When hundreds of volunteers from across Quebec responded within a few days to an appeal to help clean up next month after the Richelieu Valley flood, one Montreal newspaper hailed it as an example of "Quebecers' legendary solidarity."
That solidarity is sometimes mentioned as one of the "Quebec values" that distinguish this province from the rest of Canada.
In fact, we Quebecers are less generous than other Canadians in terms of giving our time or money to charitable and non-profit organizations to help individuals and communities in need.
That's what's suggested by the results of Statistics Canada's most recent Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating.
In 2007, only 37 per cent of us Quebecers age 15 and over reported performing a service without pay on behalf of a charitable or other non-profit organization, including schools, religious organizations, sports or community organizations, in the previous year.
That was the lowest rate among the provinces and territories, and it was nine percentage points below the rate of 46 per cent for the country as a whole.
And there was an even wider gap between us and other Canadians in donations of money to charitable and non-profit organizations.
It's not that we didn't give; 84 per cent of us Quebecers age 15 and over reported donating money in the 12 months preceding the survey, which is identical to the donor rate for all of Canada.
But we gave much less. While our average donation per donor had increased by 24 per cent from three years earlier, it was still only $219, by far the least among the provinces and territories, and only half the national average of $437.
Our median donation was only $70, meaning that half of our donors gave less than that.
The median donation for the country as a whole was $120.
And while "Quebec solidarity" might move hundreds to volunteer to help clean up after the Richelieu Valley flood, it doesn't seem to move the rest of us to reach for our chequebooks.
It should be easy to empathize with people who have been fighting for weeks to save their homes from flooding without knowing when it will stop raining long enough for the water to recede, especially if they are our people.
Yet you occasionally hear someone say that it's their fault for living so close to the water, even though some of them are living where the Richelieu River hasn't reached in 150 years.
And the Canadian Red Cross reported that as of Friday morning, after 20 days of accepting donations for relief of the flood victims, it had collected only $755,000.
One of the donors was the city of Montreal, a city rich enough to subsidize a bicyclerental service, which gave a measly $5,000 and issued a press release to brag about its generosity - and, of course, its "solidarity."
Still, that was more than was donated by the 86 per cent of Quebecers who told Léger Marketing in a poll for the QMI news agency on Wednesday that they had given nothing at all.
That didn't stop 53 per cent of the respondents in the same poll from blaming everybody's favourite scapegoat for everything, Premier Jean Charest, for not getting personally involved enough since the flooding began.
Charest's only, slight consolation is that even more of the poll's respondents complained about the federal government's response to the flood (70 per cent) than that of his government (56 per cent).
So as far as most of us are concerned, it's up to government - the cause of, and solution to, all of Quebec's problems - to show that "legendary solidarity" on our behalf.
But if you don't think so, then you can volunteer for the June 11-12 cleanup by calling 1-855-325-9911.
Or you can make a donation to help the flood victims at sosrichelieu.com or red cross.ca.
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dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @MacphersonGaz