La Révolution Moderne: Expo '67 and the Spatialization of Identity in Quebec

8/6/2019 La Rvolution Moderne: Expo '67 and the Spatialization of Identity in Quebec

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la rvolution moderneExpo 67 and the Spatialization of National Identity in Qubec

zakcq lockrem


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Zakcq Lockrem

A thesis submitted to the

Department o Urban Planning and Design

Harvard University Graduate School o Designin conormity with the requirements or the degree

Master o Urban Planning

Harvard University Graduate School o Design

Cambridge, Massachusetts

May 2010

Copyright Zakcq Lockrem 2010

La Rvolution ModerneExpo 67 and the Spatialization o National Identity in Qubec


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As I have been at work with this project for almost four years,there are numerous friends, colleagues and professors to thank

in the Department of Urban Planning and Design at HarvardsGraduate School of Design, the Department of Applied SocialSciences at Boston Universitys Met College and the Departmentof Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. First and foremost are myadvisor, Susan Fainstein, and wonderful reader, Enrique Silva.Walter Carroll, Madhu Dutta-Koehler, Daniel Esser, Srdjan Weissand Julian Beinart have likewise provided valuable guidance.

Among my fellow students at the GSD, Id especially like tothank Alex Miller and Christina Calabrese for all of their commentsand support and to Kathleen Onufer for her careful proofreading.Thanks to Siqi Zhu for the cover design.

A special thank you for all the Brooklyn kids who helped keepme (relatively) sane this year, especially Scott Valentine, but alsoeveryone else who shared a oor, bed, couch or meal (whetheryou knew you were doing it or not). Thanks for letting me marry

into your little Vietnamese / UPS family.Thanks to the research librarians at the Library and Archives

of Canada in Ottawa and the Bibliothque et archives Nationalesdu Qubec in Montral.

My biggest debt is to Jessica Lockrem. Its now been twelveyears since we started the intertwined projects of creating ourlifes work. Nothing that Ive done could have been done withoutyou. With love.

Acknowledgements


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Abstract 2

Acknowledgements 3

Table of Contents 4

Introduction 5

Part One: Introduction

Chapter One: Space, History and Society in Qubec 10

Part Two: The Quiet (Spatial) Revolution

Chapter Two: Spatial Identity in Qubec 28

Chapter Three: Spatial Identication and Colonial Montral 42

Chapter Four: Expo 67 and the Spatialization of Identity 55

Conclusion 74

Works Cited 77

Table o Contents


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This is the decade to be in Montral.(Desbarats June 26, 1964)

In a 1964 editorial for the Montreal Starentitled This DecadeBelongs to Montreal, Peter Desbarats writes of the rapid changesoccurring in the city. He writes of the angry speeches, studentdemonstrations, isolated outbreaks of terrorism but also of theemergent Qubcois culture being fashioned into a new urbanway of life (Desbarats June 26, 1964). The 60s were a turningpoint, for both Montral and Qubec. The city long repressedand depressed was dynamically re-imagined (Lortie 2004: 15)while the French speaking population of the province assert[ed]itself, having a new appreciation of [their] political and economicstrength (Desbarats June 26, 1964). This study examines thelinks between the development of a Qubcois national identityand urban development in 1960s Montral.

Though the study is situated, geographically, on the

northeastern part of the North American continent, it began for mealmost ten years ago and several thousand miles away. At thetime, I was living in Berlin, Germany, and, although I had grownup in a central city in the American Midwest, Berlin presented acompletely different urban environment than I was used to. As myinterest in urban studies increased, I began to become aware ofthe huge volume of literature surrounding the political meaninginherent or implied in Berlins urban space. Balfour (1990), Ladd(1997), Wise (1998), Till (2005) and Jordan (2006) are just someexamples of academics who have investigated and interpreted

Introduction


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6 Introduction

Berlins urban space in light of the political trends of the twentiethcentury.

Upon returning to the United States to continue mystudies, I was surprised that, outside of a few contexts, there wasso little written about the national importance of the political andsociological meanings behind urban space.1 In my opinion, thislack of literature represents a blind spot in two different elds.On the one hand, it represents a failure of social scientists toconsider space as an active participant in the formation of socialrelationships (Soja 1996); on the other, a failure of spatial scientists(architects, urban planners and geographers) to consider theimportance of political and sociological debates on nationalidentity in their interpretations of urban development.

My interest piqued, I began looking for a case study site.I had always been more interested in the metropolis, the culturaland economic center of a nation, than in the national capital.Additionally, I wanted to study a country where the metropolis

and national capital were not the same city, which ruled out manyplaces, especially former colonies, where political power andsites of economic extraction are so often centralized.

As I searched, I became increasingly interested in statelessnations, those people groups who are more or less institutionallycomplete, culturally or linguistically distinct and possess a self-conscious knowledge of their national heritage, but, for one reasonor another, do not have an independent state structure. Evenmore so, I was interested in stateless nations within developeddemocracies. This list includes Scotland, Wales, Catalonia,Euskadi (the Basque Country), Qubec and Puerto Rico amongmany others.

Foremost in my decision to study a stateless nation in ademocracy was the unique status that is provided to territory thatthe minority nation can control through democratic processes. In

1 The literature on Berlin is among the richest. As is the case withBerlin, much of this sort of literature focuses on national capitals (Vale 2008).Other examples include work on Braslia (Holston 1989) and Israel (Segal,Tartakover and Weizman 2003, Weizman 2007).


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7Introduction

many cases, this may include a state or province, but in almostall it includes municipalities. As such, cities can be an important

space of political empowerment for these people groups.In the end, my nal decision to study Qubec was as much

about accessibility as anything else: it was close enough for meto visit often for a reasonable price. At the same time, a study ofMontral, and with it, Qubec and Canada, proved to be fortuitousfor a number of reasons. First, much more so than its neighbor tothe south, Canada is an urban nation (Artibise 1988). Therefore,virtually all the fundamental issues of Canadian life are evidentin the urban areas (Artibise 1988: 239). Second, one of the mainperiods of the development of Qubcois national identity alsocorresponded exactly a period of major urban restructuring in theprovinces (and, at the time the countrys) largest city.

As such, Montral became the perfect setting for this study,which examines the role of urban space in forming and sustainingQubcois national identity in the period of the Quiet Revolution,

1960-1970.2

I approach this research through one main researchquestion, followed by several others that stem from it.

Most generally, what theoretical frameworks are neededto approach the question of identity in the built environment inQubec? Although there exists a signicant literature regardingQubcois Identity and the built environment in Montral, there isseldom an overlap between the two. How can the gap be bridged?These issues will be addressed in the rst chapter through thework of Edward Soja and Henri Lefebvre.

Each of the following chapters will take up a series of issues thatstems from that of the rst. In the second chapter, I examine howthe federal and provincial governments view their citizen/subjectsand what sort of identity did those various levels of governmenthope to produce spatially. I hypothesize that the state sought

2 Although there seems to be little consensus on the exact period of

the Quiet Revolution, it is dened here as the period from the election ofJean Lesage to the Premiership in June of 1960 to the October Crisis, duringwhich the Front de liberation du Qubec kidnapped several government of-cials leading to the suspension of civil rights in Qubec, in October of 1970.


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8 Introduction

to produce idealized subjects through spatial discourses andinterventions. Since Qubec and Canada, as two differentiated

state structures, will have differing views of who constitutes anideal subject, spatial interventions are likely to play confusing andcontested roles.

In the third chapter, I examine how the experience of urbanspace shapes identity. I posit that the experience of urban spacewas the major force in creating a radical post-colonial discourse inQubec which led to a desire to reconquer the urban spaces ofMontral which, in turn, inuenced the development of the 1960smegaprojects in the city and were instrumental in creating a self-condent Qubcois people who were recognized internationallyand in re-branding Montral as Francophone space.

In the nal chapter, I examine the role of modernism andmegaprojects in 1960s Qubcois identity. I hypothesize thatthe architecture of 1960s Montral and especially of Expo 67was deliberately Avant Garde modernist as a style in order to

encourage modernism as a social practice among the Qubcoisand to promote Qubec abroad.

It is my intention that these questions will serve as a relevantframework for better understanding urban development inthe 1960s in Montral and, by extension, into the beginning ofthe 21st century, as Montral once again experiences a majorrenaissance (Burke 2008: 18).


