Johnny: Speaking of lights. Could you enlighten us as to why Canada did not fit your definition of a country? Let’s start with a shared history.

Souviens: What shared history?

Johnny: Canadian shared history?

Souviens: I already answered that. What shared history?

Johnny: [touching his forehead as if he’s getting a headache] The shared history between English, French and Natives, the battles that you fought together, against each other that sort of thing. The compromises, the accommodations that the first inhabitants, French and English, made to build Canada.

Souviens: Oh, that history. Well that history all ended in 1992 didn’t it? By the way, I watched your interview with that Diane person. What she said about Mr. Mulroney was despicable, just despicable! Sure Irish people love to love and to be loved but no Irish people would sell out his country for love. He wanted free trade with the Americans because he thought it would be good for the country he loved, Canada, not the United States. He wanted the Meech Lake Accord and after that the Charlottetown Agreement because he knew that the country he loved could not survive with one third of the country feeling left out. He was right.

What this Diane person said about Mr. Mulroney was despicable, just despicable. She may be beautiful but as for brains … I’m not sure.

Johnny: Dr. Smith does have strong opinions, usually well researched opinions. You mention the year 1992. Wasn’t that the year that Canadians, in a referendum, voted against the Charlottetown Agreement?

Are you saying that this shared history ended with the refusal of Canadians to endorse, in a referendum, the Charlottetown Agreement?

Souviens: Yes, the Charlottetown Agreement. All Québecquers wanted was a little recognition of their contribution to building Canada; all they wanted was for the rest of Canada to recognize that Québecquers were proud of their “distinct” contribution to the building of Canada, a contribution that went backwards more than three hundred years and was not trivia; that their distinct culture be recognized for what it was: “distinct”, not better, not worse, just distinct. Was that too much to ask?

Johnny: No, not really which may explain why the Harper government, in 2006, introduced a motion, which was passed by the Canadian Parliament, recognizing that Québecquers constituted a nation within a united Canada.

Souviens: A thing passed by the old Canadian Parliament is not the same as change to a Constitution to which a majority of the Canadians would have had to agree and did not. It can be undone anytime. The motion was just a big symbol thing. It did not grant any new powers to Québec in recognition of its nation status within Canada as the Charlottetown Agreement would have in recognizing the distinctiveness of Québec and Québecquers.

Johnny: Nation, distinct society are just words, didn’t English-Canadians by their actions, if not in words, ensure that the French language and French culture would survive in a largely English speaking, Anglo-Saxon North America?

Souviens: English-Canada claimed, and some of it is true, I will admit, that it had help the French language to survive and culture too and for that we are grateful, it is unfortunate that English-Canada could not, would not acknowledge our contribution.

At a time when Québec felt it was an equal with the English and that its distinct contribution to Canada was about to be recognized, finally, the rest of Canada refused to recognize our contribution, even to acknowledge it même en théorie.