Yes, what is knitted with patience and determination can be unraveled by shouting scissors.
Allow me here for the understanding of the greatest number of readers to use the term “French Canadian” instead of “Quebecer”.
For those who do not know, namely the generations inheriting the Quiet Revolution, it was the progressive French-Canadian nationalists who, at the end of the 1960s, decided to break with old-style nationalism, that embodied by Canon Groulx to put it simply, by renaming itself Québécois and secular.
The neo-nationalist militants demonstrated an openness to the world. Sensitive to the phenomenon of decolonization which had enabled African countries to gain their independence, they too aspired to attain independence.
By rallying enough sympathizers to their cause, they succeeded in taking power in 1976 thanks to René Lévesque, the only politician capable of imposing the most spectacular reasonable accommodation before the letter, namely sovereignty-association.
Risk
It was a risky bet. The following will prove it. The Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, born of an English mother and a French-speaking father, repatriated the Canadian constitution in 1982 without the agreement of Quebec. Trudeau senior thus defeated his sworn enemy, René Lévesque, who was wounded to the heart by this betrayal.
- Listen to Denise Bombardier’s column at the microphone of every Monday and every Friday, live or as a podcast on :
In the second referendum in 1995, under the leadership of Jacques Parizeau, an openly sovereigntist prime minister, but bound by the obligation to hold a referendum, everything was settled with a few tens of thousands of votes. Many admitted that it was the swan song of independence.
Since then, Quebec will seek the means at its disposal to ensure its difference and its distinction. To counter all-out multiculturalism, François Legault, ex-sovereignist, but still nationalist, chose secularism as a weapon and as legal support, the clause notwithstanding enshrined in the Canadian constitution at the request of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, paradoxically.
During this time, and without Quebeckers being really aware of it, the open-air immigration policy of Trudeau Jr., who would always seek to free himself from his father, transformed English Canada into a country where diversity imposed itself on all levels.
War
Secular Quebec must understand that fundamentalist religious groups have declared war on it. Today it is about young Muslims demanding prayer rooms in their schools. Soon, other signs of our historical-religious heritage will pay the price.
The fleur-de-lis flag, which refers to France and Catholicism, will go through the mill.
Moreover, do we believe for a second that the Muslim fundamentalists of Quebec, supported by Islamist groups, unapologetic enemies of the Judeo-Christian West, will not be able to use the Canadian Charter of Rights in their favour?
- Listen to Denise Bombardier’s column at the microphone of every Monday and every Friday, live or as a podcast on :
Good-natured Prime Minister Legault should face the facts. As Prime Minister who passed the law on secularism, he must curb his religious impulses and make people forget that he is of Catholic culture as he is of sovereignist culture.
“You, shut up”, shout to them the religious radicals who hate the Christians that we have been and that we still are sociologically until the last Quebecer dies out in general indifference.