User:Mrboire/Political nature of the celebrations

There is much ambiguity and strong feelings about the celebrations that take place on the National Holiday. The day is meant as a day for all Québécois, no matter what ethnic, religious, racial background, Unfortunately, at the current time most of the celebrations are designed to create pride and honour the history of French Canadians and their strife for existence.

William Johnson (Author), and former Alliance Québec president, has tried to point out the minority perspective of the National Holiday on various occasions. He has even compared it to beeing able to come to Canada day waving any kind of flag and feeling welcome, but showing up at La St.-Jean waving a Canada Flag is taboo. When he was the leader of an English Lobby group, his mere mention of attending the celebrations brought accusations from party goers the he was opposed to the existence of French speaking people. One protester even likend it to going to a Canada day celebration and spitting on the flag. This type of mentality has been studied by the Center for Research and Information on Canada and found that a majority of Québécois feel that the rest of Canada does not value them. The problem is that the oposite is true. It is also argued that Johnson incited the political banter. The feeling of beeing in a group of simular minded folks does lead to a sort of Mob mentality that becomes exclusionary. Another journalist, Lysiane Gagnon questions if the holiday is truly national. She states that La St. Jean can be either a celebration of the French-Canadian identity, or something else. There exist many different concepts that celebrate diveristy together, but there are always pitfalls.

A similar situation also exists with the other National Holiday, Canada Day. In 1998, the city of Montreal cut it's funding for the parade down to less than half because it did not like the theme of unity. The parade featured floats from many different cultures from all over the world, but as one spectator questioned, "where's the francophone québecois culture". In 1997 the french newspaper "Le Devoir" headline about the festivities that year read "Canada Day ... English Style", and went on to talk about how there was hardly any room for language duality.