From: An Illinois Reader [Send him mail]
I read the recent letter about Quebec and recalled my own experience in Quebec City last week. I saw a graffito stating, Quebecois de souche (i.e., Old-Stock Quebecker). I'm not a Quebecker, de souche or otherwise, but how refreshing it is to see a people who actually take pride in their heritage, rather than sniveling and apologizing like American WASPs.
As far as patriots in America and Anglophone Canada are concerned, we're all Quebeckers now—squeezed between unfavorable demographic pressures and a powerful elite that does not share our sense of nationhood. To adapt Charles de Gaulle's famous address to Montreal, "Vive l'Amerique Libre!"
James Fulford writes: There’s Fédération des Québécois de souche, [Google English Translation page] which is even more of a nationalist party than the regular Parti Québécois.
As for the term "Quebecois de souche," a quick search finds an Anglo-Canadian blogger noting that the Bouchard-Taylor report (a Quebec governmental commission on how fast Quebec should surrender to Muslims) “seeks to stamp out the term 'Quebecois de souche' because, according to them, it alienates immigrants.”
By comparison, the term “Old Stock American” is almost unknown these days, and disparaged as racist. (An example from Google Books: “Certainly, aspects of the discourse of racial science remain; Peter Brimelow, for example, refers often to "stock"..”. Of course he does.)
