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NEWS & LETTERS, October - November 2009
Québec: Taking Back 'Les Plaines'
The 250th anniversary of the Sept. 13, 1759, fall of Québec City to British forces was marked by a massive demonstration of a new type on the Plaines d'Abraham (Plains of Abraham). Over a 24-hour period, over 20,000 people took part in a speak-out about Québécois and Canadian history called the "Moulin à Paroles," "Chatterbox" in English.
In each of three eight-hour cycles, 156 historic documents were read aloud by various people, including well-known personalities. Amongst these documents were the horrible Durham Report of 1839 which called for an end to the use of the French language in Canada, Pierre Laporte's plea to former Québec Premier Robert Bourassa to save his life during the 1970 "October Crisis," and Bourassa's somber June 22, 1990, discourse after the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord.
The hitch came when parts of the 1970 FLQ (Front de Libération du Québec) Manifesto, read by the Haitian singer Luck Mervil, were included in the programme. This gave Québec Premier Jean Charest and Québec City mayor Régis Labeaume a pretext to turn down their invitations to participate and to denounce the event as "separatist."
Originally, federal officials had planned to stage a costume re-enactment of the battle as a cutesy touristic spectacle. But after many people objected and threatened to protest, those plans were cancelled. Planning officials then claimed that there had been threats of violence and made veiled allusions to "terrorism." We are used to such slanders in Québec. As is often the case, the most serious assaults on the rights of Québec's people have come from elements of our own "elite."
The "Moulin à Paroles" was a huge success. As people listened to the speeches, they mingled amid dozens of literature tables, kiosks, and discussion groups on historical, political, social and philosophical issues. This was a time to delve back into our real history on our own terms. We must expose the fraud of "multi-culturalism" set in place by Trudeau in 1968, which is a cloak to hide the imposition of English-language corporate culture upon the entire country. It trivializes the real history of the peoples of Canada--French, English, Amerindian, immigrants--by reducing their experience to mere "culture," and it obliterates the history and struggles of French-speaking Canadians.
In contrast to that policy, the Québec of today is an increasingly pluralistic society in the true sense. Regaining the Plaines d'Abraham is part of the process of regaining the dignity of our thoughts and ideas, of our history as one of freedom, of real living human beings, and an understanding from which we can perceive and determine our own future.
--PJ, Ville de Québec
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