Boreal

THE FRACTURED NATION INTERVIEWS

Jean Souviens

Canada is not a real country.

Lucien Bouchard Prime Minister of Québec

January 1996

Johnny: Canada not a real country! Perhaps our guest today, if we can reach him, will be able to shed some light on what Mr. Bouchard meant by that statement. In hindsight, it was a prophetic observation to say the least. Good evening my name is Johnny MacDonald, your host.

Thank you for joining us tonight for our fifth and last interview in the series of interviews we have been conducting this week with scholars, experts and pundits as we try to pin down the event or events that led to the breakup of Canada ten years ago this week; an event which modern historians commonly call The Fracture.

Before continuing with tonight’s program, I would like to say a few words about the murder yesterday of a great man.

I believed that as human beings we have a right, and as citizens of a democracy an obligation, to express an opinion on issues affecting our lives and the lives of our countrymen and women. That Right, that obligation includes, must include questioning religious dogma. Of all human inventions, religion has the greatest potential to change our lives for better or for worse. By giving all citizens the freedom to question the authenticity, the relevancy, the meaning and application of religious dogma, we guard against the worse. Those who stand on guard against the worse by talking and writing about it should not to be killed or harmed in any way for doing so.

I ask my Muslim viewers to consider this when encouraged to commit murder for real or imagined criticism of their religion. If Allah is the Compassionate, Merciful God acclaimed everywhere by the believers, to commit murder or maim in His Name is to slander Him. Those who murdered Tamil Singh have slandered Allah.

Eulogy for a Prodigal Son

As you are probably already aware, one of our more delightful and thoughtful guest and a good friend, Dr. Tamil Boom-Boom Singh, was killed yesterday when a car bomb exploded outside his official residence. We mourn his loss, the loss of his wife, two of his five children and the innocent well-wishers a man of Boom-Boom’s stature and reputation invariably attracts. Two groups are vying for the honour of having killed so many innocent people.

Boom-Boom’s crime according to official communiqués from The Army of Allah the Compassionate and The Army of Allah the Merciful was suggesting that Allah enjoyed inflicting pain. No explanation was given as to why so many others had to die for this alleged insult to Allah by an honest man offering an honest opinion. No doubt the authorities will quickly sort out whose army deserves the credit for this God inspired massacre and they will receive a heartfelt apology for the distressing remarks Dr. Singh made on this program.

What can someone say about Tamil Boom-Boom Singh the former terrorist, father, humanitarian, statesman that hasn’t already been said? He got his nickname Boom-Boom by doing some of the same things that his assassins did to him. Poetic justice some have said. They did not know him.

Boom-Boom was not a religious man which is probably why the violence he did and the violence he inspired never reached the level of barbarity and depravity that religion provokes. He was, for most of his adult life, a spiritual man in the best tradition of eastern religion, some would say eastern mysticism. He believed that there is more to this mortal existence but did not claim to have a special knowledge of why we are here or that we are here to serve some benevolent or tyrannical, invisible God. He was not an arrogant man.

 Eastern spirituality informs us that we are part of the universe not apart as the three so-called great monotheistic religions that came out of the deserts of the Middle East would have us believe. Acknowledging that he was a part of creation, it was only a matter of time before Boom-Boom realised that by harming his fellow men and women he was harming himself. This self-mutilation was a sign of insanity and this insanity had to stop.

He cured himself then made it his life’s work to help others. He began to live his life according to that simple rule for getting along from Mencius, a Confucian philosopher who, almost three hundred years before another great teacher of the humanities would take up the theme, said: “All things are within me, and on self-examination, I find no greater joy than to be true to myself. We should do our best to treat others as we wish to be treated. Nothing is more appropriate than to seek after goodness.”

Boom-Boom as a teenager and a young man believed that violence was justified to help the powerless and the poor overcome the real and imagined oppression of the rich and powerful. He killed and risked his own life believing he was helping the oppressed. That was an irrational justification for murder he would later realise.

Are those who murder and maim the innocent, the defenceless in the name of Allah suffering from a similar delusion or do they have a licence to kill; a licence to murder and mutilate granted to them by a higher authority? Do they have any claim to a higher purpose for the atrocities they commit?

The revered hero of Islamic terrorists is Muhammad Atta. You may remember him as the leader of the men who flew those passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, killing almost 3,000 innocent human beings.

Atta left a note of encouragement for his fellow murderers. He wrote, and I quote: “Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty, and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out.”

