Quebec, the French Language, and Quebecois Identity

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by lio45

Aren’t you yourself an educated professional who alternated between Toronto and Vancouver? Was Calgary seriously in the running too, out of curiosity?

Vancouver is where my wife's family is and Toronto is where my family is. I moved back to Toronto to be closer to my family and because the job opportunities were much better in my field.

I applied for a job in Calgary about ten years ago, which I didn't get. I would have moved there before my wife and I were planning on having kids. I wouldn't use my personal life to generalize, though.

Incidentally, IMO, Calgary is probably the most underrated major Canadian city. It actually feels "big" in a way that similar-sized Edmonton and Ottawa don't. I had a mental image of what Calgary would be before I visited (the real reason for my visit was to hike in Banff and Waterton, not to visit Calgary), and I was proven wrong when I got to experience the city in real life. People there fret about being perceived as sophisticated and metropolitan - they kind of remind me of Torontonians 30 years ago.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

I was thinking more in terms of death penalty, gun laws, abortion, trigger-happy police forces, number of weeks of vacation, social benefits, etc. It's hard to fit a square inside a circle.

You might not realize it, but legally most provinces only legislate a minimum two weeks of vacation. Better than the USA's zero, but isn't much better to be honest. It's nowhere near the number of weeks you're guaranteed in the UK and EU. Provinces are also extraordinary stingy about granting new statutory holidays.

You might be surprised that a slight majority of Canadians actually support the death penalty: https://www.biv.com/news/commentary/poll...support-death-penalty-for-murder-8536218

Most of the states bordering Canada don't have abortion bans in place (or even protect it like New York State), so again it's not a big gap.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Yep. Most of the neighbouring blue states in New England to DC, coastal California and the PNW (Cascadia) have Canadinesque governance that shares a worldview that isn't very divergent from most Anglo-Canadian provinces.

I know some Californians who have visited Canada, and they find it much more slow-pace than California. There's nothing like the US rat race there. I've heard one American who said he knows instantly when he is in Canada, because their airports feel distinctly quieter than US airports, a bit sleepy.

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

I think what NB is wondering, is why Anglo-Canada doesn't function as a unified entity like Deutschschweiz.

German-speaking Switzerland does NOT function as a united entity. The differences between the cantons are much, MUCH larger than the difference between your Anglophone provinces. They are each their own republic, with their own history and different dates and reasons why they joined the confederation. On top of it they speak quite different dialects (people from Basel can't understand people from Uri, etc). People from Vancouver to Halifax speak the same language.

That's the daily language in Zurich for instance (top line is Zurich dialect, 2nd line is the translation in standard German; the lady in the middle is from Northern Germany and speaks standard German):

• Video Link

And here they speak various dialects from various parts of Switzerland. Frankly if you know a bit of German, these guys sound as different as a Dutch speaker compared to an English speaker. Calling these "dialects" is just political, in reality they are more like different languages.

• Video Link

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

I know some Californians who have visited Canada, and they find it much more slow-pace than California. There's nothing like the US rat race there. I've heard one American who said he knows instantly when he is in Canada, because their airports feel distinctly quieter than US airports, a bit sleepy.

I assume they're mostly from the Bay Area or Los Angeles and fly out primarily from SFO/LAX? There are parts of California I've been to that are pretty slow paced like Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Fresno and San Diego, and isn't much different than say Vancouver or Victoria.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Calgary is just too powerful economically and politically to be shunted to the side, and if Alberta ever finds itself in that situation it will join the USA without hesitation.

And be even more shunted to the side by the coastal US elites?

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

And be even more shunted to the side by the coastal US elites?

If by shunted you mean these elites offer the funding and infrastructure to get their resources to market then sure. US capital has always been instrumental in funding the development of Alberta's resource sector.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

I assume they're mostly from the Bay Area or Los Angeles and fly out primarily from SFO/LAX? There are parts of California I've been to that are pretty slow paced like Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Fresno and San Diego, and isn't much different than say Vancouver or Victoria.

