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Chapter 17 | Joseph Yvon-Theriault (continued) The expression “Francophones outside Québec” took the place of the term French Canadians at the end of the sixties, to identify Francophones living with a minority status. This appellation came from the tearing down of French Canada. We shall not take a long look at the breakdown of French Canada at this point. Let us simply recall that processes of social change combined at that time to compel the French Canadian to acquire an institutional state base and, consequently, to become territorialized. It is in Québec, the historical heart of French Canada and the only place where that group was politically a majority, that were first found a territory and a state. But, all the francophone minorities of Canada were forced to undergo a process that compelled French Canadian institutions — schools, hospitals, colleges — to transit through the... provincial states. French Canada became fragmented into as many French Canadas as there are provincial political entities: Franco-Ontarians; Franco-Manitobans; the Acadians of New Brunswick and of Nova Scotia; Franco-Yukonese; etc. The expression Francophones outside Québec contains simultaneously a denial of the tearing apart of French Canada (the Francophones outside Québec are part of the same national cultural universe as that of Québec, they are simply outside of Québec), as well as, in reference to Québec, something external, an acceptance from now on of the impossible character of that same French Canada. Let us remind ourselves that at the beginning of the 1960s the Government of Québec established a Service of “French Canada Outside the Frontiers.” In the expression francophones outside Québec, which is a logical step in the creation, French Canada has disappeared, and the francophones outside Québec are the orphans of a nation which is henceforth inaccessible. The expression francophones outside Québec is in fact a most revealing naming of identity paradoxes peculiar to francophone populations living in Canada in a minority situation. It reminds us simultaneously how these populations have found themselves out of the field of the national reference of the francophones living here (which has become the Québec reference), while sticking somewhere else. Of course, the provincial appellations — Acadians of..., Franco... Ontarians... Manitobans, etc. indicate a sort of shifting from national ambitions to a new location of provincial identity. The example of Acadian nationalism in New Brunswick, which saw the birth, during the 1960s, of an autonomous Acadian party, which rallied the most dynamic elements of young nationalist Acadians, exemplifies that phenomenon. But it must be said that the new territories for unfolding national ambition — the provinces — were too far outside Québec for such an ambition. The idea of reproducing in each province the identity forms and the institutional networks of the former French Canada was an unobtainable goal. Detached from Québec, could the former French Canada outside its boundaries still be part of a nation, or was it just a sort of archipelago of ethnic communities? There was such a certified fact — the acceptance of its minority status — in the creation in 1991 of the most important organization speaking in the name of Francophone communities living in the situation of minorities: the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadiennes du Canada (FCFAC). The expression Francophone communities of Canada, plural, does not effectively resonate as a self affirming principle, as French Canada did, or a lack thereof, as did the expression outside of Québec. Of course, one could think of this expression as more inclusive and that the Francophones living in a situation of minorities wish to manifest the link uniting them — the French language. Some others will see in that appellation an opening to the henceforth plural and cosmopolitan nature of the identity, against one anchored in a single culture in a given territory. But that plural Francophony no longer has, in that expression, collective dimensions, which is a good thing for the cosmopolitan tenants, but which can be hardly acceptable to those who persist in finding it legitimate — and there are still Franco Canadians of this breed — to pretend that certain identities are comprised of historical communities, in order to be societies. On the axis from ethnicity to nation, the plural identity is closer to ethnicity than to nation; on the axis of Québec and Canada, it asserts itself irremediably as fragments of Canadian society. This is why one can understand how FCFAC could issue, some time ago, a report by experts, which suggested that francophone communities stop asking for bilingualism on the basis of national duality, a reality which is no longer understood by the younger generation, but on the value that bilingualism could add in the new global economy (PGF Consultants, 1998). This was seen differently when it was understood that it meant treating the French language as a question of value added, and not as a founding element of a national duality, and that under that heading it was more efficient to invest in the Spanish or Chinese languages. All that is to recall that if Francophone elements living as minorities wish to fully assume their status of minorities within Canadian society (a kind of integration that is closer to ethnic integration than to national integration), several elements of those communities are putting forward the national adventure of the French fact in this country. This was the case already in 1991, when the name of the Federation was changed, from the Francophones... outside of Québec to Francophone Communities of Canada. The Acadians stated that they did not want to be included in the appellation Francophone Communities — plural — of Canada, as they were the bearers of a national tradition. |
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