Rebel poets
For the past 30 years, the independence movement in Quebec has been lit up by the enthusiastic support of many of the province's artists. Their songs, poems, films, plays and books helped knit together a generational consensus that a sovereign Quebec could be one of the world's most dynamic, new French-speaking countries.
The influence of those artists was made manifest in 1976, when poet Gerald Godin defeated Quebecois premier Robert Bourassa in a provincial election that ushered the separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ) to power. What people read into that stunning victory was that artists speak to the heart, and that the hearts of Quebecers were pining for a country of their own.
While in power, the PQ held two referendums on independence, losing both - one by an eyebrow-thin margin. In the 1995 referendum, I recall boarding a flight in Toronto, reeling with the news that the independentists were leading 51 per cent to 49 per cent for the federalists. Landing in Ottawa less than an hour later, the final result was in - 50.56 in favour of Canada; 49.44 for independence - and the country remained intact, if only tremulously so.
But times change. Two weeks ago, the decades-old consensus was rattled by remarks from two of Quebec's most celebrated and internationally successful artists. Playwright Michel Tremblay and theatre director Robert Lepage said they no longer supported independence for Quebec.
Their comments were hardly grand denunciations: Mr Lepage simply said he was 'less convinced' about independence. For his part, Mr Tremblay issued a hasty clarification in which he said he was still a separatist: he had meant to say that he was sceptical of the PQ's emphasis on the economic arguments in favour of independence - as opposed to the desire to protect what's called the 'French fact' in North America. Still, both were widely denounced as apostates. It might all well be a minor tempest or, then again, it may be that the poets are signalling a shift in the political landscape. Are they ahead of their times, expressing the unspoken doubts of the next generation?
Whatever the case, artists are taken seriously in Quebec in a way they are not in English Canada. Quebec's cultural industries are a phenomenon. Their circus troupes are known around the world. Their filmmakers have created award-winning and popular movies. Bright and adventurous musicians, playwrights, novelists and painters continue to spill out of the province and appeal to a world audience. Attacking artists for speaking the apparently unspeakable won't stifle the debate. Taking a poke at a poet will only stir up the rest of them.
