Oh Richler! Oh racism! ---------------------- Review of Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country by Mordecai Richler (Penguin Books, 1992): $14.99 Review by Sean Purdy, April 1992 Socialist Worker (Canada) The chorus of Quebec-bashing within English Canada has just found a new lead voice. The prominent novelist, Mordecai Richler, is the latest to publicly jump on the anti-Quebec bandwagon with the publication of his new book, Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country. Richler's vicious onslaught on the Quebecois has justifiably outraged the French language press. Even one of Richler's allies, the Equality Party MNA Richard Holden, believes he "perdu ses pedales" (was bicycling without pedals). Attacking Quebec nationalists as "paranoid" and "tribalist," Richler serves up the familiar diatribe against Quebec. We are told Quebec is not now an oppressed nation, if it ever was; that Quebec's constitutional demands are unreasonable and are the main cause of Canada's political and social problems; and the Quebecois are more guilty of oppressing minorities than other Canadians. Central to his argument is that Quebec is not an oppressed nation. On the contrary, "English-speaking Canada, far from stifling Quebec, has acted...as a committed partner, a buffer, shielding its culture from the rest of an English-speaking continent that Quebecers perceive as a threatening force." Echoing the American anti-politically correct crusader Dinesh de Souza's "victim's revolution", Richler considers Quebec's grievances as mere "injustice collecting." Conveniently absent from his account is any discussion of the oppressive policies of the Canadian state towards Quebec. Somehow the Conquest, the Rebellions of 1837-38, the Conscription riots, the October Crisis and the repatriation of the Constitution in 1982 escape his notice. The fact that until recently the Quebecois were relegated to the lowest paying jobs and were unable to speak French at many workplaces also warrants scant attention in Richler's account. The present denial of Quebec's right to national self-determination is only the continuation of a long history of oppression. The plight of what Richler absurdly calls "besieged Anglophones" in Quebec takes up a good part of the book. In a bizarre rewriting of history, Richler harks back to a supposed golden age of English- French relations in the 1940s and 50s when "English, as well as French, thrived there and the two cultures enriched rather than excoriated one another." It is revealing that the only evidence offered for this dubious assertion is that there were a number of Anglophone success stories in the Montreal artistic community. There is no mention of the numerous barriers that francophones faced in the political and economic sphere, let alone in culture. Ignored is the fact that in Richler's "good old days" francophones could not get service in French at Eatons and Simpsons - symbolic bastions of English dominance. French language rights come under particular fire in Richler's book. Praising the imperialism of the English language, Richler denigrates any attempt to safeguard French culture - the objective of Bill's 101 and 178 - as an unnecessary and even tyrannical infringement of English rights. The fact that the Quebecois have had to fight for decades for whatever language guarantees they have is not acknowledged. Legislation protecting language is a minor recognition of basic democratic rights and clearly a positive result of years of struggle to improve social and economic conditions. The contention that Anglophones inside or outside Quebec are oppressed is plainly false. Even among francophones, fluency in English is still essential for economic advancement. Moreover, it is still the case that no other linguistic minority outside Quebec enjoys such privileges and services that the English-speaking minority have in Quebec - universities, daily papers, radio and television stations, schools, and other cultural institutions. Surveying the political situation from a Montreal bar, Richler and his sexist band of disaffected Anglophone drinking buddies are threatened with the erosion of their dominance and can do nothing but look back nostalgically to the days when francophones were kept in their place. Richler's most hateful claim is that anti-Semitism is interwoven with Quebec nationalism. In fact, Quebec is charged with being the worst perpetrator of oppression against minorities in Canada. Drawing on limited evidence, contemporary Quebec society is accused of being at the "vanguard" of anti-semitism in Canada. The sordid history of anti-Semitism among some elites in Quebec is undeniable. Richler quotes a number of blatantly racist statements by former nationalist leaders such as Henri Bourassa, Andre Laurendeau and Abbe Lionel Groulx. While focusing on the persistence of anti-semitic attitudes in Quebec, Richler lets English Canada off the hook for such travesties as Mackenzie King's refusal to admit Jews fleeing Nazi death camps in the late 1930s. Richler also fails to fully acknowledge the committed resistance to racism in Quebec. For example, after newspaper magnate Pierre Peladeau published blatantly anti-semitic statements, numerous Quebecois including 3,000 unionists at the Universite de Montreal publicly protested this injustice. Blaming Jews and other minorities is an unacceptable response to the legitimate social grievances that the Quebec people feel. It is a dead-end strategy which plays into the hands of the right wing who seek to divide workers against each other. But to argue, as Richler does, that Quebec is more racist than the rest of Canada is groundless. The experience of Blacks, the First Nations, and other minorities has been one of constant institutionalized and state directed racism across Canada. Even a cursory look at history proves this. Arguing that Quebec is the main source of racist division in Canadian society is a way of further discrediting Quebec's legitimate rights to self-determination. As political commentary, Oh Canada! Oh Quebec, is marked by sketchy reasoning and scant attention to the facts and historical context. By falsely accusing Quebec for the country's ills, Richler's book is another weapon in the arsenal of the right-wing that socialists will have to challenge in their defense of Quebec's right to freely decide its own future.