Looking for a job is never easy. You can’t always be as choosy as you would like to be. I know I wanted to use French at my work, both written and spoken. However, job markets require that we all make a lot of compromises and consequently, we accept things that stray from what is better suited for us. I am certainly not an exception to this. For a few years, I worked in a large multinational in Ville-St-Laurent with colleagues that were about 80% anglophone. That bothered me, as I didn’t come to live in Québec to end up in the same environment I had in Minnesota.

I suppose it could be considered normal that it was so overwhelmingly anglophone, since the written documentation for the project on which we were working was to be produced in English. So I rather begrudgingly went to work, often saddened on the inside that I had to listen to all these anglophones drone on and on all around me. I would ask myself : “What am I doing? Why did I come here? I might as well have stayed in Minnesota where I was comfortable and knew my way around, because this office environment is exactly the same as one in Minnesota (or Ontario, or Manitoba, or Texas, or anywhere else).”

On a more mundane level, it was weird hearing things called the Champlain Bridge or Nun’s Island (instead of how I was used to calling them, le pont Champlain and Île-des-Sœurs). On a level a bit more complex, because I talked in the same language and accent, these people usually thought I was one of them. So they spoke rather freely around me regarding Quebecers : “Anne-Sophie is stupid and makes so many mistakes in her English” or “Quebecers are racist” or “Pauline Marois is cunt who should die”… At some point, one of them put up a huge Canadian flag on the office wall. I talked about putting up a Québec flag, which was greeted with a “oh, I didn’t know you were a separatist.” Something tells me that putting up a Franco-Ontarian, Catalan, Scottish or Norwegian flag would have been just fine though.

One time I got into something of a discussion with this second-generation-says-she’s-Greek colleague of mine about how little she knew about Québec popular culture (Québec media personalities/actors/singers/authors). Actually, she couldn’t name any (though she had heard of Mitsou…). Despite her complete lack of knowing anything about the cultural life of Québec and Montréal, in her own little head, she is a true Montrealer, much more so than I could ever hope to be. She also thought that Quebecers were racist.

Another person I worked with was a second generation francophone/allophone whose parents were Hungarian. She is what the media calls an enfant de la loi 101—with no allegiance to the Québec nation. Like most of the enfants, she views English and French languages as exactly the same and does whatever is the easiest while out in the world. Unfortunately, the French Language Charter, law 101 (or bill 101 as the anglophone media calls it, even though it hasn’t been a bill since 1977) hasn’t been as successful at making francophone Quebecers instead of bilingual Canadians. They can interact without any problems with their host society, to the point of getting all the societal codes and unsaid aspects, but they refuse that society’s grand ambitions. And this colonized reflex to celebrate and applaud those who despise their host society (such as Sugar Sammy), without paying any attention to the facts, makes them look down upon Quebecers as a conquered people with the confidence of the dominant, dafault party.

Then there was the anglophone Annabella of Italian origins, a huge busybody, always organizing Panini lunches and collecting money for this or that social gathering, a third of the time speaking in a English-heavy franglais, the rest of the time in English, all the while claiming to be perfectly bilingual, telling me that Montrealers say “Park Avenue” and not Avenue du parc. Another Montréal stereotype could be found in the actually-from-China Chinese dude, always purring in a sing-song accented English, not knowing a word of French and being very impressed that I could speak it. That however is less common than the self-flagellating francophone.

One francophone woman spoke with an accent in English as well as making plenty of mistakes in both written and spoken English. However, she prided herself on her English identity and considered herself anglophone, with a French side, because as a sickly child, she spent a considerable amount of time at the anglophone Montréal Children’s hospital (as opposed to the much larger francophone children’s hospital Sainte-Justine) which, in her mind, made her an anglophone. Other whipped francophones coming to mind was one who particularly crushed his French origins in a very Trudeau-esque way, which I found more heartbreaking than infuriating.

The angryphones were the funniest though. Sometimes, when the subject of Québec or the French language came up, they got so hysterical that you’d think francophones were drowning puppies and torturing kittens. At a team spirit building get together one evening, some months after the 2012 Québec elections, Mitch was spitting fire about how the province was still filled with a bunch of racists who still vote for that racists party (the PQ). When I questioned his own integration, he said he was from a generation where people didn’t do that. Okay, whatever… what about your two kids? Why don’t you send them to French school and speak English to them at home? Oh, the horror! He said they would never learn to read or write in English at the French school, never mind that our allophone second generation Hungarian immigrant colleague was able to do it, along with countless others. Besides, he had heard that the French schools were of inferior quality.

