When people grow up with incipient racism, it is no surprise that they slip into it occasionally. This happened the other week when a news release from Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet was claimed by liberals to be racist. It should come as no surprise that someone born in Quebec and part of the separatist movement can be so easily accused of racism or at least tribalism.
As an Anglo, raised in Toronto, I have seen the racism in Quebec over the years. It despairs me that it exists but it is easy to understand the origin. You can trace the roots in many aspects of Quebec society. It is rooted in the misinterpretations of the Papineau Rebellion. It is rooted in the early attitudes of Anglos whose English army had defeated the French army on the Plains of Abraham. It is the understandable jealousies in Montreal for the Golden Square Mile which once included the palatial homes of upper-class Anglos. And do not francophone politicians take note of these feelings?
It hardly creates an alibi for Blanchet, but it does explain the anti-Semitism that one still finds in Quebec. (And can find by digging deep elsewhere in Canada, to be fair.)
But when you grow up with this kind of racism and tribalism, it is hard to suppress. The very fact that you know it is wrong, makes the need to suppress it more difficult.
At one time in my life, I was giving speeches in Quebec that I had a person fluent in French record for me. I would practice delivering it while listening to the recording. It worked because, at the end of the speech, the questions came in French. I was always embarrassed that I had to answer most of the questions in English. I have spent a great deal of time over the years trying to improve my French but every time I try to practice it on friends in Quebec, they switch to English.
The one time I really embarrassed myself was when the Multiple Sclerosis Society was opening a new head office for New Brunswick in Moncton. I thought my little speech of congratulations would be better in French and I wrote it myself. I thought I got away with it until the city’s chief medical officer came up to me and, in English with a Montreal-French accent, asked me where I had ever learned to speak French like that?
-30-
Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be temporarily sent to [email protected]