Let Quebec Be Quebec.

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Oct 2018


(The newly elected government of Quebec plans to pass legislation that would ban all religious symbols in public.  This is widely viewed as a ban on burqas and niqabs - dress of women that cover the face.  Many in English Canada are outraged at this assertion of cultural confidence on the part of the Quebec government.)

“Vive le Quebec Libre!” cried French president Charles De Gaulle in Quebec in 1967.  He set off apolitical firestorm in Canada, and we still exhibit the scorch marks today.  Quebec separatism was made politically legitimate, and De Gaulle seemed to say that an independent Quebec would be recognized and supported by France.  It was hard putting that genie back into the bottle, and only in the election just won by the CAQ can we say that separatism as a political force is now dormant.

Quebec is the center of the French fact in the Americas.  France has been the center of western and Christian civilization in Europe since Charlemagne.  Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles “The Hammer” Martel decisively defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., and saved France and Europe from forced Islamization.  Over a millennium, France came to conceive its national mission as bringing civilization and culture to the world.  Military victory and empire, though important to national prestige, were never central to who the French were.

French culture is the heritage of Quebec.  Since 1976, Quebeckers have made it clear that they understand that their mission is to be the French fact in the Americas.  Insofar as Quebec is a “diverse, harmonious society,” it is because it contains a significant English-speaking minority – a consequence of the conquest of 1759, something many French Quebeckers live with uncomfortably and would gladly do something about.

Quebec is not on a cultural suicide mission.  The Future Quebec Coalition (CAQ) won a Fordian mandate campaigning in part on ensuring the supremacy and prosperity of French culture in Quebec.  The CAQ most definitely have a right to “impose a perverse, anachronistic notion of social purity” because that is what Quebeckers chose in a democratic election this very month.  Perhaps an idea that is 1,200 years old is anachronistic, but democracy, self-government, and logic are ideas of the ancient Greeks of 2,500 years ago, and the Spectator doesn’t seem to believe in any of them, either.

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