There was the banal and formulaic James, who barely can muster a sentence or two in French, but was always spouting hockey metaphors (“I want this mandate to be a puck in the net”). Can’t forget that oaf Ben, a Homer Simpson type who wanted Madame Marois to “suffer a horrible death” or that dreadful Ontarian woman, now living in NDG (it’s too much work for anglophones to say Notre-Dame-de-Grâce) with an aggressive, anti-Québec attitude, however married to another one of those self-erasing francophones.

Of all of them in that office, Natalie really took the cake. A rather dull and silly Ontarian, married to what she called a “Franco-American” (whatever that means—I could be considered a Franco-American, being that my mom’s family comes from Québec and I grew up in the United States). She took herself very seriously and was always touting her Concordia education (?) and expertise in the work we were doing. When talking about protecting French in Anglophone North America, she retorted in a tone of profound wisdom: “why can’t Francophones just be bilingual?” That way, she reasoned, they can have the best of both worlds. She didn’t have anything wise to say about herself though, when I asked about her own missing out on the best of both worlds (she didn’t speak French either).

I did have a soft spot for one of them though, a certain Dorothy, about 20 years older than me, living in Montréal-Ouest with her husband and young son. We got along really well from day one. Had we worked together outside of Québec, there really wouldn’t have been any problem between us. Nevertheless, when it came to Québec and French, she fell into the same trap as the majority of anglophones. To give her credit, she did speak it a little, with a heavy accent and hardly any vocabulary. She was sending her son to French school and hired a tutor to help him with his written and spoken French. She was more open than other people of her ilk, she just naïvely believed in the idea of “Canada”. Her husband was a nice person too, from New Brunswick. He too fell into that tired old anti-francophone trap, talking about how Acadians kept their distance and “wanted nothing to do with us”. Probably a gross exaggeration, especially when the Acadians are all bilingual and are used to working with Anglophones. He is just another unilingual soul in the anglophone mass culture. Seriously, who’s got a bad track record regarding hostility—Acadians or anglophones?

Now I must add that Montréal’s anglophones, as people, are not bad. They are ordinary working folks, trying to make ends meet and to get along in the hectic modern world. It’s true that they live in a bubble and if you remove the fact that they are contributing to the slow but sure destruction of Québec, whether they can see it or not, they are nothing more than the ordinary, run-of-the-mill populace found all over the North American continent. They could make themselves at home just about anywhere in North America. What about Quebecers? Aside from Montréal, what other important metropolis is there for the North American French speaker? Anglophones have their English language mass culture everywhere. Why do they think they are special and under attack from a nation of 7 million when they are over 300 million? Isn’t it plain as day that what deserves protection are the francophone institutions?

Why don’t anglophones take an interest in their surrounding community? Do they not realize that without French, Montréal would be just another North American anglophone city? If they valued Montréal’s difference, why don’t they help contribute to that said difference, instead of indirectly destroying it? They harp on and on about diversity and accepting everyone. Why can’t they see that North America’s French-speaking society is real diversity?

Anyone who isn’t a hysterical anglophone living in Montréal, frothing at the mouth when spoken to in French, can see that.

An American in Québec
‘Québec through the eyes of someone having grown up in the United States.’

***

Sorry, I dont speak French!

ÉMILIE DUBREIL, Urbania, 16 Mars 2009

Je vis dans un quartier branché, habité par des redingotes hassidiques, des robes de deuil portugaises et les jupes à «raz le plaisir» de filles venues de Toronto pour flâner indéfiniment dans nos rues accueillantes.

Il y a cent ans, le Mile End était une petite ville indépendante avec son hôtel de ville, son église et une population majoritairement canadienne française. Au détour de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les Juifs sont venus s’y installer en si grand nombre que la langue parlée par la majorité était le Yiddish. Au cours des années 1970, les Italiens et les Portugais y ont peu à peu remplacés les Juifs partis s’installer dans l’ouest et ont ouvert des commerces. Si bien qu’on retrouve, chez nous, les meilleurs cafés Italiens, des épiceries portugaises, des boucheries hébraïques et les meilleurs bagels au monde. Un quartier formidable donc et qui attire, pour cette raison même, une nouvelle ethnie toute blanche : le Canadien anglais. Mais attention, pas n’importe quelle sorte : l’alter mondialiste/écolo/ conscientisé/ artiste/et curieux de tout…sauf de la société québécoise. Il y a quelques années déjà que j’étudie cette ethnie avec attention et je m’étonne encore de l’incontournable : « Sorry, I don’t speak french » prononcés par des êtres aussi scolarisés qui disent avoir choisi de vivre à Montréal, P.Q., parce que la ville vibre distinctement de Toronto, Halifax, Calgary ou Vancouver.

