What do you think?
Rate this book
Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!: Requiem for a Divided Country
A humorous look at Quebec's movement toward independence from Canada, remarking upon the Draconian language laws imposed on English-speaking Quebecois, the economic problems posed by the movement, and the troubles with blind nationalism.
277 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Mordecai Richler
92 books394 followersWorking-class Jewish background based novels, which include
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
(1959) and
Saint Urbain's Horseman
(1971), of Canadian writer Mordecai Richler.
People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.
A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.
Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.
Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.
Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.
Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.
In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.
Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.
Richler died of cancer.
People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.
A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.
Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.
Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.
Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.
Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.
In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.
Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.
Richler died of cancer.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
July 23, 2020
OH CANADA! Our Home and Native Land, OH QUEBEC! Terre de Nos Aïeux
J’ai eu de la chance d’être né canadien. J’en suis fier et je dis à tout mes amis autour du monde que le Canada est un pays magnifique. Mais, je dois aussi dire aux mes concitoyens canadiens, qu'ils soient francophones ou anglophones, qu'ils habitent Québec ou non, que mon Canada n’est pas complet sans Québec ou sans la langue française.
What I wanted from OH CANADA! OH QUEBEC! was an informative 125 year long story about a divided country’s efforts, for better or for worse, for success or for failure, for hateful or for tolerant, to bridge the gap between Quebec and the rest of the country, between francophones and anglophones, between pure laine and metaphorical not-so-pure polyester blends … in short, between Hugh MacLennan’s proverbial TWO SOLITUDES. The opening couple of chapters held out great promise of living up to this reader’s hopes. Witness, for example, this summary of the Supreme Court’s Solomonic judgment on a challenge to Section 58 of Quebec’s much vilified Bill 101,
“… the court ruled unanimously, “Language is so intimately related to the form and content of expression that there cannot be true freedom of expression if one is prohibited from using the language of one’s choice.” Then, leaning on Quebec’s very own Charter of Human Rights, the court declared the sign law a clear violation of freedom of expression and stated that a ban on other languages was not needed to defend the French language.”
Could a belief in the value of bilingualism or a confidence in the inherent strength, beauty and longevity of the French language be put any more eloquently? Go ahead and feel free to judge me guilty of blatant confirmation bias but, to this day, I hold those English Canadians and French Canadians alike who do not believe in the value of bilingualism in considerable disdain. I take great pride in my continuing efforts to move my ability in French beyond competency and into fluency.
Sadly, OH CANADA! OH QUEBEC! quickly failed to clear the hurdle of those early expectations as it dwindled off into a petulant, whiny, self-pitying dirge that, more than anything else, was a history of anti-Semitism in Quebec. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting for a moment that it didn’t or doesn’t exist to some degree. And, God knows, anti-Semitism is hateful – period - and has no place in my Canada any more than anti-French or anti-English sentiments lobbed back and forth between unilingual Canadians who refuse to acknowledge, accept, honour or promote the other official language. It just wasn’t what I wanted to read about in this particular book.
And, thus, OH CANADA! OH QUEBEC!, despite the promise of early chapters, is relegated to my did-not-finish list and receives a niggardly 2-star rating!
Paul Weiss
J’ai eu de la chance d’être né canadien. J’en suis fier et je dis à tout mes amis autour du monde que le Canada est un pays magnifique. Mais, je dois aussi dire aux mes concitoyens canadiens, qu'ils soient francophones ou anglophones, qu'ils habitent Québec ou non, que mon Canada n’est pas complet sans Québec ou sans la langue française.
What I wanted from OH CANADA! OH QUEBEC! was an informative 125 year long story about a divided country’s efforts, for better or for worse, for success or for failure, for hateful or for tolerant, to bridge the gap between Quebec and the rest of the country, between francophones and anglophones, between pure laine and metaphorical not-so-pure polyester blends … in short, between Hugh MacLennan’s proverbial TWO SOLITUDES. The opening couple of chapters held out great promise of living up to this reader’s hopes. Witness, for example, this summary of the Supreme Court’s Solomonic judgment on a challenge to Section 58 of Quebec’s much vilified Bill 101,
“… the court ruled unanimously, “Language is so intimately related to the form and content of expression that there cannot be true freedom of expression if one is prohibited from using the language of one’s choice.” Then, leaning on Quebec’s very own Charter of Human Rights, the court declared the sign law a clear violation of freedom of expression and stated that a ban on other languages was not needed to defend the French language.”
Could a belief in the value of bilingualism or a confidence in the inherent strength, beauty and longevity of the French language be put any more eloquently? Go ahead and feel free to judge me guilty of blatant confirmation bias but, to this day, I hold those English Canadians and French Canadians alike who do not believe in the value of bilingualism in considerable disdain. I take great pride in my continuing efforts to move my ability in French beyond competency and into fluency.
Sadly, OH CANADA! OH QUEBEC! quickly failed to clear the hurdle of those early expectations as it dwindled off into a petulant, whiny, self-pitying dirge that, more than anything else, was a history of anti-Semitism in Quebec. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting for a moment that it didn’t or doesn’t exist to some degree. And, God knows, anti-Semitism is hateful – period - and has no place in my Canada any more than anti-French or anti-English sentiments lobbed back and forth between unilingual Canadians who refuse to acknowledge, accept, honour or promote the other official language. It just wasn’t what I wanted to read about in this particular book.
