The folly of ‘nations’ within a ‘Nation’ has come home to roost, yet again. Most Canadians have a relatively full life, working, raising families, playing (mostly watching) sports, surfing the Net, etc. One thing most Canadians don’t spend time on is politics. However, disturbing changes to our nation are forcing Canadians to sit up and take notice.
One of the biggest factors in this awakening is the realization that our nation of Canada is now only one of several “nations” within our borders, with the other ‘nations’ also receiving special Constitutional powers. This has created a Constitutional rights hierarchy, rather than equal rights for all Canadians.
It began, of course, with the Quebecois “nation” and has spread like a virus, with new would-be aboriginal “nations” springing up in all corners of our land. Now, it’s even taboo in some circles to refer to Canada as “One Nation”:
“A ‘Parti Quebecois’ leadership candidate is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to retract comments he made referring to Canada as “one nation” in a Canada Day video message.
“Martine Ouellet says the message posted Friday on Trudeau’s official ‘Facebook’ page ignores Quebec’s heritage and status as a ‘nation’.
“In the video, Trudeau describes Confederation as the day the country became
“one nation, one country, one Canada.”
“Ouellet shared the post to her own ‘Facebook’ page, calling it “a direct insult” to the Quebec ‘nation’ and its heritage.
https://www.facebook.com/MartineOuelletPQ/
“Trudeau revealed his true face yesterday,” she wrote. “Like father, like son, it’s really more of the same.”
“She called on the Prime Minister to take back his comments and recognize Quebec’s status as a ‘nation’.
“The Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on the matter.
“Ouellet, a former Quebec cabinet minister, is one of five candidates vying to replace Pierre Karl Peladeau as ‘Parti Quebecois’ leader…”
–‘PQ candidate Martine Ouellet: Trudeau’s Canada Day video insulted Quebecers’,
Canadian Press/Montreal Gazette, July 2, 2016
If you’re a ‘nation’, you have a ‘national history’. Both Quebec and aboriginal ‘nations’ in Canada have developed revisionist histories of Canada that are twisted and moulded to fit their own ‘national’ agenda. A shared history is a unifying force. Competing histories that accuse the REAL ‘Nation’ — Canada — of ‘cultural genocide’ are divisive…
From 2007:
“There are moments when I simply become unhinged. This morning was one of them. As most Canadians are aware, the Quebecois have at best an ambivalent attitude toward the monarchy; yet, this is simply too much.
“A suggestion the Queen should be invited to Quebec City’s 400th anniversary birthday bash next year has created an uproar in the province. Open-line radio and television shows were swamped yesterday with calls opposing the idea,the majority of people saying it would be an insult to Quebeckers and put the “Quebec nation to shame”.
“Have we forgotten that England deported the Acadians, sent Louis Riel to the gallows and exploited francophones?” asked one caller to a ‘TQS’ television show that dedicated a full hour to the news.
“Did Queen Victoria order Riel to be hanged? Was that not the decision of the federal government and its then leader, Sir John A MacDonald? While Riel’s hanging was deplorable, he was mentally unstable; and the Metis possessed legitimate grievances against the federal government, he did rise in rebellion twice, though the first time the legal status of Riel’s actions is somewhat murky.
“This is shameful. The Queen has no business coming here. Quebec City is the cradle of French in America. Her presence will only fuel nationalist sentiments,” another caller said.
“The Queen hasn’t been to Quebec City since 1964, when she was met by a huge crowd of booing separatists who were violently dispersed by truncheon-wielding police.
“Truncheon wielding certainly comes to mind with regards to the following:
“You can be sure that people will demonstrate in protest,” Mario Beaulieu, vice-president of Montreal’s Société Saint-Jean Baptiste, said in an interview yesterday. “We are celebrating the foundation of New France, not its conquest. The monarchy remains a symbol of imperialism and colonialism. {And New France—Quebec—remains a symbol of French imperialism and colonialism. After all, Quebec was founded as a colony of France!} Her presence will not be welcome.”
“Gérald Larose, president of the ‘Quebec Sovereignty Council’, said the 400th anniversary organizing committee is controlled by federalists who want to hijack an event that marks the foundation of the Quebec ‘nation’.
“Canada wasn’t founded in 1608. What was founded in 1608 was the Quebec ‘nation’ {There was nothing that happened in 1608 that had anything to do with founding a “Quebec nation”. Quebec was only the name of a city, and the people living there considered themselves citizens of France!}. This has nothing to do with Canada,” Mr. Larose said in an interview. “It would be indecent to recycle history in this way . . . Moreover, the monarchy is the most despicable, appalling, anti-democratic, imperial, colonial symbol against which all social and individuals rights were obtained through the course of history.”
