In the February 5 and 6 edition of Homework, the historian Éric Bédard reminds us how much Guy Frégault’s work on New France was a model of its kind (“La Nouvelle-France de Guy Frégault”). He is absolutely right. We find in this great historian the fluidity of the narration, the quality of the synthesis, the rigor of the documentary work and the mastery of the French language.
But while praising his subject—much deserved—M. Bédard was not obliged to take on board Frégault’s theses which are impossible to validate by historical analysis. Mr. Bédard writes, for example, that “this nascent people [les Canadiens] could have had a completely different destiny if it had known a development analogous to that of the other societies of the New World”. What makes it possible to affirm it? The only thing we know is that the development of the colony by France, after 150 years, was perfectly Lilliputian compared to that of neighboring societies.
In another passage, Mr. Bédard returns to the same theme by declaring that “this colony [le Canada] would have been able, a few decades later, like other American colonies, to stand on its own two feet and exist on its own. However, the fate of the arms had decided otherwise.
This suggests that France would have consented to Canada existing as a separate entity. Risky assumption when we know that none of the colonies of France in the Americas became independent, except Haiti (and even there, in abominable conditions).
Moreover, except for very rare exceptions, no country in the Americas has obtained its independence without waging war on the metropolis. These wars were often very long and followed by civil wars.
Finally, let us recall that with regard to the neighboring colonies, the population of Lower Canada in 1800 was 250,000 inhabitants (including the English-speaking minority). That of the American Republic, then engaged in a prodigious phase of expansion on the continent, was five million inhabitants. What power would then have guaranteed the security of the new country?
Mr. Bédard also endorses the assertion that “our ancestors had been the actors in a story that ended in an unfortunate event. “Actors, no doubt! But how to claim that they were at the center of the institutional and economic workings of the colony? This does not stand up to analysis.
Finally, modestly evoking the thesis of the “unfortunate event” is to repeat even today the threadbare arguments of “New France, paradise lost following a tragic battle”. There is more than ever reason to oppose this reading of things with the lucid judgment of Canon Groulx on the subject: “Can there be more perfect childishness, in history, than to make the catastrophe of 1760 depend solely on the outcome of the Seven Years’ War or the defeat of the Plains of Abraham? The fate of New France was settled long before that date.
It is time we got used to the idea that what definitively sealed the fate of the Canadians was neither the loss of an important battle in 1759 nor the capitulation of 1760, but the surrender of the colony by France in 1763. A perfectly deliberate imperial gesture. Without the representatives of Louis XV trying in the least to recover Canada. Neither then nor later.
I believe, like Mr. Bédard, that Quebecers need a national narrative. Let them be reminded that if they exist today as a people, it is because they seek to realize themselves as a nation. A nation with a rightful place on the North American continent.
But the national narrative does not need, in order to be convincing, to be encumbered with outdated notions such as those of “New France, paradise lost”, of the “Conquest”, of the “dislocated society”, of the ” trauma of defeat”, and “the independence that Quebec would enjoy today if Canada had remained a French colony”.
Quebecers could instead draw inspiration from the fact that our ancestors survived two empires. The first gave birth to them, but left them bloodless. The second had a policy of making them disappear, but missed his shot.
Despite this past, despite the difficulties that are its own and despite the fact that its territory borders on the largest empire in the history of the world, the Quebec nation nevertheless continues to exist in a beautiful way. No doubt this is because of an identity forged in reaction to these three empires.