Robert Guy Scully
editOn Sunday, April 17, 1977, five months after the fist time the Parti Québécois took power under René Lévesque, journalist Robert Guy Scully was published in the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post. The piece was called "What It Means To Be French In Canada". Two columns of front page of the section and an entire inside page were devoted to the article. He called the French Quebecois nation incurably "sick". "No one would want to live there who doesn't have to," he wrote. "There isn't a single material or spiritual advantage to it which can't be had, in an even better form, on the English side of Montreal."
He claimed that in Montreal's Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, what he called one of the "Harlems" of French Montreal, "[...] the people are afraid to see a doctor, or to even call one. They might try the left-over pills from the neighbor's old prescription. But they would be terrified of stepping out of their dark, greasy kitchens into bright, clean hospitals. [...] Some of the mothers will even keep their youngest at home, afraid of losing the last one to the world outside. So this child will grow illiterate, and the grown-ups will be afraid to answer the phone, in case the school board calls."
The article said that "the Quebec civil service, in many instances, [is] a corrupt banana-republic bureaucracy" and that the people of Quebec were urged "never to buy Heinz ketchup or other such 'foreign' products." Scully deems the vitality of 1970s Quebec society to be the fruit of an "extrordinary neurotic creativity" but, also, that it "means nothing." He summarizes his opinion in these few words: "Quebec is small and isolated. That will never change: a cripple could no more grow his legs back."
This article was featured in Jean-François Lisée's In the Eye of the Eagle, an extensive study of American attention over Quebec and its independence movement. In the chapter "A Voiceless Quebec", Lisée advances if such prominence was given to such a "singular and unrepresentative a view of Quebec society" was partly caused by "the perfect absence of a Quebec voice in North America's news services, and the frightening degree of ignorance in the American press on the subject of Quebec." Lisée points out that these ideas were also presented by the Editor-in-Chief of the section, Al Horne, in a speech at a Washington symposium.
Chronology
edit- See also: Timeline of Quebec history
- September 8, 1760: Montreal capitulates. New France is conquered by the British.
- June 5, 1832: The Legislative Assembly of Quebec passes the Act of June 5, 1832 giving full civil and political rights to the Jewish citizens of Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), a first in the British Empire and some 27 years before Great Britain itself.
- June 24, 1834: Foundation of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society.
- 1837-1839: Armed conflict erupts between the Lower Canada Rebels, seeking to establish a republican and independent state, and the British Army. The Patriote Rebellions are violently crushed, villages are burned and rebels are subsequently hung and deported.
- July 23, 1840: The Act of Union of Lower Canada and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) receives royal assent.
- July 1, 1867: Quebec becomes a province in a new federation, the Dominion of Canada.
- June 22, 1960: The Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ) unseats the Union Nationale (UN) and ushers in a period of great progressive social change, the Quiet Revolution. René Lévesque, elected as a Liberal, is soon to become pivotal in the Lesage government.
- October 26, 1968: The Parti Québécois (PQ) is created, on the provincial level. René Lévesque, who left the Liberal Party the year before in a storm, is made leader.
- April 29, 1970: The Liberals take back power from the UN under Robert Bourassa.
- 1974: The Bourassa government passes the Official Language Act (Bill 22), making French the sole official language of Quebec.
- November 15, 1976: The Parti Québécois becomes the first party explicitly in favour of independence to be elected in modern Quebec, under René Lévesque.
- August 26, 1977: The Charter of the French Language (Bill 101) becomes law.
- May 20, 1980: The first referendum on Quebec independence is held. The YES side is defeated with 40.44% of votes.
- December 15, 1988: The Supreme Court of Canada juges parts of Bill 101 unconstitutional.
- December 2, 1989: The Liberals are elected. Robert Bourassa is returned as Premier and begins a government now known as "Bourassa 2".
- December 6, 1989: École Polytechnique Massacre. Marc Lépine murders 14 women at the École Polythechnique in Montreal.
- August 9, 2006: The National Post publishes Barbara Kay's "The rise of Quebecistan", in which Quebec is painted as an anti-semetic society and a group of QUebecois politicians, having participated in a pacifist march regarding the Israel-Lebanon conflict of 2006, as having tacitely supported the Hezbollah.
- August 24, 1992: Concordia University massacre. Valery Fabrikant murders four people at Concordia University in Montreal.
- September 13, 2006: Dawson College shooting. Kimveer Gill murders one women at Dawson College in Montreal.
- September 16, 2006: The Globe and Mail publishes Jan Wong's "Get under the desk" in which the murders of the École Polytechnique massacre, the Concordia University massacre and the Dawson College shooting are explained by the killers' purpoted alienation in a Quebec society concerned with race.