I want to tell you a tale of two nations, two nations that have been at each others' throats for longer than the people reading this have been alive. The enmity that exists between these two nations is deeply ingrained; it is the result of an old rivalry over land, influence, and regional power. Where one nation went, the other was soon to follow... .
The French and the English have been following each other around for centuries. They've also been beating each other up in war after war, and, in between those wars, the peace that existed between the two countries has always been somewhat uneasy. So, it wasn't surprising that when they both came to the 'New World', it wouldn't be long before their rivalry broke out into battles.
In the end, the English gained the upper hand, and, in a negotiated peace settlement, the area that is now known as Québec was handed to the British on a silver platter. This was less the result of English military prowess, or negotiating skills, than it was the result of the French simply being too filled with ennui to bother with their erstwhile settlement plans. They simply off-loaded the colony they no longer wanted all that much anymore, and moved on to other things, other places, other colonies of a more profitable nature. Let 'les Anglais' have the new world; the French had bigger fish to fry.
Quebec was discarded with the same aplomb as one dumps old shoes - a fact that the Québécois have always been in passionate denial of. I don't blame them for it. It is similar to the trauma a child endures when he or she finally understands that his or her parents don't love them and never did. It's a bitter pill to swallow.
When the British took over France's former North American colonies, they did a few things that were not so nice. One of the more infamous things that they did was to gathered up some French colonists, and then take the men and put them in one set of boats, and the women in another, before sending the two genders off in different directions. The result was Canada's Acadians, and the state of Louisiana in the U.S.A.
The residents of the area that later came to be known as the province of Québec were more or less left in peace.
Thankfully, the British were relatively civilized about the whole thing. Had they been into physical or cultural genocide, Québec might not have survived it.
Think about it. If the British had committed cultural or physical genocide there would no rich French Canadian culture, no Acadian culture, and no Louisianian Hot Sauce-and-Hoodoo culture. Inside of Canada, there are a lot of people who probably do wish that the British had wiped the French colonists off the face of the North American continent. French Canadians are often reviled by people in provinces outside of Québec, as well as by some Anglos inside of the province. The cultures just don't seem to mix well.
What the nature of the problem that English Canada has with Québec - outside of transfer payments - really is, is something I just don't 'get'. As for transfer payments, well, the Atlantic provinces get them too. It has to be something more visceral, an innate dislike of something that is your opposite, something that is foreign. Québec never oppressed the other provinces, though it may be seen as leeching from them as a result of the aforementioned transfer payments.
Politics do play a large part in the animosity that Canada's western provinces feel towards its eastern ones. But why hate on Québec more powerfully than on Ontario or the Atlantic provinces? Because we're perceived as troublemakers who want to separate from a country that is hostile to us?
Our differences may seem to be insurmountable at times, yet the idea of military action only came into play once. Actually, it was twice. The first time it happened was during the infamous 'October Crisis', when a separatist group called the FLQ blew up a few mailboxes, did a bit of kidnapping, and accidentally killed a Québec cabinet minister that it was holding hostage. Papa Trudeau enacted the War Measures Act and sent in the military.
The kidnapping raised a swift response from the federal government under Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau. As CBC reporter Tim Ralfe questioned the Prime Minister concerning the armed soldiers on Parliament Hill, Trudeau responded with a now-famous diatribe: "Well, there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it's more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of..." Ralfe interrupted: "At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?" Trudeau replied with a sentence that became a catchphrase of North American politics: "Well, just watch me."
Source: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
Quebecers liked neither the terrorism, nor the armed military response. Only six years after the October Crisis, they opted for a peaceful political solution. In 1976 the Parti Québécois won the revolution for French Canada peacefully, via the ballot box.
A 1980 referendum on Québec separation drove Papa Trudeau back into fire-breathing mode. Threats were made, but this time the military stayed home.
The 1976 election marked an important turning point in Québec's history. Until then, French Canadians had been pretty much a repressed majority in their own province. After France ceded Québec to the British, it didn't take long for the wealthy and aristocratic English elite to form an unholy alliance with their French-Canadian counterparts, wealthy local business owners, and the Catholic Church. Together they kept the local people as poor and ignorant as possible in order to provide cheap labor to their industries, and to guarantee a supply of newborns to wealthy, infertile couples.
Yes, I did just bring infants into this. The Catholic Church in Quebec profited greatly from the trade. French Canadians are just as lusty as rural Europeans, and just as willing to dispense with religious trappings when it comes to cohabitation. For many readers, it may come as news that shacking up was commonplace in rural Europe, and plenty of children were born out of wedlock without anyone caring too much, before the two world wars turned society considerably more prudish. Well, in Québec things were no different, except that the two world wars didn't change things too much over here. Plenty of young women found themselves knocked up, with a priest knocking at their door offering his assistance in finding a nice home for the unborn child. The women who took the priests up on the offer didn't know that the Church then turned around and sold the kid to wealthy, often English, families.
You can understand why Québec turned secular so easily. You can also understand the average Québecer's resentment towards their English overlords, and their sense of comradeship with other oppressed nations.
When 1976 came along, things changed. Yes, there were some draconian measures enacted in order to promote French and curb the power Anglos in Québec society. Not all Anglos were against the French, however. Some of us could understand what they had gone through. Other Anglos ran like the devil was after them, straight to the safety of Toronto. Those of us who stayed got fed up at times, but we realized that we had to make an effort to integrate. Now we were the ones who had to learn the other side's language. Now we were the ones who lacked standing and privilege. The shoe was on the other foot.
But... . We were not jailed, we were not forcibly driven from our homes, we were not persecuted for being Protestant. We were obliged to integrate into the culture of the majority.
In the midst of all this turmoil, I found myself on an airplane heading to Oslo. Seated beside me was a young woman with a child. I cringed because I really don't like kids, however during the flight I got to know the young woman a bit, and even ended up watching her daughter when she had to use the toilets at Schiphol airport. The young lady was of Palestinian descent, and she was on her way to meet with her husband in a neutral third country. Her husband lived in Tunis, and for political reasons he could not come to Canada for a visit. She didn't need to explain more than that. In those days, the PLO was headquartered in Tunis. The memory of that woman and her little daughter comes back to me from time to time, and I wonder how the family is doing. Are they safe and sound here, or in another neutral third country? Or are they in the hell-hole that Palestine has become?
If you want to know my solution to the problem in the Middle East, then you need to look at my province of Québec. Apartheid doesn't work. The native majority cannot be kept in ignorance and poverty forever. There is no 'two state solution'. There can only be one state, with the majority in charge. It is the minority that has to either integrate, or get out of town. We saw it in South Africa, I saw it in Québec, we need to see it in Palestine. Only then will there be peace for the middle east.
Oh, and on one of my trips to Oslo I had the chance to attend a sermon given by Bishop Desmond Tutu. He was receiving the Nobel Prize that year, if memory holds correctly. I have to say, he was quite the wind-bag, but apparently 'that's Desmond' (according to a vicar who knew the man well). As I filed out of the church that day, I could not avoid shaking his hand.
So, yes, I can honestly say that I did shake the hand of one of the most famous leaders in the South African anti-apartheid movement.
But it is the young Palestinian woman and her little daughter who most represent the struggle against apartheid to me, and the need to end it.
Image: Pixabay
