The portrait of the Quebec people that I am proposing here, unlike what we read too often, is that of an eminently resilient, skillful people who, through the ups and downs of their history, have always (or almost ) knew how to make the right choices as a company. Few people can say the same. […]
America differently
Quebecers, heirs to the French colonists who arrived four centuries ago on the shores of the St. Lawrence, have succeeded in building an enviable society on several fronts: democratic, prosperous, peaceful, surprisingly egalitarian and tolerant.
No less North American for all that, Quebec is an exception in America. It is first of all because of its social model, closer in certain respects to that of the Scandinavian countries than to that of the rest of the continent. Quebecers are less inclined than other peoples of America to accept social inequalities and, therefore, more willing to pay taxes (to share wealth, in short) to ensure a more generous social net and a more equitable distribution. revenues.
Quebec is then used by its model of living together applying to peoples of different origins. Not so long ago, it was a divided society, on the verge of a social explosion, the French-speaking majority having a strong feeling of inferiority, and for good reason. History teaches us that divided societies are seldom happy societies.
Quebecers have succeeded in erasing this division in the space of a generation, without resentment or violent uprising. The social gap between Francophones and Anglophones has disappeared, as has the feeling of inferiority. Few people, especially from an unequal relationship, today live together in peace.
Equally rare are the examples of people – once closed in on themselves – where immigration is seen as a positive contribution to the nation. French-speaking Quebec is today a land of welcome for newcomers from everywhere. What it means to be Quebecois is changing; we are witnessing the emergence of a new nation.
Another idea of the state, religion and nation
In search of an answer, I went back in history. How to reconcile the frankly positive (too much, some would say) portrait of Quebec society proposed in this essay with the myriad of misfortunes and defeats that have marked its history? We all know them: the Conquest, the defeat of the Patriots, the ugly Durham report, the minority of Francophones in Confederation, the two lost referendums, and so on. How can this people dare to be “happy”? Perhaps the time has come to approach the history of Quebec from a different perspective, which I have tried to do in this essay.
My journey through the history of Quebec made me discover a people who, from their first moments on this continent, knew how to assess their geopolitical situation: minority, caught between two European empires none of which wanted them well and a young one. American republic which wanted to completely absorb it. Far from seeing a people beaten, stunned – without denying the less happy events -, I saw an intelligent people, aware at every stage of their interests, opportunistic even, but also endowed with a strong feeling of solidarity, egalitarianism and the search for consensus which is one of the conditions for its survival.
In this conclusion, there is no question of reviewing the history of Quebec. I especially want to come back to the pivotal place of the American Revolution (direct consequence of the Conquest) in the political evolution of the Quebec people. Quebecers refused this revolution, as we have seen, and also the French Revolution. The exposure to the hypocritical speech (how to put it otherwise?) Of the first and to the horrors of the second, no less idealistic at the beginning, quickly immunized them, so to speak, against the revolutionary virus: these people have become resistant to extremes. (right or left). Quebecers did not allow themselves to be seduced by the sirens of “freedom” from the South. Without this refusal, the implementation of the Quebec social model two centuries later would have been unimaginable.
Because of its rejection of the American Revolution, the Quebec people continued their political evolution in a more “ordered” space, that of state responsibility (think of the Great Peace of Montreal of 1701, under the French regime). . The post-Conquest marriage between the British Crown and the Church only reinforced this conception of the role of the state. Both, unlike the American revolutionaries, emphasized the need for a central institution to guarantee peace, especially with Indigenous nations, and a minimum of social justice. We are therefore far from the conception that the American colonists had of the role of the state (or, rather, of its desired absence) and, therefore, of the authorized place for violence in the nation. The Wild West has never been part of the Quebec imagination. The quasi-hatred that the American right has for the state has no equivalent in Quebec, and the Second Amendment to the American Constitution (the right to bear arms) is simply unimaginable there.
The loyalty of Quebecers to the Crown was, in today’s vocabulary, an eminently strategic choice, England being at the time the only power capable of countering American greed. The territorial ambitions of the neighbor to the South also closed the door to any dream of an independent country. I will not dwell on the ups and downs of the federal system after 1867. The crux, for purposes of this conclusion, is the British parliamentary legacy. Quebecers have made it theirs, adapting it to their image. The parliamentary system, without being perfect, is less subject to anti-democratic drifts, history teaches us, than the American-style presidential system. Would Quebec’s democracy be as vibrant, as robust, if we had adopted this system?
Finally, my little trip down memory lane convinced me that Quebecers were never a pre-industrial people, a folk people, whose values broke with American modernity. Hughes was wrong, Lord Durham too. Quebecers will be modern, but differently. As we know today, they were no less good at business than other North Americans, but it was a latent faculty. The attachment to the Church, to the values she preached (not very conducive to business, admittedly) during the long phase of cocooning, was a demographic necessity – another strategic choice. Indeed, for the “miracle” to occur, the nation had to endure. Women are the true heroines of this story, I cannot repeat it enough, but they are also its main victims.
It couldn’t go on. The history of Quebec is full of paradoxes, one of which, and not the least, is the construction of a deeply secular society on the basis of that formerly qualified as a quasi-theocracy, the priest-ridden province. Not so long ago, who could have imagined that Quebec would one day be the least religious corner of America? Now, precisely because the Church controlled everything, when she fell, everything else could have changed.
The Quebec miracle
Story of a traveler from here and elsewhere
Mario polese
Editions du Boréal, October 2021
336 pages
Who is the author
Mario Polèse is professor emeritus at the National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS), Center urbanization culture société in Montreal, his home base for more than 40 years. He has written extensively on the economy of Quebec and, more particularly, on the economy of cities and regions. He has held research and teaching positions in the United States, France, Switzerland and Latin America.