Re “French-Canadian quiet revolution similar to what Venezuela’s Chavez is doing“
By Kenneth T. Tellis
What was Luc Robitaille’s argument? That I had biased racist views on Quebec’s Language Laws which were in themselves racist?
Luc Robitaille also went on to point out that he was an admirer of Chavez. “That the people of Quebec were similar in many ways to the people of South America.”
As Luc Robitaille put it: “We are mostly a mix of Europeans and natives, just a little less mixed than South Americans.” We are under pressure from the Anglo-Saxon imperialism of America, just like South Americans. Pray tell me what this the pressure that the United States of America exerts on these pseudo French-Canadiens? That must the jobs being given by General Motors and other U.S. Corporations to the Quebecois, for which pseudo French-Canadiens should really be thankful, rather than complaining.
He then went on to spout illogical comparison between Quebec and Venezuela by the following statement:
“Imagine for a minute that the U.S. invades Venezuela, wins, and starts colonizing your country…they take control of all the economy, the political power, the army, the land, everything. They impose English as the only language of use in working environments, being born English to access staff positions in business, in public jobs, and government. Uses the army to heavily repress any show of discontent from the population. Not only the local army, but also the whole power of the empire.”
New France (Quebec) was after all the birthplace in North America of ethnocentricity. Think of Abraham Martin a Scots Catholic immigrant who was a river pilot and a canny trader. Abraham Martin like most Scots was an astute trader, so much so that he put the Canadien competition out of business. In retaliation the Canadiens used trumped-up charges of pedophilia against Abraham Martin. Martin saw no way out, so he fled to northern Massachusetts (now Maine) for his own safety. Secondly, French Protestants (Huguenots) were not permitted to immigrate to New France by order of the king, and the French Catholic hierarchy. Now there is the Catholic tolerance of New France that Luc Robitaille lauds.
What Luc Robitaille is really demanding from the majority of Canadians -- who are English-speaking is a privileged status for the Canadiens, something based on RACE, LANGUAGE and RELIGION. This is totally unacceptable in any democratic society, where there is a clear separation of church and state. One should never expect to gain a privileges from one’s race, language or religion. So what is Luc Robitaille really promoting? Why of course RACISM in its purist form. But he does not consider it racism, when it grants special rights to the minority community to which he belongs.. What Luc Robitaille is really asking for, is APARTHEID with a NEW name. How devious and quaint.
The new British settlers in the colony of Quebec were both Empire Loyalists and Britons who were enterprising enough to start their own businesses, thus they like most settlers hired people they knew who had experience and knowledge. One of these was James McGill, a Scots fur trader, who was a bachelor. James McGill bequeathed all his money for the building of an English language university in Montreal, and that university still exists today in Montreal. I agree that the Empire Loyalists came to settle in the British colony of Quebec after American independence. But they built everything themselves, and did not expect the government to do everything for them, because they believed in the Protestant work ethic: Hard work never hurt anyone. Here again, lacking education and intellectual polish, Luc Robitaille keeps using the word ENGLISH, when he really means British. Because like most Canadien, Luc Robitaille is still stuck in a time warp, dating back to a war between the French and English nations.
He deliberately omits to mention that it was two empires that fought for North America in the mid-8th century, were Great Britain and France. That Quebec even then was a French colony called New France and not a nation. The difference today is that Venezuela is a country whereas Quebec is not, nor has it ever been. By the Anglo-French Treaty of Paris, of February 10, 1763, France not ceded her colony of New France to Great Britain, but also its colonial population, who were no longer French colonials, but British subjects. The Canadien were denied a return to France because of their mixed blood. Hence New France was renamed Quebec by the British and later became the British colony of Lower Canada. Unlike Venezuela, there was no called as such for Great Britain to invade.
Then he comes out with this statement.
“Well, that’s exactly what happened in Canada when the English took control of it.”
Further along he claimed that his interpretation represented the real history of Canada, while mine was useless fiction, and I was an Apartheidist (a new word created by Luc Robitaille) or racist, and attempted to pass of his revisionism as history, which he then calls information.
“The French were the first European nation in far North America… the crimes of the English towards the French started in Acadia (Acadie).”
Luc Robitaille then progressed to the story of the Deportation of the Acadiens in 1755 – 1762, leaving out some very important points. France ceded Acadia to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, April 17, 1713. The deportation of the Acadiens was not decided in Great Britain, as some Acadien and pseudo French-Canadien historians have concluded, but by American colonials, like Benjamin Franklin among others, who saw the Northern Menace (the French) for what they were. Their reasoning was that the British colonies were not safe, as long as they had French fifth columnists or so-called neutral French (Acadiens) in their midst as was the case in 1755. The deportation took place after the ambush of General Edward Braddock by the French and their Indian allies at Monogahela, a place not far from Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) on July 9, 1755.
Proof has now been uncovered that some Acadien Catholic priests were urging the Acadiens to attack the British settlements in northern Massachusetts in support of the French attack on British colonies in America, and one of these priests was Abbe Jean-Louis Le Loutre. The decision for the Deportation of the Acadiens was not made in Great Britain, but in the American colonies, by American colonists, and in no way involved British Redcoats, but members of the Massachusetts Militia.
So Attorney Warren A. Perrin, a man of Acadien ancestry from Lafayette, Louisiana, USA was wrong to demand an apology from Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain for the Deportation of the Acadiens from Nova Scotia, Canada in 1755-62. Rather, Warren A. Perrin should have demanded an apology from the United States government for the Deportation of the Acadiens from Nova Scotia in 1755-62. But he lacked the intestinal fortitude to pursue that approach.
