There exists, in the half-country of Quebec, a paradox with regard to Louisiana. This vast gutter of America, irrigated by the Mississippi, has been repeatedly presented as the embodiment of the bad luck that awaits French in Quebec. From this perspective, Louisiana is seen as a scarecrow, a territorial Seven Hours man. This is the image used bluntly by François Legault in recent days to pose as a defender of the nation against its enemies.
In the collective psyche, however, Louisiana attracts more than it repels. The magnetism that this country enjoys is undeniable. This is partly due to the richness of its culture, but also to the relations maintained by Quebec with this region. Even patriots, after the repression of the revolution of 1837-1838, considered it at the time of their forced exile. For decades, hundreds of young Quebec teachers have gone to teach there. The number of news stories aired about Louisiana also indicates the high level of interest in it.
However, the apocalyptic character of a Louisiana where French flows to the bottom continues to be sung, both literally and figuratively. On the day when we will live in this country over there, sang Gilles Vigneault in When we leave for Louisiana, “we will talk to each other about these great countries lost here”. Stephen Faulkner wondered if, one fine morning, we were going to wake up Cajuns from having overslept. However, no one in this register of the 1970s pushed this refrain, apart from François Legault, so far as to suggest that the threat of Louisianization finds its explanation in… immigration! Not only does François Legault ring false, but his assertion is devoid of common sense. Why ?
A large proportion of Louisiana citizens have their origins in France and Acadia, but also in Germany, Spain, Africa and the Caribbean. The result has been a unique culture. Jazz was not born there for nothing, carried on the wings of the French word chat. The richness of the local cuisine is also explained by these interrelationships. But we would try in vain to explain the gradual disappearance of French in this territory due to immigration! Because the failure of French in Louisiana is first and foremost due to the abandonment of what François Legault himself has long abandoned: sovereignty.
In 1803, Napoleon ceded to the United States, for a pittance, this portion of America in order to feed his armies. Price of the transaction: the trifle, in today’s currency, of around 400 million dollars. A disastrous pressure will be exerted on the French language, but not only on it. Moreover, this ostracization of French in Louisiana was hardly different from that experienced by Francophones in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and New Brunswick. Why does Mr. Legault choose to speak only of Louisiana rather than these provinces of Canada? He who took, in principle, the side of Canada, why does he do less than nothing to support this diaspora to which we are linked?
Through dishonesty or ignorance, François Legault lets two untruths hang over Louisiana. First, immigration does not explain the decline of French there, any more than it explains it here. Then, by refusing to consider the effects of the dependence of one society on another, out of contempt, in other words, of the tools offered by independence, the Prime Minister would have people believe that a society can preserve itself by powers to control immigration. Is it simply to prove himself right in front of the electorate, by fabricating a sterile conflict from scratch, that Legault allows himself so many foolishness in the face of history?
Everything converges, to hear the Prime Minister, towards his dangerous obsession of an electoral nature: immigration. Did he ask himself, rather than playing at setting fire to the midst of social peace, what concrete effect his rain of checks for $500, or $3.2 billion, would have had if they had been channeled towards the culture and education of his society? Did he care to know if the policy of bits of roads does not belong to another age? Is he considering the difficulty of finding accommodation in Quebec? Does he know that the difficulty of existing is also that?
Of course, it would take a good dose of jovialism, accompanied by a touch of blindness, to conceive that French in North America goes without saying. How can we today, in certain circles, believe that everything is going smoothly for French? At best, 5% of the population in North America speaks this language. The majority of speakers are now grouped together in a reserve — oh! pardon — in a province. Besides, one wonders why in Quebec, by the entanglement of its destiny with that of the Aboriginal peoples, we do not understand them better.
During the ceremony which marked the unveiling of the statue to Jacques Parizeau, we should have heard the President of the National Assembly and Member of Parliament for Lévis, François Paradis, affirm that this monument constitutes “the DNA of a province which remembers”. This very provincial and biologizing facelift of the energetic and voluntary heritage of Parizeau, here is a perspective that has nothing to envy to a Louisianization yet decried by the Prime Minister. It makes you wonder how so many PQ members, who swore only by Parizeau, find themselves today in the pocket of the Caquistan, that is to say in a return to the least generous French-Canadian nationalism , the narrowest.