It is probably no surprise that French-Quebecers watched the inauguration on TV at least as much as anyone else, and probably more than a lot.
The excitement here has been palpable. Most of the local news media have been devoting their attention to the United States almost exclusively for the past week. They have had chroniclers all over the place, not only in Washington, but in Alabama, Georgia, California, Indiana. Not only covering events, but actually going out in the streets, in the trailer parks, in the baptist churches to try to bring Quebecers a sense of what this inauguration means to the whole variety of American society. Even hockey chroniclers have made a pause in their chronicling (even though the Canadiens are playing tonight) to comment on the festivities (and, believe me, that's big).
The reaction of people to the inauguration hasn't really surfaced yet, obviously. I'd expect some to be amused at the repeated invokation of God (Quebec isn't all that atheist, but it is decidedly secular - God isn't someone you invoke in relation to public office), and probably some disappointed.
We will see.
EDIT: This may not make much sense to people who do not know Quebec much, but politicians usually fight losing battles for news space with hockey in the province. Bush's final address was (and this was caricatured by our own media) second fiddle to even rumor of a possible trade involving the Canadiens in the last few weeks.
Today, there was a hockey game, and yet the medias are barely paying it any attention. More than that: it was the hockey chroniclers and the after-game shows that actually devoted time to Obama. Outside the United States altogether.
That's how closely we've been following all this.
There's more
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Quebec in one song
Quebec, being the nationalist place it is, has had several songs written for it, or about it. Technically, even the present-day Oh Canada, in its French form, is pretty openly all about a Canada that's French, Catholic, and lives along the Saint-Lawrence; in other words, Quebec.
Quebec does not officialy have an anthem, which is surprising given how otherwise quick we are to give ourselves all the attributes of a country we can, and then name hem "national".
There have been proposal, ranging from the bombastic and over-proud Demain of the sixties, to the unofficial but popular Gens du Pays (by Gilles Vigneault), which is more of a celebration song, but since it is the song we sing every Quebec day (June 24), an association of sort has grown. On the downside, it's also the song whose chorus we've appropriated as a birthday song.
Personally, if I were asked to pick one song for Quebec, it would be another of Vigneault's song, namely Mon Pays.
Translation of the lyric is as follow:
My country is no country, it's winter.
My garden is no garden, it's the plain
My path is no path, it's the snow
My country is no country, it's winter.
In the white ceremony where snow and wind are wed
In this country of blizzards my father had a house built
And I will be faithful to his manner, to his way
The guest room will be such
That they will come from all seasons to build next to it
My country is no country, it's winter
My chorus is no chorus, it's a flurry
My house is no house, it's frost
My country is no country, it's winter
From this great solitary country I shout before going silent
To all the men of Earth My house is your house!
Between these four walls of ice, I take my time my space
To prepare fire and room
For the men of the horizon, for mankind is my race,
My country is no country, it's winter
My garden is no garden, it's the plain
My way is no way, it's snow
My country is no country, it's winter
My country is no country, it's the reverse
Of a country that was neither country nor homeland
My song is no song, it's my life
It's for you I wish to master my winters
I don't think you can put Quebec more effectively or more beautifully in a single song. There's more
Quebec does not officialy have an anthem, which is surprising given how otherwise quick we are to give ourselves all the attributes of a country we can, and then name hem "national".
There have been proposal, ranging from the bombastic and over-proud Demain of the sixties, to the unofficial but popular Gens du Pays (by Gilles Vigneault), which is more of a celebration song, but since it is the song we sing every Quebec day (June 24), an association of sort has grown. On the downside, it's also the song whose chorus we've appropriated as a birthday song.
Personally, if I were asked to pick one song for Quebec, it would be another of Vigneault's song, namely Mon Pays.
Translation of the lyric is as follow:
My country is no country, it's winter.
My garden is no garden, it's the plain
My path is no path, it's the snow
My country is no country, it's winter.
In the white ceremony where snow and wind are wed
In this country of blizzards my father had a house built
And I will be faithful to his manner, to his way
The guest room will be such
That they will come from all seasons to build next to it
My country is no country, it's winter
My chorus is no chorus, it's a flurry
My house is no house, it's frost
My country is no country, it's winter
From this great solitary country I shout before going silent
To all the men of Earth My house is your house!
