In his last week of interviews before the summer vacation, the Premier of Quebec said that “the worst thing that could happen is to lose a third referendum on sovereignty.”
Beyond the fact that this is most likely an inaccurate postulate, when we hear him express this way, it is difficult not to conclude that François Legault is consumed by fear.
Obviously, the temptation is strong to ostracize the Prime Minister, to recall his time with the Parti Québécois and to point out that his federalist allegiance is undoubtedly proof that he is spectacularly deflating.
But it would be a little unfair to stop there.
Because fear does not only freeze the bones of François Legault. The fear is collective in this uncertain country, and the Prime Minister of Quebec is only the banal expression of it.
Summer, as we know, is an ideal time to delve into books. What if François Legault’s latest outing inspired us to do some occasional reading? Not particularly light reading, but which would allow us to better understand the extent of Quebec fear.
Let’s reread Maria Chapdelaine. In this novel published in 1913, young Maria must choose between three suitors. There is François Paradis, the woodsman who promises to make her dream. There is Lorenzo Surprenant, the man of uprooting who would take him to live in the United States. Then, there is Eutrope Gagnon, the man of the land, but not just any land: the one next door, just.
Maria will choose Eutrope. The adventure, after all, would be for others.
Let’s reread Thirty acres. Euchariste Moisan is an outdated farmer, frightened by modernity at the turn of the twentieth century.
So, instead of fighting to remain an owner, he will end his days as an employee in a garage in the United States. The adventure would be for others.
Quebec literature is shot through with fear. That of Donalda in A Man and His Sin. She refuses Alexis’s hand, who doesn’t exactly promise to run away. He promises him another horizon. But the adventure, once again, would be for others.
Before Jean-Charles Harvey’s major conference on the theme of fear in front of the Canadian Democratic Institute of Montreal in 1945, François Hertel, a forgotten writer, already observed in the 1930s that French Canadians had an exercise of conscience to undertake : “They have so much of the mentality of their fathers in their blood: fear, defeatism, giving up, the feeling of our inferiority. »
In this book called The beautiful riskhe added that the hill is steep to climb.
Nearly a hundred years later, we are still in the middle of the coast, but this risk which, it is true, constitutes the referendum exercise – and more broadly independence – is still just as beautiful. In fact, he even found a way to embellish it.
Yes, risk always sticks to the skin of beauty, but it should not make Quebecers tremble, who also have the right to adventure.
In any case, the real risk – the one that is not at all beautiful – is to persist in playing with fire.
Because it must be repeated: federalism and its pirouette in the form of a third way is playing with fire.