Lester's temper tantrum

The first thing to be said about Normand Lester's offensive book, Le Livre Noir du Canada Anglais (The Black Book of English Canada), is that it really is offensive. It begins with the beginning - no, not the clever cover (a maple leaf dripping with blood), but the title itself.

This recalls the tract that shook France several years ago, Le Livre Noir du Communisme. That Black Book counted the cost of the evil system that ruled so much of the world in the last century. The toll: between 85 and 100 million human lives. The comparison is just a tad offensive.

The second thing to be said about Lester's screed is that it is inane. This is a stupid book. It's a juvenile temper tantrum that wouldn't get a C in a separatist CÉGEP.

La Presse's fulminatory columnist, Pierre Foglia, stopped reading at Page 29, when he hit this arresting passage: "The English have always considered the French, whose women, food, geography and climate they envy, as their enemies." Good grief.

Wanted Money Back

Foglia called Lester "a mechanic who has just had himself lobotomized" and demanded his money back: $26.70. (It only cost me $24.02, but I used my discount card at Chapters, which has not yet banned the book. Where is Heather Reisman when we really need her?)

Actually, I almost stopped reading on the very first page of the prologue, when Lester laid his thesis on the line: "English Canada is once again at war with Quebec. Since the referendum (of 1995), it dreams of a new battle of the Plains of Abraham, dreams of finishing with Quebec for good."

Suddenly, I recalled a rant titled Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow, which made the rounds in Ontario in the 1970s. The author, Jock Andrew, unveiled a French plot to take over Canada, citing bilingual labels on cereal boxes and other compelling evidence.

I reviewed it at the time and found it "breathtakingly cretinous." I thought I would never see its like in my lifetime. Wrong, as Normand Lester makes plain over 289 pages. (Foglia, you dog, you made me read it all.)

It is a lamentable picture that Lester draws of our country's history. Again and again, les anglais have brutalized, vilified or spat upon francophones. To wit, the Acadian deportation ("genocide"), the Conquest, the Patriotes, Lord Durham, the hanging of Louis Riel, the trials of French in Manitoba and Ontario, conscription, Mordecai Richler, Diane Francis, the dreadful editors of The Gazette and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.

Some of this is even true and is, clearly, why Bernard Landry has recommended the book to Quebecers. He wants them to believe, as Lester asserts, that Canada is not a partnership but rather a pact of shame. ("English Canada tolerates only one attitude on the part of French Quebec: total and unconditional submission. It was true in 1885, and it is still true today.")

Unfortunately for the Landrys and Lesters, it just ain't so. Quebec's influence in Canada, its control over its own internal affairs and its buttressing of the French language have taken huge leaps in recent decades. Growing numbers of Quebecers feel an attachment to Canada as well as allegiance to Quebec - despite Lester's efforts to make the Plains of Abraham a daily-present blood memory, like Serbia's defeat on the Field of Blackbirds in 1389.

ROC Not Co-operating

The problem for the Landrys and Lesters is that the rest of Canada is not co-operating these days. It patently is not hostile to Quebec, not contemptuous of its concerns, not dismissive of its language. Bien au contraire.

In a wonderful coincidence, The Black Book appeared just as westerners, Ontarians and Québécois were partying together at the Grey Cup in Montreal. Lester must have hated it.

Is there anything of interest in the book? Well, we do learn that the Toronto News proposed in 1885 that Louis Riel be strangled with a French flag; that Laurier Lapierre speaks French with an English accent (really?); that the powerful Orange Order has its Quebec headquarters in Kinnears Mills in the Eastern Townships, and that Mackenzie King thought Hitler was a great man who loved his mother.

All brought to us by Les Editions des Intouchables, which notes on the copyright page that it benefits from the subsidy program of the Canada Council.

God bless Canada.

No, really.