La Fête nationale du Québec

Friday, June 24, 2011

Unbeknownst to us, we had chosen a weekend of significance to Quebecois when we decided to come up this weekend. We had no idea until the day we arrived in Montreal - we were made hip to the fact that June 24 is a holiday in Quebec. La Fête nationale du Québec (something like National Quebec Day) is a celebration of all things Quebecois.

Actually, it's a pretty interesting bit of history. In the early nineteenth century, there were two major sections of Canadian territory, known as Upper Canada (part of modern day Ontario) and Lower Canada (part of modern day Quebec). Upper Canada had issues with financial solvency due to incompetence in management and over-extension of resources; Lower Canada was mostly an agrarian society that resisted being rounded up in a province that would levy taxes on them. Both Canadas thus had rebellious populations and, in 1837, rebelled against their British leadership.

Both rebellions were crushed by the British, who responded with declaring martial law and passing the Union Act, which by 1841 unified both these provinces into one, the Province of Canada. Upper Canada, which was composed of mostly anglophone British and American citizens, got the better end of the deal - despite having over 60% of the population of this new province, Lower Canada and Upper Canada were granted equal voting rights in the united parliament. Additionally, anglophone minorities in the Lower Canada region exploited the lack of secret ballot in the province and suppressed voting rights of francophone French populations.

In 1867, after almost thirty years of union, the two Canadas were again separated - not into separate nations, but into Ontario and Quebec. In all, Canada became a federal state of four provinces (adding Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in that year due to several pressures, not the least of which was their unification in response to America's Manifest Destiny doctrine and the British colonial doctrine of no longer wishing to maintain soldiers in their colonies. This meant that the smaller Canadian provinces, by themselves, were open to invasion from the south and annexation of territory. A united Canada provided much more protection from this threat.

Quebec has a fairly interesting streak of its own as far as its political history. Quebec has always considered itself as fairly unique from the rest of Canada, in language, culture, and heritage. Quebec has from the beginning been populated by French immigrants (first being dubbed "New France" by Jacques Cartier, who claimed the land in the name of King Francis I) who overwhelmingly speak French. There have been several separatist movements with aims to declare Quebec a sovereign nation, though support on a national level has never truly been enough to allow this to happen.

La Fête nationale du Québec, originally known as "Saint John the Baptist Day" after Quebec's patron saint, was secularized in the late 1960s and rapidly became a holiday focused on Quebecois national movements and sovereignty. As recently as 1970, a small group of separatists kidnapped government officials and even murdered one of them. Of course, the Parti Quebecois at large is devoted to using political and not terrorist means to achieve its goals, and has managed to pass a symbolic bill which declares Quebec a nation within Canada. Some of the bills brought to vote by the Quebec assembly really remind me of similar movements within America with English/Spanish involved instead of French/English - chiefly Bill 101, which aims to define French as the official language of the province, dissolving need for English on street signs or job offers/applications.

Anyway, now that the history lesson is over, here's what we did!

We woke up and got ready, and were out the door by about eleven. After hearing that the 24th was a holiday, we looked up the activities and celebrations associated with Quebec Day and decided to head to the annual parade. Luckily enough, the Berri-UQAM Metro stop was barely a block away from the hotel, and it happened to be essentially the hub for the entire city's subway transit. After figuring out that my debit card didn't work in the ticket machine, I withdrew $40 of Canadian money from the nearby ATM. Of course, the Canadian $20 bill has a gigantic picture of the queen on it and some interesting aboriginal-looking sculpture on the back. I fed it into the machine and we got two all-day passes and were on our way.

Montreal's subway is pretty well put together and exceedingly easy to use, whether or not you speak French. We headed up to the stop we had planned out and walked about two blocks before we saw the people lining the streets in blue-and-white-printed fleur-de-lis-spangled banners. The parade got to us around 1:30 in the afternoon.

