by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Tensions were running high back in the dark days of winter 2002-03, with the United States preparing for its invasion of Iraq. Worldwide, millions of ordinary people took to the streets to denounce George Bush's impending war, not least of all here. Anyone who took part in the colossal march against the war that February won't forget the size of the crowd, estimated at a quarter-million, or the brutal cold and bone-biting wind. That and other marches were perhaps the strongest example of the mindframe of the vast majority of Quebecers, who opposed the war in overwhelming numbers.

Other, less PR-friendly incidents included the booing of the American national anthem at sports events and, perhaps the ugliest of them all, one played up on blustery FOX news talk shows, was the booing of a peewee hockey team from Massachusetts visiting Montreal for a tournament.

All this has prompted identity-searching, not just among Quebecers but also the world at large, as to who, 138 years after Confederation and two referenda later, we are and what we stand for. David Haglund, a political scientist from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, was in town this week to deliver a speech titled, "Does Quebec Have an ‘Obsession Anti-Américaine'?"

It's a good, if politically charged, question. The title, Haglund says, comes from French author Jean-François Revel's 2002 book L'Obsession anti-américaine: Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconséquences.

French wimps?

Haglund believes that the root cause of Quebec's anti-Americanism is its anti-militarism. Francophone Quebecers' reluctance to fight and die on foreign fields for king and country - English kings - was a cause of intense crises of national unity in the first half of the last century. Today, that manifests itself into a unique (for North America) overwhelming opposition to any overseas American military campaign, including Afghanistan but especially Iraq.

"We saw the split with Afghanistan," says Haglund. "Only 36 per cent of Quebecers supported the war, as opposed to 75 to 80 per cent in English Canada. With Iraq, it's become more evident. English Canada was fairly evenly split, but about 95 per cent of Quebecers opposed it. When Baghdad fell, two-thirds of English Canadians thought it was a mistake not to go, but that unanimity prevailed in Quebec."

But where does that anti-militarist streak come from? While Haglund acknowledges theories that it originates with Quebecers' long-standing association with underdogs around the world and the influence of French intellectuals, he doesn't hold them in the highest regard. Jean Dorion, the president of the indépendantiste Société St-Jean-Baptiste, however, does.

"It's not so much that Quebecers are anti-American as it is we are opposed to the stronger beating on the weak," he says. "With the Algerian war of independence against France, Quebecers generally were more on the side of the Algerians than the French. We see that the weaker have some points, while Anglo-Saxons consider that the weak ont tort." Another aspect of American culture Dorion says Quebecers bemoan is the resurgence of the religious right. With its staunch backing of Bush in 2000 and 2004, he says, "A lot of Quebecers were very surprised to find this new, unseen side to the U.S. We found out about the Bible Belt and it's a part of the country we like less."

Jack Jedwab, the head of the Association of Canadian Studies and a lecturer at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, agrees. "I think a lot of Quebecers do feel a certain amount of vulnerability," he says. "There's a more left-of-centre perspective here, a left-of-centre prism of international affairs in which the U.S. is not always the good guy, but rather the exploiter, the aggressive colonizer."

The result, says Haglund, is a blurring of policy and people. "If U.S. policy is driven by force, then it's going to be difficult to warm to that policy," he says. "So opposition to the policy becomes opposition to the country, and over time that becomes habitual."

Distinct problems

The latest hot anti-American topic post-Iraq is the missile shield debate, which again, Quebecers are overwhelmingly against. "I can't even call it a debate in Quebec because there's no other position," Haglund says. "To even suggest that there might be another side is almost outrageous - it's as if you're speaking Swahili, no one can understand you."

But what Quebec orneriness may mean in the future, he speculates, is another challenge to national unity. With Quebec becoming increasingly at odds with foreign policy opinions held in the rest of Canada, a teetering minority government in Ottawa, and given Quebec's steadfast aversion to military expenditures, Haglund posits that "we may find ourselves heading ‘back to the future' [i.e. Quebec versus English Canada] when it comes to having to grapple with unity implications of foreign policy crises."