French Canadians and Identity in English Canada
The Canadian philosopher and writer John Ralston Saul has expressed the view that the French fact in Canada is central to Canadian, and particularly to English Canadian identity:
It cannot be repeated enough that Quebec and, more precisely, francophone Canada is at the very heart of the Canadian mythology. I don't mean that it alone constitutes the heart, which is after all a complex place. But it is at the heart and no multiple set of bypass operations could rescue that mythology if Quebec were to leave. Separation is therefore a threat of death to anglophone Canada's whole sense of itself, of its self-respect, of its role as a constituent part of a nation, of the nature of the relationship between citizens."
Many Canadians believe that the relationship between the English and French languages is the central or defining aspect of the Canadian experience. Canada's Official Languages Commissioner (the federal government official charged with monitoring the two languages) has stated, "n the same way that race is at the core of what it means to be American and at the core of an American experience and class is at the core of British experience, I think that language is at the core of Canadian experience."
Read more about this topic: Canadian Identity
Famous quotes containing the words french, canadians, identity, english and/or canada:
“Vivian Rutledge: So you do get up. I was beginning to think perhaps you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
Philip Marlowe: Who’s he?
Vivian: You wouldn’t know him. French writer.
Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as coureurs de bois, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to call them, coureurs de risques, runners of risks; to say nothing of their enterprising priesthood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Growing has no connection with audience. / Audience has no
connection with identity. / Identity has no
connection with a universe. / A universe has no
connection with human nature.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The difference is wide that the sheets will not decide.”
—English proverb, collected in John Ray, English Proverbs (1670)
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)