Dana and I waiting for the parade

I bought some Quebec flag buttons from a guy!

This fellow headed up the parade and was yelling something about accompanying him to NEW FRANCE

It turned out that the event was known as "The Parade of Giants," and at its centerpiece were about two dozen 15-20' tall replicas of significant people in the formation and history of Quebec. Below are a few of them.

Jacques Cartier, a French explorer who declared what is now Canada for France. He mapped out much of the Canadian east coast.

Samuel de Champlain, an explorer and administrator who founded Quebec City and "New France". He was part of the first party to explore and map the Great Lakes.

Louis-Joseph Papineau (1786 - 1871) was the leader of the Patriote movement whose goal was Quebec independence. In the mid nineteenth century he led the Lower Canada Rebellion, which failed, and resulted in the unification of "lower" and "upper" Canada.

René Lévesque (1922 - 1987) was a reporter and politician in the government of Quebec. He was the first political figure since the Lower Canada Rebellion to attempt to negotiate political independence for Quebec.

Joseph Henri Maurice "the Rocket" Richard, Sr. (1921 - 2000) was a NHL player and longtime star of the Montreal Canadiens. He led the Canadiens to eight Stanley Cup wins and retired as the most prolific goal-scorer of all time. He was inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961 with the three year waiting period waived. Also, he gets the prize for creepiest giant in the parade.

The parade was a lot of fun, and it was interesting to attend an event where everyone was waving a flag that wasn't American. Of course, it wasn't the Canadian flag they were waving, either, but the Quebec flag. I made sure to pick a miniature one up for a souvenir later that day.

After the parade ended, we headed back to the hotel for a bit to get our bearings and plan out the evening. On the way back, however, we found time to sit down and have one of the famous foods of the area - poutine. Basically, it's fries and cheese curds with gravy poured over the whole thing. Extremely unhealthy but absolutely delicious. Our waitress was extraordinarily nice and apologized to us for her English at one point when we didn't understand her - of course, her English was far better than either of our French, so we told her not to worry.

I ordered the Boucane

And it was delicious.

We next took the train to Olympic Park, home of the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. The first thing we were greeted by upon exiting the Metro station was a couple of futuristic-looking domes. One was the Biodome, which hosted a few events (track and judo) during said Olympics, but was now a sort of zoo featuring four of the North and South American ecosystems: the Tropical Rainforest, Laurentian Forest, Estuary, and Arctic/Antarctic. It was pretty pricey but was very cool to see - the penguins and puffins were the best part, obviously, and Dana was surprised at how huge actual beavers are. The larger of the domes was accompanied by a huge structure jutting high above us. This was the Olympic Stadium, built for the 1976 games.

A view of the Biodome with the stadium behind it

Dana + Stadium spire

Puffinz

Beaver

We headed up through to the celebration. The park was titanic in scale, and for the festivities they had moved in an entire carnival and a huge stage. It had been raining on and off all day, so the whole thing was filled with mud, but it was cool to walk through and see all the Canadians having fun and celebrating Quebecois heritage.

Poutine on the go!

The stage

We didn't stay for any of the musical performances in lieu of heading to the waterfront and exploring. Dana had been there before and wanted to show me the shops and a couple of interesting buildings. So we hopped a couple more trains and spent a couple hours wandering around, collecting souvenirs and checking out the sights.

The main parliament building has an interesting facade

The waterfront

A stuffed polar bear you can apparently purchase for $37,000

Ruby! She and the polar bear live in a fur store. Not the biggest fan of fur, but since my ancestors were probably French fur trappers, I can't really judge

Dinner was a crepe with ham and cheese, along with maple syrup

It had been a long day, so we decided to head back to the hotel. We settled in and watched some of the coverage of the live music event from the CBC, along with a news report about the "Wet Fete" that talked about how the rain put a bit of a damper on the event. But of course, Canadians are strong and hardy people, and won't let a little rain, well, rain on their parade.