The Things That Always Happen in Quebec Continue to Happen

Hockey oui, religion non!

You’ve got to hand it to the National Post’s Joe O’Connor for courageously writing a column today that he admits few people besides “a bunch of hosers in Quebec Nordiques jerseys” would agree with. In his minority opinion, it is in the national interest to spend federal taxpayer dollars on an NHL hockey arena in Quebec City because it would help heal the rift between English and French Canada. “We are not two distinct societies. Not when it comes to our national game, which is a national treasure,” he writes. “Imagine saying: Did you see the Nordiques and Canadiens game last night? Instead of saying: did you see those sovereigntists marching around on the Plains of Abraham?” This is an extremely silly argument, unless you believe the 1995 referendum was somehow linked to the Nordiques’ relocation to Denver that year. Quebec City had an NHL team from 1979-1995, and sovereigntists did not exactly disappear.

Sun Media’s Eric Duhaime is incensed by the latest chapter in Quebec’s reasonable accommodation wars, in which the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ordered the Saguenay municipal council to stop holding prayers before its meetings and remove the crucifix in its council chamber. The plaintiff in the case was awarded $30,000. “This is pure anti-democratic, politically correct nonsense!” Duhaime fumes. “What is at stake is the decision our ancestors made to recognize the role played by the church in our history … We cannot make a clean sweep of our past. Should we burn all the paintings of our former politicians in our parliaments?” Of course we shouldn’t, but those paintings are in halls of the Parliament buildings not in the House of Commons itself. Would any Western MP set foot in the House if there was a portrait of Pierre Trudeau above the speakers’ chair? Duhaime’s religion-as-historical-artifact argument is also starkly at odds with statements made by Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay about why his is appealing the tribunal’s ruling. “This fight, I do it because I love Christ,” he said. “I want to go to heaven.”

A sad note
James Travers, a veteran columnist for the Toronto Star and a frequent source for this column, has died of complications from a splenectomy. He will be missed.