During the 1995 Quebec independence referendum a theatre company set up in a Montreal public square. There it re-enacted the 1837 war for Quebec independence as a series of encounters between Punch and Judy–style political hacks, with occasional heroic intervention by a rebel. I best remember the scene where Lord Durham opined that the defeated habitants were charming bumblers who might one day be civilized.
If obsessive rumination on one’s own history is a measure, Quebec is now highly civilized. Consider the widespread publicity accorded to University of Laval historian Jocelyn Létourneau’s new book, Je me souviens? Le passé du Québec dans la conscience de sa jeunesse. Provocatively, the book’s title is Quebec’s proud motto (“I remember”) undone by a question mark. A study of historical memory in Quebec based on questionnaires completed by more than 2,700 students, it...
Ray Conlogue is a former arts writer for The Globe and Mail and author of The Longing for Homeland in Canada and Quebec (Mercury Press, 1996), an analysis of the cultural and historical dimensions of Quebec’s independence movement, as well as being a translator, teacher and author of a young adult novel.
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