[L’éditorial de la Montreal Gazette du 30 août->8557] illustre encore une fois comment il faut être immunisé pour bien lire tout ce qui sort de cet illustre journal. On appelle ça en bon québécois tirer la couverte de son bord. Décodeur requis.
Si, dans l’histoire de Québec, il est correct de souligner l’apport décisif des marchands et des commerçants britanniques dans le développement économique de la ville dans la première moitié du XIXième siècle, on ne saurait résumer notre sacro-sainte question identitaire à une vue aussi simpliste. Chaque médaille a son revers, dit-on. Si j’avais les ailes d’un ange, je ne partirais pas nécessairement pour Québec. Tel est du moins le constat que l’on peut déduire d’un extrait d’une lettre publiée dans le non moins célèbre Montreal Herald and Daily commercial Gazette de janvier 1835. Je le présente dans sa version originale pour que les lecteurs en savourent tout le cachet anglo-saxon :
«The most pernicious result, perhaps, of the clamorous threats of our revolutionary faction [le parti patriote dirigé par Papineau] is their tendency to deter British and Irish emigrants from settling in the Lower Province. To those who look at Lower Canada through the distorted medium of the Provincial Assembly and its tool, Mr. Roebuck, the children of the soil seem to be on the verge of a general and bloody insurrection. The intending emigrant, therefore, having the Saxon massacre of the Danes and the Sicilian vespers before his eyes, concludes that Lower Canada is not an indifferent kind of abode for a gentleman desirous of a long and quiet life. He dreams that almost every member of the whole population is beating ploughshares into swords, and converting pruning hooks into spears.
If any emigrants nerves are too steady to be shaken or disturbed by fears so groundless, he still finds, on his arrival in Quebec, numberless temptations to move towards the west.
The language and costume of the porters, carters and petty shopkeepers – the classes that are first thrown in the way of every fresh emigrant – make one feel or fancy that one is not in a British colony but in a foreign country. The bewildered gentleman decides that Quebec does not suit him. – He, accordingly, makes up his mind to leave it, and finds, on a hasty investigation, that he has only two routes open to his future movements – one down stream back to the old country, and another up stream forward to Montreal... »
François Deschamps