Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

To younger progressives, the late Montreal novelist Mordecai Richler was
the literary equivalent of talk-show host David Letterman—a grouch who
presents the same old “Stupid Separatist Tricks.” They might prefer
Sacré Blues, a perceptive Gen-X view of Quebec. The author beats
Richler at his own game. After noting that militant separatist cineaste
Pierre Falardeau excoriates moderate Québécois as
“‘ass-lickers,’” he slams the director for financing his latest
project with Telefilm Canada funds. The courageous Grescoe denounces a
living target, while his predecessor attacked reactionary Canon Lionel
Groulx, who died in 1967.

In other cases, the author overindulges his subjects. In 1998, a dancer
in a Marie Chouinard production intentionally urinated onstage. Grescoe
actually praises this stunt as “simple, dignified and moving.”
Elsewhere he investigates Quebec’s boomers. Franзois Ricard, a yuppie
academic, is questioned. Grescoe points out that Ricard’s book, La
Génération Lyrique, criticizes his cohorts who threw their babies out
with the holy water by rejecting traditional religious and social
duties. Swipes against such familiar targets as Céline Dion may amuse
arrogant anglophones, but their smugness is challenged. Grescoe’s
attacks on English Canada’s “crocodile-eyed down-sizers” will
resonate in Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia. Our neighbor to the
south is described as “engaged in a narcissistic monologue, gazing at
itself in a mirror as an increasingly disgusted world looks on.”
Quebec’s distinctiveness, which makes life interesting and Canada
humane, is the alternative.