Between admiration and contempt: how do Quebecers judge the French?

While Prime Minister Gabriel Attal returns to France after a two-day Canadian visit during which he spent a day in Quebec City, the Paris Book Festival is putting Quebec literature in the spotlight this weekend , 25 years after she was last invited to the event. Strong ties unite France and the largest Canadian province, but their respective inhabitants are not necessarily the best of friends. The inhabitants of France have their opinion on those of Quebec. And Quebecers are not left out when describing the French.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the French sometimes project the image of an arrogant and intolerant big brother, who, because of a shared language and history, omits the cultural adaptation that is normally required. demonstrate abroad. Result: at times he feels a little too much at home in the largest French-speaking region on the American continent. This behavior can work to its disadvantage, as evidenced by certain preconceived ideas anchored in Quebec minds.

For sociologist Mathieu Bock-Côté, the relationship that Quebecers have with the French “depends on the environment they belong to”. Indeed, the Figaro columnist takes as an example the case of nationalists, for whom links with France are essential, especially since General de Gaulle “deprovincialized” their cause through his phrase “Long live free Quebec!” , delivered on the balcony of Montreal city hall in 1967. Furthermore, while it was common for Quebec elites to do part of their studies in France, the preferred destinations are now English-speaking Canada or the United States. , according to Marc André Bodet. For this associate professor in the political science department of Laval University, in Quebec, this explains why the “affective relationship” maintained by the elites towards France has gradually crumbled.

However, general trends are emerging within the Quebec population. In this regard, Mathieu Bock-Côté affirms that “most Quebecers” refer to the inhabitants of France as their “French cousins”, before indicating that they “have a concern for genealogy and therefore know the life of their hexagonal ancestors.

Furthermore, the sovereignist essayist underlines the importance of the French role by explaining that, “for a Quebecer, the ultimate recognition is that of France”. He specifies that this trend has been prevalent “since Felix Leclerc” (a great independence activist and pioneer of Quebec poetic song, whose success was established in France at the beginning of the 1950s). The French influence, even if it does not always say its name, is deeply rooted. This is evidenced by, according to Mathieu Bock-Côté, the 2019 law on secularism, largely inspired by the French model, and which English-speaking Canada “does not understand”. The admiration for the ancestor across the Atlantic does not stop there, because Quebecers are also “fascinated” by the country for its art of living.

However, the Quebec population does not hesitate to mock the French for “their abusive use of anglicisms”. “Quebecers are ashamed of Anglicisms,” Canadian linguist André Thibault recently explained in the columns of Le Figaro. For him, “speaking French is not only a source of pride, but an act of resistance” against the pressure of the English-speaking world.

This is where a less happy part of the opinion that Quebecers have about the French comes into play: the inhabitants of the large province fear being “snubbed” or “despised,” according to Mathieu Bock-Côté. For him, Quebecers experience a “feeling of inferiority” which is “linked to their history” and have the impression of being considered by the French population as individuals who speak “less good French”. Furthermore, the fact that they felt “abandoned” by France on several occasions while being “surrounded” by English speakers also forges this feeling. Indeed, Paris, formerly focused on its French-speaking partners, has “abandoned” entities like Quebec to “focus on European integration”, analyzes Marc André Bodet.

This logic also led the Élysée to deal directly with the Canadian federal government, mainly under the five-year terms of Nicolas Sarkozy and then François Hollande, which led to a normalization of France-Quebec relations. According to the specialist in Quebec and Canadian politics, the connection “is no longer so much linguistic as instrumental.”

Despite these few negative opinions, the link with France is “fundamentally positive”, concludes Mathieu Bock-Côté, before specifying that the popular designation “cursed Frenchmen” is used less than “in the time of our grandmothers”. It must be said that the massive arrival of young people with an international orientation and less and less imprint of French habits and customs tends to make the old clichés about the French population quite obsolete. Finally, the central role played by French immigrants in Quebec has been substantially reduced by the diversification of immigration welcomed by the province of Montreal.