A revealing story…

When we survey our history beyond the politico-economic window, taking a fresh look at relationships among French, Native and the varied English-speaking peoples of Quebec and Canada, some questions arise concerning the values underlying their coming together and pursuit of happiness.

As French and English settlers arrived in America, the old, ongoing European conflicts, their slavery-influenced attitudes toward the indigens (“the Indians”), the Catholic religious intolerance toward French Huguenots and English Protestants and the European bent towards possession and business opportunity at any cost poisoned the relationships among the three founding nations. Didn’t our original history books assert that France came to “civilise” and “evangelize” the Indians of America in the name of God? A closer look reveals that the Indians were indispensable to the lucrative French and English fur business. 

We also discover that the relationships between the “mother” country, France, and her settler “children” were exceedingly dysfunctional. At the British Conquest (1760), Quebec, abandoned in deep pain and fear, wonders how “mother” could have used, cheated, abandoned and, most tragic of all, sold her children to the English, their “eternal enemies,” for some offshore fishing banks?

 The landmark conquest and the threat of an American invasion launched Canada. We observe the first steps of a hurting blended family that has yet to resolve the relational pains of ancient and recent origin.  The “children's” relationships are characterized by ongoing dealings aiming to get material gain and “reasonable accommodation” for their disparate cultures. The centrality and strength of the Catholic Church in the life of French parishioners ensured their lifestyle would remain isolated – separated– from the English alternative, keeping them out of the business and market place. It held the schools back from progressive ideas, while calling on families to “make babies” and be content living with only “a little bread” as farmers. This became the ideal, in reality the “survival formula,” for the French Catholic parish.

The Quiet Revolution (1960) became a wake-up call for the orphan, the Québécois people who were largely still hurting in silence. The government, shifting its vision to modernity from that survivalist parish mentality, set its focus on freedom and material advancement. Clergy in leadership were displaced by professionals, and God’s Providence by “L’état providence” (modern welfare state). The Québécois began abandoning the Catholic Church, pursuing instead the secular “religions” of pleasure (hedonism) and the Nationalist venture.  Where would this lead Quebec?

Imagining Quebec as a person, we note that his lifestyle, relationships and achievements reveal a hurting orphan whose soul is bleeding while he searches for identity. Who is responsible for his misfortune and pain? Is he still hoping to find a scapegoat for these?  Or, in his quest to make life work for him, might he open a new window, a “Window of Hope…and Reconciliation” and rise to the personal challenge of the vision it provides?

 Donald Gingras

      Donald & Lorraine Gingras are leading the ministry of reconciliation,  "Heart Cry for Quebec."