Dans notre inconscient collectif, dans le mien du moins, l’unilingue anglophone de Montréal est incarné par une vieille dame de Westmount qui fait du bénévolat au Musée des beaux arts. Elle parle très bien le français à Paris, mais jamais ici. Son mari est avocat et membre du Parti libéral du Canada. Le couple se lève plus tôt le matin pour détester plus longtemps le PQ et la loi 101. Ils lisent la Gazette et croient que les francophones sont tous xénophobes. J’ai travaillé au Musée des beaux arts de Montréal pendant mes études et cette race-là, je la connais bien.

Cet unilinguisme-là ne me dérange pas le moins du monde, il me fait sourire par son anachronisme attendrissant. Il nous rappelle pourquoi le Québec a connu des luttes linguistiques, il est le symbole d’une époque révolue, celle où ma mère exigeait qu’on lui adresse la parole en français chez Eaton. Leur « Sorry I do not speak french » est imbriqué dans la culture québécoise, alors que l’unilinguisme de mes contemporains du Mile-End traduit une indifférence que je ne m’explique pas et qui m’insulte. Ils sont aussi incapables de discuter en français que de nommer le Premier ministre du Québec ou le maire de Montréal, et ne savent pas si Hochelaga Maisonneuve se trouve à l’est ou à l’ouest de la rue McGill.

La première fois que j’ai rencontré cette indifférence linguistique et culturelle, c’est il y a à peu près dix ans. Une amie m’invite à une fête, chez Amy, une cinéaste torontoise qui vit à Montréal depuis sept ou huit années. Elle vient de réaliser un documentaire sur les femmes lesbiennes en Afrique noire. Devant ses amis, elle est fière de dire qu’elle a dû apprendre le swahili pour entrer en contact avec les gens du pays. Impressionnée, je lui demande en français si l’apprentissage du swahili a été ardu, elle me répond : « Sorry? » avec l’air perplexe de celle à qui on adresse la parole dans une langue inconnue. Je lui repose la question en anglais avant de m’étonner : « You’ve been living here for seven years and you don’t speak French?! », complètement incrédule devant cette curiosité linguistique paradoxale. Elle me répond, sans saisir à quel point sa réponse est ironique : « French… It’s really hard for me! »

Débute alors une conversation animée. La plupart des convives vivent au Québec depuis plusieurs années et ne parlent pas un christ de mot de français ! Le fait que je veuille comprendre pourquoi, s’ils ne peuvent communiquer avec 85 % de la population, ils sont venus s’installer ici, les exaspère. Rapidement, l’un d’entre eux s’énerve : « Les francophones sont racistes, nous avons le droit de parler anglais ici, etc. » Manifestement, ça le dérange d’être confronté à un manque de curiosité intellectuelle qu’il refuse d’admettre. Le type est musicien, a fait le tour du monde, mange de la bouffe indienne et, pourtant, l’ethnie et la langue québécoises ne l’intéressent absolument pas.

L’amie francophone qui m’avait invitée à la fête était verte de honte. Elle étudiait à Concordia et était gênée de moi comme une adolescente qui ramène ses amis à la maison. Elle ne voulait surtout pas qu’il y ait de chicane, que ses amis unilingues l’associent à une lutte linguistique qu’elle désapprouvait. Stéphanie aurait souhaité qu’on admire son amie qui parle swahili sans soulever le fait qu’elle ne parlait pas le français puisqu’après tout, c’était son choix et qu’il fallait le respecter.

Depuis, cette histoire se répète inlassablement. Et je continue le combat. Pas plus tard qu’hier, dans un café, rue St Viateur, un type me drague. Il me déclare, en anglais, que j’ai des yeux magnifiques et qu’il aimerait beaucoup m’inviter à souper. Le gars vient d’Halifax, vit à Montréal depuis cinq ans et suit actuellement des cours de chinois… But guess what? Il ne parle pas français! « French is a very difficult », me dit-il. Je lui renvoie alors que le jour où il sera capable de me demander mon numéro en français, je considèrerai son invitation. Il me répond dégoûté que je ne suis qu’une hystérique : « I guess you are P.M.S right now… », se lève et part. Mon amie Nadia, francophone, demeure interdite devant mon intransigeance et me sermonne : « Voyons t’es ben pas fine ! »

Alors que j’ai rencontré, lorsque je vivais à Toronto ou à Vancouver, de nombreux Canadiens anglais curieux du Québec, de notre langue et de notre culture, je ne cesse de rencontrer à Montréal ce genre de francophones qui se nient eux-même et ces anglophones déconnectés qui ont élu domicile in the Plateau. And I just don’t get It.

