Do you remember when Quebecers were in tabarn…?
When we didn’t want to be treated like second-class citizens?
When we defended our language?
WIND WAS BLOWING
Michèle Lalonde recited Speak White.
Arthur Lamothe was shooting The contempt will only have a time.
Claude Péloquin wrote on the wall of a museum: “Aren’t you sick of dying, you bunch of cellarers? »
Claude Gauthier sang “I am from October and hope / I am a race in peril / I am our liberation / I am Quebec dead or alive”.
Not a Saint-Jean without Mount Royal taken by storm.
Not a gala without a speech on language.
“The wind is rising,” thundered Pierre Flynn.
“Getting out of your cage / And finding your voice / It’s a long journey / Arriving home”, sang Vigneault.
“A little higher, a little further,” hummed Ferland.
“Y stole dynamite / Then in a neighborhood full of hypocrites / Y blew up a monument / In memory of the conquerors,” said Raymond Lévesque.
Where is this anger?
Where is this rage?
WE
At that time, my son, my daughters, we stood up.
We puffed out our chests.
We didn’t accept being spoken to in English at home.
Because, yes, we used to say “At home”, in the past.
It was not yet a taboo word.
Our history. OUR past. Our culture. Our language.
We will not bend. We will not give up.
Here’s what your great-grandparents, grandparents and parents used to say. These “privileged whites” from the faubourg à m’lasse, Ville Jacques-Cartier and rue des Pignons.
Those water carriers from lower town.
Those white niggers from America.
May your generation now look down with contempt, from the height of your Franglais and your openness to others.
This other that includes all minorities except the one you belong to.
You are so open to others that you have ended up closing yourself off from your own.
And when your singers win awards, instead of taking the stage and proudly defending their tongues, they shove their trophies down their throats and say “Fuck you.”
And you call that provocation?
“There will be others, younger, crazier, to make the bougalous dance,” said Charlebois.
If that’s the rockers of today, give me back the chansonniers of yesteryear – who weren’t afraid to kick ass and light fuses.
TAKE HIS HOLE
Why did we crash?
Why did we take our hole?
Why even our artists have surrendered?
Where are you, Calvary?
It has become difficult for us to receive treatment in OUR language at OUR place!
And meanwhile, what is our government doing?
He goes to Ottawa, hat in hand, begging for a little charity following tying up the PQ and throwing him in a tank trunk…
Pelo was right.
We’re a bunch of cavers.