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IntroductionPart One


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We are a nation because we have a culture.(Handler and Linnekin 1984: 277)

(the) history-society link has too often been conceptualized inthe form of an all-inclusive ontological and epistemological dyadSpatiality in nearly all its forms is unproblematically silenced,pushed to the periphery, to the margins of critical intellectual

inquiry.(Soja 1996: 72)

Urban space plays a signicant role in structuring socialrelations as both a mirror of society and a tool that forms it. Yet,outside of simplistic one to one relationships between symbolicrepresentations and the urban fabric,1 we have yet to understandmore fully the role that the built environment plays in formingand sustaining the complexities of national identities, especiallyoutside of national capitals.2

Although there exists a substantial literature on the socialand historical production of national identity, much less attentionhas been paid to the role that space plays in the construction ofidentity. As the quote at the beginning of this chapter points out,the social sciences have tended to privilege history and societywhile space is peripheralized into the background as reection,container, stage, environment or external constraint upon humanbehavior and social action (Soja 1996: 71).

In this chapter, I will examine the relevant literature on the

1 A glass wall symbolizing democracy, for example.2 For a discussion of national capitals, see Vale 2008.

Space, History and Society in Qubec Iden-Chapter One


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Space, History and Society 11

social/historical construction of national identity next to that of theemerging literature on the social production of space. While a

signicant portion of this chapter will be in the form of a theoreticaldiscussion, I will attempt to ground my arguments in the speciccontext of Qubec identity throughout. The chapter will alsobe structured around Edward Sojas concept of an ontologicaltrialectic.

Soja builds the concept of the trialectic off of the belief of HenriLefebvre that dialectical, bifurcated thought is not enough, rather,Il y a toujours lAutre (Soja 1996: 7).3 It is a statement of whatthe world must be like in order for us to have knowledge of it(Soja 1996: 70). In the ontological trialectic - Sociality, Historicalityand Spatiality - or their lower-case equivalents society, historyand space, combine to present a representation of existence. Asmentioned above, the social sciences have often used a Historicality/Sociality dialectic, while ignoring or dismissing Spatiality, while thespatial disciplines: architecture, urban planning and geography,

have often failed to engage meaningfully with social and historicalprocesses (Soja 1996: 70-73). Soja argues instead that the threemoments of the trialectic cannot successfully be understoodin isolation or epistemologically privileged separately (Soja1996: 72). At the heart of this argument is the idea that each ofthe three concepts has an ability to act on each other in eitherdirection. In other words, one must not only accept that societyand history produces space but also that space has the ability toproduce society and history in a way that is not environmentallydeterministic. Indeed, once one accepts that social relations,history and space are all socially constructed, environmentaldeterminism becomes a conceptual impossibility. What remainsis the ability of the social construction of space to shape society.My argument is not that urban space has shaped national identityor vice versa, but that both are produced socially in a reciprocal

relationship to each other.

3 There is always the Other. Translations (and any mistakes), unlessnoted, are mine, and will appear in the footnotes.


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Space, History and Society12

As is suggested above, many, if not most, scholars tend to workin only one of the three moments of the ontological trialectic.

The remainder of this chapter will be structured around eachof these moments and will examine, in detail, the theoreticalframework of each in relation to Qubec identity, beginning withculture/society, moving on to history and nally settling in space.Throughout, connections will be drawn to each of the others.

Sociality

Unlike Canadian political scientist Will Kymlicka, who holds thata culture and a nation can be used synonymously, I do not usethe terms interchangeably (Kymlicka 1995: 18). A culture, in myformulation, is a set of social relationships, held intergenerationallyor by choice, by any group, whether religious, ethnic or simplythrough shared lifestyle or musical taste. My denition of a Nation,on the other hand, is extremely close to Kymlickas denition of a

culture/nation/people as an intergenerational community, moreor less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory orhomeland, sharing a distinct language and history but with theimportant caveat that each element in that description is a sociallyconstructed reality (Kymlicka 1995: 18). Here we have all of theelements of Sojas trialectic: Sociality, Historicality and Spatiality,all combining to produce a denition of nationhood. Nations have

culture(s), but culture(s) do not necessarily have nations. For bothgroup members and outsiders, nationhood and culture usuallyappear obvious, but difcult to dene. Many Anglo-Canadianswould dispute Qubecs claim to nationhood, but would not rejectthe idea that Qubec has its own culture, conating nationhoodinstead with a third term: statehood. Indeed, attempts have beenmade to solve Canadas Qubec Problem by advocating for anationalism that uses Qubecs distinctiveness to differentiate

Canada from the United States (Mackey 2002: 63). Within thisframework, nationhood and statehood are logical equivalents,or, as the old joke goes, a nation is a culture with an army. The


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reality, of course, is that few, if any, states today are nation-states.(Kymlicka 1995: 11-17).

While the denition of nation given above provides a valuableframework for thinking about nationhood, it should not be assumedthat an idea of a nation is monolithic or unchanging. Nationalismin Quebec is not a unitary social fact, and nationalist ideologieshave varied and proliferated in relation to changing historicaland sociopolitical circumstances (Handler and Linnekin 1984:277). Indeed, it is within a period of worldwide historical andsociopolitical change, the 1960s, that this study is set. There are,however, certain pillars of Qubec identity that have remainedrelatively important throughout Qubecs history. Referred to asle patrimoine, these national cultural institutions and traditionsprovide an important basis for what it means to be Qubcois.4Among the most important are the French Language (Bouchard2008, Nadeau and Barlow 2006) and the Catholic religion, whilesecondary symbols include rural life and the winter. Anthropologist

Claudio Lomnitz calls these symbols national totems (Lomnitz2005: 11).

The Invention of Tradition(Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), hasshown that even the most cherished of national symbols, suchas the Scottish kilt, are often inventions, historically retrotted toappear as timeless traditions (Roper 1983: 15-41). According toHobsbawm and Ranger, these traditions

belong to three overlapping types: a) those establishingor symbolizing social cohesion or the membership ofgroups, real or articial communities, b) those establishingor legitimizing institutions, status or relations of authority,and c) those whose main purpose was socialization, theinculcation of beliefs, value systems and conventions ofbehaviour (Hobsbawm and Ranger: 1983: 9).

These three types can be clearly seen in the four totems

4 Best translated as heritage in English.


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suggested above. In fact, in every case, each totem can be seento overlap all three.

As an example, I will examine winter, perhaps one of Qubecsmost interesting national totems.5 With geographical (lying ata northern latitude that produces harsh winter conditions) andtemporal issues that, combined with the role it plays in society,form the three components of Sojas trialectic, the Qubcoisexperience of winter also connects with each of Hobsbawmand Rangers three types of traditions. Within Qubecsliterary tradition, winter often symbolizes a disconnection fromlarger society (see, for example, Gatan Soucys 2000 novelLacquittement, translated as Atonement in 2007). The harshnessof winter disconnects households from each other and villagesfrom the city. Winter is self-reliance, and the Qubcois, ofcourse, are self-reliant. In essence, the geography of Qubec isseen to protect Francophone cultural distinctiveness through itsinhospitality. The informal national anthem of Qubec is a folk

song from the mid-1960s entitled Mon Pays, by a nationalistmusician named Gilles Vigneault. The constant refrain of thesong, mon pays ce nest pas un pays, cest lhiver, drawsa link between country (as territory or as statehood), time(seasonality) and society.6 Winter is even institutionalized in theform of the Winter Carnival, a 120-year-old annual event that isone of the biggest of its types in the world. The celebration takesplace at the same time as mardi grasand draws over a millionvisitors to Qubec City each year. The highlight of the festivalis the construction of a gigantic castle of ice opposite QubecsNational Assembly (the provincial parliament), which is home toBonhomme, the carnivals ambassador/king. Various provincial,

5 Interestingly, Canada, which has as much claim to winter as as anational symbol as Qubec, does not use it as a national totem in the sameway. Rather, Anglo-Canadian literature and art focuses on the concept of the

North, which is, rather then a place of self-reliance, a foreboding space ofsurvival. For examples, see the works of the Group of Seven and MargaretAtwoods Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972).6 My country is not a country, it is winter


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local and federal governmental bodies fund the festival, as donationalized provincial utilities, such as HydroQuebec.7

In addition to Hobsbawm and Rangers book, perhaps themost important work on the topic of nationhood in the last 30 yearsis Benedict Andersons Imagined Communities. In it, Andersondescribes a nation as being imagined in three ways: as limited,as sovereign, and as a community (Anderson 2006: 7). Limited,in that a nation can only exist through exclusion; sovereign,recognized as the allomorphism between ontological claimsand territorial stretch; and community, as a deep horizontalcomradeship (Anderson 2006: 7). Interestingly, despite neverspeaking explicitly of a spatial imagination, each of Andersonsformulations includes a spatial reference, an insight that will bediscussed at greater length below.

