In 1999, during a stay in Barcelona, after having wandered the streets of the Barri Gòtic (Gothic quarter in Catalan), after having strolled on the Rambla, after having visited the Miro museum, the Sagrada Familia… there was still something for me to see the History Museum of Catalonia. We then dedicated a room to Guernica. More than a famous painting by Picasso, it is a Basque town martyred in the Spanish Civil War. It showed images of the massacre of 2000 citizens of a town which had around 9000 in 1937. The scenes had nothing to envy of the almost contemporary images of Auschwitz. They were disturbing. The Catalans like to disturb Madrid.
At the time when the creation of the National Museum of the History of Quebec was being undertaken, certain cautious minds were rising to demonstrate their opposition. It would be so much easier to do nothing, to say nothing, to forget. Comfort and indifference, said Arcand in other times.
It would be so easy to forget a devastating conquest as all wars are, like the one underway in Ukraine. Forget the inhabitants of the Île d’Orléans or the Côte de Beaupré who took refuge on the heights of Charlesbourg around their bishop to escape the burning of their farms, the massacre of their herds, the bombardment of the city. It’s so far back in time. A conquest which decapitated a people of its political and commercial elites, from which it took 200 years and more to recover!
Could the rebellion of 1837-1838 have no cause? The barbaric reprisals that the patriots suffered in their flesh and their property, some hanged, exiled, others having seen their houses and their outbuildings go up in smoke… Should we forget these sacrifices and reduce them to anecdotal facts of the past ? The Durham report which followed did nothing to make the occupiers of the time proud.
Should we ignore the killings of spring 1918, when the army came to kill 4 civilians opposed to conscription in the streets of Quebec and injure 70 others by firing into the crowd? What were they doing if not protesting a promise broken by elected officials? Obviously, that’s a long way off, some will say. We don’t see that anymore these days.
But is 1970 that long ago? The Trudeau government then threw 500 Quebecers in prison under the pretext of crimes of opinion, without reason, to the point that they all had to be released a few weeks later for lack of justification to treat them in this way? It is a question of facts, not of ideological drift, when we recall.
Until our days
This is the same government that imposed a new Constitution in 1982 without any regard for the Quebec people. Why not remember it? This is not an invention on my part. Justin Trudeau, in the same functions as his father, is the first to not respect his father’s Constitution by acting from one day to the next in areas of jurisdiction that are not his. It is not going back to the flood to mention it.
The Gomery commission (2004-2005) proves beyond any doubt that the results of the 1995 referendum are the result of a circumvention of Quebec’s democratic laws on popular consultations.
Just last week, a Liberal MP treated researchers invited to submit the results of their studies vulgarly. The Liberal leader even went so far as to say that opponents of his party were incapable of opening up to the fate of French-speakers outside Quebec.
Well, since he invites us to talk about it, let’s talk about the deportation of the Acadians, a genocide to use today’s language. Let’s talk about the hanging of Riel and the ban on French schools in Manitoba, Ontario, the Maritimes, without ever taking into account the opinion of Quebecers on the subject. The list could go on, and it would be long.
We then understand better the comments of the opponents of the National Museum of the History of Quebec which is planned. We would like to sanitize the institution before it even exists, to handcuff those responsible for its development, just as we have expurgated the content of history lessons to soften it and convey the harsh reality of the facts in order to replace them with stories. romantics of the past.
I am certain that space will be given to major Quebec achievements, such as Hydro-Québec or the services acquired over the years and from which Quebecers benefit through hard work. But a National Museum of the History of Quebec that is not disturbing would miss its essence, because everything must be said.
The story is disturbing in Barcelona, as it will be disturbing here.