Introduction
Le Parti Québécois prend le pouvoir le 15 novembre 1976. Combien de temps faut-il attendre pour voir le parti accusé d'antisémitisme, par qui et pourquoi?
Mordecai Richler, déjà bien connu à l'époque, a écrit en février 1977, 3 mois après l'élection, un texte important (Oh Canada! Lament for a divided country) dans la revue américaine The Atlantic. Son texte a eu un impact important sur l'image du Québec en général, et du Parti québécois en particulier, aux USA, et sera une des premières, sinon la première, accusation d'antisémitisme contre le parti post-élection.
Avec un recul de presque 50 ans il est intéressant de relire son texte. On constate une évaluation présentée à contrecœur mais assez juste de la faible position des francophones et du français avant la révolution tranquille et une reconnaissance mitigée mais réelle du besoin de mesures correctives. En même temps le texte reflète une peur de vivre dans une société française en général, et du spectre de l'indépendance.
Le texte contient une accusation d'antisémitisme qui a terni l'image du Québec et du mouvement indépendantiste. On peut penser que l'auteur a lancé cette accusation en réaction à sa peur de l'indépendance. Mais il est également possible que la faible maitrise du français de l'auteur explique mieux pourquoi il a lancé une accusation d'antisémitisme qui était fondé sur une erreur manifeste.
Voici quelques extraits, avec mes commentaires, du texte de Richler.
Le français, un cauchemar pour Richler (a nightmare)
One night a friend phoned from Beverly Hills to say he had read in the Los Angeles Times that police had seized 15,000 Dunkin' Donut bags in Montreal and, hard put to contain his laughter, he asked if it was true. “ Damn right it is,” I said. “ Why?” “ Because they weren’t bilingual.”...But now the grim ideologues of the PQ are threatening to take down all the city’s bilingual signs and put up in their place French-only signs, hardly a life- enhancing act... Laurin is primary spokesman for the controversial Bill 101, which makes French the official language of Quebec and the province unilin- gual. ...So far, it is not an offense to think in English here, but, like all English-speaking Quebecers, I have my nightmares. I see my nine-year-old being tossed in the unilingual slammer, having copped three years for eating alphabet soup whose letters were proven to be without accents grave or aigu....
Je me souviens
Richler reconnaissait très bien la domination économique des anglophones et leur refus d'apprendre le français avant la révolution tranquille.
The PQ’s controversial language legislation. Bill 101, is something the English-speaking people of this province brought on themselves by the infuriating refusal of so many in high and influential places to learn French....hrough all the years of my boyhood here hardly a French-Canadian (or a Jew, for that matter) could be seen in the exclusive WASP dining and country clubs. McGill University, an anglophone citadel, was insultingly indifferent to the French-Canadian society that surrounded it, and maintained a quota on Jewish students. So there is a vengeful side of me that claps hands each time the PQ minister of retribution, Camille Laurin, lectures the WASPs on their need to cultivate manners more appropriate to a minority; a part of me that responds with glee when I see, on televised news clips of the language bill hearings, that they have swiftly grasped lesson number one, how to smile ingratiatingly and make noises calculated to please, latter-day Stepin Fetchits, even as they are seething inside. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Once indifferent to anything but their own appetites and undisputed right- of-way, they have belatedly learned to speak up for the rights of the individual in a civilized society. Oh yes, yes indeed, those same pillars of the Protestant community who for years would not suffer a Jew to sit on their stock exchange or teach in the school system that was common to both of us, yesterday’s sweeties, have now learned to plead for their children’s right to be taught in English.
While it is true that for years the Quebecois were treated as second-class citizens by the rulers of Montreal’s St. James Street, who controlled the levers of financial power in the province, it is also fair to point out that they were held back by their own educational system. Antiquated and church-ridden, emphasizing family verities, it eschewed materialism and its rewards: a spiritually praiseworthy but, alas, impractical stance, which left the financial fields to be plowed by the uncultured anglophones. The anglo- phones didn’t protest, no sir, they rubbed their hands together gleefully, putting French-Canadian shoulders to wheels they spun for their own fun and profit. But if this economic imbalance, certainly unjust, has already begun to be remedied, it is owing not to the PQ but to the Liberal government of Jean Lesage, which came into power in 1960, bringing us the so-called “quiet revolution”
Il faut légiférer pour protéger le français
Quebecois fears, clearly stated, are twofold. If the language of business within the province does not become indisputably French, the anglophones will continue in their dominant role. If immigrants are allowed to educate their children in the language of success in North America, the French will eventually become a minority at home and their culture will gradually fade away. Legitimate concern is one thing, cultural paranoia another. No matter what the PQ legislates, the language of international head offices will continue to be English, as a committee of the PQ’s own creation discovered when it embarked on a Euro pean tour. Obviously head offices here should be bilin gual, but Quebec, like it or not, is an island in an English-speaking sea, and it would be folly to pretend that the province can be complete unto itself, as a country its size easily could be in another Europe. And while it is acceptable that future immigrants to Quebec, warned ahead of time, would have to educate their children in French, it is a cruel breach of faith to impose this on immigrants already landed here. Bill 101 does not take into account the heartening changes that have already occurred in Quebec. Increasingly, anglophone families are sending their children to French schools or schools with French immersion courses.
Le fédéralisme protège le français
Richler partageait fondamentalement la vision Trudeauiste d'UNE culture coast-to-coast. On est loin de la reconnaissance du Québec comme nation.
