Beautiful Risks: An Introduction to “À la prochaine fois”: 1995 and Literature in Post-Referendum Quebec, Summer 2015 Svpplement
René Lévesque finished his concession speech for the 1980 sovereignty referendum with a phrase that would ingrain itself in Quebec’s psyche for the next 35 years: “À la prochaine fois.” Since that first defeat, sovereignty has never left the political discourse of Quebec. Lévesque wouldn’t live to see the next time, nor to see his party stray from its underlying socialist policies, but that phrase continues to influence the political scene today. Parti Québécois leader Pierre Karl Péladeau won his position with a hard line on sovereignty, billed by Le Devoir and CTV as separation’s “last chance.”
In the popular imagination, two important things happened on October 30th, 1995: 49.4 percent of Quebecers voted Yes to the referendum question and 50.6 percent voted No, and Premier Jacques Parizeau started crunching the numbers between nous and les autres, thus defining his image among non-péquistes with “l’argent pi le vote ethnique.” Only after his death in June have English media revisited his role in nationalizing the province’s hydro utilities, and his push for a 10-word, unambiguously indépendantiste referendum question.
“There is no such thing as a safe response to the sovereignty question ... ”
Many of the pieces in this supplement have taken up questions like, who is Québécois, what is the future of sovereignty, and how far beyond sovereignty has the literature of Quebec gone. Melissa Bull’s “Fall 1995” shows us the lines identity politics drew in high schools, Cegeps, and family kitchens. Anna Leventhal’s story is set in a retirement home in contemporary Laval, where two Jewish Quebecers of different generations contend with an aura of intolerance. Geneviève Robichaud’s “Some Thoughts on the Wrapping Text” is a discursive wander through linguistic eroticism, a response in part to the works of Nicole Brossard. If it’s written in English, it’s bilingual in its study of language. We have also printed an excerpt from Claudine Dumont’s new novel, Captive, translated by David Scott Hamilton. In Captive, we see a literary Quebec that no longer feels pressured to be about being Québécois, either in the conservative roman du terroir or the revolutionary literature of the ’60s and ’70s. Scott Marentette has translated some of these older poems from the Quiet Revolution, poems by Paul Chamberland, Philippe Haeck, and Marcel Fabien Raymond. We print them because without knowing the indépendantiste poetry that burns for a speech and a country, we, anglophone audiences in the ROC, can quickly get lost arguing over whether Pauline Marois is more racist than Stephen Harper.
Alexander Rock has translated, among others, Catherine Dorion, whose poems rage against the new Grand Noirceur, the Quebec Liberal Party’s corruption, and austerity programs. Myra Bloom has written an essay on Heather O’Neill’s francophone voice in The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, and argues that it can only exist in a post-referendum, increasingly bilingual culture. In his memoir about growing up in Quebec in the 1990s, Guillaume Morissette recalls his parents’ secretive politics, and, being a kid, investing more in Japanese RPGs than the politics on television. André Forget dissects the growing frailty of the sovereignist movement as seen through Denys Arcand’s film trilogy, and Jesse Eckerlin’s poem finds a similar failure among participants in 2012’s student movement. Jay Winston Ritchie’s poems are slices of life in Petite-Patrie circa 2015, no politics necessary, while Heather O’Neill talks about what the referendum meant if you were 19 years old, when boyfriends and social lives meant so much more than Lucien Bouchard.
Reading the 12 pieces published in this supplement, you may ask yourself, “What the hell does this have to do with the referendum?” The truth is, this might have been better called the Quebec Issue. However, it always seemed to me that sovereignty was an indelible aspect of life in Quebec. It was the question that never went away, insinuating itself into everything from 2012’s student protests to getting a Quebec health card to arguing over whether or not a customer was a douchebag in the bar where I worked. All the same, amongst the young West End and Mile End types I knew, sovereignty was something you didn’t really talk about.
It’s a conversation no one on the island of Montreal wants to have. It’s an exhausting one, an endless one, and for many whose friends, family, or job prospects decamped through the ’90s, a painful one. Besides, there’s nothing left to argue anyway. You’re either Yes or No, no explanation necessary.
So why should an English language, Toronto-based literary magazine devote a special supplement to the 20th anniversary of Quebec’s last sovereignty referendum? My initial answer was to say that The Puritan’s home is digital; it could be anywhere, and it was not hard to contact translators, Quebec-based writers, and writers of Quebec-centric works. But in a way, it does matter. Toronto’s critical distance (or sometimes sheer ignorance) means The Puritan has no stake in Quebec’s sovereignty. We don’t have to fall on either side of the debate, and I, at least, have no interest in waving a maple leaf flag in some online Place du Canada. That doesn’t mean that the ’95 referendum and its lasting mark on contemporary Quebec is not an occasion for bold words, especially as the possibility of a third referendum arises in the shape of PK Péladeau’s political ascension.
Another coinage of René Lévesque’s, le beau risque, did not refer to independence, but to giving a new Canadian constitution a chance. That beau risque turned out to be the failure that would lead to October 30, 1995. There is no such thing as a safe response to the sovereignty question, not even tearing up your ballot or going for a beer instead. When they were asked to respond, not with a vote but with texts, the contributors to “À la prochaine fois” took their own risks, unafraid to present their visions of Quebec in the last 20 years to the public.
