We are in the spring of 1839. The patriot uprisings have been crushed.
Some were hanged or sentenced to exile, others died armed.
People are submissive, depressed, discouraged. London will merge Lower Canada with Upper Canada to make us a minority.
These are the darkest hours of our history.
resignation
One of our first nationalist intellectuals, Étienne Parent, allowed himself to be overcome by despair.
You don’t have to fight anymore, he said. It is hopeless. Assimilation is inevitable. You have to cancel yourself.
His words are famous:
“We will invite our compatriots to make a virtue of necessity, not to fight against the inflexible course of events – in the hope that the neighboring peoples will not make the sacrifices we have made too difficult or too hastily either […] Assimilation will be gradual and shockless under the new state of affairs, and will be all the more rapid as it is left to its natural course and French Canadians are led there by their own interests, without their self-esteem being too hurt”.
I have the feeling that many Québecians today are resigned and don’t want to fight like Parent once did.
Worse, I have a feeling that the first of us, François Legault, our political leader who should lead by example, is also resigned.
However, it was he who spoke of our “Louisianization”.
Strikes encouraged or planned by Ottawa rain down on French Quebec with furious intensity.
They come from everywhere: planned demographic drowning, deliberate tax cuts, legal assaults on Quebec power, collective guilt. In the heart of the village, Ottawa’s old allies continue their tireless work.
La Presse satisfies us with his usual laxative. Roxham? We lack compassion. Cuckolds should be happy and say thank you.
Radio-Canada, the Orwellian Ministry of Truth, wants to re-educate us with its newspeak and propaganda.
One would have to be deaf or never come to Montreal not to see the dazzling rise of English and the marginalization of French.
Did François Legault, who was left in the dust during the health-funding negotiations, really think he would get more done by appearing friendly and smiling in front of Ottawa than by standing up?
Mr. Legault had a justifiable personal ambition: to become Premier of Quebec. In order. Completed. To cheer.
He also has a responsibility to history.
He sits on the chair of Honoré Mercier, Maurice Duplessis, Jean Lesage, René Lévesque.
He directs the fates of a fragile and great people, born of the dream of Samuel de Champlain and the colony’s first terrible winters.
dead end
After the 1837-38 rebellion was crushed, fertility saved French Quebec and proved Parent wrong.
This card will not be returned.
François Legault cannot be content to be angry for 24 hours at leaving us in the current impasse.
What does the story want to remind him of?