All but the most obdurate Quebecois should graspthat their highly vaunted culture, essentially parochial, has a better chance of surviving on this continent within the confines of Confederation (English-speaking Canadians, many of them bilingual, acting as a buffer) than it ever would should the province separate, finding itself adrift in an utterly anglophone sea...Prime Minister Trudeau has said that he is ready and willing to discuss constitutional change for Quebec. He visualizes an increasingly bilingual Canada, where there is genuine acceptance of a newly dynamic French- speaking community, centered in but not confined to Quebec...The third and most likely possibility—this being a country built on compromises, nobody taking a risk if it can be avoided—is a constitutional conference that would yield real concessions to Quebecers who feel, reasonably or not, that their culture is still threatened. It would render something Ottawa could call dynamic federalism and Quebec a new deal, enabling all of us to get on with bailing out the leaky Canadian boat, equal partners, one culture enriching rather than menacing the other, both of us coming to terms with North American realities.
Richler dénonce comme une honte les discours aux USA des politiciens canadiens (mais pas lui-même)
Richler trouvait tout-à-fait normal d'écrire dans les médias
américains, mais dénoncait les discours aux USA des politiciens
canadiens.
No sooner was Levesque elected, independence his long suit, than he got a shave and a shoeshine and revealed where our true dependence lies: he flew down to New York to sup with the bankers there, attempting to reassure them in an unfortunate speech that, while separation was inev itable, the Quebecois, unlike the Cubans, would be well-behaved neighbors. We wouldn’t pick our toes, we wouldn’t nationalize American holdings. Shortly afterward a jaunty Prime Minister Trudeau pinned a carnation into his lapel and hurried down to Washington to tell some senators, and an even larger audience of page boys, that, though the lads in the French sixth form were being obstreperous, Quebec would certainly not separate. Anglophone Canadians and Quebecois, equally concerned about their future, were obliged to watch their leaders, speaking in another country, making their position clear to us on this one for the first time since the November 15 election. Shame. (gras ajouté)
Le cauchemare économique de l'indépendance
Richler craignait non-seulement la perspective de vivre en français,
mais était convaincu que l'indépendance mènerait à un ghetto économique.
Cette vision exprimé en 1977 a sans doute contribué à un vote NON
massif de la communauté juive et anglophone en général au Québec en
1980.
The most remote, certainly, is outright independence. Which is
to say, if the PQ loses this referendum, they will then say let’s play
two- out-of-three, and after ten more abrasive years in and out of
office, they will lead this battered province into nationhood, distinct
from the rest of an exhausted Canada. In that case, I believe the
business powers of English-speaking Canada, their country fractured,
would be understandably vengeful, and the economy of Quebec would be
ruined for a generation, maybe more...The bitterness of the ultimate
property settlement could be devastating. Quebec would become a cultural
and economic ghetto. Possibly charming, certainly impecunious. A North
American Ireland, the most energetic of its young constantly leaving to
seek opportunities in the rest of North America.
L'accusation d'antisémitisme, un produit de l'unilinguisme anglais de Richler?
The Pequistes (members of the PQ) were dubbed “those bastards” on the eve of the election by Charles Bronfman, addressing 400 Jewish community leaders in Montreal. He warned his audience, “ Make no mistake, those bastards are out to kill us,” and he added that if they were elected, against his advice, he would pack up his toys and quit the province. His toys, far from negligible, include the head offices of Seagrams (Canada), and Cemp, the Bronfman family investment trust, its estimated
worth 800 millions, as well as the feckless Montreal Expos, founded a year after the PQ, but still traditionally last in the National League. I am assured that a prescient hasidic rabbi immediately rose to protest. “ If you leave, Mr. Bronfman, what happens to the rest of us? After all, we haven’t all got private 707s, or whatever, at our disposal.” On second thought, after the election, a rueful Bronfman decided to stay put after all. And, to his credit, the newly elected Levesque responded with panache. We are all just a little overexcited right now, he said. But, obviously a baseball buff, he also allowed that the Expos might benefit from new management. To be fair, fears of anti-Semitism are not altogether invalid. There have been precedents, and nobody was reassured when joyous PQ supporters sang a French version of “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” the chilling Hitler Youth song from Cabaret, at their victory rally. (gras ajouté)
Le français de Richler était tellement faible qu'il a ainsi attribué une chanson de Stephanne Venne (Demain nous appartient) joué le soir de la victoire électorale du PQ le 15 11 1976 à une chanson (Tomorrow Belongs To Me) de la jeunesse hitlérien. Cette confusion a terni l'image du Québec aux USA à un moment important. Voir:
Il disait, tenez-vous bien, que le soir du 15 novembre, 1976, les militants et les dirigeants péquites avaient chanté ...un chant nazi! Mais c'était du gros n'importe quoi! Ils avaient chanté la toune officielle du PQ Demain nous appartient, composée par Stéphane Venne. Richler avait confondu Demain nous appartient et...Tomorrow belongs to me, une chanson supposée être le chant des jeunesses hitlériennes dans la comédie musicale Cabaret. Comme le racontait Jean-François Lisée dans le magasine L'Actualité en 1992: À l'époque, la diffamation de Richler avait fait grand tort à la réputation de René Lévesque aux États-Unis. Le recteur d'une université à prédomonance juive avait refusé par exemple de recevoir le premier ministre. Tweet Louise Lafontaine 20 1 2025.
Conclusion
La peur de l'indépendance, mais aussi la faible maitrise du français, de Richler ont contribué au lancement d'une accusation d'antisémitisme en 1977. 50 ans plus tard, les choses ont-elles changées? <
Le système d'éducation anglophone au Québec continue de produire des diplômés qui ne maitrisent pas le français, en d'autres mots qui ont le même profil linguistque que Richler. La peur de l'indépendance est toujours omniprésent, comme le refus de voir le Québec comme une nation. Dans ces circomstances le risque de voir des anglophones lancer des accusations d'antisémitisme non-fondés contre les francophones en général, et contre le Parti québécois en particulier, demeure réel.