Well, ce n’est pas pour me vanter, mais à la suite de notre conversation, Amy s’est inscrite à un cours de français intensif à Baie-Saint Paul. Elle parle français avec un accent très mignon et s’est trouvé un job à l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Le musicien, aujourd’hui mondialement connu, est le seul à pouvoir donner des entrevues aux médias francophones lorsque son groupe est de passage à Montréal. Il en est très fier. Chaque fois que je les croise dans le Mile End, ils me remercient, en français, de ne pas avoir été fine. Anyway.

***

L’invention d’une minorité: les Anglo-Québécois (1992) de JOSÉE LEGAULT (May 31, 2015)
Identité culturelle, sept septembre MMXII, St-Henri, Montréal p.Q. (September 7, 2012)

The Vatican dismissed a priest from his post in a Holy See office on Saturday after he told a newspaper he was gay and urged the Catholic Church to change its stance on homosexuality.

Monsignor Krzystof Charamsa was removed from his position at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal arm where he had worked since 2003, a statement said.

Charamsa, 43, and a Polish theologian, announced he was gay and had a partner in a long interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper on Saturday.

He later held a news conference with his partner, a Spanish man, and gay activists at a Rome restaurant. They had planned a demonstration in front of the Vatican but changed the venue several hours before it was due to have started.

The Vatican said Charamsa’s dismissal had nothing to do with his comments on his personal situation, which it said « merit respect ».

But it said giving the interview and the planned demonstration was « grave and irresponsible » given their timing on the eve of a synod of bishops who will discuss family issues, including how to reach out to gays.

It said his actions would subject the synod, which Pope Francis is due to open on Sunday, to « undue media pressure ».

The issue of homosexuality and the Church has dominated the aftermath of the pope’s visit to the United States last week.

In Saturday’s interview, Charamsa said his partner had helped him come to terms with his sexuality and knew he would have to give up the priesthood, although the Vatican statement made no reference to this outcome.

« It’s time for the Church to open its eyes about gay Catholics and to understand that the solution it proposes to them – total abstinence from a life of love – is inhuman, » he was quoted as saying.

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is not a sin but that homosexual acts are.

The Vatican has been embarrassed by controversy over the pope’s meeting with Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who went to jail in September for refusing to honour a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and issue same-sex marriage licences.

The Vatican said on Friday that « the only real audience » the pope had during his visit to Washington was with a small group that included a gay couple.

Reuters
The Independent

***

La névrose chrétienne (1976) par le Docteur PIERRE SOLIGNAC (May 25, 2012)
Le pape dit ne pas juger les homosexuels dans l’Église (July 29, 2013)
Il voulait guérir les gays, il présente ses excuses (July 3, 2013)
Church where toddler’s anti-gay song was filmed: We don’t condone hate (June 7, 2012)

History professor YUVAL NOAH HARARI — author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind — explains why humans have dominated Earth.

70,000 years ago humans were insignificant animals. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were unimportant. Their impact on the world was very small, less than that of jellyfish, woodpeckers or bumblebees.

Today, however, humans control this planet. How did we reach from there to here? What was our secret of success, that turned us from insignificant apes minding their own business in a corner of Africa, into the rulers of the world?

We often look for the difference between us and other animals on the individual level. We want to believe that there is something special about the human body or human brain that makes each individual human vastly superior to a dog, or a pig, or a chimpanzee. But the fact is that one-on-one, humans are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees. If you place me and a chimpanzee together on a lone island, to see who survives better, I would definitely place my bets on the chimp.

The real difference between us and other animals is on the collective level. Humans control the world because we are the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Ants and bees can also work together in large numbers, but they do so in a very rigid way. If a beehive is facing a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot reinvent their social system overnight in order to cope better. They cannot, for example, execute the queen and establish a republic. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of intimately known individuals. Among wolves and chimps, cooperation is based on personal acquaintance. If I am a chimp and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you personally: What kind of chimp are you? Are you a nice chimp? Are you an evil chimp? How can I cooperate with you if I don’t know you?

