Governing the Island of Montreal
Governing the Island of Montreal

Author: Andrew Sancton

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0520310764

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Located at the junction of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, Montreal Island is the main contact point between French and English Canadians. Prior to Quebec's "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s, local governments in Montreal both reflected and perpetuated the mutual isolation of French and English. Residential concentration in autonomous suburbs, together with self-contained networks of schools and social services, enabled English-speaking Montrealers to control the city's economy and to conduct their community's affairs with little regard for the French-speaking majority. The modernization of the Quebec state in the 1960s dramatically challenged this arrangement. The author demonstrates how the English-speaking politicians in cooperation with certain French-speaking allies have succeeded in preventing the wholesale adoption of ambitious schemes for metropolitan reorganization. He describes the workings of a society divided by language and ethnicity, where the pervasiveness of the politics of language impedes all plans for comprehensive metropolitan reform. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997
The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997

Author: J. F. Bosher

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780773520257

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What lay behind Charles de Gaulle's "Vive le Québec libre!" speech in Montreal on 24 July 1967, Philippe Rossillon's activities in New Brunswick, Belgium, and Africa, and the sinking of Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand in 1985? J.F. Bosher argues that the motivation behind all these incidents was a policy of underhanded imperial ambition on the part of France. In The Gaullist Attack on Canada, he contends that French nationalists have been at work behind the screen of harmless fraternising of international francophonie in order to stimulate French revolutionary nationalism in Quebec and elsewhere, and that the Gaullist ideology behind these attempts rests on a set of myths about past events, age-old resentment of the English-speaking nations, and a deep-rooted belief in the superiority of France, its language, and its culture. The Gaullist Attack on Canada reveals a phase of French imperialism that poses a threat to Canadian Confederation. Since the 1960s, Bosher argues, de Gaulle and his followers have conspired to stimulate Quebec separatism as part of their larger goal to revive France's role as a great power. He bases his case on the evidence of France's actions in other former French colonies, especially in Africa, as well as the writings of such leading Gaullist conspirators as Bernard Dorin, Pierre–Claude Mallen, Pierre de Menthon, and Philippe Rossillon, who have boasted about their efforts to win Quebec away from Canada for France. Bosher criticises the Canadian government for its failure to respond to, or even to recognise, the Gaullist threat. The Under–Secretary of State for External Affairs in the 1960s, Marcel Cadieux, wanted to take vigorous steps against the Gaullist mafia but was overruled by his political superiors. Bosher argues that, even now, by standing up to French aggression the government might weaken the separatist movement in Quebec, or at least turn the tide of political support for it.