And, thus, OH CANADA! OH QUEBEC!, despite the promise of early chapters, is relegated to my did-not-finish list and receives a niggardly 2-star rating!
Paul Weiss
July 1, 2015
“O Canada,” the Canadian national anthem, can sound somewhat different depending upon whether one is listening to it in English or French. In English, the anthem is sedate and dignified – “With hearts on high, we see thee rise/Our true North, strong and free.” In French, by contrast, the lyrics seem both more militant and more openly religious: “Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,/Il sait porter la croix!” (“Because your arm can hold the sword,/It can carry the cross!”) That difference speaks to the ways in which anglophone and francophone perspectives on Canadian life can differ – something that is a major theme of Mordecai Richler’s 1992 book Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!.
Richler was one of the most successful and best-known Canadian writers of the 20th century. Many American readers first became aware of his work when his 1959 novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was adapted in 1974 into a popular film that starred Richard Dreyfuss. As a Jewish Canadian, Richler offered a perspective on his country’s life that transcended the anglophone-vs.-francophone dynamic that has often dominated Canadian political discourse. And as an anglophone citizen of Montreal, he saw how the activities of some Québécois politicians in his city were changing life there, and he did not like what he saw.
Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! had its beginnings in a 32-page article that Richler published in The New Yorker in September 1991. The article, titled “Inside/Outside,” alternated between the satirical and the serious in criticizing Québécois language policies like the then-new “Charter of the French Language” that restricted the use of English in order to ensure that the French language would be dominant in Québécois life. In the process of critiquing things like the way the law affected the signage that people could post inside and outside their businesses, Richler also pointed out how some elements of the Québécois nationalist movement had historically been tinged with anti-Semitism.
The response to “Inside/Outside,” from some within the Québécois community, ranged from disappointed to vitriolic; some charged that Richler, a native Montrealer, was “not one of us.” Unbowed in the face of some singularly harsh criticism, Richler expanded the ideas of “Inside/Outside” into Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! -- a book that bears the grim subtitle Requiem for a Divided Country.
Richler frames the ideas of Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! in terms of conversations with friends at Woody’s Pub, a now-long-gone bar on Bishop Street in Montreal. One such Woody’s Pub conversation, while the signage law is in development, centers around what is known regarding the law’s provisions: “French letters must be bigger than English letters. The space around the French letters must be larger than the space around the English letters….The colour of the French and English lettering should be the same. If it’s not, the colour of the French should be stronger. The language inspector will decide what colour is stronger” (p. 51).
Richler and his friends at Woody’s Pub respond to the provisions of this law – at once draconian and picayune – with humour and satire, proposing “an amendment to Bill 178 that would call for French to be spoken twice as loud as English inside and outside. Inspectors from the language commission would be armed with sound meters to detect Anglophones who spoke above a whisper, sending offenders to the slammer. A Francophone hockey player scoring a goal for le Club de hockey canadien would have to be cheered twice as loud as a minority-group teammate” (p. 57).
Québécois readers who might tend to dislike Richler’s stance on Quebec’s language laws might be surprised to hear Richler descant sympathetically on how Québécois culture is “adrift in a monolithic Anglo sea” – bordered on east and west by anglophone provinces of Canada, bordered on the south by the United States, and also “inundated daily by American television channels…and American films, magazines, and pop music”, till the French-speaking people of the province “feel they are manning a vulnerable dike in their attempt to hold back a surging wave” (p. 55).
Richler also takes pains to make clear that not all of the language-policy extremism in Canada is to be found in francophone Quebec: “There is no denying that the nutters who support the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada, as well as many westerners who have found a home in the new Reform Party, have been anti-Francophone for years” (p. 159).
Yet Richler clearly feels that the way Quebec’s leaders are trying to protect and preserve Québécois culture is wrongheaded. Looking back to 1976, when René Lévesque and his Parti Québécois took power in Quebec’s National Assembly (please note the provincial assembly’s name), Richler states that he does not blame the PQ’s militancy for all aspects of Montreal’s decline – once Canada’s largest city, it is now second in size to Toronto – but then makes clear what he does blame the PQ for:
[I]f I grew up in a city where an Anglophone young man or woman could feel at home and anticipate settling into a future commensurate with his or her ability, that is clearly no longer the case. Just about everything has been done to make the Anglophone youth, even those who are fluently bilingual, feel unwelcome in Quebec. (p. 107)
And Richler adds that the measures that Québécois leaders advocate in response to population decline in Quebec – calling, for instance, for large-scale immigration to Quebec from France and other francophone countries – are not workable, either. He sarcastically asks who would want to emigrate from beautiful, temperate France to the singularly bitter winters of Quebec, and then points out how Quebec’s own Immigration Department has “revealed that, in the seventies, 35 percent of immigrants left Quebec for other provinces” (p. 201). The leaders of Quebec can encourage French-speaking people of other countries to emigrate to Quebec, but it can’t make them stay in Quebec.
In a thoughtful postscript, Richler looks back at the sometimes-intemperate responses that Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! generated among Québécois readers and leaders, particularly for the points that Richler makes regarding expressions of anti-Semitism among a number of Québécois leaders and media outlets. In response, Richler cites multiple studies, by scholars from York University (Toronto) and Concordia University (Montreal), all of which indicate that “anti-Semitic attitudes are more prevalent in Quebec, and particularly among Francophones, than elsewhere in Canada” (p. 254).
