In all honesty, there are times here when I could easily forget that I’m in Canada. Yes, the plethora of maple syrup products is odd and yes the conversation among company will inevitably turn to hockey at some point, but all in all, I’ve found the US and Canada to be pretty dang similar. It is much more obvious however that I am in Quebec. I see the Quebec flag a lot. Much more than the Canadian one. The people love their language and are very happy to see an American trying to speak it. They have some of the weirdest slang expressions and ridiculous curse words that are unique to their dialect in this little section of the world. C’est cool! They protested the arrival of William and Kate here in Quebec because they feel no little connection to royalty and don’t want to have to pay for someone else’s good time. They have their own foods and their own holidays.
Last weekend was La Fête nationale du Québec (the national holiday of Quebec). The family and I made the 2 hour drive to Quebec City to better take part in the festivities. The holiday started out as feast day for Saint John the Baptist, a popular celebration for pre-Revolutionary France. But since only the French part of Canada celebrated it, the holiday has now become a source of nationalist pride. In fact, I had to look up the history of the holiday because no one knew why John the Baptist was being honored or what happened on June 24th that was wroth celebrating. On the eve of the fête, Guylaine and Richard’s nieces and nephews went out to celebrate the holiday with faces painted, bodies plastered in tattoos of the Quebec flag, and shirts decked out in messages like “Vive le Québec Libre!” There was a huge party on the battlefield-turned-park where the French and British dueled it out for the last time and Quebec surrendered. For the first time, this year it was declared illegal to bring alcohol into the park. To get around this people had gone into the park before the concert/celebration and buried their alcohol! People showed up with shovels to find their respective treasures and celebrate Quebec as the Quebecois love to do – with plenty of drinking.
This weekend was an interesting lesson in contrasts: Canada Day. The holiday celebrates the anniversary of July 1, 1867 when most of present-day Canada was united to form a self-governing British dominion. People did not celebrate Canada Day much. In the afternoon, we went to the Jazz Festival in Montreal (which was fantastic) and I saw maybe a dozen people wearing Canadian flags on their hats or shirts. That night we saw an outdoor concert with fireworks. The concert was very subdued and the fireworks were good but it felt incredibly weird to be watching fireworks to celebrate someone else’s independence day. In my sheltered mind, fireworks were reserved for celebrating the 4th of July and nothing else. And so while I had a wonderful July 1st, it did not feel like a national holiday whatsoever. It was miniscule, nothing compared to the Quebec celebration and barely observed by most people here. Last night I asked friends what they had done to celebrate, and they replied that they had done nothing! And so I’m learning about and debating patriotism – what it does for your country and what it means, why Americans find it so easy and necessary and what makes the Quebecois seemingly prouder about their province than their country.
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