In The duty of Saturday, January 7, Gérard Bouchard wonders whether to return to French Canada. He perceives in a certain criticism of the Quiet Revolution a desire to return to a historical period that he has always considered harmful to the deployment of Quebec.
I would like to reverse his question. From a question of opinion, “should we return to French Canada?” », I will make a question of fact, « have we returned to French Canada? “.
Politically, French Canada can be defined as the historical period (1840-1960) when Quebec sought to become independent within Canada. French Canada died out at the turn of the 1960s at the time of the assertion of Quebec sovereignty, the future of French Canada no longer being perceived by the majority of Quebec’s French-speaking elites within the framework of the union of the two Canadas.
The sovereignist cycle ended following the second Quebec referendum (1995). For a second time, Quebecers said no to the project of an independent Quebec. Sovereignty then became less central to Quebec political life.
Nationalism was transformed from sovereigntist to autonomist, from a nationalistic valorization to a question of identity (antipluralism). The questions of the secularism of immigration, but above all the election of the CAQ in 2018 as in 2022, elected on a resolutely autonomous and identity-based program, confirm this change.
It is clear that this quickly sketched portrait strangely resembles the French-Canadian period. A political autonomism and a nationalism, carried by only Franco-Quebecers, more centered on identity than politics. Whether this is a desirable development is another question, but it seems to me that it is a fact, an end of the cycle.
A social fact
Socially, French Canada would have been, according to Bouchard, a period of rejection of modernity by the French-Canadian elites, leaving the people ignorant, poor, in short, “behind” modernity. The Quiet Revolution would have emancipated the Quebec people. Hence the severe criticism that Bouchard addresses to those, whom he does not name, who would make a “radical critique” of the Quiet Revolution. This would have “confused”, according to these strangers, Quebec. They would quietly dream of a return to French Canada.
Let us say from the outset that few are the analysts who do not see in the Quiet Revolution a moment of catching up with the modernization of French-speaking Quebec. The Quiet Revolution would also have instituted a more social-democratic and egalitarian development model in Quebec than that which exists in the rest of North America.
But, many, since Fernand Dumont, from the beginning of the 1970s, have noted the rapidity of the change caused by the Quiet Revolution which would have had effects on the very morphology of Quebec society, its ability to renew itself.
The exaggeratedly low birth rate in Western societies, high suicide rates among young men, incomplete catch-up (schooling), a record number of children born outside of any religious marriage or civil union, the disappearance of rites of life (baptisms, weddings, funerals), a catastrophic exit from religion, etc. A kind of social crisis, which sociologists call anomie and which would have repercussions on the politico-identity crisis in Quebec.
Obviously, as Gérard Bouchard suggests, a serious study would be needed to back all this up, but the simple annual look at Quebec figures in handpublished by the Quebec Institute of Statistics, tends to support all of this.
The permanence of French Canada
However, these phenomena are generally more typical of Quebec than of the rest of the West, of French Quebec than of English-speaking Quebec or of recent immigration (I am excluding Aboriginals here), of rural Quebec than of urban Quebec. .
Some see in these phenomena specific to former French Canada proof of Quebec emancipation. We would be the first, without much debate, moreover, to validate marriage for all, to modify the definition of family, to confirm medical assistance in dying. We would be the most progressive people in the world.
And yet, I continue to believe that it has something to do with the permanence or the too rapid disappearance of French Canada. A “cultural fatigue” to paraphrase Aquin. “Quebec” is “disoriented” politically and socially. Its political fractures have become difficult to read. He has not succeeded in rebuilding society since the erasure of French Canada.
It is less a question of returning to French Canada than of attesting to and assuming the permanence of its crisis.