Canadians have honoured Sir John A MacDonald for a very long time. However, statues of John A. MacDonald are being put in storage and one, perhaps more, has been vandalized. He was a father of Confederation, if not the Father of Confederation. So, what happened?
Macdonald, Sir John (NFB/National Archives of Canada) (Photo credit: Britannica)
First, as we have seen in earlier posts, when Canada grew westward, the White population settled on land they had appropriated from Amerindians on the basis of “conquest,” a disgraceful leftover from the “age of discovery.” Moreover, as we have also seen in earlier posts, Rupert’s Land, which Canada bought from the Hudson’s Bay Company, did not include settled land, such as the Red River Settlement, bought by the Earl of Selkirk, and lands inhabited by Amerindians.
Quebec
As for Quebec, it seems it was drawn into a Confederation that also excluded it. John A. Macdonald was an Orangeman, a fraternity that was inimical to Catholics and the French. The people of Quebec could not be educated in French outside Quebec. Waves of immigrants arrived who would live in provinces other than Quebec and be educated in English. We have already discussed the school question.
However, recognition occurred 102 years after Confederation (1867) when English had become the language spoken outside Quebec. The French had been in North America since 1534.
Conclusion
In short, what of such concepts as nationhood and the rights afforded conquerors and, first and foremost, what of Canada’s Confederation? If Confederation demanded that the children of Francophones be educated in English, outside Quebec, their children were likely to be Anglophones. So, what of Quebec nationalism. Separatism is usually associated with Quebecers, but it isn’t altogether québécois. Not if the children of French Canadians had to be educated in English outside Quebec and not if immigrants to Canada were sent to English-speaking communities.
Sir George-Étienne Cartier was pleased that Quebec would remain Quebec. The population of Quebec would retain its “code civil,” its language, its religion, and its culture while belonging to a strong partnership. He may have been afraid.
However, Canada has a new constitution, the Constitution Act of 1982, which Quebec has not signed.
Love to everyone 💕
Sir Ernest MacMillan, Two Skteches on French Canadian Airs
One wonders how Québécois would survive after the arrival of United Empire Loyalists and the loss of deported Acadians. The English-speaking population of Canada constituted a majority. How would French-speaking Canadians survive? During a period of the history of Quebec, a high birth rate provided hope. Families could number from 18 to 24 children, most of whom survived childhood. It was said of women, that they had to have their “nombre.” his high birth rate was called la revanche des berceaux, the revenge of the cradle.
In short, women toiled against odds. They were pregnant for years while husbands made land, faire de la terre. The land did not always yield good crops. As well, people lived away from their village. They attended Mass every Sunday and socialized a little after mass, on the perron. Louis Hémon told this story in his novel entitled Maria Chapdelaine. After sending his manuscript to France, in 1913, he started to walk West, but he was hit by a train, at Chapleau, Ontario. He may have been trying to meet the French Counts of Saint-Hubert, Saskatchewan.
French aristocrats tried to move to Canada. It was not a very successful endeavour, but several members of the French-speaking population of Western Canada are not descendants of Quebecers. I met many of this branch of French-speaking Canadians. Some retired in Victoria and had a good relationship with the descendants of Québécois. I nearly married a descendant of this population, but he committed suicide. They bought a large number of houses that are now too expensive. We socialized considerably and we owned a tiny church and a hall. I play the organ, so every Sunday, I went to the 11 o’clock Mass and performed.
La Revanche des berceaux was successful.
It suggested that although Anglo-Canadians dominated Canada in the 19th century, the higher birth rate in Quebec promised that French-Canadians would resist British immigration and discrimination.
The irony is that these children had to leave Quebec because they could not earn a living.
The Ultramontane ideology encouraged poverty. Quebecers would start to live happily once they entered eternal life. Suffering now was seen as a sign of salvation. One paid for the original sin on earth, which was comforting. All human beings have to atone for the original sin: better on earth than after death. This view can also be called Jansenism.
Ultramontanism
Ultramontanism lessened the suffering of women who bore children incessantly. God would let them enter Paradise. However, when I was a child, women had a hysterectomy. It made them sterile. My mother did not undergo a hysterectomy until we moved away from Quebec. The dead children were used as guinea pigs. A cure was found for the family’s congenital blood disease. My mother’s legs had been ruined by varicose veins. However, she believed that not having children was sinful.
