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 [[1]]
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 [[2]] 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the author's credibility and obviously excellent research on the subject, the work includes the usual quantity of outdated informations and regrettable inaccuracies on Québec, which totally nullify the value of his exercise.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 [[3]].