He claimed in his book, Anglophobia Made in Quebec, that hatred of the English is at the very heart of Quebecois culture. On several levels, our national feast day must be reworked. If such was his motivation, one could say he succeeded. Gagnon said St. Jean must be one or the other, a celebration of the French-Canadian identity, as it is in other provinces, or something else. Thus, the deep ambiguity of today's celebrations, which is stamped national but feels ethno-cultural, so much so, that to conform to political correctness and at the same time promote the integration of immigrants, external groups are invited in.
Great care is taken to exclude the largest majority, the only one with deep roots.
And to make doubly sure that the English get the message, the parade takes place in the eastern part of the city, as though no one lived west of St. Lawrence Blvd. Also kept at bay are long-standing minorities such as Jews, Italians and Greeks. They have spoken French for ages but are on the wrong side of the political chart. Or again, the vehement protests of the Parti Quebecois against an intolerable intrusion by Ottawa should Jean Chretien offer to come to Jean Charest's aid in the upcoming Quebec election. That is precisely the reaction one would normally expect from Lucien Bouchard in the face of Gilles Duceppe's recent promise to lend the Bloc in the summer barn-storming by PQ MNAs.