Refus global and the Asbestos Strike
A manifesto, Refus global, written in 1948, and a strike, the Asbestos Strike of 1949, would end the plight of workers. Maurice Duplessis tried every aberration to end the strike. Ultramontanism had died, but Maurice Duplessis feared socialism and, possibly, communism. Workers were not killed, but the repression caught the attention of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and colleagues. One of my uncles was shot at. His brother, also my uncle, was Quebec’s top civil servant. When Maurice Duplessis died, Quebec had long been ready for its Quiet Revolution which started in 1960. The Asbestos Strike made a famous victim, the bishop of Montreal. He opposed Duplessis and had to leave for Victoria, British Columbia. Monseigneur Joseph Charbonneau was a very good person.
Conclusion
In Maria Chapdelaine, Louis Hémon writes that Québec will carry on forever. That may not be.
I was shocked when I realized the extent to which Covid-19 affected Montreal and decided one could not like a post containing the following information:
half of Canada’s victims of the Covid-19 pandemic live in Quebec;
the province of Quebec is failing its elderly citizens;
20,000 of Canadian cases of Covid-19 were Québécois.
Finding helpers
On the 8th of April, police found neglected seniors in a long-term facility: Herron. This facility is private, but private nursing homes are nevertheless subsidized, to a point, by the Quebec government. Conditions drew a parallel with concentration camps.
Given this emergency, Premier François Legault and Health Minister Danielle McCann called on teachers to help in nursing homes, the CHSLDs (Centre d’hébergement et de soins de longue durée [long term care facilities]).
Teachers
On Friday, the 10th of April, Quebec’s Premier, François Legault and Health Minister Danielle McCann tried to “force employees in the education sector to help in the health sector.” Schools were closed and the province had an emergency. Teachers did not enter long-term care facilities or nursing houses.
“Confédération des syndicats nationaux [Unions] did not take long to respond. It said it recognized the gravity of the crisis and the need to resort to exceptional measures, but is worried about how this decision would be implemented and the potential for abuse.”
“Forcing education personnel to work in the health network, without any form of consultation with those affected, is at the very least heartbreaking,” said CSN [Confédération des syndicats nationaux] president Jacques Létourneau.
However, it had been discovered that some of the elderly who had been transported to hospitals were not the victims of Covid-19.
Dr. Vinh-Kim Nguyen says the Jewish General is seeing more and more seniors admitted — not necessarily for COVID-19, but because of issues related to dehydration and starvation.
“We started to see a shift in the kinds of patients we’ve admitted to the hospital,” Nguyen told Global News.
“More and more patients are coming from old-age homes, nursing homes and CHSLD long-term care facilities, most of them coming in with dehydration, hypernatremia, high blood sodium, renal failure.”
After three days, Premier Legault thought he had not made himself clear.
“I think I am clear today: we need, ideally, 2,000 doctors — whether they are general practitioners or specialists — to come treat the people, wash patients, feed patients, to come and do the work of nurses.”
Danielle McCann was quite convincing:
“There are many GPs and specialists who go on humanitarian missions outside Quebec, to Africa and other countries,” added Health Minister Danielle McCann. “They go help. They are quite devoted. What I want to say to them today is that this time the humanitarian mission is in Quebec — it is in the CHSLDs.”
The Agreement
Doctors responded, but money talks. Two thousand doctors are working in nursing homes and seniors are losing their life to Covid-19. One doctor has died. However, it has been agreed that doctors “will be paid $211 an hour, regardless of their tasks, to a maximum of $2,500 a day. The average wage of an orderly now is $21.50 an hour.” It’s “danger pay.” I doubt very much that a Quebec doctor would have accepted to work in nursing homes without a generous danger pay.
The Military
Premier Legault’s has nevertheless requested further help from the military. He needs 1,000 soldiers who would work in a CHSLD (long term care facility.) I doubt that they will receive “danger pay.”
Similarly, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario has also requested the assistance of the armed forces. So the military is becoming the “force … of last resort.”
One can count on a soldier’s sense of duty. They came, they assessed and they found a strategy. In other words, soldiers can organize, which is what the first group did. The request for one thousand soldiers is Quebec’s second request.
I have since read that the death toll in Quebec was 1,243, which means that “Quebec with 23 percent of Canada’s population, is home to 52% of cases and 57 percent of the death.” But the death toll has now risen to 1,446 and keeps rising.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2020.
Red Cross volunteer Stephane Corbeil adjusts an opening in a tent at a mobile hospital at the Jacques Lemaire arena in the Montreal suburb of LaSalle, Sunday, April 26, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues in Canada and around the world. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Conclusion
There is more to tell: herd immunity, lifting the lockdown… But it suffices to say that one has very little respect for doctors in Quebec who will not come forward until their union negotiates a salary of $2,500 a day. There are good doctors, but, by and large, it’s all about money. They have a powerful syndicate and one fears being a snitch. The fact remains that in Quebec, half the victims of Covid-19 are the elderly. I suspect that the orderlies left because they feared contamination.
