When was the last time you truly believed in some­thing ?
French never really real­ized they don’t own half of the world any­more and we had a point of view on every­thing. We grew up believ­ing in the Euro­pean Union but we dis­trusted any­thing behind the for­mer iron cur­tain. Ital­ians, Span­ish and Por­tuguese were our new neigh­bors and we flooded their beaches in the sum­mer – but our grand-parents still remem­bered a time when they were masons, at the bot­tom of the society.

Alge­ri­ans, Moroc­cans and Tunisians all spoke per­fect Parisian French but they were new immi­grants, an easy tar­get for the obnox­ious Front National. Once an odd­ity in the French polit­i­cal scene, the rad­i­cal right-wing national-populist party was grow­ing. Mean­while, Mit­ter­rand was retir­ing and the right-wing was com­ing back into power. Ger­mans were France’s friends again and Bill Clin­ton was strangely close to French cul­ture with the Lewin­sky scan­dal.
Social cri­sis. Protests. Demon­stra­tions. Riots. The me-generation made a lot of money but they didn’t pass it on. The years of easy money… didn’t see the colour of it.

We had a strong social con­science. Why wouldn’t we ? Our par­ents started to lose their jobs, teach­ers were on strike more often than the rail­road­ers and we were paint­ing plac­ards and work­ing on slo­gans every Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber when the gov­ern­ment would attempt the reform the school sys­tem… again. We marched the streets, we argue with the cops, we scraped with the young fas­cists who handed out their shitty pro­pa­ganda in front of the high school, we met at night in an old attic to set the world to rights. We were young when we picked a side. Right ver­sus left. French-style Manichaeism.

That’s how I left. That’s how I arrived in Canada. A bit brain­washed, fairly inno­cent and very Social­ist and one hun­dred per­cent sure this world needed change.

Cana­dian pol­i­tics. Two main par­ties : the Lib­er­als and the Con­ser­v­a­tive. So, the Lib­er­als must be right-wing – cause in France, being called a Lib­eral is a bad word, much like being called a Social­ist in Texas. Oh, they’re fairly left-wing ? Alright. But what about the Con­ser­v­a­tive ? What a stu­pid nick­name ! Oh… not a nick­name ? Mmmm… Why would any­one name a party “con­ser­v­a­tive” ? What’s to brag about in being conservative ???

So, when is the demon­stra­tion sea­son ? In France, we have two : May-June (nice weather) and September-November (Par­lia­ment back in ses­sion). How about here ? No, I don’t wanna know about the hockey/ curling/ football/ base­ball sea­son ! I’m talk­ing about p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s !

Oh what’s the hell, they don’t under­stand anything.

Okay. Do you guys have irrev­o­ca­ble ben­e­fits ? We can fight for these if you like. Remem­ber when the French gov­ern­ment tried to sup­press the Pen­te­cost hol­i­day to fund a social pro­gram ? Oh yeah, that demon­stra­tion was fun ! Do you want to defend pub­lic ser­vices ? You know, civil ser­vants and the peo­ple, walk­ing together side by side to demand that state-owned ser­vices keep low profit and max­i­mize ser­vices. It’s beau­ti­ful, really. Besides, the state can’t really have train, urban tran­sit, mail and hos­pi­tal on strike for­ever, so we usu­ally get pretty good results with these. I mean, even if you don’t have a pre­cise com­plaint, it’s alright. We usu­ally go on strike first and then negotiate.

NHL lock­out ? What NHL lock­out ?? Hockey play­ers have a union ??? But what about the peo­ple ? That’s not exactly what I meant when I said I needed to know more about Cana­dian labor dispute !

You do elect a Pres­i­dent, right ? Prime Min­is­ter, what­ever. Okay. So you must be dis­ap­pointed if your party doesn’t win. Here we go ! Start a strike cause the PM didn’t get you what he promised. I’ll show you.

Or not. After a few months, I real­ized Canada was a pretty peace­ful place. Sure, there’s the lan­guage bat­tle, the soft­wood lum­ber con­flict with the USA, land dis­putes with the first nations but peo­ple are less into pol­i­tics and tend to mind their own busi­ness. It’s not that Cana­di­ans don’t fight. But they’re paid to do it – it’s called WWE or hockey night in Canada.

In France, social iden­tity is based on being a mem­ber of a group. In North Amer­ica, social iden­tity is based on the indi­vid­ual. In Europe, peo­ple believe in – and value – rev­o­lu­tions. North Amer­ica believe in slow but steady change. When peo­ple have a prob­lem, they tend to turn to local author­i­ties : the mayor, the city coun­cil­man, the news­pa­pers, the medias… You just don’t protest for the sake of it. You actu­ally try to find a suit­able com­pro­mise between two parts. Oh, that’s good news.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m gonna take my red flag down to the basement.

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