Franco-Ontarian, Francine Pelletier moved to Quebec one day in October 1975 with one ideal in mind: to survive. In the midst of an identity crisis, she had to “save her soul” as a French-speaker, she says in In Quebec, this is how we live (Lux), an enlightening essay that takes a critical look at the rise of identity-based nationalism.
The French-speaking minority in America is like a cube of sugar next to a gallon of coffee, underlines the journalist and director, using the image of the novelist Yves Beauchemin.
How to make sure it doesn’t dissolve? This is one of the questions posed by this essay which delves deeper with a more personal angle into the themes already covered in the excellent documentary Battle for the soul of Quebec1.
Francine Pelletier realized in her early twenties, while going to continue her studies in Alberta, how fragile the French-speaking sugar cube was. “I didn’t really realize that I was on the path to assimilation,” says the journalist. In Ottawa, although she grew up in a French-speaking family and attended French school, she used French and English interchangeably, without thinking about it. “There was always this dual culture at home. And I was drawn to English-speaking culture because it seemed more enveloping, more winning. »
As a child, she had seen her mother, a proud French speaker, prefer to spend a night in prison rather than pay a fine written in English only. But unlike her, she did not feel like an activist ready to go behind bars to defend her rights.
“I was too young to understand and I thought my mother was pretty special for doing that! But I ended up understanding quite quickly that there are things you have to fight for in life. It quickly became clear to me that Francophones were losers in the great Canadian equation. »
It is therefore in Alberta, in a completely English-speaking world where the French fact hangs by a thread, that she understands that she has an existential choice to make: either she becomes English-speaking, or she moves to Quebec to ensure its survival.
I understood that it was not enough to have access to a language. I needed to have access to a culture. And for that, it took a critical mass of people.
Francine Pelletier
When she arrived in Montreal in 1975 with her chum Albertan at the time, she immediately felt like she was at home there. “It was as if someone had held me in their arms,” she wrote.
It was a year of grace for her, marked by the end of the war in Vietnam, International Women’s Year, the rise of the Parti Québécois and its independence project. Francine Pelletier is captivated by the cultural abundance of this Quebec where a wind of optimism blows. She discovers politics like never before. She also discovered feminism, with which she did not immediately identify, despite the injunctions of her older sister, the actress Pol Pelletier, who shaved her head to thumb her nose at the patriarchy and tried to educate herself. .
“The class struggle, the gender struggle, the struggle for independence… It felt like people were deeply engaged in something. It was hard to resist that! »
Francine Pelletier feels challenged by René Lévesque’s dream of making Quebec a “model society” and by the way in which the Parti Québécois will succeed in restoring the nobility of nationalism at a time when, elsewhere in the West, we are ignoring it. wary.
The nationalism that the PQ promotes is not only civic, but also progressive, she emphasizes. It attempts to unite all those who were born in Quebec or who live there, regardless of their origins or beliefs.
“Immigrants are part of the country in an intimate and intense way, like stones in a sealed wall,” said MP and poet Gérald Godin.
With Law 101, forcing the children of immigrants to attend French schools, a real revolution is underway. “French-speaking Quebec stopped seeing foreigners as a threat,” believes Francine Pelletier.
After the dream and two referendum failures for the PQ, came disenchantment. From 2007, in the wake of the “reasonable accommodation” crisis, Quebec nationalism ceased to be a progressive and inclusive project to transform into conservatism defending the values of the “We” of the “historical French-speaking majority” and suspicious of immigration. A nationalism in which Francine Pelletier no longer recognizes herself at all.
In the dominant political discourse, the definition of what a “good Quebecer” is is becoming increasingly narrow, she recalls. In the name of Quebec identity or values, we begin to single out religious minorities in general and veiled Muslim women in particular. We begin to demonize multiculturalism and cut corners with fundamental rights, by trivializing the use of the “nuclear option” of the exemption clause. “Because in Quebec, that’s how we live,” François Legault will say in a video defending Bill 21.
