Quebec, land of myth

William Johnson, National Post 13/05/09  

Yes, Canadians need a fresh look at how our children are taught their history. But the House of Commons Canadian heritage committee that the federal government recently charged with the task represents the wrong approach. Federal politicians have won their reputation for bitter partisanship and reckless muck-raking, and this fact surely would taint the committee’s conclusions.

But there’s an alternative. July 19 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. At the time, the bombs of the Front de Libération du Québec, combined with the alienation expressed through Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, convinced Lester Pearson that the country’s historical roots must be reconsidered…… Quebec students are taught that the economic and educational inferiority of French Canadians before the Quiet Revolution was caused by the Conquest, and by Quebec being treated as a colony by English speakers…… As there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden, so Quebec’s destiny supposedly was derailed by the “Other” – the Anglo…… The fact is that France itself was a colonizer — and it kept New France in a state of extreme under-development. No industry was allowed to start up that competed with that industry in France. So, as contemporary observers agreed, New France remained poor while New England grew rich. This, not any Anglo plot, generated the legacy of economic and cultural under-development that retarded French Canadians until the Quiet Revolution…..To Read More….  

My Take - What is it with the French?  I didn't bother to look it up, but as I recall a couple of decades ago the citizens of Quebec had the opportunity to vote their way out of Canada and chose not to, in spite of the fact that the polls showed overwhelming support to do so.  So much for polls!  That blatantly enormous pain in the butt, Le Grand Charles De Gaulle, even came to Canada some time before that and declared that Quebec would be free.  Pretty tacky for a foreign leader, who comes to a country as a guest, and then gives lip service to a civil war, or at the very least to the concept of national dissolution.  These guys harping on all this remind me of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and all the other race hustlers who would be broke nobodies if they couldn't promote racial disharmony and discontent. 

I often wonder; what is wrong with the French?  What is it they actually want?  The French Revolution certainly didn’t fix them.  Napoleon didn’t do too bad a job, especially when the introduction of the Napoleonic Code, which is still the basis for French law, and in fact it has either influenced or became the basis for national codes of law all over the world, but he wasn't French, he was an Italian, and eventually led them to disaster.   We have to remember that France is on its Fifth Republic and it looks as if they are working really hard to have a Sixth Republic.  What is it with the French?   

To tell you the truth….I think the rest of Canada should not only allow them to go on their own terms….they should ask them to go. Of course that would create a problem for the French Canadians.  Who then would they have to blame for their problems?  Or perhaps I should say; who could they blame that would listen?

I just had a thought.  Can we do that with California and Massachusetts?  I know they can't secede, but is there any provision in the Constitution that prevents the rest of us from asking them to leave?  Maybe they can join Quebec.  Wouldn't that be interesting to watch.