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Description
Normand Lester used to be a reporter for Radio-Canada (the CBC in Quebec), until he got suspended. It was the publication of his book Le livre noir du Canada anglais (The Black Book of English Canada) in 2001 that got Mr. Lester into trouble.
Globe and Mail columnist William Johnson called the book "the perfect piece of racist literature," while Quebec's Premier Bernard Landry heaped praise on it and called it a "must read."
Contained in this one small storm over a book is the essence of the divide between the people in Quebec who want to separate from Canada and the rest of the country.
Le livre noir du Canada anglais is a catalogue of separatist anger. People such as William Johnson point to gaping inaccuracies and misinterpretations in the book and dismiss the whole thing as separatist propaganda. But, that might be a mistake. Whether or not the book is factually accurate is less important than the fact that it expresses the feelings and beliefs of a large number of people.
Let's back up four centuries to the arrival of the first European colonists to what they called New France. Isolated from their mother country by the Atlantic Ocean, these settlers developed a unique culture. It was rooted in the land and the Roman Catholic Church and shaped by the harsh environment in which they lived.
The people had a strong attachment to what was, in effect, a nation. That all changed in September 1759. That's when the British general James Wolfe defeated the French general the Marquis de Montcalm at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, just outside Quebec City. That defeat put an end to the French colony in North America and placed its citizens under British rule.
Within a couple of weeks of the battle, British military commander James Murray promised the French inhabitants of Quebec "mild and just government." When judged against the kind of government on offer elsewhere in... |
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