The following is an excerpt from Conrad Black’s column in the December 19 edition of the National Post.
Read all of Mr. Black’s perceptive analysis of Quebec – past and present at:
nationalpost.com/search_results.html?q=conrad+black
The federal government poured money raised in the wealthy English provinces into Quebec, and the response of the heirs of Hamel and Duplessis and of the Quebec cultural and political elite generally, was to accuse Canada of attempting to assimilate French Quebec. All English-Canadian political leaders since Pearson and Stanfield have had nothing but goodwill for Quebec. But, as one of Canada’s greatest and most generous-minded modern political leaders, John P. Robarts, told me in 1977 about the then current Quebec leaders, “What spoiled child when offered chocolate ice cream, won’t ask for vanilla; and how do you reach agreement with people who don’t want to reach an agreement?” You don’t and we didn’t.
Haitians and North Africans, who haven’t the remotest interest in Quebec nationalism, are being imported to replace the unborn, in an effort to maintain francophone numbers. But Quebec is superannuated, both as bully and as cry-baby. No one wants to hear it anymore. There is no significant ill-will to Quebec in English-Canada, but the province’s ability to frighten or perplex the country, or even arouse its curiosity, is past. Quebec is a bore.
The description of French Canadians in Hemon’s Maria Chapdelaine as ‘a race that knows not how to die’ was accurate in the era described, 100 years ago. Now, that is almost all Québécois do know.
Quebec’s political acuity enabled it to exercise an influence in Canada beyond its numerical strength for the first 135 years of Confederation, reaping the reward of the 10 generations of survivalist forbearance of its ancestors. It should now do homage to its honourable past, stop pretending that the lights went on only in 1960, forsake infantilism (like sending 50 separatist MP’s to Ottawa to mock federalism and vest their pensions) and enjoy Quebec’s earned and potential status in what — despite the purblind malice of the separatists, who habitually claim English Canada to be a pathetic excrescence of the Anglo-Americans — has become one of the most successful countries in the world.
National Post
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