But is this really how Quebec will succeed in surviving?
Francine Pelletier doesn’t believe it.
It’s a demagogic speech that I hate. A speech that passes for political thought, but is not.
Francine Pelletier
So what ?
“I believe that we are at a moment in the history of Quebec where we absolutely must find another model of survival. I think this is the most important idea in the book. It’s urgent! “, she said, evoking the inescapable reality of our digital era dominated by English and the cultural diversity of Quebec, a reality that is just as inescapable for younger generations.
To save the soul of Quebec, we cannot simply protect the French language. We will have to ensure that the majority of Quebec residents want to identify with their culture. And for that, we should listen to what young people say about it. People like Joshua Pace, a young 27-year-old translator, whom she quotes in her book:
“My mother is from Quebec and my father is a Frenchman of Italian origin; I am everything that is whiter and more assimilable. […] How can I explain that I have such a hard time identifying with Quebec culture? Or, the question should be: How could I feel close to a culture that fails to represent difference, and my black, Arab, Asian, Latino friends? »
“The French-speaking Quebec of tomorrow will necessarily be multicultural, diverse, mixed, or it will not be,” believes Francine Pelletier. But we still have a long way to go to support a culture in which everyone recognizes themselves. “We need to find a discourse where when we say “we”, it means everyone. »
Our interview reminded me how sad it is to be deprived of the insight into the news of this seasoned journalist, who has always had the courage of her opinions, since a column followed by a long correction was suddenly sounded the death knell for his collaboration with Duty in January 2022. Without always agreeing, I am one of the many readers disappointed at no longer being able to read it every week.
Although she deplores this hasty departure, Francine Pelletier emphasizes that it gave her the opportunity to contribute to the public debate in a different way. “It’s often said that when one door closes, another opens… It allows me to do things that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but never had the time to do. I wanted to write at length and this gave me the opportunity to do so. »
Questionnaire without filter
Coffee and me: I need it, a bit like brushing your teeth, twice a day. It is a ritual as much as a lifestyle.
A recent reading that struck me: The Kremlin Mage by Giuliano da Empoli (Gallimard). It’s a brilliant book. If we want to understand what is happening in Russia, not only now, but also since the disintegration of the Soviet empire, the arrival of the oligarchs and Putin, this is a terribly enlightening read.
The last Quebec book that I loved: A thousand secrets, a thousand dangers by Alain Farah (Le Quartanier). This novel, both funny and bright, is a great success. It allows us to see Quebec from another point of view, that of the second generation of children of immigrants. This is the Quebec of tomorrow. A must-read book.
People I would like to bring to my table, dead or alive: Hannah Arendt, because she is the one who best tried to understand the last cursed era and we are living today in a new cursed era, where catastrophes are multiplying without us really knowing where we are going. go. I would like to hear it, alongside Virginia Woolf, Leonard Cohen and René Lévesque. It would make a beautiful table!
A film that shocked me: Amores Perros by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It’s an extremely harsh and beautiful film about the difficulty of loving and living. And at the end, there is this dedication: “Because we are also what we have lost. »
A proverb that I like: There is this English proverb which says: “ It’s always darkest before the dawn. » It is always darkest just before morning breaks… We always tend to despair just when things are likely to change. You have to be patient in life – even if I don’t have much patience myself!
Who is Francine Pelletier?
- Originally from Ottawa, Francine Pelletier is a journalist, director and professor of journalism at Concordia University.
- She is one of the founders of the feminist magazine La vie en rose (1980-1987).
- She was a reporter and co-host of the public affairs show The Fifth Estateat the CBC (1995-2000).
- She has written texts in several media, including a weekly column in The duty (2013-2022).
- She is notably the author of Second beginning: ashes and rebirths of feminism (Workshop 10, 2015) and The art of getting wet. Chronicles to fuel the debate (Ecosociety, 2022).
- She has directed a dozen documentaries, including Sir (2004) on former Prime Minister Jacques Parizeau.