So many innocent people dying a horrible death, some blown to bits, others burnt alive by exploding jet fuel while others jumped to their death in the plaza below to escape the fire above; the survivors of the initial attack crushed between slabs of concrete as the buildings collapsed, their lives squeezed out of them like so much toothpaste all for the sake of satisfying a groups of merciless young men’s sexual fantasies about what awaited them after their killing work, in the name of their God, was done.

Confucianism, not unlike the teachings of the Greek philosophers of antiquity, also informs us that “correct conduct arises, not through external force, but as a result of virtues developed internally through the observation of laudable models of behaviour.”

For the murderers of the innocent their model of behaviour is a long dead alleged spokesman for a vengeful and merciless god called Allah who boasted that the god for whom he claimed to speak had “made him “victorious with terror.”

Muslim children are taught, at the earliest possible age, to fear this Allah and to be wary of, if not to hate anyone who does not fear him or acknowledge His existence. In adulthood, sometimes as teenagers, at the slightest provocation they will strike, not always out of hate, but out of fear of what this Allah will do to them if they don’t kill those who don’t fear or acknowledge Him and submit to His will.

Sometimes, like Muhammad Atta and the depraved young men he led, they slaughter the innocent simply for the favours they believe this Allah will grant them, including the gift of young virgins, to do with them what they will, as payment for killing defenceless men, women and children.

Is there any hope that men who commit these atrocities will change for the better the way Boom-Boom did? We can only hope. I will, we will miss you Boom-Boom [regaining his composure].

What Have We Talked About So Far

Johnny: So far, we have heard from a respected economist and author Dr. Diane Frances Smith and her theory that it was bad economics, freeloader economics was the term she used, that caused Canada to break up. Next, we heard from the MAD man himself the Ayatollah Muhammad Abdullah Domeini who said that it was multiculturalism carried to its logical conclusion that made The Fracture not only inevitable, but welcomed.

Following the Ayatollah was the much loved and regretted Tamil Boom-Boon Singh who made the argument that it was mainly the lack of a common history and the failure to promote core Canadian values such as secularism, democracy, freedom of speech and expression instead of unthinking tolerance promoted by a perverse form of multiculturalism that made The Fracture unavoidable.

After Dr. Singh, it was militant feminist and author, Maude Elisabeth Barnstone, who said that I line from a poem I quoted at the beginning of the interview with the Ayatollah said it all: “The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Today, we hope to talk with the Vice-president of Québec, Jean Joseph Souviens who, you may have noticed, is not here. We hope to reach him via teleconferencing in his office in Québec City. [looking towards his producer] My producer tells me that it will be a few more minutes before we hear from Vice-president Souviens. This gives us time to answer a question that was sent to us from a French viewer; French as in France that is.

An E-Mail From France

Johnny: Amélie from the French town of Dieppe where so many Canadians lost their lives in a futile, ill-conceived raid during the Second World War asks: “If Canada is gone, why do I still hear and read about a thing called The Canadian Federation?”

Good question. Yes, Amélie there is a Canadian Federation. Canada is gone Amélie, but the Canadian Federation lives on. It is a loose federation of English speaking provinces, or fragments of, that have not joined the United States or were refused admittance; a sort of leftovers from The Fracture. They are, for the most part, a poor imitation of their former self, geographically speaking.

The Canadian Federation is a bit like your European Common Market but with a lot less unity. At the heart of the Canadian Federation is the Council of Prime Ministers. You heard right, Prime Ministers. As soon as the Canadian Confederation disintegrated, the Premiers began calling themselves Prime Ministers and acting as such. In reality, they were acting like Prime Ministers long before The Fracture. It may be a Freudian ego, macho thing, we don’t know, but the Premiers during the period leading to The Fracture quarrelled more than usual with the Prime Minister of Canada and, as I said before, acted more and more like Prime Ministers in their own right.

Heading the Council of Prime Ministers of the Canadian Federation – not to be confused with the Canadian Confederation – is a Secretary-General. A sort of super bureaucrat appointed by the Council of Prime Ministers. His or her main responsibility is arranging and coordinating the quarterly meeting of the Prime Ministers. There is no capital city, per say, though some business of a strictly administrative nature is still done in the former capital of Ottawa.

The business of the Council of Prime Ministers, for the past few years, has been taken up with trying to develop a common foreign policy and negotiating free trade agreements among themselves. So far, they have not agreed on a common foreign policy or reached any substantive agreements on trade issues. They also have been unsuccessful in deciding on a new flag. The Maple Leaf having been found inadequate to represent the Federation with Québec having more maple trees than the leftover provinces combined. I hope, Amélie that answers your question. Thank you, merci beaucoup for your e-mail.

