bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1994) — Summer 1994 // Été 1994, pp. 48–50
A DIFFERENT VISION: THE ENGLISH IN
QUEBEC IN THE 1990’s by Reed Scowen,
Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1991,
000 pages, $00.00.
Reviewed by David Anido
Quebec’s position as part of Canada continues to undergo change consistent with four hundred years of French-Canadian cultural self-awareness. Language, geographic integrity, and gallic ebullience have made Quebecers feel culturally distinct — which has prompted the question whether political independence is the next natural step.
In 1994 an independent Quebec would pose no strategic threat to a North America once confronted by international communism. On the contrary, an independent, businesslike Quebec would be a culturally distinct partner facing the same political and economic challenges as all North Americans. The Bloc Québécois exists in the federal Parliament to achieve Quebec independence. Canada would be remembered as the essential chrysalis that later gave wing to the provincial butterfly.
If independence took place, and, under the present continental challenges of free trade and a comfortable affinity with Americans, could English Canada remain distinct from the United States without Quebec as an elegant spouse? In turn, would an independent Quebec gradually become a blueberry republic on the fringe of a burgeoning North American economy and plural culture?
Reed Scowen’s A Different Vision, published in 1991, presumes that, whatever happens, there will be a French majority in Quebec living with an English minority. He has also stated in a speech as Quebec’s Agent General in New York that “we are all Americans”.
This is a handbook for English Quebecers to live in Quebec with a constructive attitude towards themselves and the surrounding French majority. The book’s political and personal exegesis is to stimulate further reflection on the future of the English as a Quebec community.
The book is designed to boost the confidence of a minority living within a majority. Most English Quebecers only see themselves as a minority in linguistic terms when confronted by the chauvinistic machinations of Quebec’s language laws and bureaucracy. These same people, most of the time, see themselves as an integral part of the much larger and open culture of the rest of Canada.
Reed Scowen is one of Quebec’s best known bilingual English citizens (he rejects the word “anglophone”). The harmonious “different vision” English Quebecers have to accept, says Scowen, is the recognition of their own history in Quebec as a minority. To be a minority is no insult or weakness – it is instead an opportunity for assertiveness and cooperation.
English Quebecers must recognize and respect the anxiety of French-speaking Quebecers whose culture and language face dilution and even extinction from overwhelming Anglo-Saxon forces outside Quebec. Add to this the influence of new immigrants coming to Quebec whose French-language culture is Haitian, Vietnamese, or Lebanese, and who know or care little about les pays d’en haut, les voyageurs, or the conscription crises of the two world wars.
As a member of the Liberal Party of Quebec, and a former MNA for Notre- Dame-de-Grâce, the author’s writing often reflects the policy of the Bourassa government. This policy has been to tread a cautious line between respecting English rights and institutions while reinforcing the Frenchness of Quebec.
In a chapter entitled “The English of Quebec” the author presents a personal, non-partisan narrative which underlines his suitability for timely and prophetic advice on the future based on his pastoral upbringing in a different age.
“I grew up in Quebec — or, to be more precise, in the Eastern Townships — and I grew up in English. What was important for me then was my family; my home town, East Angus; and the nearby villages of my grandparents. We had a farm. We made hay there, picked chokecherries, swam, cut wood, shovelled snow.”
Reed Scowen, a privileged inheritor of the comfortable twilight of British culture in Canada, proves that “my credentials as a native Quebecer are as authentic as those of any of my contemporaries who grew up in French…” Like so many of his generation he saw, by living as a member of a minority, that change was both fair and inevitable. Anachronisms would vanish, but not without nostalgia.
His pontical ana apiomauc credentials point also to the depth of his “Quebecness”, and the underlying demand that the minority status of the English in the province is no disenfranchisement. Like lawyer Alex Patterson; businessman Peter Blaikie; and Quebec public servant Peter Dunn, Reed Scowen displays both a recognition of, and support for, the culturally assertive evolution of Quebec since Maurice Duplessis without disparaging his English (cf. Irish, Scottish, Welsh, or Jewish) roots.
Affirmation of status for these English roots is the author’s encouraging stance. “The English community should begin to think in terms of its territorial base within Quebec … A territorial approach brings important psychological benefits. It will allow the English to see themselves as exercising some real influence in at least a part of the province. It permits and encourages all kinds of local initiatives, a strengthening of local institutions, and political action.”
The territorial reality of the English in Quebec, as Scowen notes, is proximity to the Ontario and United States borders. This is natural given the history of the United Empire Loyalists, and the concessions to British (particularly Scottish) officers for services rendered in Imperial wars.
The Anglo “belt” runs from the Aylmer- Buckingham area of the Outaouais along the Ottawa river, through western and central Montreal, and into the Eastern Townships. There are also scattered communities along the St. Lawrence river and elsewhere in the province.
There are still some English Quebecers who cannot speak French and hold tight to old traditions with some antipathy for the 50 bout de papier Vol.
French, but they are a diminishing minority. Younger Anglos often speak as good a French as so many Québécois speak impeccable English. Necessity and courtesy are the guiding forces for their bilingualism.
The book’s conclusion is a hope that harmony will prevail as a generous French majority recognizes the proud English minority in Quebec. There is also the issue of the growing unrest among Native Canadians in Quebec — particularly in light of the Oka incident — who prefer to speak English without being identified in any way as pseudo-Anglo. This subject is not elaborated.
English is now accepted as the lingua franca of world affairs, but millions of the people who speak it for livelihood have no cultural relationship with the original settlers of Harrington Harbour, Huntingville, or Hull. Native Canadians in Quebec would write very differently of their vision; distinct from both French and English, but particularly wary of the philosophies of French nationalists. Quebec, officially unilingual, is probably less capable to be a plural society than any other Canadian province.
Reed Scowan has, implicitly in this book, and explicitly in a speech, shed light on a vital issue of the day for Canada. The future of the English in Quebec is a metaphor for the future of Canada in North America. The draw of continentalism is powerful — particularly if the levee of Canadian culture (or other distinctness) cannot stand the pressure of the cultural and economic American flood.
In a white-hot competitive world, economic pressures for continental prosperity will threaten to override the most powerful instincts to remain Canadian — unless we are assured of who we are as such, and why we must remain distinct. Such blasphemy is simple admonition that too many Canadians, and our governments, have ignored on the federal scale what Reed Scowen deals with on the provincial scale in his book.
It is to be hoped that the author will soon follow the theme of this book to a bigger picture — the future of Canada in North America.
Meanwhile, Quebec’s nationalists, with rigid self-knowledge, and the cuirass of a distinct language and culture, may be the only stalwarts ready to put their deepest popular instincts before the grail of economic prosperity. They will surely not count on the Anglos of Quebec to do the same when the latter are wheeling and dealing, in English, with their American cousins.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1994) — Summer 1994 // Été 1994, pp. 48–50. Read the rest of this issue →