Between these four walls of ice, I take my time my space
To prepare fire and room
For the men of the horizon, for mankind is my race,
My country is no country, it's winter
My garden is no garden, it's the plain
My way is no way, it's snow
My country is no country, it's winter
My country is no country, it's the reverse
Of a country that was neither country nor homeland
My song is no song, it's my life
It's for you I wish to master my winters
I don't think you can put Quebec more effectively or more beautifully in a single song. There's more
Quebec and Arkansas
Excerpt from a message to a friend I made during a visit to Arkansas in June 2008, who asked me how different my part of Canada (ie, Quebec) and Arkansas were.
Note that this was written with the parts of Arkansas around the university town of Fayetteville in mind, as it was the part of Arkansas I visited.
That much different? Not nearly as much as my fellow Canadians would like to think, for certain. What shocked me about Arkansas wasn't so much the differences (which I mostly expected), it was the similarities in landscape, in what the city actually looked like, and in mentality.
Which isn't to say there aren't differences.
The place religion occupies is probably the biggest; in Arkansas it is something people group around, organize, and identify to. You won't see that in Quebec; here, the Church is the place to have baptism, (if you have one) weddings (if you want one), and funerals in. That's not because Quebecers aren't religious; just that Quebec, due to its history, doesn't trust organized churches.
Other than that…peaceful depend of what you mean by peaceful. We get massive protests, we get riots (two in 2008!), but on things like murder, we are very, very quiet – one of Quebec's two big metro areas (Quebec City) actually had a murder-free year in 2007, and the other (Montreal) is headed toward under 30 murders in 2008. I don't know what Fayetteville is like there, so I can't compare.
That's for the differences. For everything else…the climate appears to be similar (it gets warm a little faster in Fayetteville, and stays warm a little longer), the landscapes are hauntingly familiar (I could actually stare out of my hotel room window and wonder whether I was actually in the US or visiting some regions of Quebec), and the mentalities…
Well, I could say people are the same the world over, but that's not true. Quebec and Ontario have very different mentalities. Quebec and what I encountered in Arkansas, on the other hand was shockingly similar: very hospitable and live-and-let-live (at least in person, although both regions have their blind spots), where family means a lot and try to remain close-knit, and both very deeply attached to their history, their traditions and their customs; there's a reason Quebec's motto means "I remember"!
Maybe it's because Quebec remained rural, agricultural, much longer than anyone else in the North East (and thus till has deep rural roots). Maybe it's because of the landscapes – both Quebec and Arkansas appears to have first formed in the lowlands of great rivers, before spreading into the neighboring mountain and hill regions. I don't know. All I can say is, Quebec and Arkansas were a lot more similar than I thought they'd be.
(Oh, and of course my region of Canada speaks French) There's more
Note that this was written with the parts of Arkansas around the university town of Fayetteville in mind, as it was the part of Arkansas I visited.
That much different? Not nearly as much as my fellow Canadians would like to think, for certain. What shocked me about Arkansas wasn't so much the differences (which I mostly expected), it was the similarities in landscape, in what the city actually looked like, and in mentality.
Which isn't to say there aren't differences.
The place religion occupies is probably the biggest; in Arkansas it is something people group around, organize, and identify to. You won't see that in Quebec; here, the Church is the place to have baptism, (if you have one) weddings (if you want one), and funerals in. That's not because Quebecers aren't religious; just that Quebec, due to its history, doesn't trust organized churches.
Other than that…peaceful depend of what you mean by peaceful. We get massive protests, we get riots (two in 2008!), but on things like murder, we are very, very quiet – one of Quebec's two big metro areas (Quebec City) actually had a murder-free year in 2007, and the other (Montreal) is headed toward under 30 murders in 2008. I don't know what Fayetteville is like there, so I can't compare.