What should also be considered is that the Acadiens were alive to be deported, but the French usually scalped and killed or sold British prisoners as slaves, be they men, women or children, as was done at Fort Oswego, Fort William Henry and elsewhere-- all conveniently omitted by Luc Robitaille.
Luc Robitaille upholds the right of Quebec to pass laws in violation of the United Nations Charter of December 10, 1948, which Canada signed. But again he refuses to answer as the question as to why Quebec condemned South African APARTHEID and yet demanded U.N. sanctions against that country, when he knew that Quebec’s RACIST Language Laws were far worse than South African Apartheid? No country has any laws similar to Quebec in respect of language and race. Again Luc Robitaille promotes the falsehood that Quebec is a country, which is certainly is not the case, nor has it ever been.
One of his statements is a stark departure from reality:
“We don’t want to disappear as a NATION?” Tell me where is there is such a nation as Quebec? “ We don’t want to be marginalized and reduced to a folkloric people, like happened in Louisiana. USA.” Again Luc Robitaille is stricken selective amnesia to escape reality. It was France under the Corsican Emperor Napoleon that sold the Louisiana territory to the United States of America 1803, for the goodly sum of $15,000,000. Louisiana was treated, as a French colony right till the time of its sale, so how does he think Louisiana became American? It was la mere France the same country that Luc Robitaille speaks of with such honour, that sold Louisiana to the United States. Is he not fortunate that France did not owned Quebec in 1803, when she would likely have sold that territory to the Americans as well?
Luc Robitaille speaks in terms of his fond memory of French President General De Gaulle’s July 24, 1967 visit to Montreal and his undiplomatic speech from the balcony of Montreal City Hall of: Vive le Quebec Libre! Speaking as a representative of the same country that sold Louisiana to the United States in1803, I wonder why he didn’t shout “Vive le Louisiane libre!” The generals ramblings were nothing more than meaningless and spurious words coming from a “legendin his own mind.”
Luc Robitaille neglected to mention the attempts of two Quebec leftist terrorists who drove a truck across the US border loaded with dynamite to blow up the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Washington Monument in Washington, DC in the early 1960s. The two Quebecois terrorists were caught, served light sentences in the U.S. after which they were deported back to Canada. Did these actions also represent a blow against what he calls U.S. imperialism, and if so why? Then again there were different groups like Pierre Bourgault’s Rassamblement pour l’Independance Nationale (RIN), the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ), co-founded by Raymond Villeneuve, Gabriel Hudon and Belgian immigrant George Schoeters a good friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The Ralliement National founded by Gilles Gregoire, was also a left leaning communist oriented political group. The FLQ used bombs to blow up mailboxes, kidnappings and the murder of a member of the Bomb Squad, they carried out kidnappings and they murdered Quebec Labour Minister Pierre LaPorte, all instead of using the ballot box to achieve its aims. After members of the FLQ were caught, where was their place of refuge? Why CUBA of course. Most political parties in Quebec have leftist leanings and links to Cuba. So we know their real aim is not to create a democracy, but a totalitarian State in Quebec. Or should that be a Free Totalitarian POLICE STATE? The RIN, RN and FLQ were merged into the PARTI QUEBECOIS, which was founded by Rene Levesque, who served in the U.S. Army during World War II. The former Quebecois terrorists are now laundered politicians in the Parti Quebecois.
The Quebecois or Canadien, have been living under sufferance from 1763, and think that they own this country (Canada), which they still think of in terms of NEW FRANCE. That of course is the illusion to which they still cling. Quebecois or Canadien is neither French nor French-Canadien at all, but a kind of Mestizo/Mestiza by race. It’s unreal, but they dream of things not as they really are, but they want them to be.
Finally, I bring this counter article to a close by including an extract from a letter written by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King on May 11, 1942 and mailed a week later on May 18, 1942.
When I was a boy in the <
>, I used to see a good many French Canadians who had rather recently come into the New Bedford area, near the old Delano place, at Fair Haven. They seemed very much out of place in what was still an old New England community. They segregated themselves in the mill towns and had little to do with their neighbors. I can still remember that the old generation shook their heads and used to say. < >. Today, forty or fifty years later, the French-Canadian elements in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are at last becoming a part of the American melting pot. They no longer vote as their churches and their societies tell them to. They are inter-marrying with the original Anglo-Saxon stock; they are good, peaceful citizens, and most of them are speaking English in their homes.
All of this leads me to wonder whether, by some sort of planning, Canada and the United States, working toward the same end, cannot do some planning – perhaps unwritten planning which would not even be a public policy - by which we can hasten the objective of assimilating the New England French Canadians and Canada’s French Canadians into the whole of our respective bodies politic. There are of course, many methods of doing this, which depend on local circumstances. Wider opportunities can perhaps be given to them in other parts of Canada and the U.S.; and at the same time, certain opportunities can probably be given to the non French Canadian stock to mingle more greatly with them in their own centers.
In other words, after nearly two hundred years with you and after seventy-five years with us, there would seem to be no good reason for great differentials between the French population elements and the rest of the racial stocks.
It is on the same basis that I am trying to work out post-war plans for the encouragement of the distribution of certain other nationalities in our large congested centers. There ought not to be such a concentration of Italians and of Jews, and even Germans as we have today in New York City. I have started my National Resources Planning Commission to work on a survey of this kind.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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