The postscript shows how Richler, a writer who was always known for speaking his mind, responded to the harshness of his critics the way Montreal Canadiens star Maurice “Rocket” Richard would react to an on-ice challenge from a Toronto Maple Leafs rival – with gloves off and fists up.
The Requiem for a Divided Country subtitle for this book speaks to Richler’s concern that policies like those of the PQ could constitute a practical threat to Canadian national unity itself. And indeed, it was only three years after the publication of Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! that a 1995 referendum on whether Quebec should proclaim sovereignty and independence failed – but not by much, with the ”No” vote winning by 50.58 to 49.42 percent.
Today, Canada remains a united country, and Quebec remains a singularly beautiful and culturally distinctive province within the country. Richler, who passed away in 2001, loved Quebec; he takes pains at one point to state that, “Speaking for myself, I do not need to live in Quebec”, but then adds that, while he could relocate and possibly do better in Great Britain or the United States, “I live in Quebec because it’s home and I happen to like it here” (p. 159). He writes Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! in a spirit of great love mingled with deep concern.
Richler was one of the most successful and best-known Canadian writers of the 20th century. Many American readers first became aware of his work when his 1959 novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was adapted in 1974 into a popular film that starred Richard Dreyfuss. As a Jewish Canadian, Richler offered a perspective on his country’s life that transcended the anglophone-vs.-francophone dynamic that has often dominated Canadian political discourse. And as an anglophone citizen of Montreal, he saw how the activities of some Québécois politicians in his city were changing life there, and he did not like what he saw.
Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! had its beginnings in a 32-page article that Richler published in The New Yorker in September 1991. The article, titled “Inside/Outside,” alternated between the satirical and the serious in criticizing Québécois language policies like the then-new “Charter of the French Language” that restricted the use of English in order to ensure that the French language would be dominant in Québécois life. In the process of critiquing things like the way the law affected the signage that people could post inside and outside their businesses, Richler also pointed out how some elements of the Québécois nationalist movement had historically been tinged with anti-Semitism.
The response to “Inside/Outside,” from some within the Québécois community, ranged from disappointed to vitriolic; some charged that Richler, a native Montrealer, was “not one of us.” Unbowed in the face of some singularly harsh criticism, Richler expanded the ideas of “Inside/Outside” into Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! -- a book that bears the grim subtitle Requiem for a Divided Country.
Richler frames the ideas of Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! in terms of conversations with friends at Woody’s Pub, a now-long-gone bar on Bishop Street in Montreal. One such Woody’s Pub conversation, while the signage law is in development, centers around what is known regarding the law’s provisions: “French letters must be bigger than English letters. The space around the French letters must be larger than the space around the English letters….The colour of the French and English lettering should be the same. If it’s not, the colour of the French should be stronger. The language inspector will decide what colour is stronger” (p. 51).
Richler and his friends at Woody’s Pub respond to the provisions of this law – at once draconian and picayune – with humour and satire, proposing “an amendment to Bill 178 that would call for French to be spoken twice as loud as English inside and outside. Inspectors from the language commission would be armed with sound meters to detect Anglophones who spoke above a whisper, sending offenders to the slammer. A Francophone hockey player scoring a goal for le Club de hockey canadien would have to be cheered twice as loud as a minority-group teammate” (p. 57).
Québécois readers who might tend to dislike Richler’s stance on Quebec’s language laws might be surprised to hear Richler descant sympathetically on how Québécois culture is “adrift in a monolithic Anglo sea” – bordered on east and west by anglophone provinces of Canada, bordered on the south by the United States, and also “inundated daily by American television channels…and American films, magazines, and pop music”, till the French-speaking people of the province “feel they are manning a vulnerable dike in their attempt to hold back a surging wave” (p. 55).
Richler also takes pains to make clear that not all of the language-policy extremism in Canada is to be found in francophone Quebec: “There is no denying that the nutters who support the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada, as well as many westerners who have found a home in the new Reform Party, have been anti-Francophone for years” (p. 159).
Yet Richler clearly feels that the way Quebec’s leaders are trying to protect and preserve Québécois culture is wrongheaded. Looking back to 1976, when René Lévesque and his Parti Québécois took power in Quebec’s National Assembly (please note the provincial assembly’s name), Richler states that he does not blame the PQ’s militancy for all aspects of Montreal’s decline – once Canada’s largest city, it is now second in size to Toronto – but then makes clear what he does blame the PQ for:
[I]f I grew up in a city where an Anglophone young man or woman could feel at home and anticipate settling into a future commensurate with his or her ability, that is clearly no longer the case. Just about everything has been done to make the Anglophone youth, even those who are fluently bilingual, feel unwelcome in Quebec. (p. 107)
And Richler adds that the measures that Québécois leaders advocate in response to population decline in Quebec – calling, for instance, for large-scale immigration to Quebec from France and other francophone countries – are not workable, either. He sarcastically asks who would want to emigrate from beautiful, temperate France to the singularly bitter winters of Quebec, and then points out how Quebec’s own Immigration Department has “revealed that, in the seventies, 35 percent of immigrants left Quebec for other provinces” (p. 201). The leaders of Quebec can encourage French-speaking people of other countries to emigrate to Quebec, but it can’t make them stay in Quebec.
In a thoughtful postscript, Richler looks back at the sometimes-intemperate responses that Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! generated among Québécois readers and leaders, particularly for the points that Richler makes regarding expressions of anti-Semitism among a number of Québécois leaders and media outlets. In response, Richler cites multiple studies, by scholars from York University (Toronto) and Concordia University (Montreal), all of which indicate that “anti-Semitic attitudes are more prevalent in Quebec, and particularly among Francophones, than elsewhere in Canada” (p. 254).
