Everything Is In A Name – A Letter To The National Post.

I still do radio shows and give interviews in English and French on Canada’s language issues. Just last week, I gave an interview to be published in Quebec’s prominent Voir Magazine.

But since moving to Ontario, I have more or less removed myself as an active participant in Quebec’s language debate. That however, is not to say that I no longer care about linguistic and cultural rights.

In today’s issue of the National Post Editorials (1/15/03), the Post writes about Mario Dumont of Quebec’s ADQ Party’s choice of younger potential candidates. And in the editorial, the Post speaks about some of the new candidates’ pedigrees being “sovereignist”. This is wrong.

As much as I despise calling terrorists everything and anything but terrorists, I equally dislike calling Quebec Separatists anything and everything but Separatists. The choice of description creates an illusion that hides the facts.

Quebecers who vote to separate from Canada, or who campaign for the Parti Québécois or the Bloc Québécois are Separatists. They are not sovereignists. In fact, the word sovereignist is a Separatist creation; only because being called a Separatist was (is) politically damaging.

The National Post, which is in my opinion, one of the best newspapers in North America, is so, because the Post really does call it like it is; at least most of the time.

But, describing people who support the separation of one part of Canada out of Canada as sovereignists, is to deny their true nature and what they stand for.

I have no problem with the content of the editorial; only with the nomenclature. A rose by any other name . . . etc – etc.