It is perhaps the least spatial of Andersons concepts, that ofcommunity, that best matches up with Hobsbawm and Rangersinvented traditions and makes up the bulk of Andersons book.

From a Marxist perspective, Anderson is especially interestedin how, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation thatmay prevail in a nation, people will willingly die for such limitedmeanings (Anderson 2006: 7). Even outside of a broader Marxistcritique of class-consciousness, many Anglo-Canadians will claimthat Qubcois nationalism is a product of cultural elites that takeadvantage of working class people while failing to extend theargument to their own group identities. Anderson, instead, tracesthe birth of national communities to the growth of print-capitalismand the resulting assemblage of print-languages (Anderson 2006:

7 Though it may seem strange, HydroQuebec is itself a potent na-tional symbol. In the same way that it was once said, Whats good for GMis good for America, HydroQuebec is considered almost an embodimentof Qubcois national identity. In a passage below Andr Lortie refers toShawinigan, the location of a major dam nationalized by the Parti qubcois

adminsitartion of Ren Lvesque. The Anlgo administrators of the dam madeseveral statements suggesting the French Canadians would be incapable ofproperly administrating the project, making the eventual success of the proj-ect a source of signicant nationalist pride (see Dickinson and Young 2003).


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44). French is an emblematic case. Through the middle ages,French was actually several hundred dialects loosely grouped

into two major families, the langue doland langue doc, eachnamed for the word for yes in the language (Nadeau and Balow2006: 35).8 Print-languages were developed for administrationand, soon after, for reasons of print-capital, but they created thepossibilities of national communities by creat(ing) unied eldsof exchange and communication, uniting speakers of the hugevariety of Frenches who might nd it difcult or even impossibleto understand one another in conversation through the writtenword (Anderson 2006: 44). It is little surprise then that the totemof the French language (and its Qubcois dialect, Joual) hasplayed such an important role in the imagination of the Qubcoisnation (see Bouchard 2008, Nadeau and Balow 2006).

Within Qubec, indeed within every national group, theseImagined Communities do not form a universalized whole.There is signicant room for individual expression and even for

change over time. Alisa Henderson, a Canadian political scientist,has used a system known as the Moreno scale to examine thepolitical cultures of Qubec and Scotland over time (Henderson2007). Developed by Luis Moreno, as a tool for cross-nationalcomparisons, the scale asks people to classify themselves in thefollowing way: Are you a) Qubcois only b) More Qubcois thanCanadian c) Equally Qubcois and Canadian d) More Canadianthan Qubcois or e) Canadian only (Henderson 2007: 117, 123)?Henderson found that answers a and b predominated in everysurvey; there is always a majority in Qubec who feels either onlyQubcois or more Qubcois than Canadian; although therewere signicant changes in peoples self-identications throughtime, especially relating to election cycles (Henderson 2007: 119-221). And indeed, these scales by themselves cannot fully explainthe development of a national consciousness. Henderson found

8 In fact, a third grouping of romance languages, the Langue dsi, orwhat we today know as Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, were also consid-ered the same language as the two families that developed into French,which shows just how loosely related dialects could be in the middle ages.


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that some other regions of Canada actually rated nearly as high orhigher than Qubec in people who said that they are both Albertan

and Canadian, for example. In these cases Canada might beseen as the nation and Alberta as the political jurisdiction or theymay view Alberta as a nation with a distinct history, languageand culture and Canada as an amalgam state (Henderson 2007:128-129). In other words, the scale asks people only how theydescribe themselves, but not what those descriptive terms meanto them. It would seem, therefore, that the imagined communityof nationhood is a uid and negotiated social relation as wellas a politico-historical and, I argue, spatial construction that, asHandler and Linnekin write varie[s] and proliferate[s] temporally(1984: 277).

Historicality

Every automobile license plate in Qubec carries a small

message of memory and resistance: Je me souviens.9 The linecomes from a Qubcois poem, Je me souviens que n sous lelys, je cros sous la rose, which refers to the history of Frenchcolonization and eventual British rule.10 History can be contestedin any society, but can become especially so in a place likeQubec, where identities are constantly negotiated. Indeed, inmany ways, it is the history of Qubec that makes the experience

and retelling of Qubcois history so difcult. As a majoritytreated as a marginal minority, many in Qubec are skepticalof attempts to present Qubec as the pluralist society that itcertainly is (Ltourneau 2004: 7). The question what history, forwhat present and, especially, for what future? is open and underactive discussion (Ltourneau 2004: 3).

For a signicant proportion of Qubecs population, especiallythose who are more vehemently nationalist, Qubecs history

is often expressed through the suffering of their ancestors. It

9 I remember.10 I remember that, born under the lily, I grew under the rose.


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is a national story expressed only in terms of sorrows andgrievances (Ltourneau 2004: 8). An editorial that appeared in the

newspaper Le Devoirduring a debate on provincial educationalstandards highlights this recitation of history:

What separates us radically from you [referring to thosewho would present a more plural view of Qubec history]is memory. Better yet, the duty of memory. We remember,among other things, the expulsion of the Acadians, the92 Resolutions of 1834, the twelve men hanged in 1838,the Act of Union of 1840, the hanging of Riel in 1885, theabolition of the French-language schools in Manitobain 1890, conscription, Asbestos, Gordon, the unilateralrepatriation in 1982, Meech, and what was said to RenLvesque when electricity was nationalized: Do you thinkthat you people can manage Shawinigan? We have thatmemory within us and we remain faithful to those men

and women who wanted to build a society that would bedifferent form triumphal Americanness. (Andr Turmel, Ledevoir de mmoire, 28 June 1996)11

It is interesting that, although this quote highlights events in alinear fashion, it does not hold the structure of a narrative. Rather,history is presented as a series of glimpses, bits and pieces of awhole.

To some extent, this defensive application of history lies in the

11 This translation comes from Ltourneau 2004: 8. The originaltext reads: Ce qui nous spare radicalement de vous, cest la mmoire.Mieux, le devoir de mmoire. Nous nous souvenons, entre autres choses,de lexpulsion des Adadiens, des 92 rsolutions de 1834, des 12 pedus de1838, d lActe dUnion e 1840, de la pendaison de Riel en 1885, de labolitiondu systme scolaire francophone en 1890 au Manitoba, de laconsription,dAsbestos, de Gordon, du rapatriement unilatral de 1982, de Meech, de ce

quon disait Rne Lvesque lors de la nationalization de llectricit: Nous sommes habits parcette mmoire et demeurons fdles ceux et celles qui voulurent btir ici

une socit diffrente de lamricanit triomphante.


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struggle between the two major ethnic groups for how history istold. French and English history often presents the same event

in extremely different ways. As an example, we can examine LaConqute, the event that transferred control of Qubec to theBritish Empire in 1760.12 As the feminist historian Susan Mannputs it, Conquest is like rape. The major blow takes only a fewminutes, the results no matter how well camouaged, can be atbest unpredictable and at worst devastating (Mann 1982: 20).Clearly this is language that is meant to shock, especially withinthe context of gendered national identities. Anglo-Canada, whichis often represented symbolically by a Mountie and consideredbetter at commercial and political endeavors, rapes Franco-Canada, represented by the female heroine of Longfellowspoem Evangeline, and considered the more culturally sensitive,romantic and religious.13 This extremely provocative image ismeant to show the degree to which the Francophone Canadianwas affected by this single event.

Looking at a standard Anglophone history, we nd that theword Conquest is never used. It refers, simply, to the Plains ofAbraham, the location of the battle between the French andEnglish armies that resulted in the surrender of Qubec City. Evenfurther to the point, this battle rates less than one full line (Morton2006: 25). The index also contains no reference to the Conquestand only two citations for The Plains of Abraham. To his credit,Morton does note that History is constructed differently amongdifferent groups. English-speaking people had a differentmemory of their history Their Canada dated from John Cabotsdiscovery of his New Founde Lande in 1497. The French werethe hereditary enemy, conquered in 1759 (Morton 2006: 33).A less politically correct English history addresses the Conquestthus: A happier calamity never befell a people than the conquestof Canada by British Arms (Parkman, quoted in Dickinson and

Young 2003: 50)

12 The Conquest13 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police


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Lastly, in A Short History of Quebec, a Francophone-Anglophone team devotes over 20 pages from a 370 page book

to the Conquest, its interpretations and its uses through history.It is perhaps shocking that numerous history books covering thesame time periods on the same subject could vary so greatly,from one having less than a line to one devoting more than afth of the total book to a single event. Indeed, it is not a case ofQubecs history being told differently by different groups, but ofit not being told at all by one.