Only Homo sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. One-on-one or ten-on-ten, chimpanzees may be better than us. But pit 1,000 Sapiens against 1,000 chimps, and the Sapiens will win easily, for the simple reason that 1,000 chimps can never cooperate effectively. Put 100,000 chimps in Wall Street or Yankee Stadium, and you’ll get chaos. Put 100,000 humans there, and you’ll get trade networks and sports contests.

Cooperation is not always nice, of course. All the terrible things humans have been doing throughout history are also the product of mass cooperation. Prisons, slaughterhouses and concentration camps are also systems of mass cooperation. Chimpanzees don’t have prisons, slaughterhouses or concentration camps.

Yet how come humans alone of all the animals are capable of cooperating flexibly in large numbers, be it in order to play, to trade or to slaughter? The answer is our imagination. We can cooperate with numerous strangers because we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of strangers to believe in them. As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively.

This is something only humans can do. You can never convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana by promising that after he dies, he will go to Chimpanzee Heaven and there receive countless bananas for his good deeds. No chimp will ever believe such a story. Only humans believe such stories. This is why we rule the world, whereas chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.

It is relatively easy to accept that religious networks of cooperation are based on fictional stories. People build a cathedral together or go on crusade together because they believe the same stories about God and Heaven. But the same is true of all other types of large-scale human cooperation. Take for example our legal systems. Today, most legal systems are based on a belief in human rights. But human rights are a fiction, just like God and Heaven. In reality, humans have no rights, just as chimps or wolves have no rights. Cut open a human, and you won’t find there any rights. The only place where human rights exist is in the stories we invent and tell one another. Human rights may be a very attractive story, but it is only a story.

The same mechanism is at work in politics. Like gods and human rights, nations are fictions. A mountain is something real. You can see it, touch it, smell it. But the United States or Israel are not a physical reality. You cannot see them, touch them or smell them. They are just stories that humans invented and then became extremely attached to.

It is the same with economic networks of cooperation. Take a dollar bill, for example. It has no value in itself. You cannot eat it, drink it or wear it. But now come along some master storytellers like the Chair of the Federal Reserve and the President of the United States, and convince us to believe that this green piece of paper is worth five bananas. As long as millions of people believe this story, that green piece of paper really is worth five bananas. I can now go to the supermarket, hand a worthless piece of paper to a complete stranger whom I have never met before, and get real bananas in return. Try doing that with a chimpanzee.

Indeed, money is probably the most successful fiction ever invented by humans. Not all people believe in God, or in human rights, or in the United States of America. But everybody believes in money, and everybody believes in the dollar bill. Even Osama bin Laden. He hated American religion, American politics and American culture — but he was quite fond of American dollars. He had no objection to that story.

To conclude, whereas all other animals live in an objective world of rivers, trees and lions, we humans live in dual world. Yes, there are rivers, trees and lions in our world. But on top of that objective reality, we have constructed a second layer of make-believe reality, comprising fictional entities such as the European Union, God, the dollar and human rights.

And as time passes, these fictional entities have become ever more powerful, so that today they are the most powerful forces in the world. The very survival of trees, rivers and animals now depends on the wishes and decisions of fictional entities such as the United States and the World Bank — entities that exist only in our own imagination.

Yuval Noah Harari
ideas.ted.com

***

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007) produit par ADAM CURTIS
(December 9, 2011)
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978) de GUY DEBORD (October 22, 2011)
The Century Of Self (2002) by ADAM CURTIS (December 23, 2010)

Cité du Vatican — Le pape a donné son feu vert mercredi à la création au Vatican d’une instance judiciaire chargée de juger les évêques dans le cas où ils auraient couvert des abus sexuels commis par des prêtres dans leur diocèse.

Les évêques pourront être jugés pour «manquement à leur devoir professionnel» par cette «nouvelle instance judiciaire à l’intérieur de la Congrégation pour la doctrine de la foi». Les associations d’anciennes victimes de prêtres pédophiles réclamaient depuis longtemps que le fait pour un évêque d’avoir couvert les abus sur mineurs par des prêtres de son diocèse soit un délit reconnu et puni par le Vatican.

