In certain secondary schools, the simple mention of Quebec identity would cause people to laugh, points out Jean-François Lisée in The duty of February 24, 2024. Quebec would be mocked for its lack of culture. Finally ? I am tempted to see this as proof that Quebec culture is now dominant. Quebec is treated like Canada used to be, so often criticized for the same reason.
These anti-Quebec prejudices would be alive in a private establishment in Montreal where tuition and other basic fees amount to nearly $6,000 annually. In its corridors, English would be the dominant language. That may be true at this school where parents are willing to pay $2,250 a year for extracurricular activities, including golf. This is much less true in the public school of Montreal-North where I spent three months last year for the magazine New projectas part of a forthcoming article.
From the start of the school year until the teachers’ strike, I was able to see that the lingua franca from the Amos school, which welcomes 16 to 20-year-olds, was indeed French. The students, almost all of foreign origin, sometimes speak Creole, Spanish or Arabic among themselves, but never English.
Quebec culture, far from making people laugh, arouses curiosity: the students do not know it. In a French class, I heard a girl candidly ask what joual was. The teacher’s response: “It’s a bit like Creole. It is a language, a form of affirmation, of protest. It’s identity. It is very important in Quebec identity. » Reaction from a boy: “If we do the oral in joual, will we get extra points? » It was a joke, not a mockery.
At the Amos school, the mention of Quebec culture never made people laugh in my presence. I heard a professor of African origin praise “our Quebec ancestors” without anyone finding fault. I heard a student giving a classmate lessons in the Quebec accent (read: popular accent from the east of Montreal). I also heard, in the back of a class, misogynistic comments from a boy. Her neighbors ended up asking her to shut up.
I have no trouble believing that teenagers who already see themselves at the top of the ladder belittle the culture of those who are not there. If their social advancement is less meteoric than they hoped, they will perhaps one day discover the merits of solidarity, but that’s another story.
Jean-François Lisée reports that a speaker, in this same private school, asked students if they “felt” Quebecois; the vast majority answered no. Already in the 1980s, a TQS journalist carried out the same exercise. Students from “visible minorities” (as they said at the time) gave the same answer. Remember that teenagers respond… like teenagers. Mimicry and the herd instinct characterize them.
The question about feelings is of dubious legitimacy. Why reserve it only for the children of migrants? It would never occur to any journalist to ask François Legault if he feels like a Quebecer. The main thing is to be. And this is the function of school: to produce citizens (not to say the nation). In any case, these young people who make themselves strong (make themselves weak?) by despising their fellow citizens will one day end up crossing the Outaouais or the Atlantic. In Toronto and Casablanca, we will make them understand that they are more Quebecois than they think.
Jean-François Lisée finally reports that Lebanese folklore was applauded, unlike the Quebec jig, which was booed… This anecdote reminded me of the English-speaking secondary school that I myself attended in the neighborhood Saint-Michel in the 1970s. Almost all of the children were of Italian origin and, at our festivals, we danced the tarantella. When I saw old high school friends again at a conventum last November, we danced to hits globalized. There was no longer any question of holding hands for a Neapolitan folk dance…
Teenagers of Lebanese origin immersed in an unknown and sometimes hostile Quebec (we must not hide our faces) are free to applaud an identity folklore. Sooner or later, they will end up discovering the Cowboys, Lebanese jazz and other music of our time.
What Jean-François Lisée reports reminds me above all of our insatiable need to be recognized as Quebecers. The criticism that comes out of the mouth of the least Ontario teacher or the least Toronto journalist makes us scream at the Quebec bashing and mobilize the National Assembly. Who doesn’t need to be loved by everyone? Do we lack self-confidence that much?
Several years ago, René Lévesque tried to reassure the Italian community, again, by citing a principle of Italian unity: “Italy will make itself. » Which amounts to saying that Quebec will chart its course… I want to believe that it is not a few spoiled children who will prevent it.