Canada with a K

Johnny: Do I have time for one more e-mail [looking toward his producer]? Yes. Good. The next e-mail is from Stephan from Munich, Germany who asks: “what is the origin of the name Canada and why according to my grand-father, Canadian is sometimes spelled with a K by Canadians?”

The name Canada, according to legend, comes from a chance meeting between the French explorer Jacques Cartier and two young native Indians in 1535. The two Indians were showing Cartier the route to their village, Stadacona but they called their village "Kanata", the Huron-Iroquois word for village.

The name stuck and Kanata was then used by Cartier and other explorers to apply to an increasingly larger area. In 1547, everything north of the St. Lawrence River was designated as "Canada." The first official use of the name was in 1791 when Québec was divided into Upper and Lower Canada. On July 1, 1867, the date of the country’s confederation, the name “Canada” was assumed.

Your second question was somewhat more difficult to answer but we do have some very good researchers. In investigating the perplexing mystery of why some Canadians would spell Canada with a K they unearthed some interesting information about an important Canadian institution that none of the people interviewed so far have talked about. Perhaps it was because it didn’t have much or anything to do with The Fracture. That was the Canadian Foreign Service.

Your grand-father must have, at one point in time, visited or perhaps simply walked by the Canadian Embassy in Berlin or the Canadian Consulate in Munich and this is where he probably saw Canadian spelt with a K. The Canadian High Commission in Munich, at one point in time, spelled Canadian with a K.

Our researchers found that this misspelling of Canadian was not unusual in identifying Canadian foreign missions. This raised another question: why would an institution such as the Canadian Foreign Service, which prided itself in only hiring the best and the brightest, be so bad at spelling?

The answer, our researchers informed me, can partly be found in an old study of the Canadian Foreign Service by a Pamela McDougall, a one-woman royal commission which published a report called the Royal Commission on Conditions of Foreign Service. In this report, Ms. McDougall provides evidence that Canadian Foreign Service Officers considered themselves not only not part of what Galbraith called the contented class, but in a class of their own or a caste of their own to use Ms. McDougall’s term.

Members of this caste tended to look down on lesser mortals. If these lesser mortals got into trouble in some foreign land it was their own fault and they should suffer the consequences. This attitude of the Canadian Foreign Service, our researchers are convinced, is why in places like Germany they spelt Canada with a K so as to make it more difficult for Canadians in distress to locate them.

Canadians looking for help from the Canadian Foreign Service would of course look for Canadian Consulate or Canadian Embassy under C not K in the local phone book. So spelling Canadian with a K, Stephan, was not because Canadian Foreign Service Officers did not know how to spell.

My producer is indicating to me that we have reached Mr. Souviens. I hope Stephan that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction. Auf Wiedersehen.

[ON a large monitor we see a visibly angry JEAN JOSEPH SOUVIENS sitting behind a large desk.]

Johnny: Mr. Souviens, thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule to talk to us.

Tough Love!

[ENGLISH is not Mr. Souviens’ first language so, “please excuse the English”, as Jean would say.]

Souviens: I would like to say I like to talk to you but if I did, I would be lying. And I don’t lie. Unlike you, Mr. MacDonald!

Johnny: I’m sorry, what, what are you talking about?

Souviens: You know what I’m talking about, that reference you made about Québec mistreating the Indians. THAT IS A LIE!

Johnny: Oh, I see where you’re coming from. What did I say that was a lie?

Souviens: [picking a piece paper off his desk] I have your exact words right here. During your interview with that fellow Singh you say, and I am repeating: “The Québec government couldn’t care less, after all, the Natives in every referendum voted overwhelmingly against separation. It’s payback time in le beau pays.”

Johnny: Correct me if I’m wrong, but Québec is eliminating reserves, forcibly relocating the Cree and Inuit and stopping all payments that were agreed to under the James Bay treaties. Need I go on?

Souviens: So that is what you call payback which, if I understand correctly, means revenge, la vengeance?

Johnny: Yes, payback could be considered a form of revenge.

Souviens: Well Mr. MacDonald, you could not be more mistaken. What you call revenge we call, what is your English expression, tough love.

Johnny: Tough love?!

Souviens: Yes, tough love! It is because we love our Indian brothers and sisters that we want them to be fully integrated within Québec society; to have all the rights and privileges of ordinary Québecquers.

Johnny: Perhaps, but they don’t want what you are offering. They say they just want to keep their land and their culture.

Souviens: They do not know what is good for them.

Johnny: Québecquers would never have accepted that kind of forced assimilation from Canada?

Souviens: It is not assimilation; we want them to become Québecquers.

Johnny: I don’t see the difference.