Fresno yeah, but I wouldn't call Sacramento, Santa Barbara or San Diego slow pace. Santa Barbara is just a suburb of LA really (and one of my favorite places). San Diego is a big city. And Sacramento (been there once for a funeral!) didn't strike me as a sleepy village either. The freeway SF to Sacramento was packed with cars, 6 full lanes packed with cars for the 100 miles or so to get there. Lots of tourists in old Sacramento. But they've stupidly destroyed their old city center with a freeway, as so often happens in the US.

PS: Having been to Vancouver once, I would say to me Vancouver (in terms of size, urban feel, pace, etc) feels more or less like San Diego, and definitely smaller and slower than either Bay Area or LA, and also Seattle (but I prefer Vancouver over Seattle, because of their landscape, parks, 'cooler' attitude... for example it may sound like nothing, but the one day I was in Vancouver I saw some young guys doing skateboard on the edge of the big park they have in the city center there, and that I had never seen in the many weeks I lived in Seattle, so it certainly caught my eye!!).

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

If Canada remains intact I'd believe it. But with Quebec sovereignty and a never-ending Constitutional crisis, I seriously doubt they'd be OK with the status quo.

I tend to think that borders are pretty fixed in Western countries, even sub-national boundaries (in places where a lot of decisions are made at the sub-national/provincial level).

Even in places where it doesn't make sense "culturally", it's too much of a hassle to start from scratch with all the things that governments provide to a new territory.

And the other thing is that much of our identity as citizens of a territory is shaped by government institutions and practices, and not a culture that lives independently from what the state supports*. This wasn't always true, but this is increasingly the case in Western countries since, say, the 1960s when the reach of the state into people's lives began to grow immensely.

Let's stay with the BC interior as an example. Whether they live in Fort St. John or Victoria, people from BC can talk to each other about their experience getting their N license from ICBC, or applying for BCSAP to attend one of the BC universities, or how they used to have pay a yearly fee for their BC Care Card or things that were common in the public school curriculum that I don't know about because I didn't grow up in BC. The way provinces are set up, it's easy to move around BC, but not to move interprovincially. These might seem bureaucratic and mundane, but it's part of a large shared culture, and I've probably only scratched the surface with examples. There's no impetus for people in Kelowna to join Alberta because they have never experienced the same institutions and practices that Albertans have experienced.


*and the modern state keeps local culture alive - not just here, but in countries that supposedly have a strong local culture. Particularly in places that have a strong local culture. They subsidize it through grants and they legislate it through things like appelations for food/wine, etc.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

People there fret about being perceived as sophisticated and metropolitan - they kind of remind me of Torontonians 30 years ago.

I noticed they don’t like it when observers point out that a stone’s throw from the CBD, one can find small wood-frame, wood-clad houses (I’m being careful to avoid the S-word )

[New Brisavoine]

French TV Christmas Eve news bulletin: "Donald Trump's megalomania knows no bounds. He now wants to annex Canada, telling the Canadians they would pay far less taxes if they became part of the US." (that was just after a news story about the Christians of Syria spending Christmas with heavy security presence to prevent a terror attack)

[New Brisavoine]

"Laïcité à la française". For those of you who have a simplistic and black-and-white view of French secularism, I encourage you to read this tweet. Citizens in Beaucaire, southern France, were called to vote in order to say whether they wished for the crèche to remain displayed in the city hall. 98.5% voted in favor of keeping the crèche! Here an atheist doctor explains why it is important to keep cultural symbols and traditions: https://x.com/barriere_dr/status/1871104733236138216

Food for thought for your debate in Canada, which I often find to be a bit too "black-and-white", as if secularism was some mathematical theorem, with any deviation supposedly 'proving' double standards and hypocrisy.

And bonne fête de Noël à tous ! The Christmas Eve mass at St Peter's Basilica in Rome tonight (broadcasted live on the #1 public channel on TV here, in the most secular France ) was extremely beautiful. Only Catholicism can reach that level of beauty and universalism really (with children from all continents coming to kiss the pope and prayers in many languages, including of course French, and Arabic just after French, for the Middle Eastern Christians).

