The National Post's Assault on Quebec

I didn't really want to write another post about the new/nouveau Battle of the Plains of Abraham. I find it too depressing. But since the National Beast has dragged its bigot belly into the fray, I feel I have no choice.

Because I honestly believe this is the most disgusting, outrageous, and irresponsible editorial I have ever read in a national Canadian newspaper.

Enough of the decades of appeasement; it's time for Ottawa to adopt a tough-love attitude toward Quebec. And who better to do that then Mr. Harper and his Tories? They've got nothing to lose.

They can start by reinstating the Plains of Abraham re-enactment and, if need be, providing federal security for the event. They also can end the unofficial federal policy that as near to half as possible of all federal defence spending must go to manufacturers in Quebec.

Let's also take away the Quebec chair at the Francophonie. Defend vigorously in court any challenges filed that seek to uphold the minority-language rights of English-speaking residents in Quebec. And stop jumping out of your skin every time Quebec says boo-hoo.

Disgusting and outrageous because as even the most federalist Lysiane Gagnon points out, it's not just a separatist thing.

Of course the radical fringe of the sovereigntist movement that threatened to disrupt the show was wrong, but this is not the point. Such angry reactions are to be expected when an event is deemed offensive by a large part of the population. Contrary to the reports that circulated throughout Canada, the opposition was not limited to militant sovereigntists. It came from large numbers of francophones, including many federalists.

Irresponsible because you don't threaten to use force on a nation within a nation with the most organized separatist movement in the Western world.

And truly evil because it plays to an ugly streak of anti-Quebec feeling in English Canada. The one that would have given Stephen Harper a majority when he attacked the Coalition by whipping up hate against that province.

The one that results in hundreds of comments in the media and on blogs calling for Quebec to be thrown out of Canada, and Quebecers humiliated, beaten, or hung and shot as traitors.

The same ugliness that turns normally progressive bloggers into ignorant idiots.

Who would feed the beast that would destroy our country...to please the ugly rednecks in Alberta.

Anyway.... I've said most of what I wanted to say here.

So all I want to add tonight is that we will NEVER find our shared history on the Plains of Abraham. Because that battle isn't like the Battle of Waterloo....it's more like the Battle of the Boyne. The one the Orangemen in Northern Ireland celebrate every year to try to intimidate and put down the Catholics...five hundred years later.

If you want to find our shared history you have to look for it in places like the military cemeteries of Europe.















Where French and English Canadians who fought side by side, lie side by side FOREVER.

If you want to create a shared mythology you look at what happened after the battle of Dieppe. When French Canadian prisoners were offered a chance by the Vichy regime to take off the chains that the other Canadian prisoners wore. And they refused and marched across Europe in chains with their English Canadian brothers.

How come we don't celebrate THOSE stories? Or mythologize them like the Americans do? How come in a country as big and as beautiful as Canada so many people are so ugly and LITTLE?

Oh boy. All I know is this. There's a dirty yellow fanged beast loose in English Canada. Stephen Harper and his Criminal Cons are planning to ride it all the way to a majority.

And unless it's culled .... and quickly.

It will tear our country apart...