Mauro Nardelli was brought up in an immigrant family in east-end Montreal. Fast-forward 20 years- He was a tour guide travelling around Quebec.
_ Photograph by: Tim Snow, The Gazette
By DAVID JOHNSTON
What is the most proud you have ever been to be a Quebecer?
Have you ever felt like more of a Quebecer than a Canadian?
What do you identify most with when it comes to Quebec?
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[Last week, we asked you, our readers, to tell us->38991]. And we said that to help mark St. Jean Baptiste Day tomorrow, we would publish some of your replies, and that's what we are doing today.
First of all, thank you to everyone who took the time and cared enough to send us their stories. We received about 50 replies. To be sure, some of these predictably reflect anger and frustration over ongoing political uncertainty and linguistic polices in Quebec that restrict the public profile of the English language. But the striking things about the submissions we received were the little personal vignettes that readers wanted to share, stories that show how their own experience in Quebec has been deeply rewarding.
It's these intimate stories - illuminating moments of personal epiphany with respect to Quebec identity - that make these submissions so interesting to read. And so today, as we prepare to celebrate La Fête Nat ... whoops, I mean, St. Jean Baptiste Day, here's a look at how Gazette readers feel about their own "Quebecness."
'I could be English, I could be French'
Hannah Brais, 20, grew up in Pointe Claire and attended St. Thomas High School and Dawson College. She was taking a course to become a welder this year when she pulled out in favour of enrolling this fall in environmental design at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
I truly became Québécoise last year, at the age of 19, when I was chosen to participate in Katimavik, the Canadian youth volunteer program, and was sent to three different communities to live for nine months with 10 other Canadians between the ages of 17 and 21.
As much as I felt different in terms of my liberal Montreal values compared with the others in my group, what truly fostered a sense of pride in me was my ability to communicate with both the anglophones and the francophones.
That first evening we spent together in our dining room in Olds, Alberta, proved to be interesting: While the anglophones and francophones sat across from each other at the table and made introductions about themselves using this laughable overzealous display of facial expressions and gesticulations, I made friendly conversation with everyone. Needless to say, I made friends easily, and became the group translator.
I felt like a con artist: In Alberta I could convince anyone I was English; in Lévis, Quebec, I could convince the community that I was French; and then in Halifax, I managed to work at the Acadian radio station and the French Alliance while still participating in the English community. Never had I felt so educationally privileged, and frankly, quite so clever.
Of course I was met with prejudice at times in my travels. I had several occasions where I felt I was too English to be French and too French to be English; but in truth, Canadians were more accepting of Quebec and its sense of being a distinct society than I had been led to believe. Perhaps it's an insecurity we project because we are consciously isolating ourselves, but Canadians met my ease and openness on the subject with an identical attitude.
If ever a stereotype about Canadians rang true with me, it was this accepting and easygoing nature that I was met with.
Prior to leaving for my Katimavik program, I had developed a certain bitterness with respect to my bilingual education. Several of my friends that I grew up with in the West Island never took to French, regardless of the complete immersion we had in primary and high school.
I felt like the investment that was made to turn us into bilingual citizens stood no chance against the occasional cultural defiance of the English Québécois. It took a nine-month cultural wakeup call to make me realize what an advantage I had over the majority of Canadian youth and what an ignorant defiance, the defiance of my entourage, was.
Now, a year after my program with Katimavik has ended, I've registered for university at UQAM, about to begin my degree in the fall for my first all-French postsecondary experience, and I can safely say I consider myself very fortunate to be Québécoise and to have the ability to follow my education and career path -with confidence, in either English or French.
The beauty 'belongs to all of us'
Mauro Nardelli, 37, works in information technology for a Lachine transport firm. He grew up in Villeray and St. Leonard and now lives in Rivière des Prairies.
Born and raised in east-end Montreal to an immigrant family, building an identity as a Quebecer was barely an afterthought for me. We were allowed to attend English schools, and we spoke the language the elders spoke when at home.
Growing up in the 1970s didn't make mutual tolerance easy. Fresh from the October Crisis in 1970 and heading toward the first referendum on sovereignty in 1980, all that my little world absorbed were the biased implanted notions about francophone society that manifested themselves through rumours more than fact.