Souviens: Of course you don’t, you’re not a Québecquer.

Johnny: How do you, Mr. Souviens, how does your government define what is a Québecquer?

Souviens: [under his breath] Maudite tête carré. A Québecquer is a person who is born in Québec or a person who chooses to come and live here and accepts our values and traditions. If he or she demonstrates a willingness to live like a Québecquer, then they will be accepted into the loving Québecquer family.

Johnny: But the Cree and Inuit have already said they don’t consider themselves Québecquers.

Souviens: What did I just say? [louder] WHAT DID I JUST SAY? If you are born and live in Québec or come here and accept our traditions and values you’re a Québecquer. That’s it, end of story.

Johnny: Hard to argue with that logic.

Souviens: It is Cartesian logic which you English people could not understand.

Johnny: Obviously. Circular reasoning is not something we are very good at.

Souviens: Évidemment. I thought you invited me on your program to talk about The Fracture, la Fracture, not about how we are trying to improve the life of our Indian brothers and sisters?

Johnny: Yes of course we should be talking about The Fracture and the first question I would like to ask you relating to The Fracture is what did Mr. Bouchard mean by his comment that Canada wasn’t a country?

Souviens: Just that, that Canada was not a country. What else would you like to know?

 Johnny: I know that’s what he said, but what did he mean by it? What was a country for Mr. Bouchard? What is a country for you Mr. Souviens?

What Is a Country by Jean Joseph Souviens

Souviens: What is a country? You want me to tell YOU [pointing] what is a country?

 Johnny: If you wouldn’t mind?

Souviens: Your family was Canadian-English right?

Johnny: English-Canadian, yes.

Souviens: And you want me to tell YOU what is a country?

Johnny: Yes.

Souviens: It’s no wonder that your portion of Canada went boom [making an explosive gesture with his arm], you English could not even define what you were trying to keep together.

Johnny: I have my own ideas about what a country is [getting frustrated], what is a country, but I am sure our viewers would prefer hearing your opinion of what it is.

 Souviens: Very well [stroking his chin]. What is a country? A country is a people having a shared history, shared values, occupying a geographical area which they consider their own, which is centrally administered and to which its inhabitants feel an attachment so strong that most would be willing to die to maintain its geographical and cultural integrity.

 Johnny: That is well put. I must admit I was expecting something a bit more, uh, a bit more juvenile.

Souviens: Juvenile?! I’m 52 years old.

Johnny: That is not what I meant.

Souviens: So, what did you mean?

Johnny: Nothing, nothing at all. Would Prime Minister Bouchard have agreed with your definition?

Souviens: Of course, certainement.

Johnny: I noticed that you didn’t mention language as part of your definition of what is a country, yet throughout Canada’s history, Québec has always maintained that preserving the French language was crucial.

Souviens: It is not important what language you speak or how many languages you speak as long as you can all understand each other when you speak to each other, and that is without interpreters. It is important for citizens of a country to understand what this Saul guy called the other, l’autre.

Johnny: [surprised] I don’t think he was referring to language when he wrote about understanding “the other” in Reflections of a Siamese Twin, but I am impressed.

Souviens: Impressed! Impressed by what?

Johnny: Impressed that you have read John Ralston Saul.

Souviens: Why are you surprised? Do you think Québecquers are dummies that only read Tintin and Le Journal de Montreal?

Johnny: No, of course not.

Johnny: Myself, like most Québecquers, can read French and English authors in the original writing. How about you Mr. MacDonald?

Johnny: No. Getting back to Québec and its emphasis on the preservation of French during its history as a province of Canada…

Souviens: Are you familiar with the saintly Jacques Parizeau?

Johnny: Yes of course, he almost won the 1995 referendum, loosing by one percentage point. Quite an achievement!

Souviens: You may not remember this, but in the period leading up to the referendum he was asked how a French country could prosper in a sea of people speaking English. What do you think he answered?

Johnny: Unlike Canadians, the Americans were not about to learn French to accommodate Québec. If they wanted to do business with them they would have to learn English.

Souviens: Exactly, and that is what the saintly Parizeau said.

Johnny: If I remember correctly, Premier Parizeau was quite blunt in his pronouncements. I remember his famous reference to Québecquers being trapped like lobsters in a boiling pot if they voted yes in the referendum. Until now I thought that was the winner for bluntness, but admitting that more Québecquers would have to learn English should Québec achieved independence, that is sort of like, like skewering a sacred cow.

Souviens: He did not say more Québecquers would have to learn English, he said “every Québecquer would have to learn English.” By the way, what is this sacred cow that you English skewer?

