In the wake of the adoption of Bill 96 and the recent CAQ convention, there is a lot of talk about pride these days. Pride of French, pride of the Legault government, pride of being Quebecers.
But Mr. Legault and his party are not the only ones who are proud. Me too, I am.
On my mother’s side, I have French ancestors who have been in Quebec since the 17e century, and Irish people who have been there since the 19e. On my father’s side, they were Jewish immigrants from Central Europe who ended up settling in Quebec at the beginning of the 20th century.e century. One of my grandfathers, a francophone, was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. He participated in the liberation of the Netherlands. The other, an English-speaking Jew born in England, studied law in French, subscribed to the To have toand maintained his French throughout his career in Quebec.
In a colonial society like ours, the past is certainly a complex thing, but I am proud of my heterogeneous origins.
I have an Anglophone parent and a Francophone parent. I have always spoken both languages. Because they valued French, and knew how easy it was to lose it, my parents insisted that I be educated in French. I speak English and French, but I read and write a lot in English. However, the cinema of my childhood was as much Roch Demers as Disney, and I know much better Madame Bovary that Great Expectations.
I am proud to have two mother tongues.
I studied English at university in the United States. Afterwards, I came back to Quebec to study medicine, in French. As a medical student, resident and pediatrician, I worked all over Quebec: Montreal, Brossard, Saint-Hyacinthe, Gatineau, Val-d’Or, Mistissini, Schefferville, Puvirnituq and elsewhere. I treat patients in English and French, sometimes even in Spanish. In my team, there are foreign doctors who have studied French for years, at their own expense, to take the exam that would allow them to stay in Quebec to treat Quebeckers.
I am proud of my work and of my colleagues.
I am lucky to live in a dynamic, friendly Montreal neighborhood on a human scale. I take advantage of public services, parks, libraries, bike paths, everything that a prosperous and united society can offer its citizens. A few steps from my house, you can have an excellent cappuccino prepared by an Italian barista, while eating a hot bagel or a fresh croissant, or even a succulent spanakopita or a Peruvian chicken sandwich: a world tour in a few bites . Black hats, gray hair, hijabs, tattoos and baby carriers rub shoulders in my neighborhood, most often in harmony and joie de vivre.
I am proud to live here.
I’m not used to spending my time being proud. But I tell myself that if we talk so much about pride, I can talk about it a little too. And I know that Quebec is full of proud people, for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways. I would like to know them, these prides, to see them and hear them more in the public square, in the media, and especially in politics.
Because a monopoly on pride doesn’t exist.