It’s Quebec Day. Long live the reunion! COVID is throwing its darts into the joyful melee while no one is watching. She takes her foot. Must say that we die less of it. Exit the barriers. Bring out the guitars and the accordion! Celebrate the common language. Untie this pinch at the spectacle of its daily shipwreck. Join the dance. See how we dance. Jump, dance, kiss whoever you want!
Marjo, Richard Séguin, Florent Vollant and the other artists performing in the capital can wake the dead and defy the clouds. Marc Labrèche knows how to think, laugh and speak. In Montreal, it swings too. For the rest, among those who still fear crowd baths, there are TV shows…
The time of rejoicing is fleeting and liberating. You might as well vibrate in unison for two days and two nights, whether it’s thundering, windy, raining or blowing. Filling up on joy helps to regain strength before the big fights. If the heart is hardly in it anymore, let’s not listen to this annoying guy.
Many of us have known national holidays perched on immense hopes, at a time when the fiery impulse invaded the territory at high tide. Today, its soil is collapsing, as in La Baie. We pretend to believe in it as much as before. We turn up the volume. No one can hear each other talk anymore.
However, French is honored everywhere. There is even a stationary parade in panels on Maisonneuve, between Sanguinet and Saint-Dominique, until June 25, which launches words of poetry, tales and songs to say it. But our linguistic routs are so deep… Those who measure the full catastrophe of the aftermath tense up.
Because after the Saint-Jean lights go out across Quebec, you really have to learn to roll up your sleeves. The state speaks to us of pride without relying on collective responsibility, on the war effort to be deployed. You know, like at the time of the chores of yesteryear, when all the able-bodied helped to erect the same building site in the village. Everyone was told: “Shoot! Push! It would be exhilarating to fly together to the aid of a language so long slaughtered in unison. To refuse its collapse by learning new words, by chasing English equivalents, by fighting for the revision of the education system which gives birth to illiterates.
Literacy is sick in our fragile francophone cradle more than elsewhere. At least Quebecers should be persuaded of their power to reverse the course of collective decline. They feel helpless or look elsewhere. A people to shake is flattered by its politicians in the direction of the hair. “If we got down to it,” sang Ferland.
These alarm signals flashing everywhere urge us to change: this decline of French, this inability to pass it on to rising generations. Yes, let’s defy fate on these solstice days. Before we shake the chips. Status quos cannot last.
Nor on the environmental side. On this level, of course, we note minor progress. The Plains of Abraham show obtained the carbon neutral stamp this year. Under all the vagaries of the climate, at least the place remains shady. And while trash from revelers litters the grass after the ball, trucks are already collecting trash during the rallies. And in general, people are picking themselves up more than before. By dint of seeing the planet revolt, they tremble together: all these groves, these gardens and the river which flows below under the boats help them to breathe better than through buildings in tight rows. Real treasures to protect.
In Montreal, the Place des Arts Esplanade is very beautiful. But so many trees were cut, so many green areas were sacrificed to create this asphalt playground and culture. It’s a concrete party. Planting a few shrubs in containers and sowing water jets is not enough. During heat waves, the heat island turns into a sweat lodge. The place was not designed to withstand the effects of global warming or to help the human beast to commune with the natural elements. Some prefer to celebrate a little further east, Place Émilie-Gamelin, or Parc Jean-Drapeau. Where there are still leafy trees that exude freshness and poetry.
We live as before. We dance on a volcano. But Quebeckers may love to celebrate their freedom and their pride, but they are not fooled. Their language, they will have to master it for fear of burying it. Their environment, they will have to let it breathe under pain of losing their footing. And let’s sing loudly. Because tomorrow will ring the hour to coordinate all our efforts before logging. Let’s wake up!
This column is on hiatus for five weeks. Back in August.