From: golchowy@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Gerald Olchowy)
Subject: Quebec Nationalist Writer sells manuscripts to Ottawa!
Organization: University of Toronto Chemistry Department
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 13:41:46 GMT

From a Canadian Press report in the Globe and Mail, page D1, Nov. 17,
1992:

National writer sells manuscripts to Ottawa:  Quebec library 'told us
to get lost'

(Canadian Press)--Montreal--: Michel Tremblay, one of Quebec's
best-known playwrights and a strong Quebec nationalist, has sold his
manuscripts to the FEDERAL government for more than $300,000.  But
Tremblay said Sunday he has no regrets about selling papers to a
federalist institution.

"The property is very well managed in Ottawa, they have an extraordinary
collection.  And it's normal for writers to sell their manuscripts, if
they are worth something."

Tremblay said his agent offered the papers to Quebec's Bibliotheque
nationale library in 1986 but was flatly, and rudely, refused.

"They told us to get lost."

Tremblay said he sold the documents, which span 30 years of his career,
because he needed the money after his publisher went bankrupt.

A second batch of papers was sold last year, and Tremblay says he has
received more than $300,000 in all.

Tremblay is best known for 'Les Belles Soeurs (The Sisters-in-Law)', a
play first presented in 1968 and set in working-class east-end Montreal.
The story concerns a woman who has won one million trading stamps and
has invited her sisters and neighbors over to paste them into books.

Meanwhile, the head of the Quebec writers' union called Quebec's refusal
to buy Tremblay's manuscripts an insult to all writers in the province.

Bruno Roy, president of L'Union des ecrivains et ecrivaines quebecois,
said, "If they do this to Mr. Tremblay, imagine what happens to other
writers.  The message is that what we do is not important."

Georges Cartier, the former head of Quebec's Bibliotheque nationale,
said in an interview he wouldn't have accepted Tremblay's bid even if he
could have afforded to.

News of the sale of the manuscripts had people buzzing on the weekend at
a book fair attended by Tremblay.

Robert Savoie, an opera singer who lined up to have Tremblay sign a book
for him, said he was there to support the playwright after reading about
the sale of his papers.

He said he was saddened that the manuscripts of "a Quebecker who has
given us the joy of reading our language, our culture" are "lost
forever".  He blamed the Quebec government.

At a nearby kiosk, Francois Jobin didn't see any moral or nationalist
dilemma in the Tremblay affair.

"I'd say [manuscripts] should go to the highest bidder," he said.

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End of article
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Note:  The constitutional position of the Quebec government is that the
federal government (which spends 40% of its cultural spending in Quebec 
though Quebec has only 25% of the population) should
vacate the field of culture and allow the Quebec government should be
allowed to be the sole protector of Quebecois culture...

The irony is of course that Tremblay's papers would truly be "lost
forever" if the Quebec government had its way...it wouldn't buy them,
and if Canada accepted its constitutional demands, the federal
government would have been unable to buy them also.  The Quebec
government...the great protector of Quebecois culture...NOT!

Gerald
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada