100th anniversary, while French Canadians relished every phrase that drove a wedge between the communities...

...Quebec's Premier, Daniel Johnson, spent some weeks in Paris earlier this year preparing a new relationship between Quebec and France involving joint radio and TV projects, technical cooperation in developing nuc'ear and hydro power, exchanges of teachers, students, and engineers...

...The French language, pre-1789 vintage, became the symbol of struggle against British assimilationism...

...Whether Caouette is literally correct in claiming higher economic levels for Quebecers is beside the point...

...We are linked by a common past and France will never forget it...

...It has suffered as a result...