More than a year ago when I was putting together ideas for my Fulbright fellowship application I read an article by Thomas Loebel published in the New Centennial Review 1:2 Fall 2001. The journal is edited by my old classmates David Johnson and Scott Michaelson. The title: "Jefferson Davis on the Plains of Abraham." The idea was simple and provocative. The U.S. South organized itself as the confederate states and asserted its right to self-determination. Quebec has done the same. Both the old South and Quebec developed and cultivated a strong sense of cultural identity in contradistinction to the larger nations that contained them. Loebel also told me something I had not known: that after the civil war Jefferson Davis went to live in Eastern Townships of Quebec, and that during the war his elder children had lived in Montréal. The land that offered freedom fugitive slaves before the war also offered exile to confederate leaders afterwards.
Loebel is aware of how controversial his article might be, and takes pains to point out that whereas in the U.S. the doctrine of confederacy became linked to racism, in Canada the situation is different. In fact, it seems to me that the Canadian confederation, founded in 1867, offered to the provinces the autonomy and self-determination that the southern states had demanded.
To me the most salient comparison between Quebec and the American south is the sense of tragic loss and ressentiment that binds the culture. The moment of loss for Quebecois is "la conquête anglaise" in 1759. When in Ottawa for the Fulbright scholarship orientation, I met Carla Mendiola and we spoke about how in her hometown of San Antonio the phrase "remember the Alamo" invokes the nationalist spirit of Texas. Why do affluent and privileged people prefer to invoke losses rather than victories when they celebrate their in-group? I proposed to Carla that it would be too damaging to the hispanic population of Texas to celebrate a battle in which the U.S. slaughtered Mexican soldiers in 1848. However, Carla pointed out that many of the defenders of the Alamo, and of the goal of Texas nationalism, were hispanophones.
The patriot rebellions of 1837 prompted the British to send Lord Durham to Canada to figure out how to get the colony back in line. He proposed uniting the two parts Upper and Lower Canada (roughly corresponding to Ontario and Quebec) so that the Francophone population that was the majority in Lower Canada would be a minority in the united colony.