One positive thing I can say about Montreal is that francophones and anglophones live in proximity - so that even though there was no sense of a Québécois identity in my world, there was respect and tolerance for the idea of Québécois. But we never used that term ourselves. A Québécois was different, but that didn't always make them the enemy. We did sing O Canada before class, though; that much I can remember.
Fast forward 20 years and I found myself working as a tour guide, travelling around Quebec showing off our province to tourists from France. To date, I believe it still remains MY greatest discovery, not theirs.
Growing up anglophone, nobody ever spoke to me about Le Vieux Québec, Les Plaines d'Abraham, or Le Petit Champlain. In my American television media bubble, nobody ever spoke to me of the rolling hills of Charlevoix, Le Parc des Grand Jardins, Le Fjord Saguenay, or Tadoussac and the whalewatching excursions there.
No francophone I befriended ever boasted about the forested camping edens of La Mauricie or Bois Francs, nor of Lac St-Jean and the wonderful communities that surround it.
But there they were, and after I saw them all, and more, I remained clueless as to why the rest of the world isn't flocking to Quebec for vacations.
This province is beautiful; that is indeed something to be proud of.
I owe my family a great deal of thanks for choosing Montreal, Quebec, Canada to re-settle in.
Most important, I don't let propaganda dissuade me from my attachment to this province, it belongs to all of us. No one can take away from me that I was born in a great city, a great province and a great country.
'Most of all: the diverse culture and its people'
Moira Edwards, 76, is a resident of Beaconsfield. She is a former head nurse in psychiatry at the Royal Victoria Hospital.
The Gazette's questions about Quebec identity have given me food for thought.
As a child growing up in Wales, I fell in love with Canada. It was wartime. My uncle, in the Royal Air Force, was stationed in Canada and said how kind the Canadian people were.
Canadian soldiers were revered by the British. My grandmother sent food parcels to the soldiers stationed in Canada. On one occasion a group of inebriated Canadian air men, driving a jeep, crashed into our garden and had to be restored to health by my mother.
The next day they circled their airplane over our house to say thank you and goodbye.
When my husband and I emigrated to Canada in 1957, I felt immediately at home. We sailed on the S.S Corinthia. The thrill of travelling the St. Lawrence, and my first step on Canadian soil in Quebec City, is unforgettable.
We have remained in Quebec, raised a family, worked in our respective professions, and had a rewarding life. I love Quebec.
The extraordinary scenery, the expanse of terrain, but most of all the diverse culture and its people are reasons why. I would not want to live anywhere else in Canada. Does that make me a Quebecer? Maybe, but I do not believe in separating from the rest of the country. I think Canada is the best country in the world and what makes Quebec special is the fact that it belongs in Canada.
'A federalist, I've been denied the right to wave the Fleurdelisé'
Gino Mastrocola, 36, is an insurance underwriter and resident of the Ste. Dorothée district of Laval. A native of Montreal's Park Extension district, he studied economics at Concordia University.
I'm Canadian first and foremost. I was born in 1975 and I actually can't think of any one specific moment when I was aware of being the most proud to be a Quebecer. But, sadly, I can come up with at least 10 off the top of my head as to why I have not been able to feel like a Quebecer at all - the Fleurdelisé, the Quebec flag, being one of them.
It should be my flag too, right? But it is not. Unfortunately, waving the Quebec flag has had an alternate meaning for the past 40 years. As much as I might want to, waving the Quebec flag no longer means "I'm proud to be from Quebec."
It means "I support sovereignty."
It means "I'm francophone."
Or it means "This is what side I'm on."
Our Quebec flag has been hijacked by the sovereignists and they have made it a symbol of the independence movement, thus denying a proud federalist anglophone Quebecer such as myself the right to wave the Fleurdelisé without being labelled as "one of them."
So my brand-new, never-beforewaved Quebec flag languishes in the back corner of my garage, right beside an old eight-track tape player and Commodore 64 computer, and a lot of other things that I will likely never use again.
To answer The Gazette's question as to what has been my proudest moment as a Quebecer, well, I'm still waiting for that moment to happen.