“Clearly, M. Larose and M. Beaulieu are traitors to Crown and country. Their treason is not the inspiration for my rage, it is too garden variety in modern Canada. It is their mendacity, not the crown, that is despicable and outrageous.
“So, the monarchy is a symbol of “imperialism” and is “anti-democratic”, eh? Perhaps you should have preferred Wolfe lost on the Plains of Abraham? Remained good loyal subjects of the Bourbons, those tyrants in silk stockings? Let us for a moment forget that notorious imperialist Lord Dorchester, who secured the passage of the ‘Quebec Act’, much to the detriment of the wider empire. Let us forget Baldwin and LaFontaine, Laurier, St. Laurent and of course Vanier. No, dear sirs, let us forget that and imagine a world without the tethers of the British crown, let us imagine Quebec tied to France and its history.
“During the American ‘Revolutionary War’, the people of Quebec were offered a chance to escape the {British} Crown and join the rebels. Instead, they choose loyalty. It was not out of love, but a calculated gamble that the British Crown and Empire would probably be less intrusive in changing Quebec society than the radical American patriots to the south. They were confronted with change and chose the status quo. Had Wolfe lost, even this option would not have been afforded them; either the Americans would not have rebelled, the French threat so close at hand, or French regular troops would have supported the American rebellion, using New France as a base.
“Then, there is 1789 to consider. The radicalism of the ‘French Revolution’ shocked many Quebecois and the execution of Louis XVI was seen as a horrific crime. The guillotine became the symbol of the alienation between Old and New France that even now has not been completely healed. France was still the spiritual homeland but one that had become strange and hostile.
“This rupture between new and old was true within France itself. The radicalism of Paris versus the conservatism of rural France was a feature of national politics until at least the time of de Gaulle. Rural France, the France that stayed loyal to the Bourbons — as evidenced by the rebellions at Vendee and elsewhere — was very similar in belief and composition to New France. Unlike New France, rural France could not ultimately escape the revolutionary zeal of the Terror. The distance between Paris and Quebec City would have mitigated the disturbances of the Revolution, but not completely. It is not too much to imagine guillotines within sight of the St. Lawrence. The Quebecois of that generation understood this well enough that some even learned to shout “Vive Le Roi” and mean an Englishman on an English throne.
“Then, there was Napoleon. Then again, the Bourbons. Then, 1830. Then, 1848 and so on. Five Republics, two monarchies, two empires and two provisional governments since 1789.
“When the government of Sir Robert Borden instituted conscription in 1917, {One of Quebec’s “historic grievances”…} it was highly selective in its imposition on Quebec. Anglophone areas bore the brunt of the military’s demands for new recruits. Republican France would not have been so kind and a far greater number of Quebecois, like their Algerian and Moroccan counterparts, would have met their ends in the fields of Belgium and Picardy. Such are the cruelties of British Imperialism.
“The tacit compact of Confederation was non-interference by each of the ‘Two Solitudes’ in each other’s affairs {A “tacit compact’ that is at the root of our alienation and structural weakness as a Nation}. This was a price that the Quebecois could extract from a nation where it comprised between a half and a quarter of the overall population. It was a price, in accordance with traditional British imperial policies of limited intervention in colonial societies, and British conceptions of individual rights and democratic legitimacy, that Their Majesties and their respective governments were willing to grant.
“Even when Lord Durham proposed assimilation, he would never have thought of genocide. The Acadians were deported, not massacred in their beds. The officials of the French Empire were not always so mindful of these human decencies.
“The Quebecois have enjoyed not only the blessings of British liberty and stability, they have been allowed to keep their laws and their traditions. Under the British crown, both as an imperial possession and a Canadian province, they have enjoyed a degree of autonomy that would have been unlikely as a French department.
“The bigotry the anglophone elite imposed on the Francophone majority should be seen in context of its time. Racism was as much a condition of the world before 1945 as poverty. Had their roles been reversed, it is unlikely the Francophones would have behaved any better than their Anglophone “masters” {For proof of this, see how France managed its colonies…}. In practical terms, the Quebecois have been very much ‘Maitres Chez Nous’ since the Conquest. Of course, it is a far easier thing to blame someone else for the missed opportunities and disaster of the past and present day, than oneself” {The aboriginals learned well…}.
