If Couillard doesn’t win, it will break my heart
It’s four in the morning. Pretty well every member of the family is rip-roaring mad. No piece of china is safe. A paper-thin wall divides the neighbour’s place from ours. When the fireworks start, we’ll all be exposed. That’s what it feels like to be an anglo-Quebecer in these final days of a nasty election campaign.
Is it frustrating to realize nothing we’ve done or could do or say makes the slightest difference? Strangely, no. They’ve been at it for years. This battle feels definitive, in a way the heady referendum of 1980 and the slicker, meaner bout of 1995 did not.
This is not a referendum, and yet it is — a vote that somehow smells a thousand per cent more honest than previous attempts to settle the issue of whether Quebec belongs in Canada.
My reaction to the daily escalating revelations of smallminded, racist, purist, often false, sometimes ludicrous charges various members of the three independence parties have levelled against each other has ranged between shock and nausea.
Even Québec solidaire’s Françoise David, the good witch of Lalaland, has not been able to resist carrying on like a politician.
The first debate gave me a headache. It was thrilling, if you like boxing and believe the outcome isn’t fixed. I skipped the second one in favour of an opening night at the Centaur Theatre, recorded it for later viewing but somehow haven’t found the time.
I did catch Tout le monde en parle last Sunday night, Radio-Canada’s celebrity talk show, viewed by 1.2 million Quebecers on a regular basis. Pauline Marois and Philippe Couillard were guests of the ever-affable hosts, Guy A. Lepage and Dany Turcotte, though thankfully, not together. It’s a civilized event.
Each trotted out their wellworn answers to standard questions. Marois tried for a lighter tone, but it was hard to miss the sour looks on the faces of the studio audience in the background.
Curiously, the other main guests were composer/singer Luc De Larochellière and his anglo girlfriend, Andrea Lindsay, from Guelph, Ont., who spent time in France, where she met Luc. A gorgeous, gracious blond who speaks gracefully correct French, she kept a rigorous poker face while sitting next to both politicians.
I hope her presence, including a memorable orange dress, sticks in the minds of voters as they process Couillard’s supposedly outrageous suggestion that young Quebecers just might want to be able to speak English, to cope with life in a global context. Yes, the human being can speak two languages and not explode.
I am happy to see the Liberals leading in the polls, because I would hate to see Couillard lose the election on the basis of that comment alone. If he does, then we know for sure that Quebec really is a vast wax museum, a living Conquest Memorial Theme Park, inspired by the comic nightmare movie Groundhog Day.
Getting into the mood to vote Liberal doesn’t come naturally to me. It requires a rigorous program of intellectual gymnastics. It’s not something I wake up and do willingly or naturally or with enthusiasm.
The Liberal party — federal and provincial — is a hundred-passenger bus with an enormous motor. It’s nobody’s favourite mode of transport, but it gets you where you need to go. Everything depends on who’s driving.
For months I struggled with the feeling that anybody who’d want to lead the Quebec Liberals at this time must be a certified masochist. But I’ve warmed to Dr. Phil over the last two weeks. Maybe a brain surgeon is just what we need.
If he goes down to defeat, my heart will break. This is not the Quebec I discovered and fell in love with when I moved here from Ontario in 1980, the culture I dove into, the ideals I supported, though they arose from someone else’s tortured history.
But after 35 years, it is more my home than is anywhere else on the planet.
Our neighbours may be going through a nasty patch. But the neighbourhood is fine. My plan is to vote early in the day, then lie down on the floor, stay calm, drink a nice hot cup of tea. This too shall pass.