And yet, for Qubcois historians, putting phenomena in atemporal sequence (Kants nacheinander) somehow came to beseen as more signicant and critically revealing than putting thembeside or next to each other in a spatial conguration (Kantsnebeneinander) (Soja 1996: 168). While most are critical of thosewho wrap(sic) up the past in a beautiful linear story with heroesand villains, saints and whores, solemnity and modesty, courageand fear, ags and loves, good guys and bad guys (Ltourneau

2004: 96), there is still an insistence in constructing a history thattreats space as stage and little else.

Spatial thinking is not, however, lost to the public. Spatializedforms of remembrance- land, architecture and material culturalartifacts- can be especially important to Qubecs view ofhistoricality. In fact, the cultural ideal of le patrimoine is oftenexplicitly material. During his eldwork in Qubec, anthropologistRichard Handler quotes a fourth-grade child as saying, Thepatrimoine is old things. Like that chair if that chair is maybe25 years old, its part of the patrimoine (Handler 1988: 140).While the young childs sense of what is old may differ from most,Handler reported that many other informants had a view of historyand culture that was perhaps little different from that of the boy(Handler 1988: 140).

This combination of space, history and cultural remembrance

has also led to one of the most explicit ways in which Qubcoisidentity is spatialized, Qubecs Cultural Property Legislation,which has, since at least 1922, sought to protect monuments and


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objects of art, whose preservation is of national interest from anhistorical or artistic standpoint (Handler 1988: 142). As Richard

Handler points out, the earliest types of historic preservation inQubec were similar to European precedent, Qubec quicklydeveloped practices aimed at preserving not just single buildingsor monuments but entire rural areas (and, implicitly, the lifewayscontained in them), such as the 1935 act protecting the Island ofOrlans (Handler 1988: 142).

SpatialityAlthough Benedict Anderson never explicitly uses the word

space in his work, much of his formulation of the imaginedcommunity has spatial repercussions. Both the concepts ofthe limited and sovereign imaginations have signicant spatialdimensions. The nation is imagined as limited because eventhe largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human

beings, has nite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie othernations (Anderson 2006: 7). Although most anthropologists todaywill reject the concept of the bounded culture, territorial limits dopresent opportunities for the state to spatialize forms of identitywithin their borders through the sovereign exercise of the statespowers over representation (Vann forthcoming: 3). This is bestexemplied within Qubec by the famous language law, Bill 101,

which was adopted in 1977. This law made French the ofciallanguage of the province and outlawed bilingual signs. This had aprofound impact on the physical environment. Although Dickensonand Young point out that bilingual signs are now tolerated inQubec, the prominence of the French language is certainly oneof the things that denes the province as French rather thanbi- or multi-cultural (Dickenson and Young 2003: 326). The state,in essence, has used signage as a way of demarcating identity

within the spatial boundaries of its sovereign territory.To understand the way that space is produced socially, I turn to

Henri Lefebvres Production of Space(Lefebvre 1991). According


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to Edward Soja, Lefebvres work provides an epistemology ofspace, a way of obtain[ing] accurate and practicable knowledge

of our existential spatiality (Soja 1996: 73). Described by Lefebvreas a concept of space corresponding to contemporary socialconditions (Schmid 2008: 28), this concept must relate to bothexisting conditions, as well as the theoretical and philosophicalconditions that govern the human race. Lefebvre suggests threedimensions to the production of space: spatial practice, therepresentation of space, and spaces of representation.

Spatial practice designates the material dimension of socialactivity and interaction (Schmid 2008: 36). It is the existingphysical and social environment, the Lacanian reality. We mightunderstand spatial practice as the actual, existing physicalenvironment: the built environment, topography and geology,climate and environment. Spatial practice can be xated onmaterial culture, human spatiality seen primarily as outcomeor product (Soja 1996: 76 italics in original). It is also called

perceived space, that which can be grasped by the senses(Schmid 2008: 39). In many ways, this Spatial Practice has been,and continues to be, the stomping ground of empirically orientedspatial disciplines: architecture, urban planning and geography.

The representation of space is discursive and dialectic:descriptions, denitions and theories of space along withmaps and plans, information in pictures and signs all fall intothis category (Schmid 2008: 37). Also thought of as conceivedspace, this is the location of much of the work of Kevin Lynch andothers who perform types of cognitive mapping (Lynch 1960). Itis the space of

the creative artist and artful architect, visually or literallyre-presenting the world in the image of their subjectiveimaginaries; the utopian urbanist seeking social and

spatial justice through the application of better ideas, goodintentions and improved social learning; the philosophicalgeographer contemplating the world through the visionary


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power of scientic epistemologies or the Kantian envisioningof geography as way of thinking or the more imaginative

poetics of space (Soja 1996: 79).

It is, I believe, one of the main areas of action for the state asspatial nationalist, understood as a type of utopian or idealized(Hegelian) state that envisions the representative space of theirnation. It allows for forms of descriptive architecture to movebetween the physically produced reality of spatial practice andrepresentional reality. During the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City,for example, the signicance of an architecture that was at onceindigenous and modern was extremely important in describingthe Mexican nation to the watching world. The neo-classicism of the1936 Olympics in Berlin was directly related to the Nazi desire toresurrect a pan-European empire while the exuberant modernismof the Beijing Olympics can be understood as a symbolic arrival ofthe Chinese nation in the modern world (Tomlinson 2008: 1).

Finally, the spaces of representation are the symbolicdimension of space (Schmid 2008). Decribed by Schmid as

This dimension of the production of space refers to theprocess of signication that links itself to a (material) symbol.The symbols of space could be taken from nature, suchas trees or prominent topographical formations; or theycould be artifacts, buildings, and monuments; they couldalso develop out of a combination of both, for example aslandscapes (Schmid 2008).

Soja takes the concept further, arguing that it encompassesthe sympathetic deconstruction and heuristic reconstitution ofthe [spatial practice / representation of space] duality (Soja1996: 81). It is not the space of the architects or planners or

their bosses, the state who shape space but rather the spaceof the social pathways of everyday life. According to Lefebvre,the elds we are concerned with are, rst, the physical nature,


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the Cosmos; secondly, the mental, including logical and formalabstractions; and thirdly, the social (Lefebvre 1991: 11). Thus,

if the representation of space is the main arena where the stateworks to spatialize identity, the spaces of representation are thelocation of social movements.

Important in understanding Lefebvres concepts is thatthese three potential ways of understanding the production ofspace all work together dialectically. The concepts are only usefulin so far as [they] enter[sic] into unity with [their] opposite[s](Hegel, quoted in Schmid 2008: 30). In other words, there issomething inherently contradictory between the lived, perceivedand conceived parts of space that must be sublated or transcended(Schmid 2008: 30).

At the beginning of a chapter entitled Walking in the Cityin The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau describeslooking down at the city from the top of a skyscraper, makinga distinction between the aloof view of the urbanist, city

planner or cartographer and the Wandersmnner below whowrite the urban text (de Certeau 1984: 92-93). In Lefebvresterminology, we might say that the physical space of theperceived city, spatial practice, and the urbanists conceptionsof the city, the representation of space, produce the lived spaceof the Wandersmnner, the spaces of representation. However,de Certeau privileges the experience of the latter as being thetrue writer of the city. I do not think Lefebvre would disagree.Indeed, according to some critiques of Lefebvre, we can thinkof the spatial practice and the representation of space as thesisand antithesis and spaces of representation as something of asynthesis (Schmid 2008). At the very least, we must understandthat the three do not form a linear process, but a circular one thatmay proceed in any direction.

One of the most difcult and unavoidable issues is that the

space of Qubec in general, and especially Montral, is hometo multiple overlapping social and spatial constructions, each ofwhich is merely more or less satisfactory representations of what


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realities exist (Hillier 2008: 25). Accepting that space is sociallyconstructed and constructs society also requires accepting that

there are multiplicities of constructions within a single space, areality that will be seen over and over again in this study. Withinthe example of de Certeau, it is implied that the multiplicity ofindividuals forms a single text of the city. Instead, we should viewsocially produced city space not as an aggregate of individualsbut as multiple connectivities and networks (Hillier 2008: 39).Montral is not one socially produced space, but multiple ones:Anglophone, Francophone, Qubcois and Canadian and indeed,many others. This study privileges the Francophone-Qubcoisone over the others, but that does not make it any more or lessreal than the others.

