• Blue Notes

Monday, February 23, 2009

How about these historical re-enactments?

posted by Rick Blue at 1h24

Because they didn’t like the idea of a re-enactment of the Battle on the Plains of Abraham, perhaps these re-enactments would be more to the separatists’ liking.

1) The famous “Night of the long knives:” Someone in a René Lévesque mask walks onto a rug. Someone in a Pierre Trudeau mask pulls it out from under him. Lévesque falls on his keester, dropping his cigarette. Trudeau says: “That was easy.”

2) The famous “money and the ethnic vote speech:” Someone in a Jacques Parizeau mask downs a bottle of wine. Then he stumbles onto a podium to concede the defeat of his trick referendum question. He tears up the text of his unilateral declaration of independence speech. He has to speak spontaneously. So he blames his defeat on the clichéd scapegoats that all scoundrels blame their defeats: "the others."

3) A re-enactment of a televised press conference held just before the first referendum. René Lévesque is surrounded by his gang of zealots. He is asked by an English-speaking journalist why any anglo would vote for Sovereignty Association. Instead of being a politician and welcoming anglos into his movement as co-citizens of Quebec, and saying something like: “We understand that anglos have built Montreal into the great North American city that we are inheriting and, of course, we will not take away your rights to your language and culture because that would be hypocritical, as we are demanding our rights to our language and culture.” Instead, he dismisses anglos out of hand by saying that his option is the future of Quebec and anglophones have no choice with this phrase: “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.”  

4) After it is discovered that franco-Quebec businessmen have stolen millions of dollars from Canadian taxpayers, separatist Gilles Duceppe manages to blame it all on Ottawa and feign enough outrage to get elected again.

5) In fact, almost any federal election in Quebec is now a re-enactment of this formula: The separatist Bloc Québeéois hides their separatist agenda all the way through until election night – campaigning on “good government” and “protecting Quebec,” etc. Then, in an emotional speech after all the votes are in, they claim their victory proves that Quebecers are in favour of separation.

No. I guess we don't need to re-enact these historical moments. They keep repeating themselves endlessly through time anyway.