I agree with Paul St-Pierre Plamondon on at least one thing: it is undeniable that British colonialism and its violence have deeply marked, even shaped, the history of Canada.
There would be a lot to say about the clumsiness with which the leader of the Parti Québécois brought this question into the public space, call of the moment (dog whistle) bonus. We’ll come back to that.
But several observers also criticized him for simply talking about the past. “He is rehashing old stories”, “Quebec has gone elsewhere”, he was told. I understand and respect the reflex. This column is aimed at those interested in the legacy of British colonialism.
My professional life gives me the opportunity to travel the country. Everywhere, I seek to understand how people see Canada or their province, their family history, the links they make between their personal story and nationalist stories. And everywhere, as soon as you scratch a little, the question of British colonialism emerges, explicitly or implicitly, in the relationships that people have with each other, with the territory and the State.
What I notice, however, is that our understanding of Canadian history is often caught in blind spots that roughly follow the holes in the history curricula of our respective provinces.
I will remember for the rest of my life a surreal conversation with a senior political figure from Western Canada who systematically associated French with Quebec — only Quebec. I asked him if Prairie annoyance with Quebec difference could be a legacy of state violence against the Métis, First Nations and Francophones in the West following the hanging of Louis Riel. As if, after having “worked” so hard to stigmatize local difference, we were surprised that another part of the country dared to claim it. She had never thought about it.
It is also a demonstration of how one can reach the highest political positions in the West and talk about the “alienation” of people in the West (by virtue of the bilingualism requirement in Ottawa) without ever wondered why the West is not more bilingual, or multilingual, and how did this come about?
The lack of reflection reflected a significant blind spot. By associating the Canadian Francophonie exclusively with Quebec, we deprived ourselves of a central key to understanding for our own region. Because people, fundamentally, seek to understand themselves, my questions could only be received with a lot of openness.
In the same way, I hope that we have enough perspective to smile at the way in which the generation of leaders who led the constitutional saga of the 1980s and 1990s were surprised to see the indigenous perspective emerge, a bit like a hair’s breadth, in its standoff between “founding peoples”. What was the collective uproar when Elijah Harper, Cree leader and member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly, blocked the adoption of the Meech Lake Accord, which did not include any constitutional recognition for the First Peoples. We believed we could settle Quebec’s place in Canada without any Indigenous person raising a finger to say: what about us?
It’s incredible, all the same, in hindsight. The episode remains a symbol of the gaping hole in the political and historical education of our leaders of the time.
I could give many more examples. Indigenous perspectives, those of immigrant communities from other former British colonies, those of black and Asian communities who faced the full brunt of the racism of the Empire, those immigrants from the south or east of Europe who suffered from Protestant chauvinism, Irish and Scottish families who already had a long history with London before arriving in Canada complete the family stories which continue to circulate in many French-speaking and Acadian families.
But it is rare that we consider these memories and these perspectives as elements that complement each other. I often have the impression that everyone is holding on to their own piece of the regional, linguistic or cultural puzzle and trying to demonstrate to others the importance of the piece they have in hand. Very few people seek to develop an overview of the puzzle.
Thus, traumatic memories enter into competition: each pulls the cover, no one really listens to each other. And we normalize a vision of politics where the only way to be respected is to demonstrate your strength, even if it means crushing those smaller than you as you yourself fear being crushed.
I don’t know if we understand that every time we say that the only way to be respected is to redraw the maps to create a majority space, we implicitly admit not believing that a country can exist where every group is respected, regardless of their number. There are of course several reasons for wanting to found a country. But when we justify our desire by an aspiration to in turn enjoy the strength of the majority, the message is clearly heard by the people who will remain in the minority. I said I was going to come back when the call came.
I think that an exercise in dialogue on the scars left everywhere by the history of this country is necessary so that everyone can better understand and respect each other. It is already happening quietly, through meetings led by civil society — often far from parliaments, cameras and social networks. However, you will allow me to have little confidence in the success of such a delicate exercise when it is monopolized by partisan politics or by people who show little curiosity for the whole puzzle.