Agence France-Presse
Le Devoir

***

Les propos du pape sur la pédophilie ont des échos jusqu’au Québec (July 15, 2014)
Des victimes de prêtres veulent Mgr Ouellet comme pape (March 11, 2013)
Pornographie juvénile : un prêtre de Sorel-Tracy accusé (March 8, 2013)
Congrégations générales – Les problèmes de l’Église sur la table (March 7, 2013)
Agressions sexuelles: un deuxième frère de Sainte-Croix sera arrêté (December 29, 2012)
Symposium sur la pédophilie – Le pape appelle au «renouveau de l’Église» (February 15, 2012)
Pornographie juvénile – Sitôt condamné, l’ex-évêque Lahey est libéré (January 5, 2012)
Église néerlandaise: des «dizaines de milliers» de mineurs abusés sexuellement (December 16, 2011)
Pédophilie – L’Église veut éduquer son clergé par Internet (June 28, 2011)
Former Catholic bishop Raymond Lahey pleads guilty to child pornography charges (May 4, 2011)
Pédophilie – Le Vatican va envoyer une «circulaire» aux évêques (November 20, 2010)
Le Vatican durcit les règles contre la pédophilie (July 15, 2010)
Top Catholic Priest Accused of Sexually Abusing His Own Sons (June 25, 2010)
Pope addresses priest abuse scandal (June 11, 2010)
Vatican Sex Abuse Prosecutor: Guilty Priests Are Going To Hell (June 4, 2010)
Priest Accused Of Abusing Boy, Turning Home Into ‘Erotic Dungeon’ Surrenders To Police
(May 26, 2010)
Le Vatican publiera un guide contre la pédophilie (April 9, 2010)
Agressions sexuelles par des membres du clergé – Les victimes exigent la démission de Mgr Ouellet (February 17, 2010)

Cité du Vatican – Un premier ministre Philippe Couillard ému a accueilli avec étonnement une requête empreinte d’humilité du pape François, mercredi matin: «Je vous demande de prier pour moi».

«Cela m’a vraiment surpris et ému. Penser que le pape me demande de prier pour lui, j’ai trouvé ça surprenant et émouvant à la fois», dira M. Couillard, quelques instants après un bref entretien d’une minute à peine avec le souverain pontife.

Sous un soleil de plomb, pendant plus de deux heures, le premier ministre Couillard avait patiemment attendu, avec sa conjointe Suzanne Pilote, pendant l’homélie du pape sur le mariage, en italien d’abord, reprise ensuite en français, en espagnol, mais aussi en russe et en arabe. La Place Saint-Pierre était bondée; plus de 50 000 fidèles s’étaient déplacés pour cet événement hebdomadaire. Le couple de Québécois se trouvait, avec un dignitaire ukrainien, aux premières loges, devant l’espace clôturé réservé aux personnalités où se trouvait le maire de Montréal, Denis Coderre, il y a quelques semaines.

En point de presse par la suite, M. Couillard souligna ne pas être d’accord avec l’affirmation que la religion était en perte de vitesse au Québec. On se rappellera de «l’enthousiasme» autour de la visite de Jean-Paul II en 1984, observe-t-il. Aussi l’arrivée du pape François est de nature à rapprocher les gens, «il est aimé à travers le monde. L’image de simplicité qu’il dégage, les gens y sont très sensibles».

Le rapport des Québécois avec la religion a changé, mais «j’ai constaté que c’est encore très important pour beaucoup plus de gens qu’on pense». «À L’Isle-Verte, à Mégantic, où sont allés les gens quand le malheur a frappé ? À l’église ! ». Il rappelle qu’il était en faveur du maintien du crucifix à l’Assemblée nationale, convaincu que la population est en accord avec la préservation de ce patrimoine religieux.

M. Couillard avait apporté des présents représentants sa région: un bâton de pèlerin fait par un artisan du Lac-Saint-Jean, des produits des moines trappistes de Dolbeau et ceux d’un verger de la région.

Dans une lettre transmise de main à main, M. Couillard a réitéré l’invitation faite ce printemps par Denis Coderre pour souligner les fêtes du 375e anniversaire de Montréal. Le moment n’était pas approprié à une réponse immédiate, mais il a reçu l’invitation avec un sourire, de relever M. Couillard. Le premier ministre Stephen Harper sera aussi à Rome le mois prochain et aura l’occasion de lui rappeler aussi qu’il serait le bienvenu. Le pape est «très sensible à la question québécoise», il est proche des cardinaux Cyprien Lacroix et Marc Ouellet.

Il est difficile de prévoir les probabilités de cette visite, «c’est 50-50, c’est difficile d’apprécier, on verra avec le temps», de résumer M. Couillard.

En fin de journée, M. Couillard devait prononcer un discours pour souligner le 50e anniversaire de la présence du Québec en Italie. Une représentation avait été ouverte à Milan en 1965.

Denis Lessard
La Presse