In 1973, Robert Charlebois performed a song by Pierre Calvé, entitled Living in this country. It still resonates and resonates very strongly today. Here is the text:
Published at 6:00 a.m.
Living in this country
It’s like living in the United States
Pollution, the same cars
The same bosses, the same taxes
The little ones, the big ones
In the same boat
Those who left
To look for a better place
Have understood that in other countries
In other Americas, Spain or Marseille
Apart from the sun
It’s the same everywhere
Living in this country
It’s like living in the United States
The same dances, the same songs
The same comfort and when you are dead
There are lots of people who play you for money
Those who left
To look for somewhere else further
Have invented a world in smoke
Of love and peace, a new world
Started from scratch
Like in San Francisco
Living in this country
It’s like living in the United States
It’s violence, repression
The law of the strongest who still wins
On those who would break conventions
Those who left
To find a solution
Who promised a new sun
A new country to which they will follow
Swear there will be thousands, millions
When they come back
When they come back
This song aroused strong reactions at the time. In 1973, we were in the midst of nationalist fervor. The fleur-de-lis grows everywhere. “Quebec for Quebecers” is the rallying cry of committed youth. And now the least ordinary of our singers, the voice of our revolution, the king of our own rock, tells us that living in our country is like living in the United States. Ayoye! It hurts. Faced with this grim observation, the song still offers hope for a better world. Unfortunately, the hippie utopia has since faded.
Fifty years later, living in this country means living in the United States more than ever. Forget the same taxes. The rest, the same cars, the same bosses, the same songs, it’s so much our reality. At least in the 1970s there was some national pride in us. The Leclerc, Vigneault, Léveillée, Charlebois, Dufresne punctuated our daily lives.
Today, the five most listened to artists in Quebec are: Taylor Swift, Post Malone, Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan and Billie Eilish. We live in the same beat than our neighbors.
In the 1970s, our heroes were local guys who dominated their opponents on the ice, Lafleur, Savard, Cournoyer. Today, our heroes are Americans, Caufield and Hutson, whose beautiful games sometimes make us shout with joy.
If, in 1973, Calvé and Charlebois denounced the fact that our values were the same as those of the American empire, today it is the substance and the form that we borrow from Uncle Donald. The same Facebook, the same Netflix, the same TikTok. The culture that was our protection against assimilation is breached. And our identity continues to escape, like air escapes from a holey balloon.
This is why when Trump says Canada should be 51e State of the United States, we hardly get angry. We reduce our country to one fifty-first of a foreign country and we do not go up to the barricades.
Our patriotism is not affected, because our patriotism is frozen. Discount. Forget. We said NO twice in Quebec and we never said YES completely in Canada, which means that the majority of us live in a city, a region, or even a nation, but not a country. Not the way Americans live in their country. Not like the French live in their country.
If Trump would threaten any other country in the world with annexation, his words would be received as a declaration of war. We receive it as a bad joke, a means of pressure or even an alternative.
It is time to choose our country, our sun. To love it, to defend it and to be proud of it. May contempt for Trump ignite in us the desire to be us. It would have been useful for once.
It’s time to state, loud and clear, which country we live in.
