Héros ou bouc émissaire ?

Yet another chapter in the long dramatic history of the French-language Montreal sporting press neatly wrote itself this morning, when La Presse’s Stéphane Laporte posted a blog entry entitled “Daniel Brière a refusé d’être un héros”: in English, “Daniel Briere refused to be a hero.”

You see, Briere, French-speaking native of Gatineau, Quebec, and former co-captain of the Buffalo Sabres, had the audacity to sign a free-agent contract with a team that wasn’t the hallowed Club de hockey Canadien. For this sin against the pur laine, Laporte proceeded to all but insult Briere’s manhood in a screed bemoaning the recent lack of Quebecois stars on the Habs’ roster.

But why, Daniel, why?

“At the end of the line, I asked myself where I’d be the happiest, where I could best develop myself…”

You could have been happy in Montreal, Daniel. You could have developed yourself. Maurice Richard developed himself in Montreal. Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy too. They also became heroes of a people, something you can never be in the United States. […]

The pride of playing for your gang, for the people that speak your language, didn’t play into it. Nor the challenge. Nor the great hopes. Is there a great Quebecois player left who wants to raise these passions, not just to live a quiet life in the Philadelphia suburbs?

What Laporte doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s precisely this attitude, and those like it, that keep smart French-speaking stars like Briere from signing in Montreal.

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La notion de l'État

Of the in-person speakers at Pres. Ronald Reagan’s funeral services Friday, Canada’s former (1984-1993) Prime Minister Brian Mulroney touched me the most, with what I thought was the best of the eight live eulogies or homilies. (Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s taped remembrance was also touching in its own way, even with the knowledge that she filmed it several months ago.)

One day President Mitterrand [of France] in referring to President Reagan said, “Il a vraiment la notion de l’État.” Rough translation: “He really has a sense of the State about him.” The translation does not fully capture the profundity of the observation: what President Mitterrand meant was that there is a vast difference between the job of president and the role of president.

Ronald Reagan fulfilled both with elegance and ease, embodying himself that unusual alchemy of history, tradition, achievement, inspirational conduct and national pride that define the special role the president of the United States must assume at home and around the world. “La notion de l’État” — no one understood it better than Ronald Reagan and no one could more eloquently summon his nation to high purpose or bring forth the majesty of the presidency and make it glow, better than the man who saw his country as a “shining city on a hill.”
     — from CNN.com

When the capital letter snapped into place on État — State — it would have been clear to the French-speaker Mulroney that Mitterrand was referring back to a seminal quote in French history, Louis XIV’s (possibly apocryphal) response to a confrontational parliamentarian: “L’État, c’est moi!” — “I am the State!” Louis XIV, “The Sun King”, epitomized absolute monarchy in the 17th and early 18th century, but more importantly to this discussion, remains an enduring symbol of France itself (among other things, he built the Palace of Versailles). The idea of a leader symbolically representing the nation has continued to our present concept of “head of state” — a role filled in the US by our elected president, as opposed to in other countries where a monarch or a selected ceremonial president (as in Germany, Ireland and Israel) takes that position.

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Une réalisation bilingue

I had about six paragraphs written on the history of Quebec’s language problems, led off by a promise to keep it brief. (Pause for laughter.) I had gotten to about 1976. Then I came to a realization.

No one wants to read this crap.
Hey, quit cheering.

So I’ll stick to today’s situation, and provide a few links if the history interests you.

Quebec separatism is alive and well, but Montreal isn’t terribly sympathetic to it — Montreal may be the most uniformly bilingual city in North America. On the surface in Montreal, it appears that the local residents just don’t care what language they’re speaking. To the American visitor with aspirations to competency in another language (or two, or three), this seems like a great place to be.

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Holidays Here and There

As I mentioned in a couple of posts, I went to Montreal a couple weekends ago, just on a whim. Although I actually posted trip photos last weekend, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to highlight them here on the front page. So, I’ll take this American holiday weekend to make some observations on my Canadian adventure, and wrap up with a couple notes from my Virginia Fourth of July.

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