Volume 9, Number 4 · September 14, 1967
Notes on Expo
By Mordecai Richler
The last time I was in Montreal, my home town, was in 1964. Québec Libre was freshly painted on many a wall, and students were fixing stickers that read Québec Qui Ottawa Non on car windows. Militant French Canadian Separatism, and not Expo, was the talking point. I had returned to Montreal, as I wrote in Encounter at the time, on Queen Victoria's birthday, a national holiday in Canada. A thousand policemen were required to put down a French Canadian Separatist demonstration. Flags were burnt, a defective bomb was planted on Victoria Bridge, and a wreath was laid at the Monument aux Patriots, which marks the spot where twelve men were executed after the 1837-38 rebellion. The city was feverish. André Laurendeau, then editor of Le Devoir, developed the popular theory of 'Roi Nègre,' that is to say that the real rulers of Quebec (the English, represented by the Federal Government in Ottawa) used a French Canadian chieftain (former, and once all powerful, Provincial Premier Duplessis) to govern the French, just as colonial powers used African puppets to keep their tribes in order. André Malraux, in town to open a 'France in Canada' exhibition, told the City Council, 'France needs you. We will build the next civilization together.' Malraux added that he had brought a personal message from General de Gaulle. It was that 'Montreal was France's second city. He wanted this message to reach you…. You are not aware of the meaning you have for France. There is nowhere in the world where the spirit of France works so movingly as it does in the province of Quebec.'
Feature, 2814 words
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