Since the 1960s, Quebec has seemed a rather tragic place to me, one that has lost much of the magic it once enjoyed. The rise of Francophone nationalism, at its extreme using kidnapping and assassination in the early days to demand the "liberation" of Quebec from Canada, had both a terrible and a benign face. The terrible face included anti-Semitism and harassment of Anglophone businesses, down to minutely regulating the size and placement of French and English on signs. The benign side has seen a flowering of Quebecois culture in music, film, and other realms of human creativity, and the creation of a new class of Francophone entrepreneurs (replacing Anglophones who fled anger, discrimination, and assorted unpleasantness).In the last decade-plus, secession and independence (a foolish and destructive idea) has become a minority passion among Francophones, and common sense has risen. But the passion for defending French-Canadian culture has never abated.Now that immigrants...(Read Full Post)