salomon@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Dan Salomon) (10/04/89)
alonzo@microsoft.UUCP (Alonzo Gariepy) writes: >So let us get back to how the rest of Canada is helping to obliterate the >few remaining dregs of culture in Quebec. A good posting except for this last sentence. You make it sound like a conspiracy. Actually the whole world is changing. All around the world people are living in apartment buildings, driving identical cars, eating hamburgers, watching American television, wearing western clothes, and learning English. If Quebec succeeds in freezing its culture and language it will be like a little time capsule in a sea of change. Everyone will benefit by freezing Quebec culture except the Quebecois. The Quebecois will cut themselves off from worldwide communications, and commerce. But American tourists will have someplace different to go and say "Isn't this quaint, they still speak French here." Anthropologists will have someplace old fashioned to visit to study the evolution of culture. One of the worst destroyers of culture was the Partie Quebecois. When they got to power they started changing many traditions. Abortion became legal, even though the Catholic religion is a significant feature of Quebec culture. They started inventing new French words. (A hamburger by any other name is still a hamburger.) Inventing a new culture that is purposely different from the rest of the world is still not preserving culture.