Picture this, if you can. A cartoon stick figure wearing a maple leaf grins as he gives an exuberant boot to a little frog wearing a fleur-de-lis.
Uncomfortable? How about this? A Quebecois stick figure does the same to a beaver wearing a Mountie hat.
Not so uncomfortable, right? At least not in Quebec. That image is a part of a campaign ad for Québec solidaire, a party hoping to make gains in the province's Sept. 4 election. Québec solidaire, obviously not given to subtlety, wants to be clear that it favours sovereignty.
That is done, it seems, by being as derisive as possible while bashing the bad guy - which, in nationalist Quebec, is Canada. (Or technically, The Rest of Canada, for the time being.)
Canada! The country with such a global reputation for niceness it's seen as boring. Canada, where politeness is a national virtue. Canada, which cherishes fairness, accommodation, generosity and diversity.
Canada. The bad guy. How did this happen? How did one of the world's most decent countries get transformed into world-class villain in French-speaking Quebec?
Is it because of all those domineering Anglo captains of industry in Montreal back in the bad old days? If it is, why does the animosity extend beyond that rarefied elite to all the province's average Joes and Josephines who happen to speak English? For that matter, what could possibly justify hating Canadians in Charlottetown, Medicine Hat, Victoria?
Then there's the other side of Bad Canada. It appears this milquetoast country has stomped all over the French language and Québécois cultural aspirations. Yes, the independantistes obviously think, Quebec has survived with its culture intact and flourishing, despite being a tiny linguistic island in a vast Anglo sea. But that's due to a miracle, to latter-day language legislation and to Quebecers' native pluck.
Here's a dose of reality. Quebec has survived historically as a French-speaking North American entity because of Great Britain's determination in the 18th and early 19th century that it should - and because of Canada's similar determination since 1867, when French Canadians joined willingly in a visionary new national partnership.
Anyone who quibbles with that interpretation really should pay a little visit to New England, where nearly a million Quebec workers migrated between 1840 and 1930. Drop by an Aubuchon hardware outlet (but pronounce it "Aw-buh-shawn"). Visit Vermont's state capital of Montpelier ("Mawnt-peel-yer").
Learn about the late 19th-century drive to make English the only permissible language of schools, public and private. Or else head south to Louisiana, home of Cajun culture, where y'all can let the good times roll. In English, of course.
And yet Quebec nationalists insist that Canada is the evildoer extraordinaire. How else to explain that offensive little Québec solidaire campaign ad, unveiled with the certainty it would be received without outrage?
How else to explain Pauline Marois, the woman with the champagne tastes who would be queen of all the Quebecers? She proved how gauche she could be during the first week of the Olympics, when she claimed Canada's first four medals for Quebec. Ignoring the national pride of the athletes themselves, and the federal funding that helped them to the podium, she observed: "It's another example of how Quebec could shine among the brightest - as an independent country."
The bonds that founded modern Canada have become a bizarre oneway street. Constitutionally and culturally, English Canada has always seen itself as an ally of French-speaking Quebec, accommodating, shouldering burdens, helping out. The love may lack passion, but it has decency, respect and solidity. We see ourselves as comrades.
But for Quebec nationalists, Canada is simply the beaver in the Mountie hat, a ridiculous totem to be kicked away. Where did that come from?
Sovereigntists, famous for being outraged by the "humiliations" foisted on them by others, seem to have no problem dishing them out.
All of us harbour misconceptions about other groups and people, attitudes based on flimsy or outdated evidence. No one is pure.
But the Quebec cultural trope that renders English-speakers and the rest of Canada as scumbags goes far beyond that. And it is nothing less than absurd.
But don't take my word for it. If you're an independantiste or nationalist anxious to protect Quebec's ethnic freedom, language and culture from the aggressive predations of English Canada, here's what you should do.
Go have a dialogue with the francoAmericans of New England or Louisiana. En français. And bonne chance.