Johnny: It’s just an expression? Are you saying that Premier Parizeau actually said “every Québecquer would have to learn English if Québec became independent”?

Souviens: Yes. By the way, how is my English speaking?

Johnny: Just fine. Where was I? Yes, then, why this emphasis on preserving French before independence?

Souviens: It is a way of maintaining cohesion and a sense of purpose for the struggle ahead; to give you a greater appréciation that you belong to a community of like-minded people. That is it, it is a community thing; language and community they go together, they unify the people in a community.

Johnny: Language as a unifying force even when it isn’t. Amazing!

Souviens: Nothing amazing there. The cohesive force among Muslims, par exemple, apart from all learning the same thing, is speaking the Arabic. Arab people make up only a small percentage of Muslims yet all Muslims, black, white, yellow, red or brown all feel they are brothers and sisters because they speak a common language. When Ontario started schools where little boys and girls would speak only Arabic they said it would facilitated integration into the greater Canadian family.

Johnny: It didn't!

Souviens: What foolishness. Getting the little tykes to learn to speak the English first properly, that was what should have been a priority. All they did teaching another language before the language of the people made these little boys and girls feel that they were part of the Muslim community, not the Canadian. The same for all the other immigrants, their sons and daughters who came to Canada and never learned to communicate in English.

Johnny: Is that why Québec, even before it achieved independence demanded that immigrants to the province attend French schools.

Souviens: Of course. We’re not stupid. Even the immigrants that came to Canada during the great flood understood the importance of a common language as a force for unity. Only you English were too stupid to understand. The immigrants, they knew that for Canada, English-Canada that is, to stay united it had to speak a common language. They did not want this so-called “babelization” of Canada that your previous guest mentioned.

Johnny: Babelization of the airwaves.

Souviens: Same difference. Let me tell you a little story why I believe that even the immigrant community did not want this babble thing. I was a teenager when I was with my parents on a trip to British Columbia. On the way to the old gold rush town of Barkerville, we stopped at a place called Williams Lake. We were just walking on the sidewalk, talking to each other, mining (sic) our own business when this big Hindu or Pakistani fellow comes to us and yells at us to speak English. The same thing happened during a walk through that park in Vancouver, but this time it was a Chinese or maybe Japanese woman yelling at us to speak the English.

Johnny: That was unfortunate, I don’t believe that was typical of British Columbians, they were extremely tolerant.

Souviens: DON’T START WITH THE TOLERANT THING ALREADY! What is it with you English and your tolerance for everything? Why don’t you be tolerant now and let me finish my story.

Johnny: There’s more?

Souviens: Of course there’s more. This story is about why speaking a common language is important for the country, not about being told to speak English.

Johnny: I’m sorry, go ahead.

Souviens: Where was I? Ah yes. The big Hindu fellow did not ask us to speak Punjabi or some other Hindu language and the Chinese woman did not ask us to speak Chinese, they said to speak English. Maybe they know something about how speaking the same language is good for the country unlike you English babelizers?

Johnny: I think Canadians, English-Canadians were just trying to do the right thing by allowing immigrants to maintain their language and traditions from one generation to the next.

Souviens: What do you English say; the road to hell is asphalted with good deeds.

Johnny: Paved with good intentions.

Souviens: While English Canada saw people speaking and not understanding each other as being a good thing, Québec believed that people living in the same country should be able to speak to each other, as I said before, without needing an interpreter. This is good for a country.

Johnny: Yes, and the language laws that the former Province of Québec passed making French the official language and forcing everyone to becoming proficient in French are a testament to that fact.

Souviens: And English.

Johnny: Yes, but after having become proficient in the official language.

Souviens: Again, I ask you, what is wrong with that! Just because you English were not proud enough of your language to make it the number one language that everybody had to properly speak is your fault. You cared so little for the preservation of your language, that now, in parts of your former Canada, Arabic is the predominant language. It is hard to learn a language. What did you think would happen when instead of forcing the new people to Canada to learn English properly you paid for them to learn the language of their other country as they did in Ontario, starting Arabic immersion in grade two, Christ de Tabernacle.

Johnny: Whatever the objectives of teaching immigrants and children of immigrants in their native language were, it did undoubtedly contribute to this so-called babelization of English-Canada.

Souviens: Do you thing Québec would be a country today if we had allowed the babelization of Québec the way you English did your country?

Johnny: Probably not.

Souviens: History has shown that countries that have the best chance of surviving a long time are those that speak a common language, maybe two.

Johnny: I don’t necessarily agree, but the disappearance of Canada definitely provides some support for your hypothesis.

Souviens: My hippo what?