The postscript shows how Richler, a writer who was always known for speaking his mind, responded to the harshness of his critics the way Montreal Canadiens star Maurice “Rocket” Richard would react to an on-ice challenge from a Toronto Maple Leafs rival – with gloves off and fists up.
The Requiem for a Divided Country subtitle for this book speaks to Richler’s concern that policies like those of the PQ could constitute a practical threat to Canadian national unity itself. And indeed, it was only three years after the publication of Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! that a 1995 referendum on whether Quebec should proclaim sovereignty and independence failed – but not by much, with the ”No” vote winning by 50.58 to 49.42 percent.
Today, Canada remains a united country, and Quebec remains a singularly beautiful and culturally distinctive province within the country. Richler, who passed away in 2001, loved Quebec; he takes pains at one point to state that, “Speaking for myself, I do not need to live in Quebec”, but then adds that, while he could relocate and possibly do better in Great Britain or the United States, “I live in Quebec because it’s home and I happen to like it here” (p. 159). He writes Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! in a spirit of great love mingled with deep concern.
May 8, 2012
Amusing and well-written (and a quick read, as far as 250-page treatises about Quebec politics go), this book will put you in the center of Quebec's pre-referendum political and social climate. My only complaint is that Richler spends a lot of time discussing antisemitism in Quebec, more than I believe is necessary to get the point across. It makes some sense for the context in which this book was published (e.g. the book's postscript is a long-form response to comments received about an except of the book published in The New Yorker), but someone intent on modernizing the text could probably edit it down a further 50 pages or so.
As for the content of the book, well, I fear that it has only solidified my lingering unease with Quebec as a province. Some of Richler's observations resonated with me, proving that the book's 20-year-old portrayal of Quebecois culture, nationalism, and the anglophone experience in Quebec is not as dated as it should be.
But let's back up a minute. I'm not actually an anglophone. I was born in Montreal to immigrant parents, grew up speaking French at home, and even attended a year of francophone school before we moved to Ottawa in 1992. I remember sitting on my parents' bed in 1995, watching the referendum results roll in, and seeing their relief when the status quo prevailed and the sovereignty issue faded from public view. A few years later, we were back in Montreal looking at houses, though we never did return.
As I relocated around the rest of Canada instead, I often told people that I was from Quebec (in so much as one can be "from" a place when having moved around as much as I have - my longest stint was 13 years in Ottawa, which, being more of a conglomerate of government offices than a real city, never felt much like home). What a disappointment to discover on my eventual return to la belle province that I was an outsider now, too long away to be a pure laine Quebecoise, but no anglophone either, my French too fluent (and my Montrealite prejudices too ingrained) for a move to NDG. Sadly, Richler's observation that Quebec culture is an insular and exclusive club remains true in many ways. One cannot become Quebecois merely by being born in the province, speaking the language fluently, or enjoying poutine.
Anglophones do have an easier time of it these days: no longer the targets of hostility, they get cooed over for signing up for French immersion and babbling "bonjours" in meetings. Shopkeepers are all too happy to switch to English at the slightest hint of an accent (confounding the province's continued sensitivity about losing its language). As for me, speaking French with my Canadian mutt accent, I get grilled about my parents' and my background (questions that would be considered politically incorrect if I were a visible minority) in order to ascertain precisely what type of Quebecer I am. Alas. Twenty years on, Quebec still struggles to define itself.
As for the content of the book, well, I fear that it has only solidified my lingering unease with Quebec as a province. Some of Richler's observations resonated with me, proving that the book's 20-year-old portrayal of Quebecois culture, nationalism, and the anglophone experience in Quebec is not as dated as it should be.
But let's back up a minute. I'm not actually an anglophone. I was born in Montreal to immigrant parents, grew up speaking French at home, and even attended a year of francophone school before we moved to Ottawa in 1992. I remember sitting on my parents' bed in 1995, watching the referendum results roll in, and seeing their relief when the status quo prevailed and the sovereignty issue faded from public view. A few years later, we were back in Montreal looking at houses, though we never did return.
As I relocated around the rest of Canada instead, I often told people that I was from Quebec (in so much as one can be "from" a place when having moved around as much as I have - my longest stint was 13 years in Ottawa, which, being more of a conglomerate of government offices than a real city, never felt much like home). What a disappointment to discover on my eventual return to la belle province that I was an outsider now, too long away to be a pure laine Quebecoise, but no anglophone either, my French too fluent (and my Montrealite prejudices too ingrained) for a move to NDG. Sadly, Richler's observation that Quebec culture is an insular and exclusive club remains true in many ways. One cannot become Quebecois merely by being born in the province, speaking the language fluently, or enjoying poutine.
Anglophones do have an easier time of it these days: no longer the targets of hostility, they get cooed over for signing up for French immersion and babbling "bonjours" in meetings. Shopkeepers are all too happy to switch to English at the slightest hint of an accent (confounding the province's continued sensitivity about losing its language). As for me, speaking French with my Canadian mutt accent, I get grilled about my parents' and my background (questions that would be considered politically incorrect if I were a visible minority) in order to ascertain precisely what type of Quebecer I am. Alas. Twenty years on, Quebec still struggles to define itself.
