No Exit; be seeing you

 

We’ve lived in an Alice in Wonderland world for 60 years, 

a place where up is down and down is in another time zone.

And what’s that book you're reading? The Elements of Fascism is it?

In which it states, "marginalize what is normal and make it abnormal, 

then criminalize what used to be normal."                                                          

It’s the little things at first and then the language police arrive at your door, 

anonymous informants have turned you in. No search warrant needed

when dealing with the crime of speaking the wrong language.

So, we’re standing around Hell’s airport, staring at Cancelled Departures, 

and then I see where it’s written in tiny letters, 

"there’s no exit from this place.”

"Be seeing you," I say to the others as I return home.

The Quebec government is destroying our universities

 

The campus at McGill University, Montreal, 1906

One day last fall, in 2023, Premier Legault of Quebec walked out of his Montreal office, which is across the street from the Roddick Gates entrance to McGill University, and decided, as he described it at the time, that he could hear too much English being spoken and, he claimed, this was to the detriment of the French language, and therefore it had to end. And who did he blame for this linguistic pollution? He blamed out-of-province and foreign students although he probably would have liked to have included all English-speaking Quebecers. This was the beginning of the Quebec government's attempt to destroy English language university education in Montreal and Quebec. 

Here is the scenario we were presented with by Premier Legault justifying cutting provincial funding and doubling tuition for out-of-province students at the three English-language universities in Quebec, Bishops University, Concordia University, and McGill University. The money from this drop in funding would go to French-language universities; the three English-language universities would now subsidize the French universities; however, Bishops was later exempted from this attack on English universities. Legault made the situation even worse; out-of-province students would now have to pay a higher tuition fee than they were currently paying (it was doubled but a few months later McGill and Concordia announced they would will subsidize students affected by this) and these students would also have to take French language courses that would add a semester to their studies, courses that are possibly beyond the ability of most Francophone students. Almost immediately applications to study at McGill and Concordia began to fall, the three English-language universities are now subsidizing French-language universities. As well, Moody's downgraded the credit rating of both universities based on Legault's pronouncement.

The gates to McGill University, McGill College Ave, August 25, 1869.

Of course, many of us in the English-language community are in shock over this, it feels like being stabbed in the heart; it is the wilful destruction of what has taken over two hundred years of work, dedication, and commitment to build. It is the legislated cancelling of McGill University and Concordia University, two of our most important institutions. These universities define our community but they have also been a welcoming place of learning for the majority French language community and they have helped generations of immigrants get ahead in Quebec. And it doesn't matter to Legault that McGill is one of three internationally recognized Canadian universities of excellence, the two others are the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto, or that McGill is a 203 year old institution with a reputation for excellence in learning, teaching, and research. Or that McGill is the equivalent of a head office of a prestigious company and brings more revenue to Quebec than it costs to have it here. As for the threat to the French language, based on demography, this is bogus and it's an excuse to attack the English-speaking community; compare the linguistic make up of Montreal or the Province of Quebec in 1976, when the Parti Quebecois was first elected to office with today, and it is obvious that the French language in Quebec is flourishing, and in all respects English is declining. All of Quebec, French and English speaking people, should be proud of McGill for its long history and international reputation; instead, Premier Legault and his cohort see McGill as a bastion of the English community even though about 25% of McGill students are Francophone. There is no reasoning with irrationality, ethnocentricity, and bigotry; no matter what concessions and compromises we make, Legault and his cohort are intransigent about their disdain for anyone who is not Francophone, white, and culturally Roman Catholic.

