[Chronique d’Emilie Nicolas] Slam the door

As I have been linked to academia, civil society and then the Toronto media world, and the rest of Canada more broadly, for nearly 13 years, my understanding of concepts such as the Quebec bashing has changed over the years. Let me share some thoughts on the subject here.

Note that the concept of Quebec bashing is not used here interchangeably with the notion of “Francophobia”, which brings together a set of attitudes directly affecting Francophones who are in a minority situation, outside of Quebec. We can come back to this in another text.

Do “the English despise us and hate us”, as some tribunes and other fine sociologists with little reputation for doing lace argue? The truth is that, just as Quebec society has changed profoundly in recent decades, the rest of the country is no longer what it used to be. As in Quebec, therefore, elsewhere in Canada there is a significant generational divide between those who remember the constitutional negotiations and the referendums, and those who were too young. I have especially witnessed, among the older generations, two main attitudes.

The first is mainly nourished by a weariness: we have never really understood (or wanted to understand) the Quebec difference, and we have the impression that Quebec, politically, is a kind of spoiled child who uses his political weight in the federation so as not to play by the same rules as everyone else. We have often read, for example, that if Justin Trudeau has not criticized François Legault as sharply as Doug Ford for their recent uses of the notwithstanding provision, it is because Quebec is the subject of a treatment favor.

The second is based on a fascination that is sometimes very sincere, sometimes somewhat fetishized for Quebec. Because we still have very vivid memories of the fragility of the federation, a certain Canadian elite expresses its passion for “national unity” through a particular curiosity for Quebec and its evolution.

Among the youngest (and those most recently arrived in Canada), the question is different. Both here and elsewhere in the country, the question of “the Quebec difference” within Canada has emerged politically for millennials and the generation following them, not through the debate on sovereignty, but first through the whole saga reasonable accommodation, then through the debate on the Charter of Values, systemic racism, Bills 21 and 96, etc.

There is a fundamental difference—I insist, fundamental—between a young person from Scarborough or Mississauga, immigrant or child of an immigrant, who hears about Quebec politically only through the refusal of his political class to recognize the systemic racism or to name Islamophobia, and a Conservative from rural Ontario or Manitoba who has absorbed, somewhat by osmosis, the old Orange tunes of his ancestors. I had a lot of contact with one, for example, when I was a lecturer at the University of Toronto, when I mostly saw the other rampant in the comment sections of certain newspapers.

Both ask, when they have the opportunity, questions that one can feel imprinted with a profound misunderstanding of Quebec society in all its complexity and nuances. But the basic postures and the power dynamics they underpin could not be more diametrically opposed. I cannot respond to my student who is concerned about the impact of Quebec identity debates on the rest of the Canadian political climate — and therefore, ultimately, on her own security, as if it were a matter of reincarnation of James Wolfe ready to return to burn our villages with his army.

This difference, we are too few to grasp it in Quebec. To do so would require those commenting on these issues to extricate themselves, ever so slightly, from their own weariness, indifference, and ignorance of Canada in all its complexity and nuance. Since the time I travel the 401 in one direction or the other, there is at least one thing that seems clear to me: in this country, the meaning of caricature has always been perfectly bilingual.

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In the context, I am sometimes asked why I remain in dialogue with the rest of Canada, or why I do not slam the door of a media that has already published dubious opinions on Quebec in the past. Would I thus be an accomplice of Quebec bashing ?

The answer is that I am a French-speaking Quebecer just as I am a woman, a black person and a queer person. If I thought it appropriate to slam the door of all the newsrooms that publish opinions that come up against my personal and family experience in terms of language, race and gender, I would no longer work anywhere, in any language. Personally, I prefer not to prioritize the different aspects of who I am, and try to remain consistent in how I react to all attacks.

We understand that impatience, the burning of bridges and the slamming of doors, therefore, are above all political reflexes shared by people socialized as the majority within their society. You have to have the luxury, in a way, of knowing that you can always avoid difficult dialogues by withdrawing into a world where the standards are designed for you. Finally, it should be noted that Francophones in other provinces have generally developed a culture of political resistance that is very different from that often displayed in Quebec.

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