November 28, 2019
3.4⭐ Provocative and heartfelt, Richler let's Quebec's separatists know what he really thinks about them, which is not much. There's a lot of irony in this book, in which Richler, understandably rankled by the intolerance and anti-Semitism of his youth, is in turn intolerant of Quebec nationalism and the whole "laine pure" concept.
The book began as an excerpt the New Yorker, which Richler published as a book following the intemperate outpouring of hatred the article incurred. Richler does make some valid and funny points but it may be he used too broad a brush. Most Quebecois are not racists, nor are they extremists as regards the rest of Canada. They do have long memories,though, when it comes to the prejudice they endured, historically, along with the long struggle they faced to preserve their language and culture against a determined policy of assimilation. There are echoes of victimhood in the book that don't sit well on Richler, in my opinion. I read this 20 years ago but the underlying pressures in Quebec society that he wrote about, are still there.
The book began as an excerpt the New Yorker, which Richler published as a book following the intemperate outpouring of hatred the article incurred. Richler does make some valid and funny points but it may be he used too broad a brush. Most Quebecois are not racists, nor are they extremists as regards the rest of Canada. They do have long memories,though, when it comes to the prejudice they endured, historically, along with the long struggle they faced to preserve their language and culture against a determined policy of assimilation. There are echoes of victimhood in the book that don't sit well on Richler, in my opinion. I read this 20 years ago but the underlying pressures in Quebec society that he wrote about, are still there.
August 21, 2013
The situation has changed since the publication of this book but it was interesting to get an overview of the history leading up to the call for referendum in the early 90s. Having studied Quebec history and society at the francophone Universite de Montreal a few years ago, it was interesting to get the Anglophone viewpoint, including some of the anecdotal evidence. As always in these things, there are genuine hurts and concerns on both sides of the linguistic divide. The author also seeks to address and critcise the anti-Semitic elements he has experienced, although perhaps this takes up a little more of the book than I anticipated.
December 31, 2017
Richler gives full vent to his prejudices and crude stereotypes to produces a splenetic and thoroughly inaccurate caricature of Quebec. Given the prejudice he experienced in his own life, it is sad to see such a great writer and humanist falling into mere ethnic ranting.
July 15, 2012
Mordecai Richler walks us through a history of Quebecois Nationalism to show us it was born out of xenophobic sentiment and blossomed into a movement that was sweeping, pointless, borderline fascist, and utterly insane. Far from being oppressed by les maudites Anglais, Richler documents how the English minority and newcomers to Quebec were subjected to discriminatory laws at the hands of Francophones. The separatist movement tapped into tribal feelings and did little except disrupt the economy, force thousands of Quebeckers to move elsewhere, and creat a lot of animosity. This book deftly deals with the extremism and intolerance of French-Canadian nationalism. It should be required reading for every Canadian, and hopefully it will sell another 85,000 copies when that sordid and silly movement rears its ugly head again. A wonderful book, intelligent and witty. And there there is no retort to it.
Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
November 15, 2011
A very funny, interesting, poignant and informative discussion of Quebec's "Separatism" and its roots as it played out circa 1990, when Quebec's PQ leaders wanted "independence" and the Meech Lake Accord which guaranteed Quebec's "special" status in Canada fell through. Great history of the province and of the French in Canada as well as the reasons for their grievances towards English Canada, although Richler is a definite skeptic as to how bad the French-Canadian oppression is or was, having born the brunt of anti-Semitic prejudice in Montreal as a kid growing up in the '30s and '40s when Quebec's nationalist movement took its walking papers from the Franco and Mussolini regimes. Fascinating stuff!
Currently Reading
February 1, 2011Yeah, I know. Late. But I sat through the 1995 referendum with my bags packed, ready to head to Ontario. So, I thought I'd like to read Mr. Richler's cynical take on the whole thing. No fiction usually takes me ages, so...
March 18, 2021
Montrealers often confuse their city and the province. Most of them have never visited any part of the province and yet they feel and talk like they know it all. Sadly.
As for the author, it feels like he is quite intolerant of the people he accuses of intolerance which is quite ridiculous.
As for the author, it feels like he is quite intolerant of the people he accuses of intolerance which is quite ridiculous.
October 12, 2018
Cogent analysis of the problem
February 25, 2022
I reactivated a Goodreads account I had no souvenir of ever creating for the simple but elegant sake of shitting on this book.
Oh Mordecai! Oh why!
This book, written between Quebec's referendums, is much like a Canadian history monography from which a petulant student, in a fit of francophobic anger, had ripped away every pages he disliked and proceeded to roll them into a joint of SQDC's finest. Having smoked the said joint, he then scribbled the margins with unnecessary comments on the events of 20th century Quebec.
Mordecai makes a serious effort at objectivity but unfortunately that objectivity only makes halfway through chapter 2. Laced into much of the books are scenes from "Woody's pub" where a bunch of white anglophone men gather to reminisce upon the good ol' days when the English bourgeoisie were Montreal's overlords.
