SURVEY - COMMUNITIES IN QUEBEC WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF ASSIMILATED. (1 of 3)

The Economist 29 juin 1991

(c) The Economist Newspaper Limited, London 1991. All rights reserved
Reinventing the maple leaf
The post-modern nation-state?
Was Durham right? Bust-up or patch-up, it is clear that the current bout of
antagonism between Quebec and the RoC will not be the last. That prompts
the question whether Canada would not have been better off had the
French-speaking Canadians long ago been assimilated by the
English-speakers, as Durham advocated in the 1830s.
"Outrageous!" is the usual response: the only French community of any size
in North America would have been lost, and with it the most creative and
intellectually imaginative group in Canada. Quebeckers point with horror at
Louisiana as an example of what might have happened to them.
Assimilation might well have proved a bloody business: if Quebec had become
Ulster or Kashmir or Lebanon, Canada would indeed be worse off than it is
today. But those are examples of non-assimilation. Frenchmen - whether in
Britain (Sir Peter de la Billiere) or in the United States (the du Ponts) -
have fitted in well in several countries. More to the point,
French-Canadians might have been more culturally vigorous, rather than
less, had they been less exclusive. Quebec, after all, though bigger in
population than Louisiana (4.4m), has made a far less formidable
contribution to world culture (all that jazz). There are two points here.
One is that French culture is likely to be more vital in its birthplace,
France, than in Canada; certainly, French would not die if it were snuffed
out in Quebec. The other is that, away from home, it is the melding and
combination of cultures, not their preservation, that make countries
interesting.
Fusion, not fission
Such thoughts are heresies in Canada, especially in Quebec. Quebec is a
thriving, lively province that stands as an agreeable contrast to the rest
of an ever more similar continent. It is not much more than that. It has
some good writers, singers, musicians and circus performers. But few are
top rank. Its best known author, Mordecai Richler, is a Jew who cannot
speak French and does not think much of his fellow Quebeckers. It is at
least possible, if not probable, that Quebec and indeed the whole of Canada
would be more interesting and more intellectually fertile if Quebeckers
were less keen on preserving their culture and more keen on making a new
one by fusing their inheritance with that of others.
This is the very opposite of the way Canada is evolving. Multiculturalism
is the official policy, shored up by the charter of rights. The government
gives money to ethnic societies - more money than it gives to encourage
immigrants to become Canadians - so long as they are organised as a group.
Joe Clark, the minister entrusted with the task of holding the country
together, talks about Canada as "a community of communities"; so does Mr
Mulroney. Others like to see it as "a kind of United Nations", never
stopping to wonder whether they really want to be citizens of an outfit
best known for cacophony, fractiousness and futility.
Nice Canadians believe the way to build Canada is to encourage immigrants
to go on being Chinese or Iranians or Ukrainians or whatever. In doing so
they are not just paving the way for more mini-Quebecs; more seriously,
they are forgoing the chance of allowing these immigrants' many cultures to
produce something uniquely Canadian. The chances are that if that uniquely
Canadian culture were to emerge, people would then start to identify with
it rather than with the culture of the country they had left. Not
immediately: as Sir John Macdonald once said, it will take time for the
"gristle" of nationhood to "harden into bone". But at least Canada would
then stand for something.
The trouble at present is it that it stands for less and less. This might
not matter if it were an old country, like Japan or France, whose national
characters have been formed by history; even multicultural, decentralised
Switzerland goes back 700 years. It might not matter if it were a new
country like Australia, an island set apart in the middle of an ocean. But
Canada's misfortune is to be a new country plonked next to the United
States, the first new immigrant nation and perhaps the only one with a
vigorous national identity. So vigorous is it that its northern neighbour
constantly has to provide an answer to the question, "If Canada didn't
exist, would it be worth inventing?" At present many Canadians seem
inclined to say No. And the danger is that, if one lot pulls out, others
will follow. As a Prince Edward Islander once said, "Canada is like a
boring party where the guests are too polite to leave. However, when the
first guest makes a move to go, the others each claim other engagements and
make a quick exit."
Would they? The United States has long had its eye on Canada. Its first
constitution invited Canadians to join. Many American revolutionaries
wanted to take Canada by force; l ater they contented themselves with the
belief, as described by John Sullivan, a 19th-century American journalist,
that "the United States has the manifest destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence to the free development of our yearly
multiplying millions."