Canadians are prey to many myths, but the most important of them is that what makes us truly, uniquely, profoundly etc. Canadian is Quebec. Two peoples, working in two languages, together, building on the northern half of the continent a more tolerant, more caring, more just nation than the U.S. Without Quebec, sing the full-throated chorus of Canadian intellectuals, we would simply be poor, cold, rust-belt Americans with a deep appreciation of hockey.

When the novelist Mordecai Richler attacked many of the underpinnings of that myth in an article in the New Yorker in September 1991, it was greeted in Canada—and especially in Quebec—with a tumult of incoherent anger. Richler drew attention to two dirty little secrets: the repressive language laws of Quebec and its history of anti-Semitism. Last spring he published it all over again as Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!—with footnotes, a bibliography, and a host of new details that have only increased the rage and the incoherence of the response. To make matters worse, a week after it appeared in Canadian bookstores, it was the number-one best-seller in the country.

Richler is famous enough abroad that his words will carry weight at home, and, although his book doesn't aim to ridicule the government and politics of Quebec, it does the next best thing: it surveys with wit not unmixed with contempt, a long train of stupidities that have contributed to a world-class economic, political and constitutional crisis that may well require the partition of the country to resolve—civil war having been ruled out as “unthinkable.”

October's “no” vote in a Canada-wide referendum on national unity only deepens the problem. Quebecois intellectuals and governments have over the years debated whether Quebec would be better off without Canada. But anyone who points out that virtually all of Canada's constitutional difficulties center on Quebec is indirectly raising another question: Wouldn't Canada be better off without Quebec?

Richler starts by describing Bill 178, a law that excludes any language but French from exterior commercial signs. Inside stores, English is allowed to appear but only if it is clearly subordinated to French. Detailed directives have been promulgated regulating, for example, the size of letters on signs. One rule states: “The color of the French and English lettering should be the same. If not, the color of the French should be stronger. The language inspector will decide what color is stronger.” The assumption sustaining the Quebec sign law seems to be that French will be preserved and enhanced by suppressing English and those citizens who speak it. Likewise, one can argue that arson is really a form of urban renewal.

Contemporary ethnic nationalism is best understood by looking at the religious history of the province. A half-century ago French Quebec was Roman Catholic not only in its religious practices, but also in its social organization. The health, education and welfare bureaucracies, for example, were staffed and administered by priests, nuns, and lay brothers and sisters. It is only in the last generation and a half—which is to say with astonishing rapidity—that that entire apparatus has been secularized.

The most unsavory aspect of Church-dominated society in Quebec was the contempt it taught for non-French, non-Catholic citizens. The term maudits anglais, damned English, was understood literally. The powerful English-speaking Presbyterian businessmen of Montreal were indifferent to these curses, not least because they knew who controlled the wealth of the city—but poor Irish Catholics and even poorer Jews were not so strong. Richler was tasteless enough to remind the nationalists of their anti-Semitic heritage, a heritage of which they are properly ashamed. But since their nationalist pride is uncertain, their shameful past can be accommodated only by denying it ever existed. They have thus described Richler as filled with delirium and hysteria, resentment, racism, bad faith, contempt, morbid introspection, unresolved personal problems, and both hatred and self-hatred. One nationalist Member of Parliament urged that the book be banned under Section 319 of the Criminal Code as hate propaganda.

Richler cited public opinion surveys that indicated contemporary French Quebec was more anti-Jewish in its attitudes than English-speaking Canada. Rather than admit such a thing was possible the nationalists disputed the language of the survey questionnaire and noted correctly that there were even more anti-Semitic “incidents” among the “English.” Look, they said, Toronto has more anti-Jewish vandalism than Montreal and in 1934, in Regina, Saskatchewan, two Jewish radiologists were excluded from a hospital. What does Richler say about that? Nothing!

Such bile might well alert ordinary readers to the existence of a real issue. No one among the Quebec nationalists wanted to consider Richler's argument: that there is an intelligible connection between the bigotry of a priest or the editorial position of a major Montreal newspaper during the 1930s, and the contemporary nationalism of the French population of the province. No one dares admit that the French are fighting against injustices that no longer exist, nor that they are committing real injustices against their English-speaking fellow-citizens, whose bilingual sons and daughters are leaving for more hospitable places in record numbers. Worst of all, no one even knows how to talk about the relationship of bigoted priests in the 1930s to bigoted intellectuals today. If Richler has ridiculed ridiculous laws, surely that is the only appropriate response of a concerned citizen in a democracy. Americans seeking a quick study of the painful recent history of their northern neighbor cannot do better than this splendid piece by Canada's best writer.