While Premier Legault blamed foreign students for the dystopian crime of speaking English in public, what he was also attacking was the very existence of McGill University and Concordia University and English-language higher education in Quebec. Here is a hypothetical (but equivalent) situation to what is happening to McGill University, it would be if the premier of British Columbia visited the Vancouver UBC campus and, apparently, just on a whim, announced that he was cutting funding for the University of British Columbia because the student body is more than half Canadian born Asians and 25% of the student body are foreign students; all of Canada would be appalled by this, the situation would be denounced, Federal politicians would be shocked and demand redress; Justin Trudeau would be apoplectic. What we have in Quebec is a racist attack on the English language community, an attack on both McGill and Concordia; it is an attack on our community's history and presence in Quebec. It is an attack on higher education. What Legault wants is a white French speaking province of Quebec that is ethnocentric and isolated from the outside world; if you aren't white and pure laine, then you are not a part of the Quebec nation, they want you gone. But since this atrocity is happening in Quebec, and it is against our English-language community, it is greeted with silence and even applause by our Federal politicians. From them we hear absolutely nothing, it is total silence, they want the French vote in Quebec no matter that it is destroying our community.

Redpath Museum on the McGill Campus, Montréal, QC, circa 1893

And so, we see that the government of Quebec has targeted our institutions, our language, and our history;  Premier Legault's plan is the elimination of the English language in Quebec, whether it is English language signage, all evidence of our extensive historical role in Quebec, or our hospitals and institutions that the English-speaking community founded, or speaking English on the street or, inevitably, speaking English or any language other than French in the privacy of one's home. This is a very dark, dystopian, and shameful period in Quebec and Canadian history.

The wilful destruction of an institution of excellence, based on hate and hubris, is evil. 

Addenda: enrollment is declining at Concordia University due to Legault's defunding English-language universities in Montreal. 29 August 2024.

Read this re McGill's "sustained excellence", https://reporter.mcgill.ca/sustained-excellence-mcgill-tops-macleans-rankings-again/

Some quotations from Lament for a Nation (1965), by George Grant

 

In Lament for a Nation (1965), George Grant writes as though Canada has already ceased to exist. While some of these quotations are satirical and ironic, they are all serious and even prescient. George Grant holds up Quebec as a model for an independent nation, French Canadians place national concerns over individual rights while the rest of Canada has the opposite approach; in other words, in Quebec there is a uniformity of national vision and resolve to attain it (the preservation of the French language and the possibility of independence); a vision of national purpose is lacking in the rest of Canada which seems to be following an American model for nationhood. Is Canada a "real" country? (Lucien Bourchard said it wasn't), or is English-Canada just a multi-cultural hodgepodge without any Canadian culture or belief in ourselves as a nation? 

 

On the disappearance of Canada:

... Canada's disappearance is not only necessary but good. As part of the great North American civilization, we enter wider horizons; Liberal policies are leading to a richer contentalism [sic]. (37)

 

In no society is it possible for many men to live outside the dominant assumptions of their world for very long. Where can people learn independent views, when newspapers and television throw at them only processed opinions? In a society of large bureaucracies, power is legitimized by conscious and unconscious processes. (42)

 

On the universal and homogeneous state:

The confused strivings of politicians, businessmen, and civil servants cannot alone account for Canada's collapse. This stems from the character of the modern era. The aspirations of progress have made Canada redundant. The universal and homogeneous state is the pinnacle of political striving. "Universal" implies a world-wide state, which would eliminate the curse of war among nations; "homogeneous" means all men would be equal, and war among classes would be eliminated. (53)

 

Modern civilization makes all local cultures anachronistic. Where modern science has achieved its mastery, there is no place for local cultures. It has often been argued that geography and language caused Canada’s defeat. But behind these there is a necessity that is incomparably more powerful. Our culture floundered on the aspirations of the age of progress. The argument that Canada, a local culture, must disappear can, therefore, be stated in three steps. First, men everywhere move ineluctably toward membership in the universal and homogenous state. Second, Canadians live next door to a society that is the heart of modernity. Third, nearly all Canadians think that modernity is good, so nothing   essential distinguishes Canadians from Americans. (54)

 

This world-wide society will be one in which all human beings can at last realize their happiness in the world without the necessity of lessening that of others. (56)

 

The belief in Canada's continued existence has always appealed against universalism. It appealed to particularity against the wider loyalty to the continent. If universalism is the most "valid modern trend," then is it not right for Canadians to welcome our integration into the empire? (85)