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I tend to think that borders are pretty fixed in Western countries, even sub-national boundaries (in places where a lot of decisions are made at the sub-national/provincial level).

Even in places where it doesn't make sense "culturally", it's too much of a hassle to start from scratch with all the things that governments provide to a new territory.

And the other thing is that much of our identity as citizens of a territory is shaped by government institutions and practices, and not a culture that lives independently from what the state supports*. This wasn't always true, but this is increasingly the case in Western countries since, say, the 1960s when the reach of the state into people's lives began to grow immensely.

Let's stay with the BC interior as an example. Whether they live in Fort St. John or Victoria, people from BC can talk to each other about their experience getting their N license from ICBC, or applying for BCSAP to attend one of the BC universities, or how they used to have pay a yearly fee for their BC Care Card or things that were common in the public school curriculum that I don't know about because I didn't grow up in BC. The way provinces are set up, it's easy to move around BC, but not to move interprovincially. These might seem bureaucratic and mundane, but it's part of a large shared culture, and I've probably only scratched the surface with examples. There's no impetus for people in Kelowna to join Alberta because they have never experienced the same institutions and practices that Albertans have experienced.


*and the modern state keeps local culture alive - not just here, but in countries that supposedly have a strong local culture. Particularly in places that have a strong local culture. They subsidize it through grants and they legislate it through things like appelations for food/wine, etc.

There's a lot of truth to this, but it has a flip side. This status quo bias is arguably the only thing keeping things together, so once something big happens that upsets the apple cart (say Quebec leaving and an aggressive/isolationist USA ruining the free trade formula our economy relies on) everything is now up for change.

[Acajack]

Sorry guys. In the middle of Réveillon. Just had a great collective singing of Minuit, Chrétiens.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I don’t disagree, at least for certain things.

These two truisms are not necessarily contradictory BTW.

Just as in some ways Québécois are more similar to Americans than they are to Anglo-Canadians. (Québécois tend to be more brash and boisterous for example, and don’t really fit with the Reserved Canadian stereotype.)

Of course this doesn’t mean that Québécois are exactly like Americans, or even that overall they are more similar to Americans than Anglo-Canadians are.

I've always found Quebecers to be pretty reserved and really no different than most Canadians in other provinces. The only differences that I can think of in Quebec is maybe when a group of people breaks out into a song which I've seen at restaurants and family gatherings but it's not something that happens all of the time. With Americans it's often a lot more talking loudly, bragging and jeering that I've experienced compared to Canadians.

One place that I've really noticed differences are at campgrounds. You are much less likely to have people interact with you at campgrounds in Quebec. Privacy is very much respected and you really don't see people interacting very much. People may only say "bonjour" if you're walking along a road but they never look at your campsite to say it. In Ontario, you might see some people talk with others for a few minutes and quite a few will say "hi" to people on a campsite when they walk by but that's about it. In the US, I've had quite a few people come onto my campsite to talk and they will talk about almost anything. They will act as though since you are camping there that you want to engage with them. Almost everyone says "hi" when they walk by your campsite. I've had many invitations for me to visit their site.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Sorry guys. In the middle of Réveillon. Just had a great collective singing of Minuit, Chrétiens.

Joyeux Noël ! Sounds like you had a good time!

It was busy on my street a little bit earlier likely because of Réveillon. Some of my family and many of my friends do it as part of Christmas. I never have as of yet because I'm not Catholic and we usually spend Christmas Eve with my in-laws.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Hecate

Wonder how rich Quebec would be without the last forty years of equalization. 13.3 billion last year alone. How well do you think those social programs would hold up after that Alberta oil tap gets cutoff

It would suffer less than Manitoba without equalization payments. Probably less than you would personally fare without the benefits conferred by equalization payments (which are paid by the well off, unless you are in one of the two or three top tax brackets, then you might be a net contributor, if not, "pot meet kettle").

