“The homeland is a common project, a continuous creation of our united efforts […]Being together is an infinitely complex orchestration, whose invisible conductor is the shared conviction that this whole exists, that it has a meaning throughout history, that we must be attentive to it so that it does not slacken. […]. The most serious disaster that can threaten a people is the indifference of its members to the shape of its future. »
This prodigious quote is from Pierre Emmanuel, a French poet and academic. It was chosen by Camille Laurin and Fernand Dumont to open their Quebec Policy on Cultural Development in 1978. This document was to establish, after the Charter of the French Language, a second pillar of the affirmation of Quebec identity, including a policy of living together that they called cultural convergence. A work that is, to this day, unfinished.
I am taking the national holiday that we have just celebrated as an excuse to try to outline the contours of the infinitely complex orchestration that is the identity of a nation. This is a definition that I have been refining for several years. I am happy to present the status of my draft to you today.
It is not enough to say that we do not recognize ourselves in the postnational project of Justin Trudeau and his followers. Or to describe ourselves in opposition to the Americans, the British or the French. Beyond realizing that we have a past, a present and a future that have meaning, an identity that defines and supports us, that we are not just individuals, but a nation, everything remains to be said…
How can we describe more precisely, and necessarily imperfectly, what, in Quebec OptionRené Lévesque called our “vital difference”?
First, there is evidence that Quebec forms a nation on its territory. Quebec has an official and common language, French, and all residents are called to learn it, to know it, to share it. The fight to defend this language is a permanent element of our existence. Quebec is embodied in a very rich cultural production, mainly French-speaking, which expresses its origins, its evolution and its cross-breeding. All Quebec students should know its essential works.
Our cultural roots are French, our institutions British, our way of life American, so many traces inscribed in a rich and singular historical story, always in progress. Knowledge of this story is or must be part of the experience of common Quebec citizenship.
There is our attachment to our immense territory. Our local roots. The pride of being from the Gaspé, Beauce, Abitibi or the Lake. We should name them all. The pride of the people of Quebec, a city of history and future. The extraordinary permanent laboratory of ideas, of cultural encounters and creation that is Montreal.
There we find the heart of our historic minority, English-speaking, sometimes rival, sometimes partner in the construction of the metropolis and of Quebec, and the liveliness of adopted Quebecers from all backgrounds investing in Quebec life and culture with their contributions.
On this vast, rich and living territory, since Champlain, our first and perhaps our greatest hero, we have wanted to build relationships of friendship and mutual respect with the indigenous nations. There have been setbacks. Deep scars that it is up to us to heal together to better prepare for the future. But from the Great Peace of 1701 to the Peace of the Brave in 2003, there is a desire to live side by side, in a mutually beneficial exchange. Quebec’s identity owes a lot to its indigenous imprint, in particular our early taste for freedom and our relationship with the territory. I have the weakness to think that the indigenous nations also have a Quebec imprint. It is up to them, alone, to notice it and name it.
A taste for travel is one of our identity traits. From explorers and coursers of the woods who crisscrossed and named the continent, to missionaries working in Africa and Asia, to cooperators, exporters, artists and simple travelers, Quebecers are globetrotters and want to leave their traces elsewhere.
Then there is our particular attachment to universal values:
Quebec is not the only place where equality between women and men is a precious (and still incomplete) achievement. But, because of our history, this desire for equality is expressed intensely and is part of our fundamental identity;
Quebec is not the only place where we find a strong momentum of mutual aid and consultation, alongside the spirit of enterprise. But our minority status has made these approaches to action and decision-making structuring elements;
Quebec is not the only place where the quest for social justice is unfolding. But the march of a French-speaking population that, before the Quiet Revolution, was underpaid and socially downgraded, towards a modern society of great social mobility and demanding to aim for equity in all its forms, makes this quest a salient feature of our collective life.
Quebec is not the only place where democratic will is present. But patriots who vote in all villages for 92 resolutions demanding more democracy, including obtaining responsible government, up to the laws on democracy of René Lévesque and Robert Burns, more recent advances in sanitation of our political practices and the persistent debates on the search for a fairer voting system, our commitment to democracy is inseparable from who we are.
Quebec has included in its modern identity a move towards greater secularism, entangled in the fight for the development of women.
This is essentially what, I think, defines Quebec identity. This should be the basis on which the “cultural convergence” desired by Laurin and Dumont should lead. Rule of law and society of rights, this identity admits the right to criticism, to dissent, to non-conformism, obviously. Identity is not and should not be unanimity. The description of Quebec identity must, it seems to me, be both an uninhibited affirmation of oneself and an invitation to live together. It is neither Canadian, nor American, nor European, neither better nor worse than that of other advanced democracies. She must simply be Quebecois. And deserve respect. First of yourself.
This column is taking a break for the summer and will be back at the end of August.