I found them touching, me, these children, Canadians of Indian origin, singing in chorus on the ice of the Winnipeg Jets, in the language of Punjab, passages from O Canada. In their smiles could be seen their great pride at being there, recognized, seen, heard, applauded for who they are, cherished members of one of the constituent elements of the Canadian mosaic.
This moment constitutes a spectacular identity achievement, of a symbolic depth rarely achieved. There is the place: the ice and the hockey. There is the song: an ode to Canada, this new country, “ true North strong and free “, for which, “from far and wide”we “stand on guard”. There is the language: English, then Punjabi, spoken in the country by more than half a million people, a language in progress and which, tomorrow, during another match, could be replaced by Cantonese, Tagalog, Ukrainian and — why not? – French. Moreover, the Ojibwe had been heard singing the same hymn, in the same place, two years ago.
These songs on ice are marriages, basically. Between Canada, on the one hand, which, it is normal, expresses itself in English and, on the other hand, a given cultural group, expressing in its language its support for the Canadian project. The participants in the ceremony are the living embodiment of the country’s post-national narrative. Justin Trudeau liked to say: “our diversity is a strength”. This is no longer true. Our diversity, he should now say, is our only strength. Our only reason for being, our definition and our horizon.
The choice not to retain any words from the original language of the O Canada, French, contributes to the importance of the moment. The English version was purged of anything that could identify the source and intention of the text, which was, in 1880, a hymn to the valor of French Canadians who had resisted English linguistic and religious assimilation and whose he history of discovery of the continent (before the conquest) justified the praise of “an epic of the most brilliant exploits” and a front decorated with “glorious florets”. These words have disappeared from the Anglo-sanitized version, like of course the sword and the cross.
Small print
Some are shocked that one of the two official languages has been made invisible by the Jets. It’s because they didn’t read the fine print. It is not the country that is legally bilingual. It’s just the Canadian state and some of its services. This does not apply to any province except New Brunswick, to any sports team, to any business, city or potato chip stand unless they feel like it.
However, they are less and less inclined to do so, because it is the demographics and the multicultural project that are speaking. And they speak less and less French, and more and more other languages. Come to think of it, in British Columbia, French is the sixth minority language. Among the Jets, he is still second (behind Tagalog, but closely followed by Punjabi). It is therefore normal that Canadian reality advances according to its own logic, without seeing in the rearview mirror the dissipated shadow of two founding peoples.
But what about the point of view of those who, residents of the St. Lawrence valley and its hinterlands, witness the appropriation and then hollowing out of their own symbols? The time has come to quote the author Jean Bouthillette, who speaks of “our identity emptied of our real presence”: “What the Conquest and the English occupation had not been able to accomplish: making us disappear, the apparent association in the confederation succeeded a hundred years later, but from within, like a fainting spell. Dispossession has become invisible. Such is the specificity of the French-Canadian condition, the originality of our misfortune. To assimilate in fact is to die to oneself in order to be reborn in the Other; it’s finding a new personality. »
His little book was called The French Canadian and his double (Boreal). Its publication, in 1972, diagnosed with a cold and fierce scalpel the identity problem felt when a French-speaking Quebecer aspires to conform to a Canadian standard whose trappings have been stolen from him (name, anthem, maple leaf) to take on a another reality, English-speaking, that he will never be able to reach.
The essential imputation
How should we react to this O Canada in Anglo/Punjabi? The federalists among us certainly feel vaguely betrayed, but do not dare say it too loudly for fear of fueling anti-Canadian sentiment. The separatists decided a long time ago that the O Canada was cursed and refused to sing it, even in its original version. The trouble is still perceptible among nationalists with a Quebec-strong-in-a-united-Canada tendency. The Winnipeg event adds salt to their discomfort. What Bouthillette called “a psychic uprooting, a no man’s land interior, a wandering of our soul as a people in its Canadian exile.
He already knew, 50 years ago, that only one remedy was needed. Cut ties with this part of ourselves swallowed by the Other. It’s a lot to ask of a people to change their name, their symbol, their anthem, to find healthy self-expression. To change countries. Was it too early in 1980? This is what Gérald Godin concluded, in a letter to Lévesque five years after what he called “The Great Refusal”: “The weight of experience represented by the lives of our compatriots must always remind us that what they decide, as cruel as it is for us, it is always ultimately what they believe is best for them, in their own lives. » (Godinby Jonathan Livernois.)
The mutation required maturation. And it was only in 1995 that a very small majority of Quebecers (and 60% of French speakers) declared to pollsters for the first time that, given the choice, they felt more Quebecois than Canadians. For Bouthillette, everything is there, in the appearance of a new name which “slowly makes us reborn to ourselves and to the world […] a name that is clear and transparent, precise and harsh, a name that concretely reconstitutes us in our sovereignty and reconciles us with ourselves: Quebecois.”
The amputation/rebirth almost happened at that moment, and some of us think that this choice would have been made, had it not been for the money and a good number of shenanigans (some traces of which lie, unreachable, in the vaults of the Chief Electoral Officer). Was this failure going to push us back for good into what Bouthillette called “fainting”, into “the diffuse suffering of the vanquished and the expropriated”?
The year 2003 offers clues that it was more of a hiatus. The time — almost a quarter of a century since 1995 — to finish mourning, to come back from it. The other evening, at the Book Fair, a retiree approached my signing table as one comes to the confessional. “I voted No in both referendums. » She had thought carefully and was no longer in a phase of hesitation. “That’s enough. It’s time. » I asked him: “What made you change your mind”? His response: “The football player there, he said it. Keep your English! »
A fed up. An overflow of self-negation by the other. According to Philippe J. Fournier, founder of Qc125, in one year, sovereignty took six percentage points. Not yet the majority, of course. But a resurgence that finally crosses the margins of error. Could something be happening? Has the moult started its final phase? Would Quebecers prepare, quietly, in their own way, to say one day soon, in a tone of weariness rather than anger: “Keep it, your O Canada. It no longer helps us, but harms us. Consider this our parting gift! »
Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. He has just published Through the mouth of my pencils published by Somme Tout/LeDevoir. [email protected]