Moving ForwardThe remainder of this study will begin to examine the concrete

ways in which social actors, both individuals and the state,produce identity spatially, focusing on the period of the QubecsQuiet Revolution and on the planning, execution, and legacy ofthe 1967 International and Universal Exposition, or Expo 67. Inkeeping with Edward Soja and Henri Lefebvres fondness forthrees, I propose the following framework for understanding thespatial production of national identity. I believe three processes

can be identied that match roughly with Lefebvres trialectic:spatial identity, spatial identication and the spatialization ofidentity. Each of the three are the topic of a following chapter andwill consider Qubecs identity at a different spatial scale.

Spatial identity, examined in Chapter Two, is analogous tothe representation of space, and is based on the work of DavidH. Kaplan. Kaplan describes territorial identity as embody[ing] agroups territorial perceptions, which may or may not coincide with

the territory currently controlled by the group, but always coincideswith the territory the group would like to control (Kaplan 1994:585). Examined at the national level, the chapter will consider


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macro-territorial issues and statecraft in Qubec and Canada.Chapter Three will examine spatial identication, an

endogenous, discursive process of shaping and being shapedby the everyday experience of the city, comparable to Lefebvresspaces of representation. Within the context of the Sixties, thischapter will examine the way in which Montral entered Qubecsspatial identity and was transformed from a place of Anglo(American and Canadian) capitalist exploitation to a Qubcoisspace through the development of a radical post-colonial critiqueof urban space.

Finally, the fourth chapter will examine the spatializationof identity. Analogous to Lefebvres spatial practice, this is anexogenous process that occurs through state control over spatialdisciplines. Building on the preceding chapters, it will argue thatthe administration of Mayor Jean Drapeau in Montral can beconsidered a post-colonial administration that pursued whatJames C. Scott (1998) has called a high modern ideology in

its attempt to transform Montral, before the eyes of a watchingworld, to a space at once Francophone and profoundly modern.The chapter will examine the planning, architecture and discourseof Expo 67, a physical and temporal event that at once celebratedCanadas centennial and showcased Qubcois progress to theworld.


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The Quiet (Spatial) RevolutionPart Two


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Il y a politique de lespace, parce que lespace est politique.(Lefebvre 2009: 174)1

none of us is completely free from the struggle overgeography. That struggle is complex and interesting

because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but alsoabout ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.

(Said 1994: 7)

The previous chapter argues that the spatial dimensions ofthe production of identity must be added to social and historicalones in order to gain a fuller understanding of national identityin Qubec. The remainder of this study begins to examine theconcrete ways in which social actors including, both individualsand the state, produced identity spatially at multiple scales duringthe Quiet Revolution.

This chapter examines the concept of spatial identity, the

territorial perceptions of each of Canadas two nations. Though,as Kaplan writes, there is a need to account for the spatialidentities that exist below the national scale, to view them aspotentially more vital than national identities, and to explore theirbearing on the nature and direction of national spatial identity(Kaplan 1994: 587). This chapter will remain at the level of thenation, examining statecraft in Canada and Qubec in order tounderstand the goals of each level of government and their abilityto meet those goals in relation to citizenship and territorial control,while later chapters will examine issues of identity at urban and1 There is a politics of space because space is political.

Spatial Identity in QubecChapter Two


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29Spatial Identity in Qubec

neighborhood scales.

Spatial Identity

The concept of spatial identity is grounded in the work ofgeographer David H. Kaplan, whose work shows geographyis instrumental to national identity. Spatializing the work ofBenedict Anderson, he notes that, a nations sense of itself isbound inextricably with the sacred soil that members will die for(Kaplan 1994: 585). For Kaplan, the concept of spatial identityembodies a groups territorial perceptions that may or may notcoincide with the territory currently controlled by the group, butalways coincides with the territory the group would like to controlat a national scale (Kaplan 1994: 585).

In gure 2, Kaplan presents a diagrammatic representationof his theory in a binational state. The diagram shows that thedominant group identity will stretch to the physical boundaries of

state sovereignty (if not further), while the minority group areaconsists of a smaller entity. Disputes are likely to occur in threeareas:

1) Since the entire minority group area is likely to exist withinthe spatial identity of the majority, any attempts to secede orgain greater autonomy are likely to be met with opposition.

2) In areas near the boundaries of the minority area, identitiesand ethnicities are likely to blur.3) Any mixed areas within the minority area are likely to be thecause of signicant conict.

Within Canada, Qubecs (or rather Francophone Canadas)spatial identity has undergone a signicant change through time,with the most major shift occurring during the Quiet Revolution

(Kaplan 1994: 593).To understand Qubecs spatial identity, it is important to

understand the historical position of Francophones in Canada.


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30 Spatial Identity in Qubec

of French-speaking men and native women. The conict overterritory during this time was not peaceful. During both the RedRiver Rebellion (1869-1870) and the North-West Rebellion (1885),

Mtissettlers rose up against what they felt were discriminatoryland policies undertaken by the federal government in Ottawa. Theleader of the rebellions (and occasional Member of Parliament),Louis Riel, was executed in 1885, souring the Anglo-Frenchrelationship for decades and largely ending French Canadasdreams of westward territorial expansion.

Yet, as is shown in Figure 3, in 1900 (and throughout the

beginning of the twentieth century) there were signicant pocketsof Francophones throughout Canada who were able to maintainwhat Kaplan refers to as localized spatial identities. It was not

Throughout the nal portionof the nineteenth century, it

was largely unclear whichof Canadas two nationalgroups was most likely tosettle the west. Indeed, formuch of that time, the mostprobable outcome seemedto be a scattered settlingof member of both groupsin discrete settlements.For their part, Franco-Canadian voyageurshad been instrumental inexploring the interior ofNorth America for hundredsof years and the vast

majority of inhabitants ofEuropean decent in centraland western Canada wereFrench speaking Mtis,generally descendants

Figure 1: Schema of Spatial Identity(Kaplan 1994: 588)


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Figure 2: Franco Canadian Spatial Identities in 1900 and 1994. (Kaplan 1994:594)


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until the 1960s that spatial identity began to coalesce around theprovince of Qubec itself. This ethnonational identity afrmed

French-Canadian identity through the institutions and authority ofthe Quebec government (Kaplan 1994: 594-595).

Matres chez nous

Whether as cause or effect, the election of Jean Lesage andthe Parti Libral du Qubec(PLQ) in the provincial elections of1960 signaled a substantive change in the direction of Qubcoisnationalism, the role of the provincial government (which was,in 1968, renamed the National Assembly), and to the provincesspatial identity. From 1936 to 1959, save for a short period from1939 to 1944, Maurice Duplessis and the conservative UnionNationale party had ruled Qubec. Just as the period of thesixties and the administration of Jean Lesage are often termedle Rvolution tranquille, the period of Duplessis reign is usually

referred to as La Grande Noirceur, while Duplessis himself isoften called Qubecs little dictator.2

While Duplessis can be considered a conservative nationalistwho worked to increase some forms of provincial autonomy(much like the States Rights movements in the United States),his main political philosophy was one of Corporatism, a conceptbased in a certain type of Catholic Fascist thought and most

strongly implemented in Francos Spain and Mussolinis Italy,but also, in part, in Portugal, Ireland and Qubec (Stevenson2006: 246). Corporatism was based on the principle that citizensshould not rely entirely on the state but rather should formnatural associations based on functional interests, which wouldcollaborate with one another and be incorporated into economicpolicy-making through representative institutions (Stevenson2006: 245). In Qubec, this policy meant shifting much of the

responsibly of the state from the government (which was beholdento Anglophone Ottawa) to the Catholic clergy, who could more

2 The Great Darkness


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reasonably assume the role of protector of Qubcois languageand culture.

Just as the state shifted its social responsibility to the Church, itpursued a largely Laissez-faire economic policy during Duplessisadministration. As historian Garth Stevenson notes, In his 1944election campaign, he used the slogan Matres chez nous[but] there is little to suggest that Duplessis took it seriously(Stevenson 2006: 245). Indeed, although Qubec at the timehad the constitutional right to direct foreign direct investment,he pursued an open-door policy that contributed to a rapidgrowth of American ownership and control in Quebecs economy(Stevenson 2006: 245).

