A holiday that’s changed along with Quebec

I still call it la Saint-jean, but welcome its inclusive nature

It’s la Saint-jean again. I never got used to calling it la Fête nationale. Nothing to do with nationalism, it’s generational.

I grew up a French-canadian — I was born in 1956 — and one day, I became a Québécoise.

Nationalists meant well when they pushed for people living in Quebec to be called Québécois. French-canadian is an ethnic designation. You’re born French-canadian, but anyone can be a Québécois. People who came to live in Quebec could never be called French-canadians. What were they, then?

Well, I’d rather not repeat the names that were used. They were a mark of our past collective ignorance.

Notwithstanding the racial aspect of being a French-canadian, which was not evident to me as a youngster, I was kind of upset when that was taken away from me. I felt that Québécois had an aroma of separatism, which I disliked. I felt excluded. Just as I felt excluded when la Saint-jean became la Fête nationale.

For many years, the Fête became an expression of sympathy for sovereignty. I stayed away. I dislike flag waving and nationalist chanting. Many people stayed away until the 1990s, when it became fashionable to include the “communautés culturelles” in the celebrations. The age of diversity had arrived.

At the time, I lived in the Côte-des-neiges area. I remember one official neighbourhood Fête nationale at Parc Jean-brillant under the theme of diversity: People had brought food from their country of origin, world music alternated over the loudspeakers with Robert Charlebois, Gilles Vigneault and Ginette Reno. It was a glorious day, one of my best Saint-jeans ever.

The following year, there was a different theme. I did not go. There is only so much Paul Piché nationalist-folk music one can listen to in a lifetime.

Later, the organizers — an offshoot of la Société Saint-jean-baptiste — brought back the parade along Sherbrooke Street with Les géants: giant paper maché puppets of historical and popular figures. Colourful and innocuous, fun for kids, but not exactly brimming with diversity.

The whole shebang took on a more sinister tone in 2017, after someone had the brilliant idea, in the name of protecting the environment, of trading motorized tractors that were used to pull the floats along for human energy. The first float was pulled by black student athletes from Louis-joseph Papineau high school in Saint-michel.

No one will ever convince me that it was done deliberately. The students had volunteered. Their coach also took part in the event. But you have to be pretty socially illiterate and insensitive not to see how bad the optics were. I felt so bad for the students who were surely honoured to have been picked to take part in the parade.

There was a massive outcry, and rightly so. As they say, it won’t happen again.

This year, the official celebrations will be on television. A concert, named Tout le Québec à l’unisson, will be shown on all major networks Tuesday night at 8 p.m. The spokesperson for this year’s celebrations is Haitian-born actor, author and director Didier Lucien, who grew up in Saint-jean-sur-richelieu.

There was mini-media scandal when he declined to comment on racism while on duty for the Fête nationale, a role he had accepted way before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Even the left took him to task for that decision, despite the fact that his position on the issue of racism in the arts in Quebec has always been clear. He’s famously quoted for saying he’s had enough of being offered taxi driver roles.

Despite this, Lucien, who could have never have called himself French-canadian, is a proud Québécois, like the vast majority of people who live in Quebec.

Nothing is perfect, but living in Quebec is a blessing.

Joyeuse Fête nationale! Joyeuse Saint-jean tout le monde!