Notes to English Canadians

Notes to English Canadians J.A.CORRY Everybody outside Quebec - and no doubt many inside Quebec - are asking what Quebec is going to do: It is too early to expect the answer to that question: there has still to be the referendum , and it is some time away. Cautious, conservative people, of whom there are large numbers in Quebec, are not likely to commit themselves until they know more about what is involved the terms of severance, the prospects for customs and monetary unions with the rest of Canada, the attitude of the rest of the world which Quebec, as sovereign, would have to face alone. While Quebeckers are pondering these, and similar imponderables, helped or confused by confident advice pro and con, there is a prior question to be asked, the answer to which may well be decisive for many Quebeckers. What are the attitudes and responses of English Canada going to be? (Here I pause to define terms as I shall use them. By "English Canadians," I mean Canadians in ·provinces other than Quebec, of whatever ethnic stock, who speak the English tongue: those of genuinely Anglo-Saxon stock are now a minority. By Quebeckers, I mean, primarily and most often, persons in that province who are deeply embedded in the French language and in the distinctive tradition and culture of Quebec.) What is English Canada going to be prepared to do to meet deep and widespread aspirations of Quebec? More immediately critical, what are the bigoted in English Canada going to say? If there is going to be angry talk about disloyalty or about how people who don't like us are welcome to leave - as long as they don't try to take the family silver with them, and so on, are other English Canadians going to counter such talk and expose it for the slender minority view it is? This could be done rather easily. All it requires is a lot of citizens to think what common citizenship calls for, and then to speak up against bigotry. This is what we English Canadians generally can do right away without waiting for governJournal ofCanadian Studies ments to lead. However, it calls for sympathy and understanding, and an adventure of the imagination , an effort to see ourselves as others see us, specifically as many, perhaps most, Quebeckers see us. How would we feel as a minority in Quebeckers' shoes? Of course, it will be an effort for a down-to-earth, practical people who, for the most part, have never actively cultivated . their imaginations. Perhaps the prospects of the vanishing of "Dominion from sea to sea" will stir us to it. First, we have to find sympathy with the tenacious struggle for survival along the St. Lawrence by a small people for over two hundred years, initially against efforts at domination by the English up to the time of Confederation. Thereafter, the struggle was against complacent indifference by the English-speaking majority in Canada, punctuated by provincial actions against state-supported separate schools, and by federal imposition of conscription in two wars, wars which did not rouse in Quebeckers the sense of all-out commitment that stirred English Canada. This is the embittering legacy of the past. Second, we have to understand what has been happening in Quebec since 1959 with the passing of the repressive twenty-year regime of Duplessis. Since then, Quebec has gone through a rapid, deep-reaching and intoxicating social revolution. We have to understand the nature of the changes and how they have led Quebec to speak with many, and sometimes conflicting, voices and to press ever harder against the terms of its association in the Canadian federation, in ways that English Canada has thought both over-reaching and insatiable. As we know, the 'sixties was the period of the "quiet revolution." The magnitude and the sweep of the revolution has not been widely understood in English Canada. A keen appreciation of what it has achieved is a first step for understanding the Quebec which stands up proudly to us now. The restraints of the Duplessis regime, under which people had to think carefully about what they dared say or do, have...