Introduction

The slow decline of Canadian studies as an academic discipline and public diplomacy program, despite valiant efforts to keep it alive,¹ has been well documented. Budgetary pressures and declining enrolments in universities, combined with the federal government’s decision to terminate its support of international Canadian studies networking, research, and teaching (Nimijean 2013), are the latest challenges to the viability of the enterprise.

However, the well-being of Canadian studies is also measured by its ability to address issues important to Canadians (Campbell 2000). Thus, the relative absence of Québec (and, more generally, the absence of concern about official languages and francophone minorities outside of Québec) in Canadian studies is another challenge to be overcome. As Joan Sangster (2007, 19) notes, early Canadian studies devoted considerable energies to understanding the Canadian nation and Québec’s place in Canada; however, she argues that Canadian studies has largely been an English-Canadian discipline, and interest in Québec has diminished as interest in identity politics has grown. Thus, while numerous francophone and Québécois(e) scholars are active in Canadian studies, it remains that the primary Canadian journal of Canadian Studies, the bilingual Journal of Canadian Studies, publishes articles mostly in English: since its creation in 1966, it is estimated that fewer than 7% of its articles have been published in French (Wright 2007, 33). And it is difficult to find Canadian studies textbooks published in French (Bergeron 2007, 371). Not surprisingly, therefore, Canadian studies is very absent from Québec, and even Québec studies struggles in its home province (Castonguay 2007).

In May 2012, a group of international Canadianists met at a bilingual conference hosted by Carleton University’s School of Canadian Studies to discuss a pressing question: “Where is Québec in Canadian Studies? / La place du Québec dans les études canadiennes.”² The major goal of the conference was to gain insights into the seeming disappearance of Québec, at least in Canada, from Canadian studies, and to discuss the requirements necessary to overcome the situation.

Our international colleagues reported that Québec remains integral to the study of Canada abroad. However, within Canada, it remains that teaching and research into Québec topics common to both Québec and the rest of Canada (ROC) are increasingly funded only by Québec organizations, notably the Government of Québec’s Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs and Ministry of International Relations and the International Association for Quebec Studies (AIEQ). This fits in to the Québec government’s broader political goal of promoting awareness of Québec outside the province, both in the rest of Canada and globally.

Given provincial control over education and the federal withdrawal from Canadian studies internationally, Canadian studies as a discipline acts less and less as a bridge between nations; increasingly, they are separate and unaware of each other. This view has been reinforced by our experiences as two Québécois teaching Canadian studies outside of Québec at the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. level. A growing number of Canadian students outside of Québec have little knowledge—historical or otherwise—of Québec and its place in Canada. Several participants at the conference echoed this point.

At one level, this is not surprising, as it reflects the broader Canadian trend of decreasing levels of knowledge about Canada and its history, as the Historica Foundation has noted repeatedly over the years. At another level, it is not new that people in the two solitudes know less and less of each other. David Bell (1992, 92–95) links this to distinctive teachings of history that do not adequately teach us about the respective Canadian “others.” This correlates to different self-images and outlooks of Canada held by Canada’s two major linguistic groups.

Universities were long seen as having a role to play in promoting knowledge of Canada and Québec’s place in the country (Symons 1975), but as we heard throughout the conference, universities outside of Québec have not promoted the study of Québec. The problem is compounded by the...