–‘Putting the Quebec Nation to Shame’,
The Monarchist, 14 April 2007
http://themonarchist2.blogspot.ca/2007/04/putting-quebec-nation-to-shame.html
‘The Consequences of Multiple ‘Nations’ Under One Roof’:
“There is a common thread stretching from the ‘Idle No More’ protests, to the Rexton anti-fracking riots, to the Indian occupation of Caledonia, to the blockades faced by resource companies across Canada. And it is the theory that all of Canada is still Indian territory.
“Part of it comes from the politically-engineered phrase “First Nations”, which is the favoured alternative to the term “Indian Band”. Calling 600 little towns across Canada — that’s really what an Indian Band is, a race-based municipal government — “nations” blurs reality. Under the ‘Indian Act’, reserves are racial homelands, not sovereign nation-states.
“But ideas have consequences. You can’t tell someone they live in a “nation” without them one day believing you.
“Rising in parallel is a new ethnic supremacy.
“Again, look to the words: Indian extremists use the phrase “settler” to describe ‘non-aboriginals’, as if Canadians who immigrated here are illegitimate. But the term refers even to Canadians whose ancestors immigrated here generations ago. ‘Settler’ isn’t just an insult; it’s designed to undermine the legal status of non-aboriginals.
“Again, this is understandable. For more than a century, Natives have had to live under the racialist ‘Indian Act’, that actually served as the model for South Africa’s apartheid. Apartheid is gone, but Canada’s ‘Indian Act’ endures {Because Aboriginal leadership refuses to let it die. Their power stems from the Act…}.
“If an Indian Act that treats Indians as legal inferiors — no property rights, fewer democratic rights — is legitimate, why can’t the opposite be acceptable? If ‘liberal’ politicians can rationalize the ‘Indian Act’, why can’t Indian reactionaries rationalize a ‘Settler Act’, by which ‘non-aboriginals’ are denied rights to land?
“This isn’t just the conversation of fringe elements. This is the standard vocabulary of many Indian chiefs, especially the noisiest…
“Radical {part-Aboriginal} ‘professor’ Pam Palmater, whose standard attire is camouflage fatigues; Manitoba’s Grand Chief, Derek Nepinak, who threatened to bring Canada’s economy to a halt; Attawapiskat’s Theresa Spence, whose Band regularly blockades the nearby diamond mine {and who is at the centre of Band corruption on her reserve}. All use the language of militancy and a claim to an ‘unextinguished sovereignty’ {The Treaties clearly and simply define who is ‘Sovereign’ and who are the ‘Subjects’. They are ‘Subjects’.}.
“A typical demand now is to negotiate “nation to nation” with Canada — or even directly with Queen Elizabeth herself. Imagine that — 600 ‘First Nations’, some with as few as 30 Band members.
“Even some ‘settler’ politicians are now parroting the ‘nation-to-nation’ framework.
“But it’s false. Here is an excerpt from ‘Treaty No. 7’, typical of Canadian treaties:
“The Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan, Sarcee, Stony and other Indians … do hereby cede, release, surrender, and yield up to the Government of Canada for Her Majesty the Queen and her successors for ever, all their rights, titles, and privileges whatsoever to the lands.”
“That is standard wording.
“Some treaties are even more abject. The 1760 ‘Peace and Friendship Treaties’ {Maritimes & Gaspe} required Indians to send prisoners to “reside as Hostages” with the British, to ensure their submission {Actually, the hostages were required by the British to stop the Indians from switching sides. It seems that some tribes had a bad habit of switching to the side that appeared to be winning…}.
“It must be difficult for proud young Indians to accept their ancestors surrendered to Britain. But they did. Just as French Canada did, too.
“Indian supremacists who prefer to talk about a fantasy future, where all “settlers” are thrown off the land, are just as utopian as Quebec separatists who think they can undo 250 years of history, too.
“Except Quebec separatists know they have to obey the Constitution. ‘Idle No More’ pretends they don’t {The Canadian Constitution IS written to favour aboriginals over everyone else…}.
“But daydreaming is easy. Easier to blame “settlers” than, say, to fix the 65% unemployment rate in Treaty No. 7 bands.”
–‘Ideas have consequences: You can’t tell someone they live in a “nation” without them one day believing you’,
Ezra Levant, Toronto Sun, Nov.4, 2013
From New Zealand:
“In 1908, the Tuhoe chief Rua Kenana came down from his mountain stronghold to discuss matters of state with New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Joseph Ward. To Rua’s question on the issue of sovereignty, Ward replied: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE SUN IN THE SKY. As we review the place of the Treaty in our constitution…let us never forget the foundational constitutional reality that the Treaty established — one sun in the sky.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10860565
Canadians For Legal Equality 
One thought on “‘nations’ Within A ‘Nation’”