Mordecai's version of the history of the québécois nation is VERY selective. He shrewdly eschews the struggle against Britain's ethnocidal tendencies and two centuries of financial domination and class warfare. Surely a writer who's made his bones writing about the ethnic injustices he suffered in Montreal would have no qualms with these themes. Perhaps Mr. Richler felt possessive of his victimhood status? Because instead of attending to what caused the francophone ire of the 70's and 80's (the subject of this book), he waxes at length upon the antisemitic & racist undercurrent of french nationalism in early 20th century Quebec. It's an fair point, albeit incomplete, and it remains relevant with today's atrocious bill 21, but the fact that there are surely twenty times the amount of pages talking about antisemitism rather than oppression in the francophone nation of Canada (which was undoubtedly THE source of divide in Canada) is an admission that the book is not in any way attempting to understand the divide. In fact the only glimpse we get at the history of french Canada is through out-of-context quotes from the most irrational nationalist "firebrands" he could find, selected only for the sake of making Quebecois seem like bedlamites. This book is simply a litany of gripes from Montreal's whiniest writer.
Mordecai really REALLY wants to get the point across that he is an IMPORTANT personage of Montreal's intelligentsia. The books floats from anecdote to anecdote of him enjoying cocktails with various Canadian political heavyweights. Dinner with Mulroney, drinks with Levesque. He is altogether supercilious.
He portrays all of the actors of the quiet revolution through his own distorted lens. Mulroney, a crook of legendary renown who's wife took helicopter trips to the hair salon on taxpayer doe, is an upstanding man of the world. Levesque held profound contempt for his own movement. Camille Laurin's a hateful zealot of the french language. Bourassa is a weak weathervane. etc. Every pro-sovereignty politician is presented with a demeaning adjective, every federalist is lauded. There is no attempt at staying factual. This is Mordecai's version.
But despite the intellectual dishonesty permeating the book, the argument he makes over the language bills he so deeply hates are weak and unconvincing. Mordecai makes the argument that by forcing immigrants to integrate into a french society, rather than learning the lingua franca of North America, English, Quebec's language laws are profoundly discriminative. He fails to understand that the point of these laws is to prevent the general exodus of french to English, because as he mentions, it IS lingua franca. There is no threat to English.
See, what Mordecai fails to understand is a concept Nassim Taleb coined as "the intolerant minority". For example (and this one Mordecai would surely understand) if a small contingent of invitees to a dinner party are of Jewish faith, then the food for everyone needs to be kosher, because of that small minority that only eats kosher food. Similarly, if within a Quebec business meeting a small contingent of people cannot speak french, like, say, Air Canada's president Michael Rousseau who bragged of not being able to speak french in Quebec, then since nearly everyone who's bilingual speaks English the meeting will happen in English. This phenomenon is the reason why English has become the de-facto lingua franca around the world. This is the reason why it is a vital factor for French's survival in Canada that the people of Quebec be able to speak French, and why the English-only communities of Quebec he so valiantly defended are problematic.
But beyond the botched history, the biased politics and faulty arguments, what irked me most about the book is the profound contempt for Quebec culture he conveys. The book closes with this statement, regarding the prospects of an independent Quebec: "Eventually, I suspect, it would revert to being a folkloric society. A place that people come from. Ireland without that country's genius." Ouch. This is just hurtful. I love my culture and believe there is nothing quite like it in the world. Quebec's culture is the pride and envy of English Canada who's culture was for most of history a profoundly Anglophilic offspring of the British crown without much originality, and nowadays is seemingly a liberal cousin of American culture, never having quite found anything distinctive for itself other than this in-betweenness. The parallel between Quebec and Ireland is one that's been made over and over because it is very much accurate. I'm sure Mordecai, sheltered in his anglosphere, has read much of Ireland's great works. But seeing the way he describes Docteur Ferron as merely a writer Quebecers like I tend to believe Mordecai has simply never bothered himself to explore Quebec's culture, perhaps because he's always hated it.
The reading then left me with one question. Why oh Why, Mordecai, did you stay here all of this time if you so disdained the place? Was it a sort of Stockholm syndrome? Had your ire or separatism turned into a twisted form of love? Had you come to like the feeling of victimhood at the hands of those "discriminatory language laws"?
This book deserves burning. I'm convinced this book sits on Richard Henry Bain's end-table to this day, religiously undusted once or twice a month, perhaps the only place where Mordecai Richler still enjoys relevance.
VLQL.
Oh Mordecai! Oh why!
This book, written between Quebec's referendums, is much like a Canadian history monography from which a petulant student, in a fit of francophobic anger, had ripped away every pages he disliked and proceeded to roll them into a joint of SQDC's finest. Having smoked the said joint, he then scribbled the margins with unnecessary comments on the events of 20th century Quebec.
Mordecai makes a serious effort at objectivity but unfortunately that objectivity only makes halfway through chapter 2. Laced into much of the books are scenes from "Woody's pub" where a bunch of white anglophone men gather to reminisce upon the good ol' days when the English bourgeoisie were Montreal's overlords.
Mordecai's version of the history of the québécois nation is VERY selective. He shrewdly eschews the struggle against Britain's ethnocidal tendencies and two centuries of financial domination and class warfare. Surely a writer who's made his bones writing about the ethnic injustices he suffered in Montreal would have no qualms with these themes. Perhaps Mr. Richler felt possessive of his victimhood status? Because instead of attending to what caused the francophone ire of the 70's and 80's (the subject of this book), he waxes at length upon the antisemitic & racist undercurrent of french nationalism in early 20th century Quebec. It's an fair point, albeit incomplete, and it remains relevant with today's atrocious bill 21, but the fact that there are surely twenty times the amount of pages talking about antisemitism rather than oppression in the francophone nation of Canada (which was undoubtedly THE source of divide in Canada) is an admission that the book is not in any way attempting to understand the divide. In fact the only glimpse we get at the history of french Canada is through out-of-context quotes from the most irrational nationalist "firebrands" he could find, selected only for the sake of making Quebecois seem like bedlamites. This book is simply a litany of gripes from Montreal's whiniest writer.
