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Thanks to all of you who have passed along on- and off-line concerns
about the referendum over the past couple of weeks. In addition to
e-mail messages, I have received quite a few telephone calls (at full
rates!) from friends across Canada. Some people are cynical about
what they see as this eleventh-hour "support" from Canada, but I have
been touched by the solidarity. The mood here today is glum, to say the
least, and a close victory, which the pollsters are predicting, will hardly
(or should hardly) fill either side with much joy. Imagine trying to create a
new country when 49% or so of the population doesn't share your
vision. And the opposite result would be a less-than-resounding vote of
confidence in Canada. In the same way that divided opinion on the O.J.
verdict delineated racial contrasts in American realities, this referendum
has defined sharp contrasts in Quebec and Canada. Lucien Bouchard
as charismatic "leader," as the saviour of a national dream? Apparently
he is for many, but the guy makes my flesh crawl. This is no Rene
Levesque, believe me, and Parizeau's PQ vision bears little resemblance
to the heady social democratic philosophy of the early PQ. The Quebec
that Bouchard and Parizeau describe as the current victim of Canadian
anglo oppression sounds suspiciously like the Quebec I grew up in, and
not much like the Quebec my children are growing up in. (Perhaps that
explains the flower and peace sign that have been central images in the
separatist campaign.) Certainly, the Quebec of my childhood was in
need of radical change. The suburb I lived in was closer ethnically,
linguistically, culturally, ideologically to Toronto than Montreal, although
only 5 miles from St. Denis Street. But this morning in the polling station,
there were at least 6 different ethnic groups in line, a wild mixture of
languages, and obvious mutual respect. Anglophones and allophones
were speaking accented French, and their French-speaking neighbours
were responding in accented English. I know this sounds like Jean
Chretien's rosy view of the Canadian possibility, but something similar
has been my experience increasingly over the past decade in Montreal. I
cannot remember when I last sensed linguistic tension here. It is a crazy
Montreal commonplace to hear a French person and an English person
having a conversation in broken versions of both official languages -
each speaking the other's mother tongue. There is, no doubt, progress
to be made, lots of it, but it does seem sad to me at this point in our
history that separation seems to be the solution to so many. Whatever
happens, tomorrow's a painful day.
Anthony