Johnny: Your conclusion. Thank You. I think you have answered the question that may have been on a lot of viewers mind, I know it was on mine, as to why the French language lost much of its appeal for Québecquers after independence.

Souviens: Glad I could be a light.

Johnny: Speaking of lights. Could you enlighten us as to why Canada did not fit your definition of a country? Let’s start with a shared history.

Souviens: What shared history?

Johnny: Canadian shared history?

Souviens: I already answered that. What shared history?

Johnny: [touching his forehead as if he’s getting a headache] The shared history between English, French and Natives, the battles that you fought together, against each other that sort of thing. The compromises, the accommodations that the first inhabitants, French and English, made to build Canada.

Souviens: Oh, that history. Well that history all ended in 1992 didn’t it? By the way, I watched your interview with that Diane person. What she said about Mr. Mulroney was despicable, just despicable! Sure Irish people love to love and to be loved but no Irish people would sell out his country for love. He wanted free trade with the Americans because he thought it would be good for the country he loved, Canada, not the United States. He wanted the Meech Lake Accord and after that the Charlottetown Accord because he knew that the country he loved could not survive with one third of the country feeling left out. He was right. What this Diane person said about Mr. Mulroney was despicable, just despicable. She may be beautiful but as for brains, I’m not sure.

Johnny: Dr. Smith does have strong opinions, usually well researched opinions. You mention the year 1992. Wasn’t that the year that Canadians, in a referendum, voted against the Charlottetown Accord? Are you saying that this shared history ended with the refusal of Canadians to endorse, in a referendum, the Charlottetown Accord?

Souviens: Yes, the Charlottetown Accord. All Québecquers wanted was a little recognition of their contribution to building Canada; all they wanted was for the rest of Canada to recognize that Québecquers were proud of their “distinct” contribution to the building of Canada, a contribution that went backwards more than three hundred years and was not trivia; that their distinct culture be recognized for what it was: “distinct”, not better, not worse, just distinct. Was that too much to ask?

Johnny: No, not really which may explain why the Harper government, in 2006, introduced a motion, which was passed by the Canadian Parliament, recognizing that Québecquers constituted a nation within a united Canada.

Souviens: A thing passed by the old Canadian Parliament is not the same as change to a Constitution to which a majority of the Canadians would have had to agree and did not. It can be undone anytime. The motion was just a big symbol thing.

Johnny: Nation, distinct society are just words, didn’t English-Canadians by their actions, if not in words, ensure that the French language and French culture would survive in a largely English speaking, Anglo-Saxon North America?

Souviens: English-Canada claimed, and some of it is true, I will admit, that it had help the French language to survive and culture too and for that we are grateful, it is unfortunate that English-Canada could not, would not acknowledge our contribution. At a time when Québec felt it was an equal with the English and that its distinct contribution to Canada was about to be recognized, finally, the rest of Canada refused to recognize our contribution, even to acknowledge it même en théorie.

Johnny: I must confess that Canada’s refusal to simply recognize Québec as a distinct society, even in theory as you claim, in its constitution is confusing considering that under Canada’s multiculturalism doctrine it recognized the distinctiveness of just about everybody else.

Souviens: [getting agitated] And that’s the other thing.

Johnny: What other thing?

Souviens: The multiculturalism thing. What was up with that? Multiculturalism is not a culture; it is the death of a culture or more precisely the death of a nation, la mort d’une nation. How can you pretend to be a nation if you don’t have a culture that you can claim as your own? This multiculturalism thing was, for Québec, except for a short period right after the conquest, the greatest threat to its survival.

Johnny: Multiculturalism, a threat to Québec’s survival?!

Souviens: Ever since France traded Québec for Guadeloupe, Québecquers have been preoccupied with the preservation of their culture; Québec’s priorities and beliefs had not changed over time but the rest of Canada had. The rest of Canada became the whatyoumacallit: the tolerable, the tolerating, you know a society where everybody but the not tolerant tolerate everything and the tolerant tolerating the not tolerant and the not tolerant not tolerating the tolerant. What do you call it?

Johnny: You mean the tolerant society?

Souviens: Of course, yes, yes that crazy system which most Québecquers believe was an excuse for not believing in anything. Native French Québecquers with our precise Cartesian definition of what it means to be a Québecquer could not identify with the official wishy-washy definition of what it means to be a Canadian.

Johnny: Cartesian definition or not, even in hindsight, multiculturalism as a culture in itself is a bit of a contradiction in terms.

Souviens: Québecquers became even more concerned about their culture as the country became more and more of a country of minorities where Québecquers would be just another minority among minorities.