That's for the differences. For everything else…the climate appears to be similar (it gets warm a little faster in Fayetteville, and stays warm a little longer), the landscapes are hauntingly familiar (I could actually stare out of my hotel room window and wonder whether I was actually in the US or visiting some regions of Quebec), and the mentalities…
Well, I could say people are the same the world over, but that's not true. Quebec and Ontario have very different mentalities. Quebec and what I encountered in Arkansas, on the other hand was shockingly similar: very hospitable and live-and-let-live (at least in person, although both regions have their blind spots), where family means a lot and try to remain close-knit, and both very deeply attached to their history, their traditions and their customs; there's a reason Quebec's motto means "I remember"!
Maybe it's because Quebec remained rural, agricultural, much longer than anyone else in the North East (and thus till has deep rural roots). Maybe it's because of the landscapes – both Quebec and Arkansas appears to have first formed in the lowlands of great rivers, before spreading into the neighboring mountain and hill regions. I don't know. All I can say is, Quebec and Arkansas were a lot more similar than I thought they'd be.
(Oh, and of course my region of Canada speaks French) There's more
Marriage and Quebec
Originally posted to my LiveJournal, September 2007, in reaction to new census statistics.
Meanwhile, back in Quebec, the death knell of the traditional family (two married adults and children) is no longer entirely a boogeyman invoked by conservative to argue against whichever latest change to the laws of matrimony they want to argue against. Instead, it is fast becoming a reality among French-Canadian society.
According to the last results from the census office, thirty-five percents of couples in the province of Québec live out of wedlock. In the regions that feature the least immigration, and are thus heavily fFench Canadian, those ratio soars past forty per-cent - nearly half of couples happily live out of wedlock.
In perspective, even the queen of all left-wing countries, Sweden, is far behind at twenty-five percent. Finland is at twenty-four. Canada as a whole - that's counting Québec - is at fifteen percent, which would give about ten percent without Québec's thirty-five thrown in.
This only goes to underline how far Québec culture has swept around - not fifty years ago, Québecers were proud to call themselves the favored, loyal children of the Roman Catholic Church, and priest had staggering political influence in the province; with excommunication of "evil" politicians being a powerful political weapon, and sayings like "Heaven is blue, Hell is red" (refering to the colors associated with political parties - blue for conservatives, red for liberals), being practically the norm.
And now instead we have this.
There's more
Meanwhile, back in Quebec, the death knell of the traditional family (two married adults and children) is no longer entirely a boogeyman invoked by conservative to argue against whichever latest change to the laws of matrimony they want to argue against. Instead, it is fast becoming a reality among French-Canadian society.
According to the last results from the census office, thirty-five percents of couples in the province of Québec live out of wedlock. In the regions that feature the least immigration, and are thus heavily fFench Canadian, those ratio soars past forty per-cent - nearly half of couples happily live out of wedlock.
In perspective, even the queen of all left-wing countries, Sweden, is far behind at twenty-five percent. Finland is at twenty-four. Canada as a whole - that's counting Québec - is at fifteen percent, which would give about ten percent without Québec's thirty-five thrown in.
This only goes to underline how far Québec culture has swept around - not fifty years ago, Québecers were proud to call themselves the favored, loyal children of the Roman Catholic Church, and priest had staggering political influence in the province; with excommunication of "evil" politicians being a powerful political weapon, and sayings like "Heaven is blue, Hell is red" (refering to the colors associated with political parties - blue for conservatives, red for liberals), being practically the norm.
And now instead we have this.
Notes on Quebec Mythology
Originally posted to my livejournal in July 2008, as part of research on one of my ongoing novel projects.
For various reasons, I've been reviewing my Québec mythology a little.
It's an interesting field. The Catholic European roots are undeniable, but there has definitely been an adaptation of such legend to the realities of an immense and sparsely inhabited territory (something true even to this day - Québec has a population density of 5.6 inhabits per square kilometer. While a lot of that is due to the empty north, that still leaves vast untamed forested areas).
Native American influence is probably there as well. For example, I'm not aware of too many European Catholic legend which feature sea serpents as benevolent being, but there are records of at least one in Québec, where the apparition of a sea serpent in the nearby lake announce a bountiful harvest for the year.
