I have come to realize that Canadians are happily blind to their own history. It is really self-inflicted. But it may now be national policy if this really comes to pass...or rather does not come to pass:
The controversial re-enactment of the 1759 defeat of French forces on Quebec City's Plains of Abraham has been cancelled, Montreal media reports say. André Juneau, head of the National Battlefields Commission that administers the Plains, refused to confirm the reports the mock battle was called off but said a revised program will be announced next Tuesday for the 250th anniversary of the clash. Mr. Juneau cited concerns about violence between separatists and federalists and the subsequent safety of the public as reasons for the program's revision.
I would think that if there were calls for violence then it is a matter of police investigation, is it not? Otherwise, this is a morality play about how weak and insecure the nation and the respective political factions have become. Threaten to cause a ripple in a tea cup, we hide. In Scotland, Culloden can be recreated. In the States, Gettysburg can be replayed. But woe to he that suggests that the battle in which the collapsing Royalist cause under Louis XV should be actually understood, recalled, even noted.
Comments
Robert McClelland - February 15, 2009 10:54 AM
Culture wars suck, eh.
Ben (The Tiger) - February 15, 2009 11:01 AM
I think it's just Canadians being Canadians, whether in our French or English incarnations -- we don't like loud debates and open disagreements.
It's part of the national character.
David Janes - February 15, 2009 11:12 AM
Can't we be both?
Alan - February 15, 2009 1:32 PM
I think there is a very good argument being missed - that Quebec was preserved through the conquest:
1. If Montcalm wins and Quebec gets through to the American Revolution, Quebec loses as the US would clearly have turned on it. Britain would have only had the Maritimes at that point and would not be in a position to take Quebec separately without US colonial militia.
2. if Montcalm wins, Britain leaves and the US somehow does not take out Quebec (impossible) in the 1780s, then France falls to the Revolution and is unable to assist Quebec leading to the US taking Quebec between 1793 and 1800.
It was the Wolfe Manifesto that framed its preservation. It should be celebrated.
Both what?
Chris Taylor - February 15, 2009 1:53 PM
Even if the US did succeed in taking Quebec militarily, it is a virtual certainty that it would have been sold off by Boney as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. As noted by Alan in an earlier thread.
But that sort of realist interpretation doesn't fly in Canada. British = ungood, except where it intersects with the Pearsonian Year Zero cultural vision.
Ben (The Tiger) - February 15, 2009 2:26 PM
Here's another realist interpretation -- had Quebec not fallen, the American Revolution would not have happened. Or at the very least, it would have been delayed for at least another half-century.
Great victories bring great instability -- not for nothing does Macpherson's single volume history of the Civil War begin in 1848, in Mexico City.
Renee - February 15, 2009 2:43 PM
Wait, what's the difference between a fool and an idiot?
Ben (The Tiger) - February 15, 2009 3:14 PM
Fools are curable, idiots are not. (I think.)
But at any rate, I don't think that Canadians are cowards, fools, or idiots -- just very conflict-averse sorts.
Chris Taylor - February 15, 2009 3:22 PM
That sounds like a fair trade. Lose Quebec, gain the United States.
Who's got the keys to the Wayback Machine?
Chris Taylor - February 15, 2009 3:28 PM
Also, Scotland may have lost to the English a couple of times, but eventually they ended up running the place, and then went on an ass-whooping world tour for a few centuries.
Quebec just lost, without any follow-up ass-whooping.
Alan - February 15, 2009 5:00 PM
A fool has maximized capacity and, as I recall from my undergrad, in Russian culture can be a holy mystic which sees more or rather more purely. Ben can correct me on my Dostoyevski.
So does being conflict adverse mean avoiding any challenge to the point that avoiding strengths and benefits of history - even Quebec's history - are challenged? As far as I understand, the fall of New France was a precondition to the carving off of the arguable "nation," though its pronouncement by Mr. Harper seems to be itself a precondition to an erroneous interpretation.
I think Quebec won because it was abandoned and then cut off from France and granted the autonomy it needed to develop uniquely. All of which required Wolfe winning. If not, then it is not a nation but a satellite.
Ben (The Tiger) - February 15, 2009 6:55 PM
Your Dostoevsky is accurate, Alan.
Your interpretation of Quebec history is, on the other hand, what French Canadians thought in the late 19th century. (That strange era when francophone politicians were getting knighthoods and baronetcies and pledging their loyalty to the British Empire.)
Doesn't mean that it's a wrong one, though.
Alan - February 17, 2009 1:00 PM
Done. Sad day for history.