Our leaders at the time, the saintly Parizeau among them, were concerned about the bad things that come with groups, the things that groups do – group dynamics I think it is called – such as being jealous of what other groups have; imagining that other groups want to steal from them, take their women that sort of thing, and, and groups like to mark their territories, not like dogs and cats, but by putting up real and not real fences, and, and groups only like members of their groups and hate members of the other groups for all those reasons I talked about before.

Johnny: Group dynamics can have some unfortunate side effects, group-think and mob-rule to name a couple.

Souviens: This bad side of group thinking, our leaders, including the saintly Parizeau, believed would lead to a new kind of power politics where Québec would be at a distinct, this is, what you English say, not a pun thing, disadvantage. They saw the politics of power of the new Canada as a series of alliances between groups to deny or take away an existing right of another group. Gropings (sic) that they already blamed for denying Québec’s independence and for denying Québec’s distinctiveness within Canada.

Johnny: I assume you meant groupings instead of gropings.

Souviens: What’s the difference?

Johnny: Groping involves some sort of sexual interplay, touching.

Souviens: Yes, there was some of that too.

Johnny: Your colourful analysis of the sinister side of group dynamics makes some sense considering what happened to Canada.

Souviens: And another thing, I think it was the stomach of the English reacting, what I believe you call a reaction of the gut to Québec’s demand for a greater recognition and more power that was the cause of the flood. It was a not conscious response by the rest of Canada. Unable to deal with Québec as an equal it would make the Canada, a country of minorities, so nobody could claim to be special, spécial.

Johnny: I’m sorry, but I find it difficult to agree with you Mr. Souviens, that Canada would cut off its nose just to spite Québec?

Souviens: Explain to me please, how does a country cut off its nose? Where is its nose?

Johnny: It’s just an expression meaning doing something that is obviously against your interest simply to exact a measure of revenge against another.

Souviens: That’s what the English-Canada did alright. That is exactly what they did!

Johnny: Increasing immigration to get back at Québec? I don’t think so. But your novel, some would say slightly paranoid theory would explain why, while the rest of Canada, under multiculturalism encouraged newcomers to keep their culture and their language, Québec did the exact opposite.

Souviens: Yes we did. Speak our language, accept and become part of our culture or get out! What the rest of Canada perceived as intolerance or what you called paranoia, Québecquers understood as the only way to ensure the survival of their language and cultural distinctiveness during the flood. And La Fracture from which Québec emerged intact is proof that we were right.

Johnny: I agree that without an enlighten majority to set the tone, as the English majority did for the longest time, some of the more unpleasant consequences of group dynamics which you mentioned, did come to pass. Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps English-Canada did cut its nose, but to what end I’m not sure. I don’t think it was to spite Québecquers?

Souviens: I will grant you that, the English before Diefenbaker were not that bad.

Johnny: Turning to your second qualification for calling yourself a country: shared values.

Souviens: At one point in time we may have had more things in common, valued some of the same things. But not at the Fracture, pas à la fracture.

Johnny: Was that also because of the failure of Canadians to ratify the Charlottetown Accord?

Souviens: No. We no longer shared the same values when the English-Canada took the side of this Allah than the Pope.

Johnny: Aladdin, the Pope?!

Souviens: What are you saying?

Johnny: I thought you said Aladdin?

Souviens: No I did not. Why would I call Allah, Aladdin? Allah was no Aladdin.

Johnny: I must have misunderstood.

Souviens: As I was saying, the English, they took the side of this Allah than the side of good Québec Catholics. Whatever shared values we might have had, we didn’t have them no more when English Canada did not support Québec in its fight against those who would deny our traditions, our culture, those who would call Québecquers pagans.

Johnny: I think you mean infidels.

Souviens: What’s the difference? Canada was willing to sacrifice an important part of our culture, a culture that went backwards hundreds of years to appease a very bad and fanatical bunch of newcomers.

Johnny: The Canadian government was just trying to please everyone.

Souviens: And they pleased no one. It was not just the Canadian government but the Court as well.

Johnny: What court?

Souviens: The Canada Supreme Court. A small Catholic school tells a child studying there that he can’t bring a dagger to school; he could hurt himself or his little playmates. This wise decision makes sense to everybody, even the judges of the Québec Supreme Court agree, telling the parents of the kid with the knife that their little boy could not bring a dagger to class, that it was a reasonable limitation on religious superstitions “given the safety concerns from carrying the daggers to school” but not the stupid Supreme Court in Ottawa. They said it was okay for children to go to school carrying knives and things under their clothing. Everybody in Québec with the ability to think was outrage. One of our good thinkers of the time Daniel Baril warned us that the Canadian Supreme Court had by this and other stupid decisions elevated a right to believe what you want to an obligation.

