Graeme Hamilton - Once, it was the Eaton's department store and its "big fat damned English ladies" serving customers that played the part of bogeyman for Quebec's language zealots.
Now, with Eaton's long gone and the store that replaced it staffed by bilingual clerks, some Quebec nationalists have turned to another target: the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. And just as the stereotypical Eaton's salesperson "who can't speak a word of French" was a figment of Pierre MacDonald's imagination when the Liberal industry minister made the complaint in 1989, the latest ravings about the Canadiens are the stuff of fantasy.
In a lengthy TV interview broadcast last week, Pierre Curzi, the Parti Quebecois language critic, advanced his theory about why there are not more Quebecers lacing up for the Canadiens: It is a federalist plot to rob Quebecers of one of the most stirring symbols of their identity. Asked by the host of the Tele-Quebec program Les Francs-tireurs about the shortage of "francophone Quebecers" on the Canadiens, Mr. Curzi said it is by design.
"I don't get paranoid about conspiracies, but I say that when the biggest symbol of our identity, namely the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, does not play any more francophones, when you go there, that is damned well political," he said.
The host was having trouble following his logic, so Mr. Curzi elaborated. "It is not by chance," he said.
"People who are federalists and people who do not want to see Quebec become a country, who do not want French to flourish, they know very well that you have to seize a certain number of symbols of identity. I believe there is a takeover by federal power of the Canadiens club."
In Mr. Curzi's view, the recent campaign to bring the Nordiques back to Quebec City is also a political project, driven by an urge to have "a team that is going to be our team, that is going to resemble us."
This is not the first time Mr. Curzi has taken a provocative position. He opposed the decision to invite Paul McCartney to perform on the Plains of Abraham during Quebec City's 400th anniversary celebration in 2008, complaining that the celebrations had been "Canadianized." He has also called for policies to stop francophones from moving from Montreal to off-island suburbs -- the fewer francophones on the island, he warned, the greater the chance recent immigrants would form families with anglophones.
Lamenting the declining Quebecois character of the Canadiens has become an end-of-summer rite as predictable as the rookie camp that opened this week. Rejean Tremblay, La Presse's marquee sports columnist, kicked it off last month with a column describing forward Maxim Lapierre as the Canadiens' "token Quebecer." He said the team "abuses Quebecers" and fans respond like a battered wife. Canadiens management "know that their customers are in love, they know that they can mock them as much as they like and they will come back for more," he wrote.
Of course, there's also the possibility that rather than being beaten into submission, Canadiens fans are astute enough to accept that professional hockey has changed dramatically since the Flying Frenchmen electrified the old Forum. European and American players have squeezed out a lot of English-and French-Canadian players. Unlike the days when the Canadiens had a lock on the best Quebec players, Quebecers are now free to play where they please. The bottom line is that Canadiens fans want what fans of every other team in the league want: the Stanley Cup.
For Mr. Curzi, a former actor who was picked as Quebec's most popular politician in a poll last year, it seems that championships are neither here nor there. "What is fundamental in a national sports team is the identity value," he said. And he suspects the Habs' ownership of deliberately subverting that identity: "The people who buy hockey teams are not imbeciles. The people who finance them are not imbeciles. These are not people without political opinions." (Why George Gillet, an American who owned the team for eight years before selling it last year, would be so intent on preventing Quebec from flourishing remains a mystery understood only by Mr. Curzi.)
Columnists Yves Boisvert in La Presse and Don Macpherson in The Gazette have challenged Mr. Curzi, but his message has resonated in certain separatist circles. Jean-Francois Lisee, a former advisor to PQ leaders, congratulated Mr. Curzi for highlighting the Canadiens' "refusal to assume its role as a Montreal and Quebec team." The big fat damned English lady is gone, replaced by the big muscular damned English, or Russian, or perhaps Czech defenceman.