When did you first feel like a Quebecer?As the National Day approaches, The duty has brought together an anthology of comments about this moment when belonging to Quebec blossomed, sometimes to make pride and attachment flourish, other times an awareness. The personalities cited all have in common that they have contributed, in their own way and at their own level, to the influence of Québec.
Anne Marie Olivier
The former artistic director of Le Trident theater does not remember a specific spark that would have ignited her belonging to Quebec. “I have always felt like a Quebecer. As I have always known my name”, she writes to the Duty. Delving into her memories, she recalls a national holiday from her teenage years where unbridled love culminated in a communion with life and her homeland.
” At 17 years old. I was madly in love and, if I had already celebrated Saint-Jean-Baptiste with all my heart, I had never celebrated it with all my body. That evening, several times, each of my nerve endings, real fireworks. Enjoyments and rejoicings at Saint-Jean, big blazing fire. That evening, I was flying with the wings that love gives, this love that overflows so much that it is thrown in all the winds on passers-by, old people, ants, everything that lives. We had a light heart that gives the necessary distance to laugh at the little ugliness or incongruities that are also part of our national holiday… from the fleur-de-lis merchandise made in China to the settlers who drink Bud while listening to music that is far from being done here.
At that moment, I realized that I was madly in love with Quebec. »
Gilles Vigneault
It was by noting that the word “French-Canadian” too narrowly encapsulated the people of his country that Gilles Vigneault understood his belonging to Quebec for the first time.
“From the age of going to small school, where the ‘teacher’ was called Simone Landry, Berthe Cormier or Albina Jomphe, I heard about the history of ‘Canada’. Since my father worked with a certain Dave King from Kegaska or with a certain Bastien Malec, an Innu from Natashquan, with whom I too “returned” cod to dry on the “vigneaux”, I understood that everyone I knew was from Quebec, and the ambiguity of the word “French-Canadian” has always irritated me! Bastien Malec, Joseph Bellefleur and Michel Grégoire, Dave King, Wilfrid Keppen or George Court have always seemed to me to be from the same country as me and to be an integral part of it. Then, later, I understood that certain dates, 1837, 1980, 1982, 1995, confirmed me in my convictions. »
Guy Sioui Durand
It was in the ferment of the 1970s, when Woodstock, Vietnam, rock’n’roll, Expo 67 and the October crisis were forging the youth of Quebec, that Guy Sioui Durand, sociologist and art critic born in Wendake, author of several books on contemporary Aboriginal art, became aware of his Quebecness.
“In 1970, I studied at Cégep Limoilou. It is both the first opportunity in history to be able to exercise the right to vote for us, the Aboriginal peoples, after the modification of the Indian Act of 1960. And it is above all the October crisis , where the State calls on the army, anticipating the crisis twenty years later of Kanesatake-Oka. Pierre Vallières is coming to give a conference at Cégep. He just published white niggers of america, title reviled today — like “Indian”, official title of the Indian Act still in force. In 1971, I entered sociology at Laval University, whose disciplines make us their subject of study. A teacher told me bluntly: “You are no longer an Indian. Your socialization is that of a French Quebecer.” »
It was, for Guy Sioui Durand, the “harsh awareness of Quebec” and the learning of a lesson in sociology: regardless of their origin, no one escapes their environment and the ideas that cross it.
Joanne Liu
It was the snowy winters and a certain left half of the fridge that made DD Joanne Liu, doctor without borders par excellence, of her attachment to Quebec.
“I went to Paris for three years for Doctors Without Borders, and that was the time when I felt most Quebecois. Every day, I was reminded that I had an accent. Every day, I was made to rehearse. Every day, I was criticized for how I said things. I also remember a specific moment when I happened to find myself watching a Quebec film, a film by Philippe Falardeau called The left half of the fridge. There is a scene which shows the stairs of Montreal with the snow: when I saw that, I thought such bored — I felt homesick, I was homesick. Everyone was asking me why I wasn’t pursuing my career in Paris, people were freaking out because I was promised an amazing career there and everyone thought I was going to be next. boss. I answered: “It is not possible.” I was too bored. I had to go back. »
Louise Otis
Originally from Matane, the president of the Administrative Tribunal of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and mother of judicial mediation in Quebec says she has always felt Quebecer. However, it was in the words of the most highly placed diplomat on the planet that she understood the place that Québec could occupy on the international scene.
“Almost 20 years ago, while I was still a judge on the Quebec Court of Appeal, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan, asked me to join the System Redesign Group of justice of the UN composed of five members, national and international judges. On the first day of our mission, the General Secretary, Kofi Annan, formally welcomed us into his cabinet and greeted all the members from five different countries.
When he came to me, he said: “Thank you for bringing Quebec’s mediation system to the UN.” I still remember today the immense pride I felt to see Quebec named and recognized. Quebec mediation. Ours ! She has since traveled around the world — with Quebec as her flag.
I could also feel the immense pride that would have inhabited my father, this worthy Matanais who earned his living in the dense forests of the North Shore until the age of 72 to help me complete my law studies. . He who learned by reading his Larousse encyclopedia, one volume per year, at the foot of the northern spruce trees. »