You may know that I lost fourteen brothers and sisters to a congenital blood disease. The Insurance Company ceased to contribute money, but my father’s employers footed the bill. It was small. These were the days when I could phone our doctor and say: “Dr Saine, Thérèse has a fever and she is in considerable pain. I don’t know what to do.” He said the magical words. “Don’t worry Micheline, I’m coming over.”
But I will stop here. I was kept away by a case of sadness. The videos show the Premier, Danielle McCann and Quebec’s top doctor: Dr Horacio Arruda. Canada’s top doctor is Dr Theresa Tam.
More than 2,500 coronavirus deaths in Canada as confirmed cases cross 46K.
Love to everyone 💕 I was not able to enter all captions. My post disappeared. I will try to enter captions and credit later.
Under Premier François Legault and several members his Coalition Avenir Quebec, Quebec is again trying to secularise its already secularised society. All faces are bare in Quebec. Muslim women wear a discreet veil. However, if Bill 21 is enacted, they would be required to remove their discreet veil or, perhaps, if not certainly, lose their position.
People gesture during a demonstration in Montreal, Sunday, April 7, 2019, in opposition to the Quebec government’s newly tabled Bill 21. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes)
Given its rigidity and Quebec’s preexisting official laïcité, Premier Legault’s, Bill 21 is unacceptable. Were there a genuine threat of terrorism, which there isn’t, a society could forbid the niqāb to make faces visible. It would be a matter of security. But, if enacted, Bill 21 could be interpreted not only as Islamophobia, but as an expression of religious intolerance across-the-board.
Some employees wear uniforms in order for the public to recognize that they are policemen, bus drivers, firemen, etc. So did school children when I was a child: navy blue and white. We looked like the young girl depicted by Jean-Paul Lemieux, including the hairdo. So there are uniforms. Men will not be affected, but Muslim women will be.
Alexandre Bissonnette
sentence
Premier Philippe Couillard
He will appeal his sentence, but as things stand, Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed 6 Muslims worshipping at a Quebec City Mosque, will not be eligible for parole for the next 40 years.
When Alexandre Bissonnette killed, he was not affiliated with a terrorist group and, to my knowledge, he has not joined such a group since he has been detained.
At the time, Quebec Premier Dr Philippe Couillard reassured Quebecers and Canadians.
The Consequences
As for my Muslim ladies, their daughters may wish to remove their veil. They may find it cumbersome. However, if their mother was forced to remove her veil or be unemployed, her children may insist on wearing a veil, if they have not left Quebec.
Under Bills 22, enacted in 1974, and 101 enacted in 1977, Quebec declared itself unilingual and would not allow immigrants to enrol their children in English-language schools. Therefore, Quebec’s best immigrants were North Africans who spoke French fluently. However, to a very large extent, they were Muslims. French-speaking Muslim immigrants to Quebec did Quebec a service. Has Quebec forgotten?
Religious Intolerance Across-the-Board
Bill 21 smacks of religious intolerance. All display of adherence to a religion would be forbidden. Some of us are atheists, but others believe in God, and many find a refuge in spirituality. We are a diverse society and will grow more diverse. If Bill 21 is enacted, Quebec could be divided along religious lines.
Students and staff at Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School in Montreal’s West Island, held a protest against Bill 21 over their lunch break on Friday. (Valeria Cori-Manocchio/CBC)
Conclusion
I will close by suggesting, boldly, that Bill 21 may not be entirely what it seems. I suspect that it is and that it isn’t about religious affiliation. Quebec’s two referendums (1980; 1995) have not given the government of Quebec a mandate to negotiate sovereignty. But the province is drifting away using all means it can dig out. For instance, Quebec has yet to sign the Constitution Act of 1982.
Could it be that, once again, Quebec wants to differ, Bill in hand … ? If Quebec wants to differ, let it not be at the expense of its law-abiding and French-speaking Muslim women. Immigrants from everywhere, first generation immigrants in particular, mourn their country. Many have lost everything. Let us not think that we have done them a favour. Such an attitude would be insensitive and, in fact, arrogant.
Our duty is to respect everyone, despite colour, faith, language and other differences. These are superficial differences. Let our immigrants belong. All of us are human beings and merely passing …
Love to everyone 💕
We are returning to Molière. But laïcité weighed on my mind. I have friends who are supporters of Bill 21. I hope they will forgive me. They know that Quebec is a lay society.
