The older I get, the more difficult it is for me to know what my values are and the more difficult it is for me to defend them. Those that I believed in during my childhood, those that I discovered later, those that I believed to be common to people here, those that I thought were universal, all turned out to be uncertain, ill-founded, far too often downgraded by those who took advantage of it to justify their power or to promote their own ideals and their own dreams. There is not one that I do not look at with suspicion. God ? Love of neighbor? Democracy ? Solidarity? Equality? Freedom ? Justice ? Autonomy? Nationalism? Truth ? Name it endlessly! There is not a single one that deserves to be believed in blindly, to be completely abandoned to.
It’s a whole bunch of values that we need to carry around in our bag and put on the table of our conscience. But they do not always marry, often oppose each other and then question the choice we have made. All that remains is for us to review our choices or rearrange our values.
For a good sixty years I have dreamed of living in Quebec in a country of French language and culture. But I also believe in democracy and I see that the Quebec people are divided between those who share this dream of independence and cultural affirmation and those who share several other values such as freedom, individual and collective enrichment, well-being and social peace, understanding between peoples, maximum access to wealth and consumer goods and tutti quanti. Canada offers all these values, but the price to be paid by French Canadians is increasingly clear and obvious: we are already witnessing the gradual and planned disappearance of French culture and language in Canada and Quebec. Quebecers only have the option of accepting this disappearance or separating from the rest of Canada. The PQ offers us one last stand of honor. If we lose, I’m afraid we will have to mourn the idea of Quebec’s independence.
The small Gallic village will perhaps resist the invaders for a long time, but the territory will certainly become smaller and smaller. Above all, I hope that Quebecers will then devote their energy to other struggles that are just as — if not more — important, even if it means having to rearrange their values.
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