Franco-Canada Blogged

There will be a blog post ruminating on Acadieman, Brayons, and “weekend Acadians”. After I got taken to the woodshed at the pub Friday by a friend who’s spent a lot of time in Quebec, there will also be some flailing about on civic nationalism, and whether defence of a language is enough to rally a national identity around. (It looks it at the moment, which is why I got taken to the woodshed for suggesting it isn’t. So I still have to either think it through, or post whatever rubbish comes into my head anyway.)

And until I write those posts, two links to other people blogging:

Angry French Guy has his own post on what he (as a Quebecois) makes on Acadia. My tendentious and ill-informed summary:

• Yup, Quebec to Acadia is like Australia to NZ (or Canada to Quebec)—with the larger party not particularly aware of the smaller, and the smaller party defining itself in opposition.
• Acadia does still assimilate immigrants to Acadianicity. The “Weekend Acadians” post, prompted by a comment by Acajack in response to me, will include stuff about the difference between Northern New Brunswick, where Acadianicity is still a dominant, assimilating identity, and Southern New Brunswick, where it yields to English. (It won’t include a *lot*, but it sets up an interesting conundrum on types of identity that I have to deal with as a Greek-Australian msyelf.)
• Franco-Canadians from outside Quebec go to Moncton U because they repudiate the Quebec-as-French-Homeland argument, and are passionately invested in Canada. As I’d been surmising from other posts.
• They’ve ended up getting jobs in Quebec anyway, because you can’t get a job in French in the Yukon. So they *have* done aliyah.

I didn’t *like* the conclusion to Acajack’s comment on “weekend Acadians” (though I sort of identified with it), which is why I’ll post about it. AFG’s conclusion… I’m not happy that you can’t get a job in French outside Quebec (and Officially-Bilingual New Brunswick, hence AFG’s Avoiding Speeding Ticket strategy). But those are the facts of French waning outside the Homeland-And-A-Half. I’d prefer Aliyah not to be necessary in my ideal world; but there are good reasons why Aliyah is necessary in this world.

The other post, chez Big Media Matt, triggered by a conservative blogger’s post pro-Quebec Separatism (because it gives him a useful cudgel in the American culture wars: we all have our own reasons for taking an interest in another’s politics). Matt’s post, with comments (some informative), is on the virtues and vices of being a Deracinated Cosmopolitan Elite. Which *is* the ideal I’m inchoately defending, though I do also see the downsides in deracination.