Anglos, it’s time to get over 1995 referendum
It was a close call for federalists, but that was then, and this is now
I’ll never forget how I felt on Oct. 30, 1995, while the votes in the second referendum on sovereignty were being counted. Things were looking bad for those of us who wished to see Canada prosper as one country with three nations, French, English and Indigenous.
At the time, I was editor in chief of Air Canada’s enRoute magazine, possibly the most fun I have had in a job. I could not help to wonder whether Air Canada would move out of Montreal in the event of a Yes vote.
It was No, by a small margin, 50.58 per cent. Many places would have gone up in flames that night. That Quebec didn’t is testimony to the deep democratic roots of the sovereignist movement built by René Lévesque.
A Yes vote by the same margin would have been more complicated. Look at Brexit. The 2016 question was easy to understand, unlike our masterpiece of obfuscation, yet the result was as muddy as the Thames at low tide: 51.9 per cent in favour of leaving the European Union.
They’ve been fighting ever since.
It’s hard to break up an alliance Britain has belonged to for 45 years, a tight mesh of 28 countries’ economies and legal systems, on a razor thin majority, considering the man who launched the referendum, David Cameron, was sure the Yes side would win the day and everything would go back to normal with cheap olive oil in supermarkets and vacation homes in France.
The following day, people were asking for another referendum: many said they did not know what they had voted for.
Negotiations must end by March 2019 and there is not even a whiff of an agreement wafting over the white cliffs of Dover. As they say, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
So, you may wonder, why bring back the painful memories of the 1995 referendum? Simple: because it’s time we forget about it. It happened 23 years ago. A lot has changed in Quebec since then. If the English-speaking community has not yet moved on, I can assure you a majority of francophones haven’t been in referendum mood in a long time. Even the Parti Québécois took it off the table.
They haven’t fallen in love with Canada, and never will — certainly not as long as another centralizing Trudeau is at the helm — but, being pragmatic people, most Québécois recognize that Canada works well enough for them.
Shame about the weakening of the founding nations pact, though. That hurts.
I sometimes wonder what new Canadians outside Quebec think about their French-speaking brothers and sisters? What do they know about us? Do they understand why we are such a pain in the bottom? Does anyone care that we opened up North America with First Nations?
If you haven’t already done so, you must read Champlain’s Dream by U.S. historian David Hackett Fischer.
Don’t be fooled, the dream of “faire le pays,” a normal consequence of the 1759 Conquest, will never die, nor will the drive to keep the French language and a 410-year-old original culture alive.
There is also a clear generational gap between the “grey heads” that populate PQ assemblies and the significant proportion of 18- to 34-year-olds who plan to vote for the Liberals on Oct. 1. They don’t give a flying tutu about identity, hijabs, etc. They hated the charte de la laïcité, known in English as the charter of values.
Support for the Parti Québécois stands at 19.3 per cent, with the Coalition Avenir Québec at 35.2 per cent and the Quebec Liberals at 30 per cent.
When I hear anglophones say they won’t vote CAQ because a leopard never changes its spots, François Legault may bring back independence, and so on, I worry. Do we live in the same world? If a movement to shake things up hits Quebec on Oct. 1, does that mean the anglophone community will lock itself out because it fears a hypothetical referendum?
You must be joking.