Je suis tellement fière d'être québecoise, mais je suis Canadienne avant tout.

No more elections for a few years, plz!!

Just got home from work. Damn, is it ever cold!! Just a few days ago, I was marveling at how mild it has been so far in December and I think I jinxed the province. -20C all day today, not even counting the wind chill.

On my way home from Chrysler on the bus I was listening to the radio on my Mp3 player as the election results were coming in. First off, since I didn't get the chance to vote today I suppose I'm not entitled to bitch about the results. However, it was way too cold to walk to the polling station before work which resulted in the lowest voter turnout in our provincial elections at something like 57%.

The Liberals got a slim majority with 66 seats,the Parti Quebecois did better than expected with 51 and the ADQ crumbled, winning only 7 seats (Mario Dumont resigned as head of the ADQ, which is pretty much the only good news).

So I'm sitting in the crowded 215 listening to the radio and Pauline Marois is giving her "victory speech" (congrats on losing the election??). The Parti Quebecois militants are chanting "ON VEUT UN PAYS!! ON VEUT UN PAYS!!" (WE WANT A COUNTRY!! WE WANT A COUNTRY!!) in the background and as soon as I hear this, my eyes well up with tears. I must of looked like a real idiot, on the verge of crying, but thankfully no one was paying attention. So to this she replies to the crowd: "On va l'avoir, c'est sure" (We will get it, for sure!). I am so sick of these fucking separatists... they may want their country, but why the hell do they deserve to tear mine apart in the process? This good showing by the PQ could very well rally the separatists who have been pretty quiet since losing the referendum in '95.

I love my country and I love my province. I love living in Montreal; there is nowhere else in the world that I would rather call home. But if the PQ starts rocking the boat and talking about separation and referendums again, I am out of here. I just can't take deal with this again. In 1995, we came within 1% of Quebec separating from Canada. I was 13 years old, and worried sick that I could wake up in a different country than the one I went to bed in.



Just watching this video brings back all the anxiety and emotion of that night.

Even more telling is the video from the cbc.ca archives of the broadcast that night: here Poor Peter Mansbridge sounds so deflated at the beginning of the segment when the Yes side was still ahead. It's so touching to hear the reactions of the crew and people behind the scenes - it goes to show just how emotional that night was for every single person in this country.

Now I'm not even all that politically-minded, but I was raised to be a proud Canadian. My mother sent me to a French elementary because she wanted me to learn French so that I would have every opportunity to work here. I am so thankful to her for having this foresight. I don't know anyone who is more bilingual than my mom, but she was raised in a French neighborhood. I grew up in the English part of town with almost exclusively English friends, but thanks to my six years at Charlemagne, I speak near perfect French. I hold as much resentment towards Anglophones who live here and make zero attempt to learn the language (some of my best friends included) as I do to the separatists who refuse to utter a word of English. In the long run, though, it's the pettiness and xenophobia of the separatist Quebecois that make them the bigger of two evils. It's all good and fine if you plan on spending the rest of your life in Abitibi-Temiscamingue or some backwoods town, but as soon as you set foot outside of the province you will come to realize that a knowledge of English is imperative if you plan on traveling or doing business outside of Quebec. I will grant that Quebec is a distinct society, but is it anymore than British-Columbia, or any of the Maritime provinces? (Ontario and the Prairies are pretty much all the same thing anyway! hahaha) I apologize for the ranting and raving, but this is something that, even in Montreal, affects usona day-to-day basis. English-French relations in this province can be tenuous, and there is so much history to consider. It is something that profoundly interests me, and should I ever decide to do a Master's degree, I would love to study it more in-depth, be it through Linguistics or Sociology or History or whatever. That, however, is VERY unlikely! haha.. I'm gona take my bachelor's degree and run!!!

So, all that said, I really hate provincial politics here. These sovereigntists always try to play the US against THEM game. They have made me feel that since my name is not Louise Tremblay or whatever, that I do not belong here, that I am not a Quebecer. We've had a 13-year reprieve , with no talk of seperation; politics here had begun to shift more towards left vs. right ideologies instead of Federalists vs. seperatists. Now, with Marois seemingly lighting a fire under the sovereigntists' butts, I am so scared that all this crap is going to boil over again. With the way the economy is going, and the state of wordly affairs in general, this PETTY DIVISIVENESS is the last thing we need. So, at the first whiff of the PQ gaining steam and any chance of another referendum, I'm packing my bags and saying goodbye to my home.

haha.. i just posted this in the video comment for the youtube video I posted above:

"ayoye.. en entendant le discourse de Marois a soir, avec le monde qui scande "On veut un pays!" ca m'a fait penser a 1995.

Honnetement, si jamais le Quebec obtient son independence, nous autres a Montreal, on va se separer du Quebec. Ca serait interessant, n'est-ce pas? Passer par les douanes chaque fois que vous venez en ville!! haha.. ca me fait rire. Comme si y'avais pas d'autres choses encore plus importants qu'un "Quebec libre".. l'economie en particulier."

(wow... listening to Marois' speech tonight, with people chanting "we want a country" made me think back to 1995. Honestly, if Quebec ever gets its independance, we here in Montreal wil seperate from Quebec. It would be interesting, don't you think? Having to clear customs every time you want to come to the city. haha.. it makes me laugh. As if there weren't more pressing issues at the moment than a "free Quebec", like the economy for instance...")

oh man, I am soooooo gonna get blasted by the separatists!! I'll be sure to post the most colorful remarks here.

Je suis tellement fière d'être québecoise, mais je suis Canadienne avant tout.