Johnny: An obligation?

Souviens: Yes, an obligation for the non-believing people with their taxing dollars to pay for the beliefs of those who believed even if you didn’t believe in any of the stuff that these believers believed.

Johnny: I believe I understand what you are trying to say. The impact of that decision was more widespread than the justices may have anticipated. By raising the bar so high – allowing students, children to bring concealed weapons to class – educational institutions simply gave up and gave in to whatever this or that religion wanted including building prayer rooms, chapels and synagogues on their premises at taxpayers’ expense.

Also, the cost of fighting appeals from religious zealots, most of which were funded by those same taxpayers, was prohibitive even for the public school boards who were already starved for resources, much of their funding having been diverted to pay for private religious schools and private religious education.

Souviens: It was not only the money. These public funding of the believers’ beliefs only created more exclusive groups with what do you call “the revealing truth” who would not grope the other. This would not do. After much struggle, the not too Quiet Revolution of Lesage, Lévesque and Trudeau and others had finally gotten the Catholic Church out of Québec classrooms and the stupid Canadian Supreme Court demands that religion be let back in. Québecquers knew from experience that religion in the classroom makes your society go backwards.

Québec separating put an end to all that backwardness. In Québec, you can believe whatever you want to believe but don’t expect others to pay for it and our schools are not for indoctrinating your religion but learning, do your believing on your time and your dime.

Johnny: Revealed truth. Not “revealing truth” is what you meant to say.

Souviens: Whatever! It’s all nonsense to me.

Johnny: How about your third claim that a country is a geographical area whose inhabitants consider their own.

Souviens: It wasn’t only Québec that was making that claim. The first King Ralph was just as adamant in claiming that Alberta belonged to Albertans. That money from oil belonged to Albertans and the King’s friends and for the most part, the Canadian government agreed, refusing, as Ms. Smith said, refusing to impose more tax, tax that would have been paid by Americans, TABERNACLE, and that would have funded health care for all of Canada. À La Fracture just about every Canadian province was acting as if it was a country. Speaking geographically, the provinces were countries and Canada an association of countries; a sort of Souveraineté association. They denied it to Québec only to grant it to themselves.

Johnny: “Centrally administered” I think we just answered that one. Your last claim to being a country was that “its inhabitants feel an attachment so strong that most would be willing to die to maintain its geographical and cultural integrity.”

Souviens: What was that line from that poem about the good guys doing nothing while the bad guys bullied and killed everybody? The good guys à La Fracture outnumbered the bad guys, yet the bad guys won. Why? Pourquoi? Because the good guys didn’t think their country, whatever it was, was worth fighting or dying for.

Canada in a Nutshell

Johnny: When did you become convinced that Canada had no future?

Souviens: It’s the little things that make you think. It was not like Paul on the road to Damascus. There was no big flashing light or anything like that. I was a young man when Radio-Canada showed Le Canada: l’histoire d’un people, on the English network it was Canada: A People's History. A 30 hour historical epic, it said, that was supposed to be a celebration of Canadian history. As I just mentioned, they didn’t call it Canadian history they called it L’histoire d’un peuple, A People’s History. It got me wondering why they called it that. What country would do a show on its history and not call it that. When the French do a show about their history they say French History or The History of the French People, the same with the British, the Americans, none of them refer to their history as a people’s history. They know who their people are and are not ashamed to admit it. But no, not Canada. Why I asked myself, why can’t they do this?

Johnny: Maybe the producers of the series believed that calling it Canadian history would offend some who considered themselves citizens of Canada but not necessarily Canadians.

 Souviens: There Mr. MacDonald, in a nutcase, was the problem!

Johnny: Nutshell.

Souviens: What nutshell?

Johnny: I mean what you meant to say was nutshell.

Souviens: Whatever it was, it was nuts! The whole fracture thing was nuts [betraying a note of sadness and anger] la maudite fracture n’aurait jamais dû arriver it should never have happened. If provincial premiers had let Québec have the powers it needed to protect its language and culture instead of using Québec’s demand an as excuse to demand more powers for themselves thereby weakening English Canada; if the English media had not personalized the historical struggle between English and French Canada; if English-Canada had cared as much about preserving its culture and heritage as Québecquers did theirs then perhaps an English and a French Canada, within a united Canada, would still exist.

 Johnny: I would tend to agree. Thank you for talking to us. Merci et bonne chance.

 Souviens: You to.

Johnny: Well that’s it for the interviews. I found them informative, I hope you did too. Thank you and good-night.