The conception of the Qubcois nation during this periodwas largely seen as a rural / Catholic / Francophone society atodds with an urban / secular / Anglophone one, especially bythe clergy, whose goals as the Francophone cultural elite largelyrevolved not around cultural development, but in maintaining the

status quo. Indeed, church leaders insisted that the French-Canadian people stick to the land; maintain a distrust of activegovernment; and shun industrialization, urbanization, and strongsecular authority as evils (Kaplan 1994: 593).

In terms of spatial identity, it can be said that the governmentof Qubec did not see itself as a national government and wereuninterested in exercising full sovereignty over even the territorythey controlled. The earlier discussion of winterspace (chapterone) is illustrative of this point. Francophones were consideredto be largely self-sufcient, protected by harsh conditions andoutside the urban industrial mainstream of the country.

At the same time, the elite of Qubec were essentiallycomfortable with the post-Westphalian assumption that nationand state are essentially coterminous. Discussions were framedin terms race or ethnicity, not of two founding nations (see

Ames 1972 (1897) for examples).Indeed, the current world system in general supports a view

of the world where states (implicitly to be tied to nation) are the


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nal holders of sovereignty. One of the explicit goals of the UnitedNations is to maintain all of the worlds countries within their current

borders, or what the UN Charter refers to as territorial integrity.Any changes are considered to be agents of destabilization, bothpolitically and economically. In fact, the majority of the worldscountries, especially those with a colonial past, are, in fact, multi-national states (Kymlicka 1995: 11).

The assumption of uni-national states has had a profoundimpact on both Anglophone and Francophone Canadians.A signicant portion of Anglophones (and occasionally theCanadian state) has historically sought the assimilation ofFrancophones into a English Speaking Canadian nation-state.While assimilation has roots in the period directly following theEnglish conquest (Dickinson and Young 2003: 53), the attitudesurvived into the twentieth century. In a 1964 editorial aboutExpo 67 in the Windsor Star, an Ontario newspaper, a localman wrote, When Wolfe defeated Montcalm on the Plains of

Abraham, this country became part of the British Empire and assuch there should be only one national language and that shouldbe English Quebec should be told by Ottawa that English is thebasic language here and that all other languages are secondary,and no further nonsense on this question (Holland 1964).

The above quote, however, may indeed be directed more atthe Canadian national government than to Qubcois aspirations.In the 1963, the Canadian Government under Lester Pearsonresponded to the increased nationalism in Qubec by establishingthe Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, whichpublished its preliminary report in February 1965. Although the fullrecommendations of the council were not adopted into Canadianlaw until the administration of Pierre Trudeau in 1969, throughoutthe mid 60s it was clear that the commission was emblematic ofthe general direction of the Canadian government.

It was through the recommendations of the commissionthat English and French were declared the ofcial languagesof Canada. The dual language approach represented a larger


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transformation of institutional identity, language and symbols tohelp members of the French segment of the society recognize

themselves in the State (Gagnon and Iacovino 2007: 103). Formany Anglo-Canadians, the debate shifted from the assimilationof French speaking Canadians to a discussion of why anoverarching unity (a national identity) could not supersede(but not subvert) other social identities when so much wasbeing done to be inclusive of French speakers (Prashad 2007:86) In other words, why was a Francophone identity, centered onQubec, even necessary?

According to Indian historian Vijay Prashad, multiculturalidentities have a fatal aw: they will always give the dominantculture the upper hand, or majoritarian cast in his terminology(Prashad 2007: 86). His work is worth quoting at length, as itcould easily be seen as the key problem in establishing Canadianidentity:

It is easy for the demographic majority in a society to askfor suspension of identity, whose cultural features wouldanyway seep into the culture of the nation for example,which religious holidays should be recognized by the state,which language should be promoted, or whose version ofa contested history should be recounted. (Prashad 2007:86)

For Prashad, the problem lies in the difference between ofcialmulticulturalism (the policy of the state in Canada, Nigeria orIndia) and multi-nationalism (the European Union or NATO). Inthe latter, difference is ofcially recognized at a national level andcooperation occurs at a supranational level. This is a distinctionthat is often lost in Anglo-Canada. According to Prashads model,inherent differences between the dominant and minority cultures

such as religion, language, history and culture will cause conict,although this will be harder to discern from the perspective ofthe dominant culture, which is protected by sheer weight of


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population. Put even more simply, majorities tend to be self-evident as nations, while minorities (or stateless nations) must

often be more outspoken in their arguments for a distinctivenationality and identity.

From the perspective of the majority, especially one thatimagines itself inclusive and multicultural, the outspokenness ofthe minority identity is often a source of signicant displeasure.From this perspective, the minority identity is invented, while themajority identity, protected as it is by the weight of demographicmajority is clearly not, at least from the majority perspective.Rather a dominant white Anglophone Canadian-Canadianculture and nationalist program (italics in original) is afrmed bythat demographic (and therefore cultural) dominance (Mackey2002: 142). The question here however, is to what extent thisline of thinking becomes a question of the function and role ofstate structures and of citizenship, not at its broadest denition(everyone with a passport), but in a more discrete interpretation.

In his look at Mexican identity in New Mexico followingAmerican annexation (in many ways a historically close parallelto the situation of Qubec, but with much different outcomes),Pablo Mitchell describes citizenship thus:

Citizenship includes those who control materialresources; whose ideas receive attention and respect;who walk the streets and enter businesses without specialscrutiny; whose economic and political activities ndfavor in the courts, banks and newspapers; whose births,marriages and deaths are reported in the press; whoseailments nd speedy and dignied treatment; whosechildrens peccadilloes amuse rather than enrage thejudiciary . (Mitchell 2005: 6)

In essence, in this denition, citizenship becomes, and belongsto, the majority. From the perspective of Anglo-Canada,Francophones are guaranteed equal rights and citizenship (using


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the broad denition), while Francophones are acutely aware oftheir limited citizenship using something like Mitchells denition.

The same is true of state structures. According to Hegel,the State is the actuality of the ethical idea.... it is absolutelyrational inasmuch as it is the actuality of the substantial willwhich it possesses in the particular self-consciousness oncethat consciousness has been raised to consciousness of itsuniversality (Hegel 1952: 155-156). Whereas Marx argues thatthe state represents class interests, this formulation argues thatthe State is essentially an idealized subject, which representsthe majority (Day 2002: 40).3 For minority nations, therefore,citizenship, and the state itself, can be considered repressiveforces.

As is the case with bilingualism, many of the policies of theCanadian state have focused on individual rights over collectiveones as a way of preserving state authority over its subjects. Itis possible to interpret Canadian politics as a divide reecting

Rousseauian (i.e. collectivist) ideas in Quebec and Lockean (i.e.individualistic) ideas in English Canada (Kernerman 2005: 29).While it may be apropos that French and English Canada maybe represented by French and English philosophers, the splitprobably has more to do with their majority/minority positionswithin the Canadian political entity then cultural sympathy. Forthe Canadian state, individual rights assure that all citizens areequally treated, while, for Francophones, individual rights without

3 This does not imply that individual Francophones cannot participatein, or even lead, the Federal Canadian government. Henderson (2007) hasnoted that the Qubcois have actually always been overrepresented in thenumber of cabinet ministers from Qubec. Likewise, since laws were passedthat all federal employees must be bilingual, Francophones have been morelikely then Anglophones to take positions within the bureaucracy, owing tohigher levels if functional bilingualism among Francophone Canadians. Yet,

many, if not most, of the Qubcois that participate at the highest level s ofgovernment tend towards a federalist outlook that often favors Anglophonedomination in politics. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier was quoted as sayingthe future of Canada is to be English (Kaplan 1994: 593)


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respect for difference guarantees unequal treatment.4 Canadianpolitical scientist Charles Taylor describes this debate thus:

For one, the principle of equal respect requires that wetreat people in a difference-blind fashion For the otherwe have to recognize and even foster particularity. Thereproach the rst makes to the second is just that itviolates the principle of nondiscrimination. The reproachthe second make to the rst is that it negates identity byforcing people into a homogeneous mold that is untrue tothem (Taylor 2004: 43).

Within Canadian political science this debate is often termeddifferentiated citizenship (Taylor 2004) or citizenship plus(Kernerman 2005).

