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For a lot of us, Quebec is "that province" in the east that never seems happy—the nation who wants to be recognized as distinct within a country that doesn't understand Quebeckers' lack of enthusiasm.

Many Christians also know that Quebec is a spiritual anomaly. Cardinal Marc Ouellet calls it a "spiritual vacuum."¹

Canadians aren't known for mixing their religion with their politics. That's why it's so hard for us to relate to these things…or see how intertwined they are.

History check

Quebec used to be the most Catholic part of Canada. Quebecois lived in parishes run entirely by Catholic priests for more than 200 years. They exercised oppressive control over the schools, the hospitals, politics, and people's personal lives—all in the name of preserving the French language and culture. Simply put, to be French was to be Catholic. Women were chastised if they didn't have a baby either in their arms or in their womb. Men were taught to live in poverty. There was little spiritual teaching, and priests advocated an unbiblical, superstitious spirituality. ²

The church really only began to be separated from the state in the 1930s. The Quebecois' resistance to the church's control grew as new government and policies empowered them. Slowly, they stopped going to mass, and by the 1960's, it became a mass exodus. Historians call it The Quiet Revolution. It's as if the Quebecois woke up and realized all they had been missing. The self-disdain promoted by the church became love of self³, and Quebecois today are inspired more by pleasure than almost anything else.⁴ Today, in 2009, Quebec is known by many as the most secular part of North America.

Perception check

I'm an Anglophone, and I grew up in the city of Montreal, so I was more than aware of the spiritual emptiness of my context. (I used to go to youth conventions in New York where they'd talk about having eighty or ninety kids show up to a high school Bible study. We considered ourselves lucky to get five out of a school of a thousand. For a friend of mine who went to a French school, the record was three.)

So when I got to Bible college in the west, I jumped on the Quebec bandwagon, spreading the news: Quebec was in spiritual crisis.⁵ We had to help.

Many organizations dedicated to meeting Quebec's spiritual needs will trumpet the statistics that indicate a dire problem: Quebec boasts some of the lowest rates in the country for marriage⁶ and Christian affiliation⁷, and some of the highest rates for cohabitation⁸, suicide⁹, abortion¹⁰, and divorce¹¹.

"I know it's hard to face Quebec as a mission field representing the largest unreached people group in the Western world, but we must," says a video produced by the PAOC. "Quebec needs workers. Quebec needs dollars. Quebec needs you. Please help us change the writing on the wall of Quebec."¹²

Another church sees that the problem is more complex than that. A youth pastor writes, "[Part] of our core mission is to change the perception of Church in Quebec. This isn't some randomly chosen mission statement, but it is uniquely tailored to our situation here…because of all the past church-related hurts and scandals."¹³

They understand that the province's history with the Catholic church creates a barrier to conventional ministry practices. Anything that looks or sounds remotely like the old Catholicism that betrayed them (and contrary to what many Evangelicals may think, their Evangelicalism can look very similar) is out of the question. They've broken away from the rules they heard about for centuries, but ironically, to be French is still to be Catholic. It's who they are—at least when infant baptisms, funerals, and Christmas midnight mass come up. That's enough religion for them.

I bought into it—all of it. More workers, more resources, contextualization, sensitivity to their fear of organized religion¹⁴, whatever. We needed to save Quebec!

My father, also an Anglophone, is a born-and-raised Quebecker and 100 per cent bilingual¹⁵. He's also a pastor. I asked him one day—if the need was so great in Quebec, why didn't he go? He knew the language and the culture already, didn't he?

They don't want to hear it from Anglophones, he said. English people aren't unable to connect with French people because they don't speak the same language or understand the culture, but because they are English.

I was as aware of the political animosity in Quebec as anyone, I thought. I remember the tension, fear, and anger surrounding 1995's referendum as clearly as yesterday. I even went to the "No" rally in Montreal, my heart swelling with (ignorant) pride at the wonderful show of support I was showing for my province and my country.¹⁶ So my father's words made sense, but I didn't see why our Englishness should stop us from trying to reach the people in Quebec. If their Canadian neighbours wouldn't go to them, who would?

My thinking changed when I met Donald Gingras a few years ago. He came to speak in college chapel, where he said something I'll never, ever forget.

Reality check

He began with his story. Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, he grew up French, Catholic; and with a bone to pick with the English. God took hold of him in his adulthood, and within a couple of years, he and his family found themselves on the wheat-covered prairies of Saskatchewan.

One day in Caronport, he greeted another student on his way to the bookstore. To Gingras' surprise, the student responded angrily: "What's wrong with you Quebecois?" Then he began to vent.

"It was like a garbage truck unloading on me," Donald writes in his book.¹⁷ "I had never experienced such humiliation."

Not long before that, Donald writes, he never would have tolerated that kind of aggression. But something changed inside of him: "The more I listened, the more I started to sense my opponent's hurts and feel his pain. As I listened, suddenly I realized that English Canadians were also feeling rejection and insecurity. Quebec wanted to leave Canada, making her a fragmented nation."

Donald found himself listening carefully to him. "The more he talked, the more my eyes were opened to see through his window. Before this I would have said, ‘You English deserve it for all the pain you have inflicted on us through the centuries!' But now I was feeling his pain, the pain of an English-heritage man."¹⁸

When the student finished unloading on Donald, he responded by saying something he never thought he would say to an English person—the same thing he said to all of us in chapel years later:

"For the wounds, the hurts, the pain we have caused you, would you forgive us?"

Reconciliation

"The problem of Quebec is spiritual," says Gingras. Reconciliation with God and with one another is the only way that Quebec—and the rest of this country—will ever feel whole.

He believes that God has given him and his wife, Lorraine, the work of telling this story, and in the summer of 2008, he published Window of Hope and Reconciliation, which provides a detailed historical account of the story of Quebec, explaining the reasons behind its struggles with the rest of Canada. He includes an extended conversation between himself, his wife, a fictional counselor, and a Francophone man who is Quebec personified—his history, struggles, desires, hurts, and hopes. Through the telling of Quebec's story, he (Quebec) is finally able to understand that a history of deep hurt and broken relationships—not just with the English, but with his Mother country, France, the Catholic church, the Natives, and others—has led him to feel like an outsider in his own home.¹⁹

Even Quebec nationalists, who live to "protect" Quebec, have caused a great deal of damage, according to Gingras. He writes that they're guilty of spreading propaganda: Members of the F.L.Q.²⁰ essentially re-interpreted Quebec history for their peers, blaming all of their problems on "The English."²¹

Et voilà, the Quebecois had a scapegoat.

The picture is becoming clearer, isn't it? The Quebecois are hurt, they're angry, and they don't want to be anymore. And according to Gingras, all of the political concessions in the world—even separation—won't heal them.

"The Quebecois need to see God transforming people's lives and relationships," he says, just like he saw it in his own. "What changed my life as husband, father and Canadian citizen? It is not money, politics, economy, or a new deal [between] Quebec [and] Ottawa. No, it is the gracious and transformational power of the gospel of reconciliation. This is what really matters."

Gingras has devoted his life's work to promoting this understanding on both sides. He speaks for Quebec because he can, offering remorse and forgiveness for these years of fighting.

And the rest of us? We need to forgive, too. We need to love our neighbours—even the ones we don't understand. We need to live the gospel, being reconciled with God and with one another. And we need to pray.

Questions still remain. Will Quebec and Canada ever feel like equals who understand and care for one another? Will the Quebecois ever know their Creator or be transformed by the gospel?

Gingras offers us something invaluable that was difficult to see through all the hurt, confusion, and resentment before.

Hope.