When did you first feel like a Quebecer?As National Day approaches, Le Devoir has compiled an anthology of commentary on this moment when belonging to Quebec blossomed, sometimes to encourage pride and solidarity to blossom , sometimes to raise awareness. What these personalities all have in common is that they have contributed to Québec’s influence in their own way and on their own level.
Anne-Marie Olivier
The former artistic director of the Le Trident theater cannot remember a specific spark that would have ignited her affiliation with Quebec. “I’ve always felt like a Quebecer. Because I’ve always known my name,” she wrote to Le Devoir. As she deepens her memories, she recalls a national holiday from her teenage years, when boundless love culminated in connection with life and her homeland.
“With 17 years. I was madly in love, and if I had already celebrated Saint-Jean-Baptiste with all my heart, I had never celebrated it with my whole body. That evening several times each of my nerve endings, a real firework. Pleasure and rejoicing in Saint-Jean, great blazing fire. That evening I flew on the wings that love bestows, that love so overflowing that in all winds it is thrown at passers-by, old people, ants, everything that lives. We had a light heart that gives us the necessary detachment to laugh at the little ugliness or inconsistencies that are also part of our national holiday… from the Chinese-made lily wares to the settlers drinking Bud while listening to music That is far from the case here.
It was at that moment that I realized I was madly in love with Quebec. »
Gilles Vigneault
When Gilles Vigneault found that the word “French-Canadian” too narrowly encompassed the people of his country, he understood for the first time that he belonged to Quebec.
“Even when I went to a small school where the ‘teacher’ was called Simone Landry, Berthe Cormier or Albina Jomphe, I heard about the story ‘Canada’. Since my father worked with a certain Dave King from Kegaska or with a certain Bastien Malec, an Innu from Natashquan, with whom I also “brought back” cod to dry on the “Vigneaux”, I understood that everyone I knew was from Quebec, and I’ve always been puzzled by the ambiguity of the word “French-Canadian”! Bastien Malec, Joseph Bellefleur and Michel Grégoire, Dave King, Wilfrid Keppen or George Court always seemed like they came from the same country as me and were an integral part of it. Then, later, I realized that certain dates, 1837, 1980, 1982, 1995, confirmed my beliefs. »
Guy Sioui Durand
It was during the turmoil of the 1970s, when Woodstock, Vietnam, rock ‘n’ roll, Expo 67 and the October Crisis shaped Quebec’s youth that Guy Sioui Durand, a sociologist and art critic born in Wendake, author of several books When he met contemporary Aboriginal art, he became aware of his Quebec origins.
“In 1970 I studied at Cégep Limoilou. It is both the first opportunity in history for us, the indigenous people, to exercise the right to vote following the amendment of the Indian Act of 1960. And it is above all the October Crisis in which the state deploys the army, in anticipation of the crisis of Kanesatake-Oka twenty years later. Pierre Vallières arrives to hold a conference in Cégep. He has just published Nègres blancs d’Amérique, a title despised today, as well as Indian, the official title of the Indian Act still in force. In 1971 I began studying sociology at the University of Laval, whose disciplines make us their major. A teacher told me bluntly: “You are not Indian anymore. Her socialization is that of a French Quebecer.” »
For Guy Sioui Durand, it was “keen awareness of Quebec” and learning a lesson in sociology: no matter what their origins, no one escapes their surroundings and the ideas that permeate them.
Joanne Liu
It was the snowy winters and a certain left half of the fridge that Dr. Joanne Liu, MSF par excellence, made aware of their connection to Quebec.
“I went to Paris for three years for Doctors Without Borders and that was the time I felt most Quebecois. Every day I was reminded that I had an accent. I had to rehearse every day. Every day I was criticized for the way I said things. I also remember a certain moment when I happened to see a film from Quebec, a film by Philippe Falardeau called “The Left Half of the Fridge”. There’s a scene showing the stairs in Montreal with snow: When I saw that I was so bored – I was homesick, I was homesick. Everyone asked me why I didn’t continue my career in Paris, people freaked out because I was promised an incredible career there and everyone thought I would be the next boss. I replied, “It’s not possible.” I was bored. I had to go back. »
Louise Otis
The Matane-born President of the Administrative Court of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and mother of judicial mediation in Quebec says she has always felt like a Quebecer. However, she understood the place that Québec could take on the international stage from the words of the world’s highest-ranking diplomat.
“Nearly 20 years ago, when I was still a judge at the Quebec Court of Appeal, the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, asked me to join the UN’s System Redesign Group of Justice, which consisted of five members: national and international judges. On the first day of our mission, Secretary General Kofi Annan officially welcomed us into his cabinet and greeted all members from five different countries.
When he came to me he said, “Thank you for bringing the Quebec mediation system to the United Nations.” I still remember the great pride I felt when Quebec was named and recognized. Quebec Mediation. Our! Since then she has traveled the world with Quebec as her flag.
I could also feel the immense pride that would have resided in my father, this worthy Matanais who, until the age of 72, earned his living in the dense forests of the north coast to help me complete my law degree. He learned by reading his Larousse encyclopedia, one volume a year, at the foot of the northern spruces. »