What is a social revolt worth when you are heartbroken? At the height of the student crisis that we nicknamed “the maple spring” 10 years ago, my brother was in the middle of a separation and I took him in with me until he got back on his feet. It was in 2012 that I discovered the ravages of text message breakups – my last breakup was in the early days of the internet.
Posted at 6:15 a.m.
For the first and only time in my life, in a state of exhaustion not far from burnoutI had taken a four month sabbatical and couldn’t have chosen worse timing.
My apartment was located not far from Émilie-Gamelin Park, at the heart of the demonstrations and clashes with the police. The days were punctuated by the shouting of slogans, the sound of pots and pans and the wanderings of demonstrators. My boyfriend got peppered once while going to buy peppers at the greengrocer, sandwiched between the students and the police. It must be said that with his crazy hair and his glasses, he looked like a mean lecturer in philosophy, even if he never finished his CEGEP.
I was hoping to drop out of everything during this leave, but I remained glued to the news and social networks for weeks, observing a phenomenon that had no equivalent in the history of Quebec. It happened on my street.
But my little brother was in deep love, I had to help him. In the evening, I would take out a bottle of wine, we would go outside on the terrace, I would listen to him while the helicopters circled above our heads. Because as the formula wanted it, the fight was “every evening until victory! »
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We keep saying these days that Quebec society has never been so divided. The maple spring did not fit into this plan. Times are changing, those who are causing trouble right now are truckers against health measures. For the moment, I find that they are much less clubbed than the students at the time (so much the better, I hate clubs).
Do you remember that in 2012 we passed a “special law” prohibiting, among other things, masked demonstrations? History has these ironies, all the same. And the young people responded to this by singing: “The special law, we don’t give a damn! »
Although I was in the front row of the demonstrations (and with a soul in pain), I did not understand the hatred towards the students at times. Neither did my mother, who lives close to my house. She banged her pot and provided water and rags for the young people in case they received tear gas outside her house. I found her quite a “drama queen”, but she was really supportive of the students, whereas today she fears antivax.
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Yes, it stirred, but we were not angry with this movement which sometimes made those who lived far from the action hysterical. On the other hand, I was often exasperated by the painful lyricism of some adults who seemed to live vicariously the fantasy of a fuzzy revolution that they had never been able to lead. My friend Gérald, a retired journalist who lived in the Laurentians, laughed at us when we got excited about the subject. For him, it was above all a Montreal phenomenon, with a few branches in other cities.
At the height of the crisis, a wind of madness seemed to blow over Quebec. In a chronicle, Joseph Facal imagined himself imprisoned in a Kebekistan ruled by supreme leader Amir Khadir. It was in this period that a certain Magnotta mailed bits of his butchered victim to the Liberal and Conservative parties. The day the government of Jean Charest passed its famous special law, the tension was palpable the same evening at Émilie-Gamelin Park. I was coming back from a show with my boyfriendand we had to run under the sound grenades whistling, while the people on the terraces of Sainte-Catherine Street got angry at the police.
I think the pans started when part of the population, by making themselves heard, wanted to curb a certain violence that was growing.
All I had to do in 2012 was watch and listen. What did these young people really want? Was the increase in tuition fees just a pretext? Why were they brandishing poems by Gaston Miron? I feel that from there was born something that upsets Quebec society even today, without putting my finger on it, when we were talking about the Plan Nord, and when the Aboriginals were absent from public discourse.
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But my brother was not well. Today, he gets along great with his ex, but in 2012, their frantic texting during the breakup was driving me crazy, I didn’t know how to stop this vicious cycle.
I bought a discount package for Rome, where my brother could no longer pick up text messages but be swept away by the beauty of the Eternal City. For a short week, I dragged it to all the most touristy places, like a GO on acid: the Colosseum, the ruins, the Vatican Museum collection.
We even took a day trip to Venice, to the most tourist trap hotel imaginable, near the Rialto Bridge. In short, the total, but the situation was serious, I wanted to change my brother’s ideas. And take a break of spring maple.
We ate that evening in a small restaurant near St. Mark’s Square. When our French table neighbors heard our accent, they couldn’t help but ask us what was going on in Quebec. The “maple spring” had crossed borders, people were talking about it elsewhere in the world. We tried to explain the situation, without bias, and other tourists from the restaurant joined in the conversation, curious. The owner of the restaurant, surprised to see that the place was animated, offered us shooters of grappa on his arm.
Very late and a little drunk, we returned to our hotel, there were no longer any tourists, only the Venetian youth who were taking over the city, we danced on the Rialto bridge to sober up, and we were rather proud than Quebec talk like that.
On their return, the fever had subsided. My brother’s grief, my fatigue, the maple spring. Autumn was coming, and so were the elections. But if this crisis monopolized for months all the debates in 2012, it was no longer linked to the increase in tuition fees, at some point. Everything to do with the direction that Quebec was taking, with its cuts in education and health care. We resumed the course of our lives anyway and let go of an anger that might have changed how we live the pandemic today.