parti quebecois

today i was going to say a few words about the parti quebecois and that was before i heard about the shooting.

this afternoon i wrote a thing as a comment on someone else's blog and it was pretty much what i was going to say to you so instead of rewriting it i'm just going to post it the way i wrote it there.

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i perhaps have not been following quebec politics as well as i should, being perhaps too much thinking about vermont politics.

my full understanding of current climate notwithstanding, i have an opinion.

we have in this region of north america a shared heritage and quebec finds itself in the difficult position of being the last bastion of the francophone portion of that rich cultural heritage.

canada as a country ought to be vigorously preserving its francophone citizens and their heritage.

moreover, anglophones are part of the rich cultural history of quebec. quebec as a province ought to be vigorously protecting its anglophone citizens and their cultural heritage.

anglo quebeckers are not just more anglos that are an inconvenience to french life; they are a part of the history of the province. they are are a minority people of some importance and quite frankly quebec ought to understand that on a fundamental level better than most political entities.

here in the us we have wiped out nearly all of our francophone heritage. in the 1930s the state of vermont engaged in systematic eugenics to purge francophones from the population. here in vermont and new hampshire and maine we lost something good and important.

so i don't know what the answers are, but what i know is that it is a shame to lose the precious enclaves of minority culture whether that's the larger group of francophones in canada or the smaller group of anglos in quebec or any other group for that matter.

let's everybody play nice, ok?