Mordecai really REALLY wants to get the point across that he is an IMPORTANT personage of Montreal's intelligentsia. The books floats from anecdote to anecdote of him enjoying cocktails with various Canadian political heavyweights. Dinner with Mulroney, drinks with Levesque. He is altogether supercilious.
He portrays all of the actors of the quiet revolution through his own distorted lens. Mulroney, a crook of legendary renown who's wife took helicopter trips to the hair salon on taxpayer doe, is an upstanding man of the world. Levesque held profound contempt for his own movement. Camille Laurin's a hateful zealot of the french language. Bourassa is a weak weathervane. etc. Every pro-sovereignty politician is presented with a demeaning adjective, every federalist is lauded. There is no attempt at staying factual. This is Mordecai's version.
But despite the intellectual dishonesty permeating the book, the argument he makes over the language bills he so deeply hates are weak and unconvincing. Mordecai makes the argument that by forcing immigrants to integrate into a french society, rather than learning the lingua franca of North America, English, Quebec's language laws are profoundly discriminative. He fails to understand that the point of these laws is to prevent the general exodus of french to English, because as he mentions, it IS lingua franca. There is no threat to English.
See, what Mordecai fails to understand is a concept Nassim Taleb coined as "the intolerant minority". For example (and this one Mordecai would surely understand) if a small contingent of invitees to a dinner party are of Jewish faith, then the food for everyone needs to be kosher, because of that small minority that only eats kosher food. Similarly, if within a Quebec business meeting a small contingent of people cannot speak french, like, say, Air Canada's president Michael Rousseau who bragged of not being able to speak french in Quebec, then since nearly everyone who's bilingual speaks English the meeting will happen in English. This phenomenon is the reason why English has become the de-facto lingua franca around the world. This is the reason why it is a vital factor for French's survival in Canada that the people of Quebec be able to speak French, and why the English-only communities of Quebec he so valiantly defended are problematic.
But beyond the botched history, the biased politics and faulty arguments, what irked me most about the book is the profound contempt for Quebec culture he conveys. The book closes with this statement, regarding the prospects of an independent Quebec: "Eventually, I suspect, it would revert to being a folkloric society. A place that people come from. Ireland without that country's genius." Ouch. This is just hurtful. I love my culture and believe there is nothing quite like it in the world. Quebec's culture is the pride and envy of English Canada who's culture was for most of history a profoundly Anglophilic offspring of the British crown without much originality, and nowadays is seemingly a liberal cousin of American culture, never having quite found anything distinctive for itself other than this in-betweenness. The parallel between Quebec and Ireland is one that's been made over and over because it is very much accurate. I'm sure Mordecai, sheltered in his anglosphere, has read much of Ireland's great works. But seeing the way he describes Docteur Ferron as merely a writer Quebecers like I tend to believe Mordecai has simply never bothered himself to explore Quebec's culture, perhaps because he's always hated it.
The reading then left me with one question. Why oh Why, Mordecai, did you stay here all of this time if you so disdained the place? Was it a sort of Stockholm syndrome? Had your ire or separatism turned into a twisted form of love? Had you come to like the feeling of victimhood at the hands of those "discriminatory language laws"?
This book deserves burning. I'm convinced this book sits on Richard Henry Bain's end-table to this day, religiously undusted once or twice a month, perhaps the only place where Mordecai Richler still enjoys relevance.
VLQL.
April 21, 2016
The Federalist's Bible, Old Testament. The first time I read this, I was 16, and I LOVED it. But I've seen the light: this book is hot garbage. This book presents one of the most radically biased views of Quebec nationalism that could possibly exist. I love Mordecai Richler's other works, but god I wish he had kept his nose out of politics. So much misinformation (or disinformation? Who knows with Richler).
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with the politics of his political enemies either. This work is just the result of Richler's resentment and cynicism coming to a head. He grossly exaggerates and mischaracterizes Quebecois people.
The only way I could recommend reading this is if you're willing to read the other side's radical political work - in this case a sovereignist's - and even then I wouldn't recommend wasting your time with that.
Read or re-read Barney's Version instead of getting involved with this mistake.
Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with the politics of his political enemies either. This work is just the result of Richler's resentment and cynicism coming to a head. He grossly exaggerates and mischaracterizes Quebecois people.
The only way I could recommend reading this is if you're willing to read the other side's radical political work - in this case a sovereignist's - and even then I wouldn't recommend wasting your time with that.
Read or re-read Barney's Version instead of getting involved with this mistake.
December 30, 2009
While I have to admit that this book presents a biased point of view on the issue of the french language and seperation issues, it is not a bias I disagree with for the most part.
Richler is true to form as he gives a personal history of the Quebecois sense of disenfrancisment, combined with an examination of rascism embodied within the spirit of Quebec nationalism. His sarcasm and wit add to the flow of the book, but his ( perhaps justified ) attitudes regarding anti-semitism in Quebec tend to roll over the points he is trying to make.
Overall it was a very good read that was a testimony of the year it was written. It might be a little dated today but I well remember the feeling of growing up in that time period.
