Why don’t our national television channels — Télé-Québec or Radio-Canada, your choice, or even TVA or CTV — look more often at our cultural heritage or at the history and geography of our regions, both those of Quebec, of the French-speaking Canadian world than that of Canada as a whole? The question, it seems to me, deserves to be asked, even in these difficult times, and perhaps even especially because of them, dominated as they are by all-out political excesses, in the country as elsewhere , whose setbacks are constantly being reported to us by the vast majority of the media.
This question is inspired by the scale and frequency of television broadcasts, generally of high quality, such as Roots and wings, dedicated by our French cousins to historical periods or to regions, large and small, of their country. Mainly relayed by TV5, and sometimes broadcast by channels such as Télé-Québec, Radio-Canada and Artv, these praise – on occasion a little grandiloquently, it is true – the architectural heritage, but also the landscape and ethnographic, while the terroirs and trades, agricultural or otherwise, including of course gastronomy and all the knowledge it brings together, are generously highlighted.
Certainly, both France and several other countries of the Old Continent are rich in a geographical and historical heritage of great density, great intensity, even exceptional diversity. Certainly, just as much, it must be recognized that this industry which consists of showcasing the geographical, historical and cultural personality of the regions of France and their rich built heritage also plays a role in tourism promotion. Because the latter contributes to the economic survival of several regions of the country otherwise condemned to marginality.
More importantly, this promotion, which literally covers the entire country and its overseas branches, builds links between all its inhabitants, the first to be affected by this type of tourism. Knowing your country better, learning more about its history and geography, by means other than those of school education: who could dispute the value of such objectives?
Moreover, who would deny that the regions of Quebec each have, regardless of the division to which they are subjected, a history, a geography whose knowledge deserves our attention? Who would deny to what extent Beauce is a “country”, in the historical sense of the term? Who would deny that the Chaudière River and its spectacular water regime, including its high and low water levels, do not deserve an in-depth historical reconstruction for the general public, or even dynamic television monitoring?
Who would dare to assert that we all know enough about the behavior of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence and the rivers of the North Shore, about the history of the population of their basins; or that we know enough about the islands of the St. Lawrence themselves, including Anticosti or the Magdalen Islands? Several of these islands are great witnesses to the history of Laurentia, in particular its true prehistory, including paleogeographic and geological.
That said, I do not deny, precisely, that many writers, poets in particular, have described, related and sung the characteristics and adventures of their city or their corner of the country. We can of course mention Gabrielle Roy, Germaine Guèvremont, Roger Lemelin and Kevin Lambert or Félix-Antoine Savard, Félix Leclerc and Gilles Vigneault. I am also thinking of Antonine Maillet, if I may go beyond Acadia, whose historical, cultural and landscape heritage is immense.
I am also aware that many young and old singers continue to praise their region of origin or their culture. We know that there is an abundant literature on the splendors of the Quebec territory and in particular on certain highlights of its history and geography. Finally, I am aware, if only through professional distortion, if I may say so, that our colleges and universities are full of historical and geographical scholarship, including specifically Quebec scholarship.
But, apart from some happy initiatives, such as that which consists of praising the Fabulous story of a kingdom (the Saguenay), our scholars do not focus enough, at least in my eyes, on the historical and geographical heritage of the regions and localities of Quebec. Nor is it a question of falling into a navel-gazing and blind nationalism that would hide the rest of the world. Because no one knows enough, neither about themselves nor, consequently, about others.
Basically, that is my modest concern. This, I repeat, consists of asking myself why our television media do not draw more abundantly from this erudition in order to attract the attention of their audience, as they blithely do in their multiple forays onto the world stage, this which, I agree, has great utility in terms of sharing knowledge. But this cannot replace this other, which consists of knowing one’s own country, of understanding it better, in order to know oneself better and to know, quite simply, to understand better.
Quebecers have become masters of self-celebration. Why then do they not rely more on knowledge of their history and geography?