Independence of Québec:About

This website provides a starting point for English-speakers who wish to know more about Québec's independence movement. The political status of the province of Québec has been the subject of a fundamental debate in Québec's French-speaking society for the past 40 years, and arguably a lot longer. For many Anglophones, the subject is a complete mystery. This site wants to help its visitors in forging their own opinions on the subject. Whenever possible, English language resources are provided.

The facts section contains links to other sites where facts can be found. We do not claim these sites to be free from inaccuracies or opinions. With this section we only try to point out places where factual information can be located. You will have to exercise judgment to figure out what is true and what is false.

With the exception of the Con arguments page, the opinions section attempts to point out a certain number of valid sources that could lead visitors to understand and ultimately sympathise with the movement for the independence of Québec. There you will find many opinions by Québec's nationalists, autonomists, sovereignists or independentists, as well as some basic notions and concepts to help you understand the reasoning behind these opinions. Unfortunately, most of the good texts we would like to put on our website are in French only. They are being (slowly) translated by volunteers. If you can read and write French and English and would like to help us, you can send us an e-mail at english@republiquelibre.org .

Origin of this site

What convinced us to start working on this site is a wonderful text by journalist Jean-François Lisée, published in the University of Toronto Press in 2002. The article is a review of "Why Canadian Unity Matters and Why Americans Care - Democratic Pluralism at Risk" by Charles F. Doran. As intelligently written by Mr. Lisée, despite the author's credibility and obviously excellent research on the subject, the work includes the usual quantity of outdated informations and regrettable inaccuracies on Québec, which totally nullify the value of his exercise.

Indeed, Québec's sovereignists, independentists, and nationalists have published countless documents over the pas 40 years, the overwhelming majority of which were written in French and were unfortunately not always translated to English. Meanwhile, for about 40 years also, English Canada also published many documents in reaction to the movements in Québec. These documents were often read and sometimes translated to French by Quebecers, a fair percentage of whom are bilingual, and this contributed to enrich our debate and eliminate extremist positions. The result is that, in Québec, in the community of those who speak French as first or second language, there is an actual debate on the question of Quebec's political status, in which partisans of as well as opponents to independence are represented. Such is not the case in English-speaking Canada.

We concluded that there really should exist a one stop Internet site where the thesis and fundamental arguments of Québec's sovereignists, independentists and other nationalists can be found. Here we are now, adding more and more information to this site on a somewhat regular basis.

If you find a broken link, or come across a spelling or grammar mistake, please report it to us. If you wish to add a new link to this site, feel free to send us an e-mail at english@republiquelibre.org .

An old communication problem

January 2007 update

We believe that this site tries to address a problem that turns out to be, upon further research, much older than originally believed.

Here is a quote from page 13 of the 1839 Report on the Affairs of British North America by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham:

The difference of language produces misconceptions yet more fatal even than those which it occasions with respect to opinions: it aggravates the national animosities, by representing the all the event of the day in utterly different lights. The political misrepresentation of the facts is one of the incidents of a free press in every free country; but in nations in which all speak the same language, those who receive a misrepresentation from one side, have generally som means of learning the truth from the other. In Lower Canada however, where the French an English papers represent adverse opinions, and where no large portion of the community can read both languages with ease, those who receive the misrepresentations are rarely able to avail themselves of the means of correction. It is difficult to conceive the perversity with which the misrepresentation are habitually made, and the gross delusions which find currency among the people; they thus live in a world of misconceptions - in which each party is set against the other, not only by diversity of feelings and opinions, but by an actual belief in utterly different set of facts.

The Report on the Affairs of British North America, a seriously flawed document which we suspect is in fact a collection of various butched drafts originating from different people for its severe inconsistency in logic and language, nevertheless highlights a certain reality of the press which still exists today. Durham is wrong in that he underestimates the number of bilingual people among the litterate francophone class. The leader of the Parti canadien, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, James Stuart and later Louis-Joseph Papineau were well versed in the French and English language. Any person wanting to be of any real use in the parliament had to know English to read the English laws and French to read the French laws. Any person who wanted to be a lawyer had to be bilingual, unless they wanted to limit their practice to certain cases. Moreoever, the patriotism of the Canadiens commanded them to learn the English language to the level of fluency. We are very much convinced that those who "live[d] in a world of misconceptions" were monolingual anglophones who refused to pay any attention to the Montreal Vindicator run by Irishmen sympathetic to the patriotic cause of Lower Canada, their adoptive country.

The steady flow of calumny against the majority of Lower Canada, their representatives, their laws and institutions, in the Montreal Herald is reported by Louis-Joseph Papineau in 1839 in those terms:

Of all the men odious to the Canadians, not one who was such with a righter honour than the editor of the newspaper the Montreal Herald. An impetuous Tory, this man, named Adam Thom, had for several years been dragging in the mud the names of all the whig ministers including that of Lord Durham.

But the John Bull, unable to provide enough libellous anecdotes to feed the malignity of Adam Thom, his personal correspondences, real or simulated, made public the turpitudes, true or false, of the majority of the outstanding men in the liberal opinion.

The news of the nomination of Lord Durham, which mystified whigs and radicals applauded in a manner that appears so strange today, created an incredible overflow of insults. The barking of the Cerberus tore the ears of Lord Durham so painfully, that he hastened himself to throw it the soporific cake. And a few weeks after the pompous disembarkment of the viceroy, and because he had outraged him, Adam Thom became his commensal and his adviser.

This man, who was but an impassioned partisan, of poor talents, daily excited by the abuse of strong liquor, when he treated of English politics, was turning insanely furious, when speaking of the French Canadians. When exalted by the thirst for blood, his hatred was limitless. For several years, insults against the whole nation and reiterated incitations to assassinate the most popular representatives had each day soiled the pages of his newspaper;

This was not limited to this one newspaper. In L'Avenir, on May 15, 1848, Papineau writes:

Nothing would be more compromising for an honest man than to be often and highly praised by rascals. Nothing would tend to ruin the reputation of political integrity, of devotion to the cause of justice, of liberty and the rights of peoples of a man faster than the receiving of a word of praise, of a good compliment from the Transcript, or any other section of the tory press of Lower Canada as it has been since its first page in the Mercury to the last elucubration of the Courier.

About the partisan lies that were daily featured in an important part of the English language press, it is interesting to know that they resemble those that today are part of the phenomenon known as Quebec bashing. The "French" majority of Lower Canada then, the "French" majority of Quebec today, is accused of disloyalty, of lack of intelligence, of entertaining hatred of other nationalities and other degrading generalizations on the basis of the origin of their ancestors.