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Article: Quebec After Catholicism.
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- June 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In July 1997 Quebec City unveiled a bronze statue of Charles de Gaulle outside its walls. Though the $150,000 price tag might have seemed exorbitant to Canadians whose cash-strapped governments have in recent years been compelled to cut social services, for Quebecois sovereigntists it was a small price to pay for the assurance that from now to forever the eminent general will preside over the Plains of Abraham, site of a definitive French defeat at the hands of the English in 1759, terrestrial source of perpetual French Canadian humiliation, historical souvenir of all that is wrong with the world.
It is of course fitting that de Gaulle should rule over the Plains, ...