RENCH CANADA'S OUTLOOK
By D. W. BROGAN Montreal, April. HAD never seen the St. Lawrence except in summer, and the steel blue of the water and the snow patches on the hills de a fine contrast. It was like the Firth of Clyde in winter, but, course, not quite so beautiful ; the absence of the lochs made the ene less varied. But the real shock of novelty came not from e scenery, but from speech. For the boy who sold me the ontreal papers, the men standing around the typical North erican small-town station, were speaking French, were units of only considerable agglomeration of French-speaking peoples not der direct or indirect German control ; they were the most notable xceptions to the monstrous phenomenon of the enslaving of the tench tongue by the barbarians.
And the experience of Riviere du Loup, of Levis, of other small wns was repeated in the great city of Montreal. There in the treets, in the stations, in the restaurants one saw ordinary American " figures, in standard late winter or early spring clothes. group of young men lounged round a news-stand, their jaws ythmically moving—but when they absented themselves from the licity of gum long enough to speak, they were kidding each other French. It is, indeed, rather odd French. The accent is a Yankee cent, the nasalising more like that of Marseilles than of Rouen, or all the alleged Norman ancestry of the Canadiens. I felt some the relief that -I used to feel in Provence when I spoke French Quebec; the " r's " were not trilled or the vowels given their e force ; in short, many people spoke French (as far as accent ent) not startlingly better than I do myself.
But the interest, the fascination of this world, was its freedom. o one who had got accustomed to the tiny, censored, emasculated richy papers, the sight of La Presse, the biggest paper in Canada either language, was a delight. Of course, La Presse was more ike the New York Times than it was like even the pre-war Temps. ut there it was, a great newspaper in French, saying what it ought fit about the war, the Germans, collaboration, as well as of local government, spring sales in the shops, all the minor atters that went to fill its twenty-four pages. La Presse was vmbolic in another sense. For on its editorial page it daily prints facsimile of the medal given it by the Academie Francaise for its rvices to French culture—and that medal is a profile of Cardinal chelieu. His mark, the mark of the old regime, is still deep and
ear in French Canada. For here we have a community of millions French-speaking people who have escaped not only the German oke, but the French Revolution. The typical Canadien is not
e citizen of Montreal, but the habitants whose long strip farms
till run down to the river's edge as they did in the seventeenth entury when every house had to be a fort against the Iroquois, when Frontenac, on his citadel rock of Quebec, planned the estruction of New England.
By their very history, the Canadiens are bound to be the most solationist of the white inhabitants of North America. Practically every one of them has had no blood-tie with France since 1763. The four or five millions who compose the French Canadian ,ommunity in Canada and the United States are all descendants of- the few thousands whO settled in the vast wilderness that they called New France. All around there are the hundred and forty millions of English-speaking people whose existence is a
menace to the survival of this minority. Or rather it would be a menace if the Canadiens were not the most tenacious as well as the most prolific people of North America. It is not in the Montreal
Press that their tenacity is best revealed, but in the French papers, schools, churches of Ontario, Nova Scotia and New England. To see in an industrial town in Connecticut the massive buildings of the local French church, presbytery and school is to be reminded of this fact. To survive as a unit, to grow and prosper as a unit, the Canadiens have had to sacrifice much, not merely in labour and money, but in freedom and flexibility. They must present a united front ; they must frown on dissent that may lend comfort to the enemy. That enemy is the English language and the " Yankee " way of life.
The language-enemy is powerful. On the Canadian National Railways the tickets, posters, &c., are bi-lingual, but the French is more or less unconsciously Americanised. The notices are more curt, more peremptory than they were on the Nord or the P.L.M. " Passengers " are told to do this or forbidden to do that, where in France " MM. les voyageurs " would have been prayed to do or not to do something. All around is the subtle denationalising influence of advertising. Coca-cola takes away thirst in French, but the kind of thirst it quenches is not a French thirst! The movie theatres advertise in French, but the films are standard Holly- wood. Even the newspapers have to cater to North American tastes, and provide lavish comic supplements where Popeye is called "Le Gars de la Marine," "Tillie the Toiler," "Margot travaille trop," but Tarzan is just Tarzan.
The success of the French-Canadians in more than holding their own is one of the miracles of history. More than holding their own, for if the present population-trends continues. they will be the biggest element in Canada inside a generation. This success breeds complacency. They cannot easily feel very alarmed about the German menace even in Montreal, much less in the farms cleared from the forests of Northern Quebec or Ontario or on the Gaspe peninsula. All that outer world is foreign to them as it cannot be to any other stock, since all other stocks have recent ties with Europe and they have-none.
There are apparent exceptions to this rule. One of the most con- spicuous sights of Ottawa's smart suburb of Rockcliffe is the new French legation, only surpassed in size by Rideau Hall, the home of the Governor-General. The legation was built by the Republic, but it is controlled by Vichy. Canada has full diplomatic relations with Vichy, and the apologists for the Petain regime have a pretty free run for their money. And it should be remembered that many of the programme-points put out by the Government of the Marshal are of a kind that appeals to French Canada. The claims of the family are not neglected in the country that produced the Dionne quins. The stabilising effect of peasant agricultural life is not a novel theme for the habitant. The return to religion preached if not practised in Vichy has its own appeal in one of the most pro- foundly Catholic regions of the world. Vichy France has many more points in common with Quebec than the anti-clerical Third Republic of 1914, or even of 1939, had. We should not be sur- prised that thefeis Vichy sentiment in Quebec ; we should be sur- prised that there is not much more of it.
For Quebec is far more involved in this war than in the last. It provides more recruits, is more interested in the issues, less ready to listen to preachers of internal dissent. With its background, it was impossible to expect a majority in Quebec to vote Yes on the man-power plebiscite, but that any serious number of Canadiens should vote Yes would have been a miracle only a few years ago. The great change from the last war has several causes, the fall of France being one of them, the openly anti-Christian character of Nazism being another. But most important is the political skill of Mr. Mackenzie King. In 1914, Canada was governed by a Con- servative party which had hardly any hold on Quebec. Today Canada is governed by a Liberal party which has its core in Quebec. The mistakes of tact which provoked so much opposition in 1914- 18 have not been repeated. The present Prime Minister is the heir, the disciple and the friend of Sir Wilfred Laurier. In Ernest Lapointe French Canada had a spokesman in the Government whose prestige was immensely raised by his victory over the isolationist, reactionary Quebec Government of Armand Duplessis. Now it is not the Provincial Government of Quebec, but of Ontario, that gives the Federal Government a headache. In Mr. Saint Laurent, the late Ernest Lapointe has found a worthy heir and successor. There is much interest and much pride in the French regiments. The entry of the United States into the war made a great difference, for nearly half the Canadiens live in the United States, and already it has been noted that one of the American naval heroes is a Canadien from New England. Quebec knows that it is the representative of French civilisation, of French values and achievements in a world where they are threatened as never before. New France has a duty to Old France and is slowly and stubbornly preparing to do that duty.
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