LETTER
Which Vision of Quebec to Embrace?
The majority has spoken: we don’t feel comfortable with people who are different. We are afraid that people who are different will impose their differences on us, and so it is necessary to impose the right way to do things upon THEM.
A great sigh of relief breathes through the province: our hero Legault, a man just like us (OK, a man quite a bit richer than us, but all the same, he understands us) has come to rescue us from our malaise. For a while now, we haven’t been feeling quite at ease. There is something that is not right in our lives, and looking around, it’s obvious that it is these strangers who live among us who are the root of our anxiety.
These strangers who don’t want to assimilate. Who are not like us. Who insist on being different. If they were like us, we’d feel better. We’d feel more at home.
But is this true? Would we feel better if everyone was the same? Would our lives have more meaning? Would our jobs be more interesting? Would our families be more united? Would we have less pollution? Would we no longer fear the upcoming climate changes? Would we no longer worry when multinational corporations decide to do things that are harmful to us? Would we no longer have concerns about this technology that is invading our lives, whether we like it or not?
I ask myself these questions, because these are the issues about which we are saying little, but that affect us profoundly, while we argue vehemently about the appropriateness of clothing and jewelry worn in public. And then other questions occur to me, inspired by the things I’ve heard in this debate.
Is it true that people who are different are all newly arrived from far distant lands and don’t even speak our language? That woman who wears a scarf, is she definitely an Arab? And that young man who wears a turban, was he definitely not born here, doesn’t speak our language well and doesn’t properly understand our customs? And that person who wears a yarmulke, has his family certainly not been here for generations?
Who are “we”? How do we define who is one of us, and who does not belong?
And perhaps this is the real source of our uneasiness… Do we really know who we are? Or are we afraid that we are losing our bearings, and that we no longer know how to find our way? Without the sense of the other, the English, the Protestant, the Indigenous, the religious person, the Jew, the Muslim… without all these others, are we afraid that we are empty?
What nonsense! We are not empty, we just need to reconnect with our forebears. We can take with gratitude that which they bequeathed us, and then we can share it amongst ourselves: all the contributions, of all the people who are a part of us: the dreamers, the builders, the gurus, those that bind us together, the explorers, the farmers, the supporters, the leaders…
This world we are living in is hard; there’s no doubt about it. The pace of change in our modern lives is exhausting. But rather than fighting one another (and trying to exclude some of us from belonging to our group), at the end of the day, wouldn’t it be more constructive if we took on the real matters at hand? Questions such as: why are we here? How can we live full lives? How can we build better relationships with one another? How can we deal with the challenges in our lives, such as our lack of power vis-à-vis large corporations, the pollution of our lovely planet, and the lack of equity between those who have increasing economic power, and those who have less and less?
If all women and all men dressed the same way (with no head coverings, thank you!), if everyone retreated even more within themselves, to only be true to themselves within the isolation of their less and less peopled homes… would we be happier? More fulfilled as human beings? Would our lives make more sense? Would we have greater justice in the world?
It seems to me that we love dichotomies: us and them, good and bad, secular and religious… but real life is not so clear, well-defined and unidimensional, it is effervescent, supple and multidimensional.
Quebec in the minds of some seems to be rather nervous and poor and colourless. My Quebec is sufficiently confident and rooted in the beauty of its richness to live with, and celebrate, our diversity.
Asiya Richard,
Aylmer
