Bridges and Fences

Inquiry:



In 1995, residents of Quebec voted not to secede from the Canadian federation by a tiny margin.

Imagine what might have happened to North America if they had parted ways. Canada and the United States are dependent upon one another for trade and resources, and there are a number of agreements between the countries that account in part for both their successes as regional and world powers. Canada is a member of the Group of Eight, NAFTA, NATO, the UN, and so on.

With a split economy and a political wedge driven between the Atlantic Provinces and the rest of the country, the new nations would be given to greater fractionalization. Interior and foreign policies would get incredibly more complex for everyone in North America. Individuals would begin exoduses from nations that no longer represented their interests. French Canada itself would face harder times, as it lost much of the diversity that makes its economy so secure now. It would surely also suffer from a self-imposed stigma.

Why secede in the first place? The French originally colonized Canada, and the Quebec region (which is still dominated by descendents of the French) has a strong cultural tilt, which is why they continue to use their predecessors' language. They find these values increasingly threatened by the largely English-speaking world as it closes around them.

The real problem, though, is that there is no simple solution to the culture question. Preservation of a culture for its own sake is to a certain degree sentimental and nationalistic nonsense. But then, why is assimilation better? What makes one culture better than another, simply because the other is bigger?


Think about this as the issues of immigration bombard you from every news source. The answers are complicated, but they are there - and in every instance of divisive politic I've run across, the best solutions have involved compromise, acceptance, and most prominently, a mutual desire for everybody to benefit.