Editorial

JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES Editor DENIS SMITH Associate Editor BERNARD R. BLISHEN Editorial Assistant ANITA NEVILLE Editorial Board MAURICE J. BOOTE ROBERT D. CHAMBERS LEON DION KENNETH E. KIDD ANDRE LAURENDEAU W. L. MORTON T. H. B. SYMONS Advisory Board ANTHONY ADAMSON CLAUDE T. BISSELL DONALD G. CREIGHTON KATHLEEN FENWICK DAVID M. HAYNE JOHN HIRSCH JEAN PALARDY CLAUDE RYAN B. D. SANDWELL RONALD J. THOM REVUE D'ETUDES CANADIENNES Redacteur Redacteur adjoint Assistante comite de redaction Comite consultatif EDITORIAL The lessons of centennial year are emerging in paradox. Canada has become more confident of, and knowledgeable about, its capacities; but it has also, perhaps, become more divided. The country's brittle.political framework is now more malleable, as English Canadians, at last, have begun to discuss openly the new shapes that it might assume in future, taking up the discussion begun seven years ago in Quebec. But some contradictory home truths have at the same time thrust themselves upon us. In English Canada, the centennial celebrations, and especially those of the July first weekend, demonstrated simply the deep emotional commitment that exists among the non-French-speaking community to the idea of Canada. This commitment, it seems clear, involves in a subtle way the fact of the monarchy, regarded not as something foreign and inhibiting, but as a focus for the sense of ourselves. No amount of pleading that this should not be so will change the fact that, for many Canadians, it is so. The monarchy is an institution natural to the community, as the Queen's easy presence, and the spontaneous reaction to it, displayed. The commitment of English Canadians involves, too, a still generalized and inchoate, but unmistakeable, embracement of French Canada. This embrace is one that need no longer be considered by French Canadians as smothering: rather, it is fraternal and potentially liberating. And the English Canadian commitment, as John Robarts expresses it in the speech reprinted in this issue of the ·Iournal, seems to be essentially to the federal system that Journal of Canadian Studies 1 now exists, with some readjustments. In the political trials that are to come, Quebec and the French-speaking nation will have to appreciate the strength of this English-Canadian resolve to survive and to flourish as a nation in a political dwelling not very different from that presently occupied. In Quebec, the year has had a different significance . That province, too, has expanded its own confidence and sense of destiny. For years it has been striking out ahead of the Canadian consciousness , renewing its ties with the Frenchspeaking world, seizing the instruments of the twentieth century to serve its purposes, and acting creatively for itself. Now, the Gallic outburst of enthusiasm for Le Grand Charles has signified to English Canada in the most deliberate and unmistakeable way that the momentum of Quebec 's independent growth of spirit is irreversible. Quebec's realization of itself in the presence of President de Gaulle has not automatically.crystallized the choices of the province; there are still some options open; but the gradual slide toward political independence has been accelerated , and has become a more conscious process. There cannot, for a long time, be any L more complacency and quietism in the relations between French and English Canada. The possibility of estrangement is now the urgent and immediate question. Until now, English Canada has not admitted this possibility. Virtually all the reactions to the Quebec Revolution, whether they 'have: been sympathetic or hostile, have rested upon the assumption of Canada's permanent unity. Quebec might be understood and sympathized with, but its demands could not be allowed to twist the federation noticeably out of its established shape; and Quebec must itself remain part of the structure . As the realities of sentiment and aspiration in both parts of the country become clearer, the possible incompatibility of these separate sets of attitudes becomes clearer too. If Quebec is determined and powerful enough to frustrate or paralyze the federal ·system; if English Canada is determined to preserve that system for itself in more or less its present form, then is not one possible path of reconciliation the acceptance of 2 a degree of disengagement between Quebec...