Why are there still casualties on the Plains of Abraham

When language stops proving who belongs

I think Canada has two troubled relationships.

One with the people we first relied on, then betrayed, and then spent a century managing as though they were someone else’s children.

The other is with a people we fought, defeated militarily, partnered with, argued with, funded, mocked, married, and still don’t quite understand, even now.

Today I want to talk about the second one.

Because I live inside it… and I don’t pass the authenticity test.

In 1759, on a field outside Quebec City, the British defeated the French in a battle that lasted fifteen minutes and changed a continent.

English Canada has spent the 265 years since then waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It never did.

Because here’s what we got wrong from the beginning. You can win a battle. You can win a war. What you cannot do is win a culture. The French didn’t surrender on those plains — the army did. The church stayed. The language stayed. The civil law stayed. The farms stayed. The names on the mailboxes stayed. The people who were there in 1759 are still there, still speaking French, still not particularly interested in delivering to English Canada the spoils it has spent two and a half centuries quietly assuming were coming.

We won. They never lost.

And I think that’s the thing English Canada has never quite metabolized. Not consciously. Not as a stated position. But as a low hum underneath the argument — this impatience, this puzzlement, this vague irritation that the conquered won’t behave like the conquered.

That’s what you’re actually hearing when a CEO’s French becomes the story.

A man stands up after two young pilots die and offers condolences.

Within days, we’re no longer talking about the dead, or the families, or the loss.

We’re talking about his French.

Maybe he’s an asshole. Maybe he couldn’t be bothered. Maybe after 300 hours of lessons he still sounds like a tourist ordering a coffee and decided not to humiliate himself on camera.

All of that is possible.

But the scale of the reaction… the heat behind it… the insistence that this was the real story…

That’s not about him.

That’s about us realizing, somewhere deep down, that the thing we’ve been using to measure belonging is starting to slip, and we don’t quite know what replaces it.

I went to Bishop’s.

I know to go to Fairmount, not just St-Viateur… and I know why that sentence alone will start a fight that doesn’t really end.

I prefer pastrami… but when I’m at Schwartz’s, I get the smoked meat.

I grew up with The Box humming in the background, and I remember exactly how much shit Sass Jordan took for slipping into English every now and then.

I’ve skied Mont Sainte-Anne, Owl’s Head, Sutton, Tremblant… enough times that they live in muscle memory.

I’ve sat in a Metro car so quiet you forget you’re moving.

And I can’t speak French.

Not really.

I can tell you I’m tired. I can tell you to shut up. I can tell you I’m feeling okay.

And then my brain shuts the door, cleanly and completely.

I started in grade three. I did the years. I put in the time that was asked of me.

It’s not a choice.

It’s a limit.

So here’s the problem.

For a long time, language worked.

If you spoke French, it meant something. It meant you invested, that you stayed, that you chose to be here and to participate in something that required effort and continuity.

It was a good proxy for belonging.

But it was still a proxy.

Because I’ve done all of that.

I’ve lived it, absorbed it, repeated it, cared about it.

And I still fail the test.

Now here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

If you think I’m talking about smoked meat and ski hills, then you’re missing the point entirely.

I can talk for an hour about Lévesque and Trudeau and not get bored, and more importantly, not get it wrong.

I know exactly what the Night of the Long Knives did to the psyche of this province, and how often it still gets invoked… sometimes honestly, sometimes as a kind of reflex.

I understand equalization well enough to know why Alberta resents it, why Quebec depends on it, and how both sides flatten that reality when it suits them.

I know what the Quiet Revolution changed, and just as importantly, what it didn’t.

I know what cultural isolation looked like under Duplessis, and why the overcorrection that followed came as hard and fast as it did.

I know why head offices left, why some came back, and why that story is almost never told cleanly, because it doesn’t serve anyone’s narrative particularly well.

This isn’t cultural tourism.

This is the argument.

And I still fail the test.

Now add what’s coming.

We are inches away from a babble fish in the ear… real-time, near-perfect translation where tone, cadence, and intent carry across languages without friction.

A leader stands up, speaks plainly in English, and every word lands in French exactly as intended, in a voice that sounds like it belongs there.

At that point… what exactly are we measuring?

That’s what this moment is really about.

Not a CEO who didn’t speak French, or didn’t speak it well enough, or didn’t try hard enough.

But a culture realizing that its cleanest, simplest signal of belonging is about to be simulated perfectly, at scale.

And that’s unsettling, because it forces a deeper question that we’ve been able to avoid.

So the question isn’t whether French matters.

It’s a question of whether the French matter… to us.

And the answer is yes.

Not politely. Not symbolically. Not in the careful language of policy.

Desperately.

Because whatever we were when this started… two European inheritances replaying old tensions on new ground… that’s not what we are anymore.

Quebec is not France.

And we are not England.

Neither of us are proxies for anything now.

What exists between us is something built here… through proximity, friction, compromise, and a kind of familiarity that only comes from not being able to leave each other alone.

We’ve fought too much, traded too much, lived too close to pretend otherwise.

This is no longer inherited.

It’s earned.

And if you want proof of that… look south.

We are closer to each other than we are to the Americans.

Not always in temperament. Not always in tone.

But in the things that actually matter… how we govern, how we argue, how we carry history forward instead of pretending we can reset it every generation.

We need each other that way.

Because if we drift too far apart, we don’t become more distinct… we become more absorbable.

And there is a gravity to the south that doesn’t negotiate.

But don't fall asleep, And please forgive me if I've fallen into the old Federalist trap. Stay or become an American is a powerful rhetorical device but not how you forge a partnership.

I need Quebec. I need to be a member of a country that has a Quebec. I need it's reverence for culture for family. I need its quirk. I'm from Toronto, it's very clean and all things are precise. It's very boring. I want Expo 67’, I want a ridiculous snowman skating. I want good food and cheese with bugs and I want the wisdom of Mordecai Richler taught in my schools.

So yes… the French matter.

Which is exactly why the way we show that has to evolve.

We can anticipate the response.

Of course we can.

The language is the respect. The language is the proof. The language is the line.

And for most of my life… I’ve been on the wrong side of that line.

I’ve fought it. I’ve worked at it. I’ve run into it over and over again like a wall that doesn’t care how much is on the other side.

And for the last time in this essay… I’ll say this plainly.

It doesn’t matter.

Not in the way it used to.

Because the framework that made that true is about to disappear.

Technology is about to erase the idea that language can function as a reliable gate.

Perfect translation… real-time… in your ear, in your voice, with your cadence.

The signal will still exist.

But it won’t prove what you think it proves.

So I’m not asking you to abandon it.

I’m telling you to get ready for what comes after it.

Because the question isn’t going away.

It’s just getting harder.

If language no longer tells you who belongs…

how will you know who’s on your team?