Dimitri Soudas: Quebec City’s foolish decision to erase history

2025/06/28 Leave a comment

Of note, Quebec’ history wars?

Last week, the mayor of Quebec City made a decision that should concern every Canadian who still believes that history matters.

A historic mosaic, installed at city hall, depicting the moment Samuel de Champlain meets a First Nations chief, is being removed. Why? Because, and I quote, it was deemed to be “offensive.” That’s it. That was the only criterion. One of the most important figures in the founding of Quebec — and, by extension, of Canada — is now considered too problematic to be shown to the public.

Let’s be honest: the mosaic depicts a painful truth. Yes, the Indigenous chief is shown in a posture of submission. Yes, it reflects the colonial lens through which history was often portrayed. But the role of history is not to make us comfortable. It is to show us what happened. The moment we begin to edit the past to make it easier to look at, we stop telling the truth, and we begin to create fiction.

Seventeen years ago, in 2008, I wrote the speech delivered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City. It was one of the proudest moments of my life, because it was a moment of unity, between French and English, between past and present, between our country and the city that gave birth to it.

In that speech, Prime Minister Harper honoured our collective memory: “1608 is a historic date for you, for Quebec, and for all of Canada. Because it was beginning on July 3, 1608, exactly 400 years ago today, that we really started becoming what we are today.”…

Let that sink in. The very language, culture and political existence of modern Quebec, and of Canada, can be traced to the moment Champlain arrived and established a settlement on the shores of the St. Lawrence. And today, that very moment is being removed from the walls of the city he founded.

This is not reconciliation. This is revisionism. This is not respect. This is erasure.

We have a duty to teach our full history, including the injustices. Including the imbalances of power. Including the painful truths about colonization and its lasting effects on Indigenous peoples. But we cannot do so by pretending the past did not happen. We cannot do so by tearing down mosaics instead of building understanding.

When we erase history, what comes next? Language? Identity? Memory?

Source: Dimitri Soudas: Quebec City’s foolish decision to erase history

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Black and Arab people overrepresented in Quebec City police stops, data show 

2024/11/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

New data from Quebec City police show that Black, Arab and, to a lesser extent, Latino people are overrepresented in police stops, a recurring pattern across North America. Researchers and advocates say this is evidence of racial profiling, which the force denies.

The data, obtained by The Globe and Mail through an access to information request, break down by race the 4,567 stops done by Quebec City police between Jan. 1, 2023, and July 13, 2024.

They include street checks and arbitrary traffic stops conducted under a Highway Safety Code provision invalidated by the Quebec Superior Court in a landmark 2022 racial profiling case. Police continued to use the provision pending appeal by the Quebec government, but the Court of Appeal confirmed the lower court ruling in October. Street checks occur when police ask individuals to provide ID or other information without detaining or arresting them.

White people were under-represented in police stops, making up 83.1 per cent of stops, compared with 90.6 per cent of the Quebec City population, according to the 2021 census.

Source: Black and Arab people overrepresented in Quebec City police stops, data show

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Quebec City Muslims alarmed by increasingly public displays of racism one year after mosque shooting

2018/01/23 Leave a comment

Sad:

Rachid Raffa is tired and bitter.

It’s been 43 years since he chose to settle in Quebec City after leaving Algeria. But as his encounters with racism become more commonplace, he’s come to feel less at home.

“When I came to this country in 1975 I got off at the wrong airport,” the 68-year-old said during a recent lunch break from his job at the provincial Ministry of Transport.

“I should have landed elsewhere in Canada.”

Raffa has been an active member of Quebec City’s Muslim community for decades. In the 1990s, he was president of the Islamic Cultural Centre, which later opened a mosque in the suburb of Sainte-Foy. He still prays there regularly.

More recently, he’s watched with disgust as mosques around the city are increasingly targeted by vandalism.

Anti-Muslim tracts were plastered over three prayer spaces in 2014. Some had their windows smashed the following year.

Raffa’s sense of dread deepened when, in June 2016, a pig’s head was dumped outside the Islamic Cultural Centre with the words ‘Bonne Appétit’ [sic] in a card.

“My bus goes by the mosque and I often told my wife ‘May God protect this place.’ But it happened,” he said.

On Jan. 29, 2017, moments after Sunday evening prayer ended, a gunman entered the nondescript building in Sainte-Foy.

Six men were killed that night, five others were injured. Seventeen children were left without fathers and the entire city was shaken to its core.

The response to the tragedy was swift. Thousands gathered the next day in the cold, holding candles and walking in silence, to honour the victims.

In the days that followed, politicians denounced all forms of hate speech and promised to safeguard the rights of all citizens.

But the light that emerged during the city’s darkest hour faded quickly.

CBC News spoke to dozens of community members in the weeks leading up to the one-year anniversary of the shooting. They described having to negotiate casual racism, outright Islamophobia and persistent fears for their safety.

Several who agreed to speak on the record refused to appear on camera or have their picture taken. They were concerned they would be targeted afterwards.

The social harmony promised by Quebec’s leaders after the shooting has failed to materialize.

In its place are acrimonious political debates over identity and religious accommodation, a surge in activity of far-right groups and a spike in the number of reported hate crimes.

“Everything that touches Muslims has become explosive. And we are fed up. I am fed up,” said Raffa.

“I am completely overwhelmed that this tragedy has led to the rise of racist rhetoric in the public sphere, to the complete indifference of Quebec’s elite.”

A climate of fear

Shortly after the shooting, Quebec City’s Muslim community resumed its long-standing effort to acquire a burial ground in or around the city.

The city’s first mosque dates from the late 1970s. But families had to travel to Laval, 260 kilometres away, to bury their dead.

They thought they had found a suitable location for the cemetery in Saint-Apollinaire, a town only 40 kilometres outside Quebec City. Even the local mayor was on board.

But a citizens group arose in opposition, and the cemetery project was quashed by a slim majority in a referendum.

Source: Quebec City Muslims alarmed by increasingly public displays of racism one year after mosque shooting

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ICYMI: Quebec City guide to help integrate newcomers derided as insulting, infantilizing

2017/01/20 Leave a comment

Does seem that this guide would have benefited from greater care in its design and emphasis. That being said, it is an effort to capture some unwritten aspects of integration but not whether the content reflects evidence or is based upon the assumptions of the authors:

Immigrants who settle in Quebec City are being offered a new guide to explain local customs, and the authors spare no detail in telling the newcomers how to fit in – for example, refrain from committing incest, wash with soap and use underarm deodorant to “control perspiration and bad odours.”

The guide from city hall was made public last week and has already been condemned as insulting and paternalistic.

“It’s a good idea to prepare something intelligent to help immigrants, but the way it was done is infantilizing,” Anne Guérette, municipal opposition leader in Quebec City, said on Sunday.

Quebec City is one of 13 municipalities across Quebec designated by the province to settle refugees from Syria. While Montreal remains the overwhelming destination of choice for newcomers, more than 550 state-sponsored refugees landed in Quebec City, 400 of them from Syria.

To help them integrate, city hall unveiled a guide last week, “Québec, Une ville pour moi” (Quebec City, A city for me) that spells out “common values” and ways of life in the province’s second-largest city. Some of the values, such as the equality of men and women, are commonly recognized in Canada. Other rules in the booklet, whose contents were first reported in Le Journal de Québec, seem to treat newcomers as if they are joining the civilized world for the first time, or have never bathed.

The section on “Hygiene and body care,” which is accompanied by a diagram of a dark-haired man with a beard, advises brushing one’s teeth at least twice a day “with a toothbrush and toothpaste.” Hand-washing is a must, “especially after going to the bathroom,” among other occasions. Socks and underwear should be washed after each use. And when washing one’s body, “pay particular attention to underarms, feet and intimate parts.”

For household rules, the guide counsels limiting kitchen odours through the use of an oven vent, and removing shoes inside the house to avoid disturbing one’s neighbours. In yet another rule aimed at removing “bad odours,” the guide helpfully suggests opening a window.

Mayor Régis Labeaume defended the guide in Quebec City last week, calling it “completely normal.”

“We could have just talked about sorting household garbage, but that is not enough,” Mr. Labeaume said. “There are practices, ways, traditions that are different,” he said. “There are laws and rules that exist here that might be different from the countries of origin of immigrants. So it’s better to go this far.”

The tips out of Quebec City come as the country debates the notion of defining “Canadian values,” as the country integrates large numbers of newcomers, and as Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch has proposed screening would-be immigrants for “anti-Canadian values.”

Quebec City’s guide, which received funding from the provincial immigration ministry, also has a section on family violence. It says using violence against your spouse violates the Criminal Code, as is using “unreasonable” force or using a belt or ruler to punish your child. Sexual consent is necessary even among married couples. Incest is a crime.

“For example: Brother + sister = illegal. Parent + child = illegal,” the guide spells out.

The guide is being distributed to organizations working with immigrants and refugees. Chantal Gilbert, a city councillor whose responsibilities include minority ethnic communities, says the individual sections can be made available to groups depending on their particular needs.

“There are communities to whom things won’t necessarily apply,” she said. “There are communities that might come from a place that is exactly the same culture as us, though they might need to know how things work for schooling. Even a French person from France comes here and can’t figure out the schooling for their children.”

Source: Quebec City guide to help integrate newcomers derided as insulting, infantilizing – The Globe and Mail

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