Quote:
Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
So when did Quebeckers pick up the habit? I'm assuming it's a post-war thing?
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I'll let you in on a little secret. (Though you may have suspected this anyway...)
Many of the French European traits sometimes attributed to Quebeckers are actually "acquired" (in some cases rekindled I suppose) as opposed to passed down intergenerationally from the 1600s and 1700s.
I am not sure about cheek kissing though, so it could very well have been something that's been done here for centuries. For example, I am pretty sure that talking expressively with one's hands is something that never truly went away here.
On the hand, I am pretty sure about stuff like fine wines and cheeses.
Quebec was a land of beer until the 1970s and only the upper upper classes drank wine. Of course wine has grown tremendously since then to the point where you can sometimes see young men in their early 20s with backward baseball caps having wine with their meal in Gatineau restaurants while chatting about the NHL.
Same goes with cheese and fine pastries and such.
Barely less than a generation ago cheese in Quebec was cheddar and the biggest Québécois contribution to cheese culture was probably the curd. Now as most foodies know fine cheese production and consumption have exploded in Quebec.
Same goes for pastries. Once again, and anecdotally... you can see construction guys with muck-coated workboots at my local French-run bakery ordering a
fougasse aux olives and other typical
viennoiseries that would be typical fare across the pond.
Not exactly a sight you'd see in most parts of this continent.
Is all of this europhile posing? Maybe... or it could simply be a byproduct of the increased contacts between Quebec and France over the last 30 years or so. (After two centuries of little to no contact.)
Plus, having Dim Sum, for example, isn't really "posing", is it?