In a recent interview with L’Express, Jean-Louis Roy confided that he would simply have called his most recent book Les Ontariens (or The Ontarians for the English version). The publisher had another title in mind: Chers Voisins – Ce qu’on ne connaît pas de l’Ontario, or, in English, Ontario in Transition – Achievements and Challenges.
Chers Voisins [Dear Neighbours] could be an overall title for an open letter from a Quebecker to Ontarians – but this is not at all the case. Rather, the book is a “primer” on contemporary Ontario for Québec readers who might still be holding on to outdated prejudices vis-à-vis Canada’s largest province.
Roy began work on his book in 2007, basing it on a large number of interviews that he conducted with influential Ontario personalities. It was published this winter in both official languages and has had various book launches in Québec and Ontario.
The author was at the helm of the daily newspaper Le Devoir; he was also a delegate for Québec in France and served as Secretary General of la Francophonie internationale. Currently, he is a researcher in public law at the Université de Montréal. He has also taught at the University of Ottawa and at York University’s Glendon College. Roy was the speaker at the meeting of the Club canadien de Toronto on May 14.
Dynamism and Multiculturalism
The book is intended quite simply for “anyone who is interested in Ontario,” explains the author. Readers discover – almost at the same time as Roy himself – the dynamic and multicultural province which Ontarians themselves think they know and take for granted but which, to a Quebecker like Roy, is a source of sheer wonder.
Moreover, such a seasoned traveller as this author cannot help drawing a favourable comparison between Ontario’s relative social peace and the ethnic conflicts that are rocking the rest of the planet, including Europe where immigrant integration is far more problematic than here at home.
The reader can sense that Roy must be pinching himself occasionally lest he forget that Ontario is going through economic and financial difficulties and that its social harmony is sometimes only surface deep. He is an optimist, however: “If the economic restructuring currently under way is a success,” he writes in his introduction, “and if Ontario can build on its cultural impetus, it will be one of the most attractive [provinces in Canada].”
Indeed, the book contains a lot of “ifs” and conditionals. Chers Voisins does not try to be a promotional brochure sponsored by Queen’s Park. Above all, the world economic situation remains volatile; and no one can claim to know how we are going to pull through or what the next setback is going to be.
A Province on the Move
There can be no doubt that Roy owes his discovery of “just how much Ontario has changed” over the last decades to the fact that he has taught in Ottawa and Toronto.
Furthermore, it is safe to say that if such a well-informed observer from Québec was not aware of these changes, many other Quebeckers were in the dark as well.
Therein lies the usefulness of this extensive report, which strings together statistics that are likely to impress Québec readers even though such figures often simply reflect the demographic weight of Ontario, where more than a third of all Canadians live (12.8 million).
To accomplish his goal, Roy met with dozens of Ontario leaders in several sectors, including business leaders, festival directors, major journalists, etc., turning the microphone over to them so that they could help him understand what is happening in Ontario.
In most cases, the individuals he talked with were not people he had chanced upon in an airplane or at a cocktail party. Instead, he called them and made appointments. “All of these people eagerly agreed to tell me about their work and the Ontario context,” he said. “Several of them expressed their surprise at such interest in the province” – a sign of the modesty for which English Canadians are proverbially known.
La Francophonie
Roy admires the resilience of Ontario’s francophones but acknowledges that “nothing has been handed to them on a silver platter.”
According to him, however, Franco-Ontarians are now being treated as a “historic minority”: there are bilingual districts covering practically the whole province, and services in French are available in the most important sectors, such as the court system and education. Health will probably be added to this list in the near future.
“Ontario has done more for the French language than several member countries of the Agence Internationale de la Francophonie,” he commented. “We don’t find this particularly encouraging but here my criticism is aimed mostly at the international Francophonie.”
The author rejects any comparison with Québec. “Québec often makes choices that are different from those made by Ontario, and that’s a good thing.” Chers Voisins is not intended as a guide to Ontario policies that should be adopted by Québec.
The book is simply a portrait of Ontario, which is already quite an achievement – and an original one at that as far as the Québec intelligentsia are concerned.
Although Roy spent five years working (part time) on this book, he makes no claim that he is now an “expert on Ontario.” “We need to continue getting to know each other better,” he says, welcoming the periodical meetings between the two provincial cabinets that were instituted under Jean Charest and Dalton McGuinty. It is too early to say whether the new PQ government will continue in this direction, but Ontario and Québec will remain closely linked: each is the principal economic partner of the other, and these are the two provinces that have the highest level of exchanges and travel between them.
By François Bergeron
Week of April 23-29, 2013