 

Liberalism was, in origin, criticism of the old established order. Today it is the voice of the establishment. (93)

 

... facts about our age must also be remembered: the increasing outbreaks of impersonal ferocity, the banality of existence in technological societies, the pursuit of expansion as an end in itself. Will it be good for men to control their genes? The possibility of nuclear destruction and mass starvation may be no more terrible that that of man tampering with the roots of his humanity. .. The powers of manipulations now available may portend the most complete tyranny imaginable. (94)

 

The classical philosophers asserted that a universal and homogenous state would be a tyranny. (96)

 

If the best social order is the universal and homogeneous state, then the disappearance of Canada can be understood as a step toward that order. If the universal and homogeneous state would be a tyranny, then the disappearance of even this indigenous culture can be seen as the removal of a minor barrier to that tyranny. (96)

 

On American Conservatives:

To return to the general argument. There is some truth in the claim of American conservatives. Their society does preserve constitutional government and respect for the legal rights of individuals in a way that the eastern tyrannies do not. (63)

 

Their concentration on freedom from governmental interference has more to do with nineteenth-century liberalism than with traditional conservatism, which asserts the right of the community to restrain freedom in the name of the common good. (64)

 

They are not conservatives in the sense of being the custodians of something that is not subject to change. They are conservatives, generally, in the sense of advocating a sufficient amount of order so the demands of technology will not carry the society into chaos. (67)

 

On the CBC:

The jaded public wants to be amused; journalists have to eat well. Reducing issues to personalities is useful to the ruling class. The "news" now functions to legitimize power, not to convey information. The politics of personalities helps the legitimizers to divert attention from issues that might upset the status quo. (7)

 

The Conservatives also justifiably felt that the CBC, then as today, gave too great prominence to the Liberal view of Canada. (19)

  

On the Quebec Nation:

The French Canadians had entered Confederation not to protect the rights of the individual but the rights of the nation. They did not want to be swallowed up by that sea which Henri Bourassa had called "l'américanisme saxonisant." (21)

 

In Canada outside of Quebec, there is no deeply rooted culture, and the new changes come in the form of ideology (capitalist and liberal) which seems to many a splendid vision of human existence. (43)

 

To turn to the more formidable tradition, the French Canadians are determined to remain a nation. During the nineteenth century, they accepted almost unanimously the leadership of their particular Catholicism--a religion with an ancient doctrine of virtue. After 1789, they maintained their connection with the roots of their civilization through their church and its city, which more than any other in the West held high a vision of the eternal. To Catholics who remain Catholics, whatever their level of sophistication, virtue must be prior to freedom. They will therefore build a society in which the right of the common good restrains the freedom of the individual. Quebec was not a society that would come to terms with the political philosophy of Jefferson or the New England capitalists. (75-76)

 

Yet to modernize their education is to renounce their particularity. At the heart of modern liberal education lies the desire to homogenize the world. Today's natural and social sciences were consciously produced as instruments to this end. (79)

 

On Tradition:

My lament is not based on philosophy but on tradition. If one cannot be sure about the answer to the most important questions, then tradition is the best basis for the practical. (96)

 

On the Future:

In political terms, liberalism is now an appeal for the "end of ideology." This means that we must experiment in shaping society unhindered by any preconceived notions of good. "The end of ideology" is the perfect slogan for men who want to do what they want. (57-58)

 

Implied in the progressive idea of freedom is the belief that men should emancipate their passions. When men are free to do what they want, all will be well because the liberated desires will be socially creative. (58)

 

The next wave of American "conservatism" is not likely to base its appeal on such unsuccessful slogans as the Constitution and free enterprise. Its leader will not be a gentleman who truly cares about his country's past. It will concentrate directly on such questions as "order in the streets" which are likely to become crucial in the years ahead. The battle will be between democratic tyrants and the authoritarianism of the right. If the past is a teacher to the present, it surely says that democratic Caesarism is likely to be successful. (This is a footnote, on page 67)

