Francophone Quebecers are insecure and …

…. unhappy in their own shoes; they are a people with a serious, but unacknowledged, identity problem.

Francophone Quebecers have a predilection for nanny-state legislation enacted to bolster their wobbly self-esteem and protect them from life’s little surprises.

They are especially prone to enacting stringent language laws that will somehow imbue them with powers to vanquish Canadians. To that end, they surreptitiously send their language police into Canada to check restaurant menus for French listings, into airport bookshops to count the number of French titles, and into the crowds to see how many folks respond to their inquiries en francais. An avid franticphone went so far as to sue Air Canada last year, successfully – for $12,000 - for failing to respond in French while serving him his Sprite. The anglicised version of petit is petty; a word that nicely captures their character.

They frantically demand that Canada be bilingual and, inanely, insist that Quebec be unilingual.

There is an English word for this: puerile.

Are these the actions of a capable, confident, and vibrant culture? Hardly. These are the actions of a perpetually troubled people fearful of having to fend for themselves. They are desperately afraid of separating from Canada because their ineptly governed province, riddled with corrupt politicians, faced with an immense provincial debt, decaying infrastructure, loss of transfer payments, and hobbled by a dysfunctional educational system, would promptly collapse into bankruptcy.

If Quebecers were a confident, mature, resourceful people, they would have negotiated a right-of-way with Newfoundland for Churchill Falls power. Not these folks; they petulantly stamped their little feet – and squeaked NON!

If Quebecers were a resolute people, they would have gone their separate way long ago. But then, perhaps they are haunted by their historical inadequacies:

• July 26, 1758: Fort Louisbourg. French commander Ducour surrenders to the British force under Lt. Colonel Wolfe.
  
  
• September 13, 1759: Plains of Abraham. Following a 15-minute battle, French troops under Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm surrender to the British army led by General James Wolfe. Both Wolfe and Montcalm die.
  
  
• February 10, 1763: Treaty of Paris. France cedes Canada to Great Britain.
  
  
• August 3, 1798: Battle of the Nile. The French Navy carrying General Napoleon’s expeditionary force to Egypt is decimated by the British Royal Navy under Rear-Admiral Nelson.
  
  
• March 1803: Napoleon prepares to invade England.
  
  
• November 1803: Saint Dominique (Haiti). Napoleon withdraws 7,000 surviving troops from the island following revolts by the slaves. Abandons efforts to rebuild France’s New World Empire.
  
  
• December 1803: Louisiana Purchase, Needing money to invade England, Napoleon finalizes the sale of territory, stretching from Louisiana to the Rocky Mountains to (what is now) Alberta, to the United States.
  
  
• October 21, 1805: Battle of Trafalgar. The combined French and Spanish navies are defeated by British Royal Navy under Admiral Lord Nelson.
  
  
• June 23, 1812: Napoleon invades Russia. Napoleon commits some 400,000 troops to the campaign and, although he wins in battle, he loses the war. The Russians refuse to capitulate, burn Moscow, and retreat into the hinterlands. Wrote Napoleon, “the French showed themselves to be worthy of victory, but the Russians showed themselves worthy of being invincible." He returns home with a ragtag remnant of 40,000 exhausted troops.
  
  
• April 14, 1814: Britain exiles Napoleon to Elba.
  
  
• February 26, 1815: Napoleon Escapes.
  
  
• June 18, 1815: Battle of Waterloo. Anglo-Allied forces under the command of the Duke of Wellington, along with the Prussian army under Gebhard von Blucher, defeat the French army under Emperor Napoleon.
  
  
• December 1815: Britain exiles Napoleon to Saint Helena.
  
  
• November 1894: The Dreyfus Affair.
  
  
• June 14, 1940: German army enters Paris, without opposition.
  
  
• June 17, 1940: French Marshall Petain capitulates.
  
  
• June 22, 1940: French General Charles Huntziger signs Hitler’s articles of surrender, at Compiegne. Winston Churchill warns the French that Britain will fight on alone whatever they (the French) did. The French Prime Minister tells his cabinet, ’In three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ Retorted Churchill: ‘Some chicken! Some neck!’
  
  
• June 28, 1940: Britain recognizes General De Gaulle as Free French leader.
  
  
• July 3, 1940: Battle of Mers-el-Kébir: British Navy bombards French Navy, sinking a battleship, damaging five other ships, and killing 1,297 French servicemen. Although France and the United Kingdom were not at war, France had signed an armistice with Germany, and Britain feared the French fleet would end up as a part of the German Navy.
  
  
• August 20, 1941: Drancy internment camp: French police conduct raids throughout the 11th district of Paris and arrest more than 4,000 Jews. Other concentration camps were constructed by the Vichy Regime in which they imprisoned French Jews – 75,000 of whom were transhipped to Nazi camps to be exterminated.
  
  
• February 30, 1966: De Gaulle orders NATO out of France: A few days after returning from his USSR visit, President de Gaulle, “… to preserve French independence in world affairs”, orders the immediate withdrawal of all NATO troops from France soil. Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State, asks de Gaulle “Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France's cemeteries?" Mr Rusk writes that de Gaulle  ‘ … did not respond’.
  
  
• July 17, 1995: President Jacques Chirac apologizes.
  
  
• March 12, 2009: Nicholas Sarkozy invites NATO into France "… to ensure French national independence."
  
  
• Le Francophonie, a peculiar collection of French-speaking entities – including the ‘Nation’ of Quebec, met recently in Senegal, a spectacularly corrupt nation in Africa. Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, publicly commented that subsequent meetings should be held in democratic nations. I think not; I think it is entirely appropriate that the Francophonie continue to hold its gatherings in such places; Quebec, at least, would be right at home.
  
  
• Gilles Duceppe, the man pictured above, is the defeated leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the federal separatist party. He lost his seat in the last federal election because he promised yet another separatist referendum. Imagine that: a political leader losing his seat for supporting his constituents' – indeed, his party's - raison d'etre. Does one need further evidence that Quebecers are indeed a conflicted people?
  

(And by the way, here is a link to a site that describes what others, particularly the Brits, think of the French: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1161642/As-France-rejoins-NATO-humorous-reminder-missed-them.html)

Notwithstanding Duceppe’s political machinations dedicated to leading Quebec out of Canada, Canadians will be paying him $140,000 a year for the rest of his life. In other nations, this guy would be tried for treason; in Canada, we file it under Babysitting our petits enfants. JGP

 

The link below from Kim McConnell of Canadians for Language Fairness in Ottawa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABS_VP9gRZA&feature=relmfu

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