Similarly, the Québec werewolf is an interesting figure. While it is undeniably a man-human transformation, it's a were whose legend involve no biting (one becomes a were by not attending church for several years in a row. Or, in other words, deliberately stepping outside society), and no silver (simply bleeding the were is enough to cure him). Nor does the resulting being (were-cat, were-horse and were-demon all join the wolves in Quebec folklore) show any sign of ever being human : they completely take the form of the other (interestingly, while the cat and dog are universally described as enormous and black, the horse is enormous but white. The demon is, well, a demon). Possibly, this conception of the werewolf was influenced by the Native American wendigo, people who became demons for breaking taboos.
There's more
For various reasons, I've been reviewing my Québec mythology a little.
It's an interesting field. The Catholic European roots are undeniable, but there has definitely been an adaptation of such legend to the realities of an immense and sparsely inhabited territory (something true even to this day - Québec has a population density of 5.6 inhabits per square kilometer. While a lot of that is due to the empty north, that still leaves vast untamed forested areas).
Native American influence is probably there as well. For example, I'm not aware of too many European Catholic legend which feature sea serpents as benevolent being, but there are records of at least one in Québec, where the apparition of a sea serpent in the nearby lake announce a bountiful harvest for the year.
Similarly, the Québec werewolf is an interesting figure. While it is undeniably a man-human transformation, it's a were whose legend involve no biting (one becomes a were by not attending church for several years in a row. Or, in other words, deliberately stepping outside society), and no silver (simply bleeding the were is enough to cure him). Nor does the resulting being (were-cat, were-horse and were-demon all join the wolves in Quebec folklore) show any sign of ever being human : they completely take the form of the other (interestingly, while the cat and dog are universally described as enormous and black, the horse is enormous but white. The demon is, well, a demon). Possibly, this conception of the werewolf was influenced by the Native American wendigo, people who became demons for breaking taboos.
Frenglish Quebec
It sometimes feel like I've spent a large part of my online life of these past eight (oops. Nine now) trying to explain to various American, English-Canadians and various others the realities of Quebec life.
Since I had a blogspot account doing nothing useful, I've decided to create a central repository for all those stray thoughts (and, perhaps, articles) on Quebec I've logged at various discussion board, and in various forums over time.
In the interest of full disclosure, because sometime bias may come though, I will disclose that I am a white male and a "Québécois" (that is, a person who identify as part of the French Quebec culture). I am also (and this is probably the last time you hear me refering to myself as such, because I wholeheartedly hate the concept) what some people refer to as "Pure-wool", that is, a Quebecer of near-exclusively French ancestry. I am bilingual (French-English), which is to say I am equally inept in two languages. I live in the outer suburbs of Montreal.
Politically, I trend toward center-to-moderate-left in canadian terms, which is to say I favor some social programs (universal healthcare and making higher education more accessible, for two), but generally think the market is a good thing, so long as proper safeguard exists, and that money doesn't grow in trees. Morally, I'm very much the live and let live type - so long as no one is getting hurt (without consenting to it), do as you will - but don't expect me to do as you do. Religiously, I'm probably best described these days as an independent (and therefore not a church goer) Christian with some agnostic leanings.
I hope to make some use of this, but I make no promises!
There's more
Since I had a blogspot account doing nothing useful, I've decided to create a central repository for all those stray thoughts (and, perhaps, articles) on Quebec I've logged at various discussion board, and in various forums over time.
In the interest of full disclosure, because sometime bias may come though, I will disclose that I am a white male and a "Québécois" (that is, a person who identify as part of the French Quebec culture). I am also (and this is probably the last time you hear me refering to myself as such, because I wholeheartedly hate the concept) what some people refer to as "Pure-wool", that is, a Quebecer of near-exclusively French ancestry. I am bilingual (French-English), which is to say I am equally inept in two languages. I live in the outer suburbs of Montreal.
Politically, I trend toward center-to-moderate-left in canadian terms, which is to say I favor some social programs (universal healthcare and making higher education more accessible, for two), but generally think the market is a good thing, so long as proper safeguard exists, and that money doesn't grow in trees. Morally, I'm very much the live and let live type - so long as no one is getting hurt (without consenting to it), do as you will - but don't expect me to do as you do. Religiously, I'm probably best described these days as an independent (and therefore not a church goer) Christian with some agnostic leanings.
I hope to make some use of this, but I make no promises!
There's more
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