[New Brisavoine]

The 3rd most read article on the website of Le Devoir. The article is a bit paradoxical, because they start by saying that sovereignism is "agonizing", because there are now more important topics that have replaced it (such as global warming, or identity... by identity I suppose they mean the Islamic veil and all that stuff, which is itself quite odd, since the whole issue of Québécois secularism is challenged by Anglo-Canada, which plays in the hands of sovereignists), but then they conclude the article saying that there's a revival of sovereignism among the younger generation. So, agony or revival? They don't seem to be certain.

Le quart de siècle d’agonie du clivage souverainiste-fédéraliste

Le Devoir
24 décembre 2024



[...]

Marc-Antoine Lemay, 25 ans, estime au contraire que le débat sur l’indépendance suit « un cycle » et est justement en train de revenir. L’étudiant originaire de la Mauricie revendique 1500 auditeurs par mois de son balado, Génération Oui. « Beaucoup de jeunes qui nous écoutent sont des indécis, et commencent à s’impliquer », affirme-t-il.

Rose Lessard, 24 ans et présidente du Forum jeunesse du Bloc québécois, jurerait aussi que les jeunes voteraient « oui » pour peu que le mouvement souverainiste fasse une place à leurs priorités.

« C’est sûr qu’on n’a pas connu les grands débats constitutionnels, mais on a une réalité qui est différente, comme la crise climatique », fait valoir celle qui souhaite se présenter aux prochaines élections pour le Bloc dans Hochelaga–Rosemont-Est, à Montréal.

Paradoxalement, son argument est repris par un proche de Justin Trudeau. L’ex-secrétaire principal du premier ministre Gerald Butts prédit lui aussi le retour imminent de la question nationale du Québec après l’arrivée au pouvoir du conservateur Pierre Poilievre et de son slogan postulant que le Canada est brisé. « Est-ce que le prochain référendum deviendra l’ultime débat du Canada sur le changement climatique ? » demande-t-il dans une analyse parue dans The Walrus à l’automne.

Deux sondages effectués à l’été 2023 sont arrivés à des conclusions contradictoires sur l’appui à la souveraineté chez les 18-34 ans, chiffré à 42,9 % par Pallas et à 25 % par Léger. La majorité des Québécois étaient âgés de moins de 42,5 ans en 2024, et personne sous les 47 ans n’a eu l’occasion de voter sur l’idée de délaisser le Canada pour faire du Québec un pays.

https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/827227/quart-siecle-agonie-clivage-souverainiste-federaliste?

[New Brisavoine]

Going though the readers' comments below the article... most of them are pro-independence. For example this comment, which makes the Francophone forumers in this thread very "soft" in comparison.

(I'm translating in English)

You're confusing the desire for efficiency with resentment.

Personally, I do not want Québec to become a[n independent] country because I have resentment toward Canada, as you suggest, but rather so that we can finally become masters of our orientations and decisions without having to always ask permission. Above all, so that we can be free to act at a speed that is impossible to achieve while remaining attached to the slow and heavy Canadian [transatlantic] liner.

A concern for efficiency, agility and performance. As simple as that.

For what is the value of a “national affirmation project” [proposed by the Advisory Committee on Constitutional Issues for Quebec within the Canadian Federation] if we remain stupidly subject to the wishes of our big brother? Nothing. It’s all smoke and mirrors. As usual.

[Nashe]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Going though the readers' comments below the article... most of them are pro-independence. For example this comment, which makes the Francophone forumers in this thread very "soft" in comparison.

(I'm translating in English)

A concern for efficiency, agility and performance. As simple as that.

In government? If they get their wish, they might be disappointed.

[Hecate]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

It would suffer less than Manitoba without equalization payments. Probably less than you would personally fare without the benefits conferred by equalization payments (which are paid by the well off, unless you are in one of the two or three top tax brackets, then you might be a net contributor, if not, "pot meet kettle").

We’re talking about Quebec, not manitoba… keep up. Show me exactly where I said manitoba wasn’t a beneficiary of equalization? It’s just funny watching Quebec separatists completely ignore that pretty big injection of money whenever they talk about independence. And honestly man. Try to let go of at least a little bit of the hate you have for me. It’s freaking Christmas. Maybe take a few days.

Merry Christmas.