Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Distinctly Anglais

Ballot for the Green party of Quebec during th...Image via Wikipedia


Whenever I hear the words 'Quebec' and 'distinct' in the same sentence I get cranky.


So I wasn't too happy to open an e-mail from my chosen political party this week informing me that Party Leader Elizabeth May is thrilled that the Quebec Green Party is now a 'distinct' wing and will organize things its own way.


She calls it 'grassroots democracy'.


I call it divisive.

And par for the course.


But I'm not as upset about it as I used to be.

Technology has brought English Canada together in a way that we couldn't have imagined when the FLQ first struck terror into our hearts forty years ago.


Face book and twitter have shrunk the country to the size of our computer monitors and the coverage of the Olympics opened a floodgate of love-of-country that most of us had never experienced.


Who knew the passion that lies beneath our reserved exteriors, eh?



Les Anglais have also seen the power of the Internet this past month in the middle east.


We now know that millions of people can be informed and united for a single cause -

people who are separated from each other geographically.



For the first time it is possible to imagine the country surviving and flourishing without Quebec.



I don't advocate separation and  I suppose it is too much to ask one politician to draw

 a line in the sand, but I can tell you one thing:


I'll be sleeping easier during the next referendum.





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