Paul St-Pierre Plamondon recently recalled the risk of Quebec’s weight in Ottawa evaporating. A few days later, he said that Canada’s history has been marked by executions and deportations. These assertions, entirely founded, disturbed certain commentators, who did not hesitate to associate the rhetoric of the PQ leader with “fear”.
Pablo Rodriguez, who fears a referendum because it could lead to “neighborhood squabbles”, even dared to describe PSPP’s comments as “worrying”. We will nevertheless note the absurdity: what is frightening and violent is no longer the history of Canada as such, but the fact of talking about it.
The reaction of federalists is not surprising. They have been sorely lacking in arguments for ages now. Until today, blackmail and fear have been their best weapons. The latter even allowed them to triumph in 1980 and 1995. They would therefore be crazy to change strategy.
But on social networks, we could observe another type of reaction. Citizens, equally uncomfortable with PSPP’s comments, openly doubted the importance of history in understanding current events and in preparing for the future. This is a completely normal feeling.
What could the deportation of the Acadians or the Conquest reveal about the current condition of Francophones in Canada? After all, haven’t we moved on? Well, not quite.
Are deportations a thing of the past? Talk to the Acadians, whose Prime Minister does not speak French, and who saw their federal deputy René Arseneault ask the House of Commons 269 years after the deportation for permission to no longer take the oath to the King of England. The Acadians were met with laughter from the Conservative MPs, who even had the nerve to intone God Save the King. The video went around the world.
Is the Conquest a thing of the past? This event occurred in 1763, but it took more than 200 years before Quebecers organized the beginning of a political response. When André Laurendeau and Davidson Dunton wrote in a report in 1963 that French Canadians were less educated than black Americans, this always stemmed from the Conquest. When René Lévesque asked Camille Laurin to “correct” the linguistic situation in 1976, current events were only incidentally responsible. This stemmed from the Conquest. In 1998, Laurin also stated that he wanted the law to “be part of History […]picks up the thread to repair all the wounds, all the losses suffered […]. I wanted to make a law that repairs, that straightens out and restores confidence, pride and self-esteem to a people who valued their language, but who had become resigned.”
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Today, in 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada refuses to translate some of its judgments into French and Justin Trudeau’s ministerial cabinet is mostly incapable of expressing itself in the language of Quebecers.
Besides, if history is in the past, why is French declining in the country? This is because history is not in the past. The story never unfolds. The story sticks.
In the coming months, federalists will emphasize the supposedly outdated nature of history. They will present themselves as the way of the future by encouraging Quebecers to look forward even if they know very well that the stolen referendum of 1995, the difficulties that Bill 21 is currently encountering before the courts as well as the Century Initiative are so many events that history continues to generate in a silence that is not useless to disturb.
But citizens perplexed by the historic discourse are not fooled.
They know well that the separatists have a weakness for the past, but that what motivates them above all is a social project which proposes that we turn our backs on the status quo, on half measures and tireless resentment.
It is a project focused on creative energy and the future.