Oxford University Press, Don Mills, Ontario, 2012. 389 pp., illus., $35 hardcover
Published as the sixth volume in Oxford University Press’s Illustrated History of Canada series, Peter Gossage and J.I. Little’s recent book covers Quebec from Samuel de Champlain to contemporary issues of the hijab and gun control.
Abandoning a narrative model of national history, the authors take an innovative approach to chronology and interpretation and elevate the genre of survey history with their elegant writing. Their book represents a sharp break from a generation of national histories written in the 1980s with emphases on industrialization and political correctness on the national question.
The work’s subtitle, Tradition & Modernity, is significant. Gossage and Little situate Quebec history around the polarities of an “identity grounded in the past and its traditions ... and another, more forwardlooking identity that is attentive to science and technology, to modern ideas ... and to the promise of what might be.”
They give only cursory attention to worn benchmarks like the Conquest, the Quebec Act, Lord Durham’s report, or the War of 1812 and instead take a fresh approach to perennial themes in Quebec history. Rather than presenting tradition in the context of a backward Catholic peasantry, for example, they speak to the persistence of the corvée, or statutory roadwork labour, and resistance to municipal and educational reform.
Modernity is associated with Montreal, and they give place to its urban dominance, its immigrant communities, and its cultural duality. Indeed, the centuries leading to the rebellions of 1837 are rapidly covered under chapter titles relating to the fur trade, settlement, and military matters; on the other hand, ninety pages — nearly a third of the text — are devoted to the six decades since 1960. Here the authors dig into “Quebec’s growing diversity” and what they call the establishment of “a modern, transparent political culture.” They poke the historian’s stick at social issues around sexuality and the pill, gender inequality and feminism, gays and lesbians, and youth power in the CEGEPs (post-secondary colleges) and universities.
No history of Quebec can avoid the national question, two referendums, and the repeated election of Parti Québécois governments that have sovereignty as a principal objective. While presenting both sides of the debate, Gossage and Little leave little doubt as to their historical take on what they call “the promised land of sovereignty.” Respected historians at Concordia University and Simon Fraser University, respectively, Gossage and Little are determined not to be dismissed as outsiders. Pointing out that they are “Quebec-born historians with deep roots in the province,” they insist that “most general statements about Quebec society” into the nineteenth century “simply do not apply to the substantial [English-speaking] population that lived in the freehold territory.”
They give careful attention to complex issues around language and schools but are not tender with Bill 101 (1977), the province’s “comprehensive and restrictive language law.” They write passionately of a government running “roughshod over individual rights and liberties,” “language police,” and both corporations and thousands of English-speaking Quebecers voting with their feet by leaving for Toronto or Calgary. For the Québécois, on the other hand, it was “a fresh start” and “a national coming of age.”
Writing of the aftermath of the 1995 referendum, Gossage and Little come back to the charge, urging nationalists “to give up on their dream of an independent Quebec and focus on other things.” And they throw their weight behind historian Jocelyn Létourneau, well-known for the barbs he has exchanged with sovereignists and his depiction of tension between “ancient founding myths” and “new myth.” This makes for a lively history, rich in its historiography and writing and, with its upfront critique of nationalism, one that will spark sharp reception.
Since this should become the go-to history of Quebec, I see two principal negatives. The lack of a general bibliography outside the footnotes weakens the work for students and general readers. Another surprising downside is the weak reproduction of the maps (on pages 54 and 69, for example) and some illustrations (such as on page 88). Excellent captions have been wasted by a publisher who has produced “An Illustrated History” in which nine colour images are awkwardly placed while several of the black-and-white illustrations are unattractive and undecipherable. These difficulties could be remedied in an inexpensive paperback version aimed at the student market.
— Brian Young (Read bio)
Brian Young is a professor emeritus of history at McGill University and a former board member of Canada's History Society.