We cats are sure that Quebeckers don't often think of themselves as having anything in common with Miami — or, specifically, Little Havana. In fact, when we cats lived in South Florida and would travel to La Belle Province, the locals who chatted us up invariably would tell us we were crazy to ever want to leave the sunny tropics to visit — let alone live part-time — in their frozen clime.
But this week's mostly depressing election results in Canada have reminded us that au contraire, Quebec and Miami are definitely alike — in political, if not in actual, temperature.
Nearly lost in the headlines that Americans saw about the Pillsbury Doughboy winning his first majority was the fact that the separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois, has been practically wiped out. Thanks to the province's surge toward the New Democrats, the folks who have always sworn allegiance to splitting from Canada no longer qualify as an actual political party. Amazingly, only 16 years after Quebec voted by a whisker not to leave Canada, separatism is dead.
We cats think this is fascinating, and here, we think, is a possible reason. Quebec sovereignty appears to of little or no importance to Francophones under the age of 40, and to all the immigrants who have come to the province in the last decade or two. Just as today's young Cuban-Americans in South Florida may not understand why their elders are so passionate about hating Castro — or the American Democratic Party as long as there's a Kennedy in it — these younger Quebeckers just don't relate to separatism. They have other fish to fry. Which we cats understand (we love fish).
Time does march on, doesn't it? Sorry for the cliche, but the older we get, the more true it seems.
(IMAGE: A rally during the 1995 sovereignty vote, in which "non" won in a squeaker, keeping Quebec in Canada by just over one percentage point. It feels like a hundred years ago.)
No comments:
Post a Comment