Here’s comforting news for Americans who worry that their country is getting wacky: so are the neighbors.
Consider the most recent national anthem flap. A few weeks ago was St. Jean Baptiste Day, now more commonly called Quebec National Day because Quebec is determined to be a nation.
As it happened, the Montreal Expos were playing at home that night. As all big league ball clubs do (WHY?), the Expos play their national anthem before each game.
So? So someone in the ball club’s hierarchy decided that playing “O, Canada” on June 24 before the game against the Florida Marlins would be a provocation to Quebeckers.
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On the other hand, NOT playing “O, Canada,” might enrage other Canadians, some of whom are easily enraged these days, and could seem cowardly, perhaps because it would be.
Displaying the brilliance for which public relations operatives are noted, the Expos decided that the anthem would be played, but not just before the game. It would be played an hour or so earlier when only a few fans would be there to hear it.
But national anthems should be the worst problem the Expos have. They might make the playoffs this year. And then they might go away. Attendance is up over last year, but not by much, and while the poor-mouthing of baseball club owners should be taken with enough salt to fill the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Expos really seem to be losing money.
For this, city and team officials offer many explanations-too much competition for the entertainment dollar, a stingy local business community, a boring stadium and a bad deal from Canadian television. No one, it seems, will offer the most likely explanation, perhaps because there is no cure for it.
To wit, in Montreal, baseball is trying to thrive in a city whose essential character may be inhospitable to baseball. Big league baseball cities come in great variety, but only Montreal is French.
And what’s wrong with French? Rien de tout. French is magnifique. It just ain’t baseball, that’s all. Baseball is an American game which has also been embraced by the cultures of Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
But not, it should be noted, by the Dominican Republic’s island neighbor, French-speaking Haiti. English Canadians love their Blue Jays. But the embrace of the Expos has been comme ci, comme ca, and so it is likely to remain, toujours. Baseball, perhaps, is not sufficiently French.
And Quebeckers are so intent on being sufficiently French that they seem ready to dismantle Canada for it. The province will hold elections soon, and all the polls show that the Parti Quebecois will take control of the provincial parliament and will commence planning secession.
Needless to say, this has caused a tizzy, especially in the financial community, where the movers and shakers blame the decline of the Canadian dollar on nervousness over the future of national unity.
Well, movers and shakers in all financial communities get too easily tizzified. They also manage to find any excuse to do what is in their immediate interest, which is usually to raise interest rates. Have to prop up that dollar, you know.
Those of us with a bit of memory recall that Quebec has approached the brink of secession before, and has pulled back from it. The likelihood that it will do so again ought not be casually dismissed. Even if the Parti Quebecois wins this year’s election, it will not necessarily convince Quebeckers to vote for secession in a referendum a year or so later.
Especially if and when they realize that the “sovereignty” they are being offered isn’t all that sovereign. It’s more symbolic than substantive. To take just one example, but a big one: As envisioned by Parti Quebecois, an independent Quebec would still use Canadian currency. So the government-owned Bank of Canada would remain powerful, though independent Quebec would have no political influence over it. This is not sovereignty; it’s voluntary disenfranchisement.
But then, Quebec may be leading the way toward the Balkanized future. Secession is also the talk of Alaska, Hawaii, northern California, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and New York’s Staten Island. Now that conservatives on both sides of the border have become at least as unpatriotic as liberals, the motto de jour could become “when annoyed, separate.”
One day, there might be 20 or 30 national anthems in North America. Then they’d have to stop playing them before ball games. That would be a relief.