Richler is true to form as he gives a personal history of the Quebecois sense of disenfrancisment, combined with an examination of rascism embodied within the spirit of Quebec nationalism. His sarcasm and wit add to the flow of the book, but his ( perhaps justified ) attitudes regarding anti-semitism in Quebec tend to roll over the points he is trying to make.
Overall it was a very good read that was a testimony of the year it was written. It might be a little dated today but I well remember the feeling of growing up in that time period.
September 23, 2017
Mordecai Richler wrote this in the lead-up to the referendum on Quebec independence in the early 1990s. What is surprising is how relevant the book still is today. Language especially is a topic revisited often, made more interesting because of the laws Richler cites in this book.
Some of it is unintentionally relevant, as when he exhorts Ottawa and Quebec to explain the true costs of independence. It's worth quoting here, "…Parizeau, wearing his Tinker Bell suit, actually told a group of Université de Montréal students that independence would not cost a cent and, instead of heaving him out the window, the students clapped hands to show that they believed in fairies." Isn't this how Brexit came to pass?
A good, if highly specialized, read.
Some of it is unintentionally relevant, as when he exhorts Ottawa and Quebec to explain the true costs of independence. It's worth quoting here, "…Parizeau, wearing his Tinker Bell suit, actually told a group of Université de Montréal students that independence would not cost a cent and, instead of heaving him out the window, the students clapped hands to show that they believed in fairies." Isn't this how Brexit came to pass?
A good, if highly specialized, read.
June 20, 2021
Written in 1991 in anticipation of a second independence referendum, this counts as part of Quebec's complicated history of separatist movements and contentious languages laws. This is without a doubt a slightly dated and biased account of the issue, but the antagonism between francophones and anglo/allophones is something Quebec probably will never fully shake, and is still present, now 30 years later. Same as its nationalistic and currently slightly more dormant desires to separate from Canada.
Richler finishes the book with a rebuttal to multiple rebuttals of his original The New Yorker article, and a lot of the book feels like that, written in fighting spirit by someone who's clearly too immersed to be unbiased. But, he's good and quite entertaining at throwing punches.
Richler finishes the book with a rebuttal to multiple rebuttals of his original The New Yorker article, and a lot of the book feels like that, written in fighting spirit by someone who's clearly too immersed to be unbiased. But, he's good and quite entertaining at throwing punches.
June 7, 2007
I found myself vigorously disagreeing with some of the conclusions Richler made in this book. It's good as an introduction to the topic, but it doesn't have much of a structure to keep the reader interested.
September 14, 2008
It's dated, sure, but Richler also provides a history of the political-cultural climate of Quebec. All of which was basically new to me.
July 2, 2009
Needed something a little local..and so sick of civil war/rape/traumatic books. Refreshing and Mordecai true to form :)
August 27, 2011
Still fresh.
November 24, 2011
This book rally helps to explain a divided nation. Not a lot of sympathy for francophones here though.
February 6, 2012
Read as research for my dissertaion on Quebec politics.
October 12, 2012
A bit of an outdated read at this point, but certainly a good introductory read to the language issue once you weed through Richler's opinions.
April 14, 2015
ahh the nineties...good thing all that language fuss is over with
December 16, 2017
Loved it. Bought it in Ottawa in the 1990s, donated it to a church library,,,wish I had kept it.
July 23, 2023
Somewhat dated now and redundant even in the day in which it was published, the book is still a piquant foray into the attitudes and history that led up to the referenda on Quebec's independence or at least improved status within Canada. Richler's basic theses are that francophone Quebecois had best wash their own hands thoroughly of the anti-Semitism and anti-aboriginal prejudices that infect its provincial body politic before pointing fingers at the anglophone majority, and that advocates for independence need to be more honest with their aggrieved acolytes about the actual price that Quebec would pay for going it alone. Richler's wit and venom are on full display in these pages, and he holds little back in going after those who attempt to shield their racism behind a cross or a veneer of nationalist pride. Take justifiable pride in being French-Canadian, he seems to be saying to his francophone fellow Quebeckers, but please lay off the victim posture; you just aren't that beleaguered except in justified responses to your overheated rhetoric.
February 21, 2019
3.5 stars. I appreciate that Richler is a grumpy Jewish-English Montrealer. There’s sass a-plenty in this piece. I did find it went on a little long at the end. But overall I enjoyed it, as an Anglophone Montrealer. While it definitely sets the scene for what is yet to come in 1995, it’s more interesting to read it 25 years after publication to see what fears came true and what was just smoke.
March 24, 2019
I tried to find this book to read while I was on vacation in Montreal last fall, but it was unavailable. I may have been more engaged with it while experiencing Quebec life and culture. As it was, this book is humorous and a good history of the language and independence movements in Quebec...but a little too detailed for my interest level. I read half and skimmed the rest.
October 6, 2022
A fun little read around Quebec election time. Richler was truly an entertaining writer and he skewers both Quebec nationalists and anti-Franco forces outside the province. A uniquely Montreal perspective on issues that remain live today, even if separatism itself is not.
April 24, 2025
Based
Just about sums up my thoughts on the absurdity of Quebec politics and its persecution complex. Except Richler is actually Quebecois and is allowed to say it 🤭
A lot of Richler's observations, even 30 years later, hold true today
Just about sums up my thoughts on the absurdity of Quebec politics and its persecution complex. Except Richler is actually Quebecois and is allowed to say it 🤭
A lot of Richler's observations, even 30 years later, hold true today
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews