Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Richler, Mordecai (Vol. 185) - Rick Marin (review date 6 July 1992)


Richler, Mordecai (Vol. 185) - Rick Marin (review date 6 July 1992)

Rick Marin (review date 6 July 1992)

SOURCE: Marin, Rick. “Maple Leaf Rag.” National Review 44, no. 13 (6 July 1992): 52-4.

[In the following review, Marin commends Richler's wit and cynicism in Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!: Requiem for a Divided Country.]

I met my first Québecois language Nazi at a French immersion course in Cap Rouge, a hamlet outside Quebec City occupied that summer by high-school students from Canada's Anglophone provinces. Guy was the fascist Francophone's name, and whenever he heard one of us utter un mot anglais, he barked a rebuke and issued a demerit. Later, in 1980, I was an undergraduate at McGill University in Montreal, “the Paris of Canada.” My French was as good as it had ever been, but there was one problem: every time I addressed a native in French, I was rebuffed in English, frequently pidgin, in return. It was a perverse game, all the more so given the recent outlawing of English on public...

[The entire page is 844 words long]

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