Of course there is something viscerally nostalgic in the festival of demands organized by the students on strike this week. Ten years after the maple spring, we want to feel what those who are today teachers, sociologists or deputies have experienced.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
Even though the 2012 struggle ultimately did little to improve the situation for students, those returning to the fight this week still want to be heard. They want their spring.
Place du Canada, Tuesday, however, they were significantly fewer than ten years ago, but their enthusiasm was great. They came from UQAM, Cégep du Vieux Montréal, Sherbrooke or elsewhere. I spoke with several of them. I heard the words of enlightened young people, with ideas and real convictions.
Many people think this series of protests is unnecessary and folksy. I do not think so. If young people no longer demand anything, who else will? What would youth be without their demands, their desire to change the world?
“It’s a law of nature that the younger generation should take matters into their own hands and differ from their parents,” I once heard from Alfred DesRochers in a radio interview. “Otherwise, the race degenerates. The old poet was right.
At the turn of the 1980s, like thousands of students, I took part in a student strike. Drooling not nearly, we occupied for days and nights the Cégep de Hull that I attended. There were sentries watching for the arrival of the police while the others slept in the gymnasium on judo mats that smelled like feet.
I no longer remember the reasons why we went on strike, even less what it brought us. But I remember very well the feeling I had during those days of struggle. For the first time, I felt like an adult.
Young people who take to the streets with a social conscience probably feel the same way.
Anyway, on Tuesday, they told me about their situation, about what they need to do to make ends meet. And at no time did I think we were exaggerating, that we had come to demonstrate for “a week’s break”.
“I come from a disadvantaged background,” Paula told me. I’m a real high school dropout. I’m going back to school. At $15 an hour, it’s hard to come by. »
10 years ago, Paula was 22 and pregnant. She waited for her daughter to grow up before starting studies in accounting sciences in 2019 at the age of 29. “I hear things that disgust me in my classes. I’m here to do things differently. »
On her sign, Simone had written: “My mother sold all her saucepans to pay for my studies”. I went to chat with her. The girl was 10 in 2012. She speaks proudly of her teacher mother who marched in the streets alongside thousands of protesters.
Simone is currently studying management techniques and intervention in leisure. “We have to do a total of 450 hours of internship and we are not paid”, explained to me his comrades, Katherine and Olivier. The subject of internship compensation is on everyone’s lips. I would even say that it is the great battle of this movement.
Isabelle and Frédéric, two sexology students from UQAM, also want to take advantage of the events planned for this week to obtain paid internships. “Business and government need to work together,” Frédéric told me. We are asked to work like professionals, but for free. »
Several wore the famous red square. There were, however, very few saucepans. The percussionists of the Movimento formation were there to set the mood. These musicians were music students at the University of Montreal during the Maple Spring. Today, they offer their talent at events that defend social causes.
“We rehearse every Sunday,” Louis Desjarlais told me. We take what we are offered to pay for the instruments. “Here are artists who have ideas in mind.
There were also some socialist or Marxist groups promoting them. Louis-François, who is part of La Riposte sociale, was 16 during the maple spring. His father organized a demonstration in Gaspé. The apple did not fall far from the apple tree.
“Today, I’m the one who sends him articles and lets him know what’s going on,” the sociology student told me.
Big week, therefore, for students and CEGEP students who have made the decision to upset the school calendar as they enter the exam period. That said, not everyone dares to take part in this movement. Let’s just say I didn’t come across any law or medical students.
It is certain that there are fewer nerves and that the “leaders” do not have the stuff of those of 2012. As for the militant student associations, they are absent. We hope for a stronger mobilization by the fall when the provincial elections will be held.
Will the students stand in the way of François Legault as they did with Jean Charest ten years ago? There was no hint of that on Tuesday.
What is new this time is the place taken by the fight against climate change. Rallies will take place on Friday, then on the 1er April and April 22, on the occasion of Earth Day. These gatherings could be larger.
I don’t often want to go back, to “relive my youth”, to rediscover the aspirations of my twenties. But I admit that yesterday, I would have liked to be the age of these students.
And spend the night in a barricaded cegep on a judo mat that smells like your feet.