With this background, the massive cultural and politicalshifts of the 1960s were surprising to many Qubcois and to

Anglophone observers in the rest of Canada. As Pierre Valliresputs it, Qubec leaped from the Middle Ages into the twentiethcentury in the space of just a few years (Vallires 1971: 11).

Jean Lesages Liberals won the 1960 provincial election,again using the Matres chez nous slogan. The major differencewas that the PLQ meant it. The role of the government shiftedswiftly to the left, becoming involved directly in social movements,as well as economic and spatial planning (Perks 1965: 29),triggering the policy changes at the Federal level (bilingualismand biculturalism) addressed above.

In many ways, the Lesage administration took for itself therole of representing Francophones in Quebec as a nationalgovernment emphasizing la defense des intrts de lensembledes Qubcois (Henderson 2007: 150).5 The result was an

4 A typical, but problematic, explanation of this concept focuses on

handicapped citizens. If a person with a handicap is treated exactly the sameas everyone else, without respect for their difference, the outcome is com-pletely unequal. See Kernerman 2005.5 Defending the interests of all Qubcois.


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overarching state structure within Canada that contained twodifferent national governments, but with one (the provincial

government of Qubec) subservient to the other (the Federalgovernment of Canada).

For Qubec, the goals of this change in political culture havelargely been twofold. First, as the election slogan implies, thegovernment of Qubec has been actively shaping a politicalspace within their sovereign territory where Francophones canparticipate fully as citizens as described by Mitchell above; totransform this country where they [the Qubcois] have alwaysbeen the overwhelming majority of citizens and producers of thenational wealth, yet where they have never enjoyed the economicpower and the political and social freedom to which their numbersand labor entitle them (Vallires 1971:1) to a space of politicalempowerment.

Second, mirroring the debate on individual versus collectiverights, the provincial government has sought various ways of

differentiating themselves from the other provinces while ghtingto take on more of the responsibilities usually reserved for a federalgovernment, such as immigration controls and internationaldiplomatic representation. Every major party in Qubec, whetherfederalist or pro-independence, favors greater devolution ofpowers to Qubec. Independistes usually favor what has beentermed Sovereignty-Association, while Federalistes favor anasymmetrical federalism (see image one), which is the de factopolitical organization of Canada today (Gagnon and Iacovino2007: 33).

Asymmetry in Canadian Federalism dates to the beginnings ofthe Quiet Revolution and, in many cases, was actually supportedby other provinces. As described by Alain Gagnon and RaffaeleIacovino:

At the beginning of this period, the government of Quebecsought to align itself with the other provincial capitalsto form a common front to combat unilateral actions by


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40 Spatial Identifcation

Ottawa that infringed on exclusive provincial jurisdictionsan ethos began to develop around a de facto acceptance

of asymmetry and bilateral agreements between Quebecand Ottawa, since Quebec often asserted its autonomyin areas that other province did not mind ceding to thefederal government. (Gagnon and Iacovino 2007: 32-33)

This pattern of other provinces at times supporting Qubec (whenthey also are hoping for increased autonomy in a given eld) andwhile not doing so at other times not has remained to this day.Often, indeed, other provinces, especially the richer ones, willalso seek increased autonomy even without Qubec, though mostCanadian political scientists still regard the Qubec / Canadarelations as the primary motivator for assymetrical federalism(see Gagnon and Iacovino 2007, Kernerman 2005, McRoberts1997). Although this new type of federalism has provoked a (stillongoing) constitutional crisis in Canada, it is, in daily practice, an

extremely robust system, as evidenced by the fact that Qubechas remained a part of Canada for the last 50 years.

Conclusion

The 1960s represented a substantive shift in both thegovernance and the territorial perceptions of Qubec. While this

chapter and Kaplans work on spatial identity primarily engagesspatial identity at the national level, he calls attention to thenecessity of exploring spatial identity across multiple scales,speaking of the need to account for the spatial identities thatexist below the national scale, to view them as potentially morevital than national identities, and to explore their bearing on thenature and direction of national spatial identity (Kaplan 1994:587).

In the following chapter, I will shift my analysis from the nationallevel to the urban one. Chapter three will begin by examining theshift in Qubcois spatial identity from rural to urban, showing


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This book is therefore not the product of an individual butof a milieu. The milieu is contemporary Quebec, but more

especially Montreal and the metropolitan area. A man fromthe Gspe would probably have written a very different

book.(Vallres 1971: 17-18)

This compartmentalized world, this world divided in two, isinhabited by different species. The singularity of the colonialcontext lies in the fact that economic reality, inequality, andenormous disparities in lifestyles never manage to mask the

human reality.(Fanon 1963: 5)

The previous chapter argues that, prior to the QuietRevolution, urban Montral was largely outside of the spatialidentity of Francophone Qubec. This had occurred for numerous

reasons, at both the macro-state level and at the level of urbanspace itself. Among the most important was the identicationof Francophones in Qubec as a rural, Catholic population atodds with an urban Anglo, Protestant one. In many ways, thisdichotomy was perpetuated by the state and clergy long afterdemographic factors had produced a French-speaking majorityin Qubecs cities. A sermon recorded in 1936 expresses theprofound distrust of urban space and urban lifeways among therural population.

Spatial Identifcation and Colonial Montral

Chapter Three


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43Spatial Identifcation

You wont believe me. I went to Montral. And aroundmidnight there were some people walking on the sidewalk!

What on earth were they doing there? Thank God youwere asleep. You are going to heaven because you leada normal life. You breathe fresh air. You go to bed. ButMontral! Those people will all go to hell (Garreau 1981:377)!

This chapter examines the development of Montral and its rolein producing a spatial identication among its inhabitants. I arguethat the initial development of Montral as a primarily Anglophone,commercially centered urban space eventually led to thedevelopment of a radical post-colonial discourse through whichMontreal, during the 1960s, entered Francophone spatial identityas the metropolis of Qubec. The nal chapter then analyzes therole of the municipal government in restructuring urban space tot the new Qubcois spatial identity.

French to English and Back Again

By the time that the rst permanent European settlement wasfounded on Montral Island in 1642, the French had already spentmore than one hundred years exploring the St. Lawrence Rivervalley. Jacques Cartier rst visited the future site of Montral in

1535, though he and his men famously stayed on their shipsrather then on land. At the time, Cartier estimated there to bearound one thousand inhabitants living on the island in a villagecalled Hochelaga. By the time that Samuel de Champlain nextvisited the island in 1611, the village and its inhabitants haddisappeared. It is unclear what happened to the inhabitants in theintervening years.

Geographer Peirce F. Lewis talks about the importance of two

terms to location of cities: site and situation (P. Lewis 2003: 19).By both counts, Montral was an inevitable city, or more precisely,Montral was an inevitable commercialcity. New France was a


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vast continental empire. The French used the Mississippi, St.Lawrence and Ohio River systems to penetrate deeply into the

continents interior. At its height, New France encompassedall of the Great Lakes region and the St. Lawrence, Ohio andMississippi River valleys. In order to reach the Great Lakes andthe Upper Mississippi River, French traders would traverse theSt. Lawrence River in canoes, then the Ottawa River, and thenportage to the Great Lakes. Montral Island sits at the point inthe St. Lawrence River where the Lachine Rapids make theriver impassable. All trade moving between the interior of NewFrance and Europe had to unload at Montral regardless of itsnal destination. The situation of Montral for trade could be littlebetter. Additionally, the area surrounding Montral was also thebest agricultural land in the St. Lawrence River Valley.

As was the case throughout much of Qubecs history, theearly development of the cities of New France proceeded fromcooperation between the colonial administration and the Church.

The colony in St. Lawrence Valley was based on an economicsystem known as Seigneurialism. In this system, land was ownedby a seigneur, who had been granted land by the Crown of France,and was worked by a censitaire, who paid dues on the land heworked (Dickinson and Young 2003: 31). Although Dickinson andYoung argue that Canada did develop a sort of small aristocracyfrom this essentially feudal system, many seigneurs were infact religious orders, so it could be argued that many Canadienseigneurs took their social status from their religious positions asmuch as their position as a landlord (Dickenson and Young 2003:32). On the Island of Montral, the sole seigneursfrom 1663 onwere the Sulpician Order. As such, religion, administration, and,from the founding of the Collge de Montral in late 18th century,education were centralized in Montral (Dickinson and Young2003: 43).