 

The kindest of all God's dispensations is that individuals cannot predict the future in detail. (87)

 

But if history is the final court of appeal, force is the final argument. (89)

 

 

Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec

Here is my review, published in The Malahat Review, issue 197, winter 2016:

Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec

Languages of Our Land, Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec,

Langues de Notre Terre, Poèmes et Récits Autochtones du Québec 

Susan Ouriou, ed., and Christelle Morelli, trans., 

Banff Centre

Banff, 2014

I

f you read Languages of Our Land / Langues de Notre Terre with any preconceptions about Indigenous writing, then you will be surprised by these twelve writers from Quebec; they are all unique and talented voices. All of these authors write in French and for the most part they live either north of or in the Quebec City region.

            I suspect that many readers of this book will be English-speaking. What might be interesting for them is to read the English translation and the French text together. Don’t just ignore the original text; even with thirty-year-old high-school French you can benefit from this reading. With no offense to Christelle Morelli, who translated this book into English, you will see the limitation of translation. There is an almost ineffable quality to a text in its original language that can elude even the best translator. For instance, here is the beginning of Mélina Vassiliou’s wonderful poem “Birthing/Writing.” In English the text is flat: “birthing / writing // writing / my future.” But in the original French you have the wonderful sound of the words, as Mélina Vassiliou wrote them; they have a vigour not found in the English translation. Here is the same passage in French: “progéniture / écriture // écriture / mon futur.” These are powerful words in French, and you can get the full force of the words by reading them out loud several times, “écriture / mon futur”—“écriture / mon futur.” It becomes mantra-like, an inspiring motto reminding poets that the profundity of our existence lies in communicating our vision, it is our present and our future.

            In “Roadblock 138–Innu Resistance,” the Innu poet Réal Junior Leblanc asks, “How can we / defend our heritage / and our children’s future / against the moneyed giants?” I used to live near the New York state border on Route 138, the highway that Leblanc refers to. It is mostly a secondary highway that runs its 1400-kilometre length slightly diagonally east and west through country and city across the province of Quebec. In some ways, this road is an asphalt soul of the province connecting, linking, joining people from north to south. I am reminded of the Mohawk blockade of the Mercier Bridge, on Route 138 as it enters Montreal, back in 1990, and the reaction of the majority of the population against this manifestation. Any answer for Leblanc’s question, “how can we defend our heritage?” is both difficult and complicated; however, Leblanc writes, “I weep / for all the rivers / they will divert / for all the forests / they will plunder / for all the lands / they will flood / for all the mountains / they will raze // To them, I will say always / from the depths of my soul / No.”

            It might be difficult to maintain a “No” when the force of modernity and so-called progress surround one. So much is political in Quebec: French, English, First Nations. We who live here know that our identity is in the language, or languages, one speaks; it is our endless conversation, our endless dance. Even though writing in French, Manon Nolin, in her poem “The Land of My Language,” is referring to her Innu-aimun—her Innu language:

           

                                    Roots of our ancestral lands
                                    a word, a language
                                    that of my ancestors
                                    bear my promised land

                                    The language of my cradle
                                    becomes my land
                                    and so the territory of my tongue
                                    remains my life’s Innu-aimun.

            If poetry is the voice of the human soul, as I believe it is, then these Indigenous writers are the voice of the soul of their community. As editor Susan Ouriou writes in her Introduction, they bring to us a “reinterpretation of history and a rediscovery of spirit.” There is so much of interest in Languages of Our Land / Langues de Notre Terre that I regret not being able to discuss each author in some detail. However, perhaps the poet Johanne Laframboise speaks for all of the writers in this book when she writes, “One cannot kill / poetry // it withstands all / for us // we owe it to ourselves / to be poets / in this century” (“Emergence”). “One cannot kill / poetry” is a statement of survival and transformation and a wonderful affirmation of the creative spirit. These writers bear witness to their vision and their community in this excellent anthology.