French rule, if not French culture, was not to remain in NorthAmerica. Unlike the British, the French colonies always had troubleattracting settlers, so even before the Conquest cut off immigration


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Qubec was limited to a mostly natural rate of population increase.At the time of the Conquest, the French-speaking population of

European descent in Qubec was approximately 70,000, of whomonly around 4,000 lived in Montral. Despite the change in rulers,the Conquest brought little change to the Canadienlife, at leastin the short term.1 This was largely due to the rural character ofmuch of the population.

The British had little idea what to do with their new possessiononce they took control of it. Separated by religion, traditionand law, they dithered for several years in deciding how to rule.According to the historian Neatby, an English colony without anassembly seemed unthinkable, an assembly including RomanCatholics unreliable, and an assembly excluding Roman Catholicsunjustiable (quoted in Mann 1982: 36). The Quebec Act of 1774came out of some desperation on the part of the British colonialauthorities, both from fear of the increasingly restive colonies tothe south and from the discomfort of holding the French colony

for so long without a denitive direction for its progress. The Actprotected many of the things that French Canadians held dear.Seigneurial land tenure, the Tithe and French Civil Law wouldcontinue. All three perpetuated the power of the Catholic Churchand the retention of inhabitants on rural land. There would be noassembly, but rather an appointed council under a governor.

The second change, brought about by the American Revolution,was the rst mass immigration of Anglophones to Canada.This immigration was in the form of thousands of Loyalists,Americans who had sided with the British during the Revolutionand were forced to ee to Canada upon independence. Manyof the Loyalists settled in what would become New Brunswick

1 The preferable form of address for the inhabitants of Qubec has,like the identity itself, changed signicantly through the years. Prior to con-federation, the term Canadian referred almost exclusively to people of French

descent, while Anglophones were most likely to refer to themselves as Brit-ish. Following Confederation, Anglophones became Canadians and Frenchspeakers French-Canadians. Finally, following the Quiet Revolution, mostFrancophone inhabitants of Qubec will refer to themselves as Qubcois.


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employ of English capitalists. In either case it would appearthat the great mass of French Canadians are doomed,

in some measure, to occupy an inferior position, and tobe dependent on the English for employment. The evilsof poverty and dependence would nearly be aggravatedin a ten-fold degree, by a spirit of jealous and resentfulnationality which should separate the working class of thecommunity from the possessors of wealth and employersof labor (quoted in Milner and Milner 1973: ix)Just as the American Revolution had prompted profound

changes in Qubec, the American Civil War sent a chill throughBritish North America. Many assumed that rather then demobilizing,a triumphant Grand Army of the Republic would instead turn north tosubdue more territories. As such, it was necessary for the separateBritish North American Colonies (Upper and Lower Canada, nowOntario and Qubec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince

Edward Island) to form some sort of more lasting partnership.It was during this process that Montral would develop as themetropolis of Canada. Today, the very word metropolis can ringsomewhat hollow, with almost every mid-sized city claiming tobe the metropolis of something or the other, the largest urbancenters in their regions looked to for services or distribution ofgoods (Sutcliffe 1998: 20). It is not in this context that I speak.Rather, Montral was a metropolis in an older understanding ofthe word, that of the cultural and economic center of a nation.Although quite small by the standards of European metropolisessuch as London, Paris or Berlin, or even of other American onessuch as New York, Mexico City or Buenos Aires, Montral held aplace of that sort of importance to the young Canadian nation.

Economically, the greatest period of development came duringthe Canadian Boom of 1890-1910. By this time, settlement

of the American West was completed and international capitalbegan to seek new territory north of the forty-ninth parallel(Sutcliffe 1998: 21). Montral became a center of transportation,


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based on the geography of the city of Montral.2

If one were to draw a line across the map of a portion ofthe city of Montreal he would divide the south-westernhalf of our city into two occupied districts of nearly equalextent. One of those districts, that to the west, is upon highground; the other, that to the east, is in the main little abovethe river level. The former region, for lack of a better name,we shall call The city above the hill, the latter, in contrasttherefrom, The city below the hill. To pass from the formerinto the latter it is necessary to descend a considerablehill and with this descent becomes noticeable a markedchange in the character of the inhabitants and in the natureof their surroundings. Looking down from the mountain topupon these two areas, the former is seen to contain manyspires, but no tall chimneys, the latter is thickly sprinkledwith such evidences of industry and the air hangs heavy

with their smoke (Ames 1972 [1897]: 6).

The Montral that Ames describes would remain little changedinto the 1960s. It is a city divided not only by language and class,but also by geography, with the Anglo elite occupying higher land.Likewise Most of the residents of the upper city know little andat time seem to care less regarding their fellow men in the citybelow. To many of the former the condition of the latter is as littleknown as that of the natives in Central Africa (Ames 1972 [1897]:6, italics mine).

Though it would remain largely unarticulated until the QuietRevolution, what Ames described was a colonial organizationof space. Indeed, economically, the Qubcois suffered undera sort of double colonization during this period. First, theQubcois were colonized as laborers under Anglo-Canadian

(and increasingly American) capital, and secondly as Canada

2 Montral, or Mount Royal, is so named due to the mountain that is inthe center of the island.


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itself formed a colonial economy, exploit[ing] and export[ing]resources to the neglect of developing industries and services

based on manufacturing (Jacobs 1980: 16) According toJane Jacobs, economic colonialism was not forced. Rather,Canada prefer[red] colonialism (1980: 16). Canada specializedin exporting resources, furs timber, apples, coal, iron, nickel,gold, copper, silver, wheat, cobalt, sh, uranium, hydroelectricpower, aluminum, potash, oil, natural gas and still importedmost nished goods (Jacobs 1980: 17). Most of those export andimports passed through Montral.

Montral began a signicant program of suburbanizationaround the turn of the twentieth century, both industrial, examinedat length by Robert Lewis in his book Manufacturing Montrealand residential, examined by Annick Germain and Damaris Roseand in an essay by Walter van Nus. Montrals suburbanizationwas very much related to ethnicity. With the increasingly vocalFrench majority within the city of Montral, suburban development

exploded from the 1890s on. Montral slowly annexed manysuburbs, especially those of the industrial, Francophone easternside of Montral Island, assuming a good deal of municipal debt inthe process, but most English speaking suburbs retained politicalindependence (van Nus 1998: 60).

Outremont, Westmount and Montreal West are good examplesof Anglophone suburban development (van Nus 1997: 63). Thesessuburbs are also informative in their use of zoning to retain anupper class and unilinguistic zone. Westmount especially usedbuilding codes and required building materials in order to keepthe cost of building high (van Nus 1998: 63). The incorporation ofthese Anglophone suburbs into a majority Francophone megacitywas a topic of conversation from the days of the Quiet Revolutionto today (Burke 2008: 21).

Overall, the period of metropolitan Montral could be seen as

the period of greatest Anglophone control; however, demographicchanges and international capital ows were already beginningto bring about profound changes to Montral that would have


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huge repercussions for Qubec nationalism.

Spatial Identifcation

The Quiet Revolution signaled an important shift in the waysin which urban space shaped Qubcois nationalism.

In the citys cafs and meeting places, young intellectualsand artists came into contact with one another, encounteringideas and collectively shaping new lines of though. Writingin the literary journal Libert in 1963, Luc Perrier argued thatMontreal acted as a common language; the citys streetsand buildings were not important because of their beautyor historic value, he wrote, but because they existed as thephysical spaces in which the citys inhabitants interacted,as the locations of friendship and solidarity. And, as culturalalienation and marginalization were grafted onto the urban

landscape of Montreal, an important goal of radicals wasto transform the city into a space of liberation. (Mills 2007:53).

This endogenous, discursive process of shaping and beingshaped by the everyday experience of the city is what I callspatial identication, comparable to Lefebvres spaces of

representation.Throughout this time, the city space of Montral contributed toan increasing identication with post-colonial struggles throughoutthe world. The 1961 publication of Frantz Fanons Les damns dela terre, was extremely important to Montral activists seeking toreconcile their feelings of national and cultural alienation with theirsocialist convictions (Mills 2007: 41).3 For activists in Montral,it was through Fanons descriptions of the colonial city that they

recognized their own city. The urban space of Montral allowedthem to form a meaningful connection to the post-colonial, national

3 The Wretched of the Earth.


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liberation discourses throughout the rest of the world.For Fanon, decolonization required a reorganization of the

geograph

La Révolution Moderne: Expo '67 and the Spatialization of Identity in Quebec

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