by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Ever wonder why Jacques Parizeau became such a passionate, take-no-prisoners separatist? It stems from when he was a teenager hanging with friends outside a restaurant at Côte-des-Neiges and Queen Mary. A group of anglos came along, a punch up ensued and Parizeau’s little finger ended up broken. To this day he can’t bend it properly. So one of the main causes of the near break-up of this country is a twisted three inches of pink, bony flesh.

Parizeau sometimes offers an alternate, more respectable creation myth. He was taking a train across Canada and was supposed to be writing an essay on the merits of federalism, but “just couldn’t do it,” he says. I’m imagining he couldn’t do it because he couldn’t hold a pen due to his broken pinkie.

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe—like Parizeau, a son of a wealthy, well-known Montrealer—says his decisive anti-Canada transformation occurred on a cold winter day of his youth. According a 1991 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Duceppe boarded a school bus on which anglos were allowed to sit, while Duceppe and franco friends were forced to stand. When he complained about the unfairness of it all, an anglophone teacher smacked him. No word on whether the teacher managed to knock Duceppe’s clear plastic hairnet off—although I envision it flying quite far.

René Lévesque also suffered the slings and arrows that fed his desire for independence, many of which are enumerated in his various biographies. One incident has it that he was kicked out of the room during an interview with a princess visiting in Newfoundland. Another details how he couldn’t find good French reading material as a CBC foreign correspondent in Korea. And there were many other such stories… but while reading them… my eyelids… became… very… heavy….

Bernard Landry was born blessed with fine separatist genetic material. “Since he was 10 Bernard Landry never stopped telling his friends ‘We’re going to get those English!’” reports his biography by Michel Vastel. Landry later joined the Canadian Armed Forces, where French guys had a rough time. “Did this help turn you into a separatist?” asks Vastel. “It could have helped,” replies Landry. “Those English-speaking officers sure made us sweat.” (I’m seeing a slogan: “Une nation sous ma transpiration.”)

Others, including pundit Pierre Bourgault and former PQ justice minister Serge Ménard, report to becoming sovereignist after being mistreated by anglos while serving in the Canadian Armed Forces.

An army has historically been the glue that unites a nation. Canada’s, conversely, has been the Great Laboratory Where Separatist Leaders Are Created.

I rang up a military flak who told me about today’s “strict policy of zero tolerance for any type of harassment,” “preventative measures” and the “official language directorate.” Yet grunts will tell you that anglo boneheads still stupidly mock and taunt their French counterparts.

And civilians in the rest of Canada do the country no favours when they pick on francophones. Former FLQ terrorist Raymond Villeneuve says he gets e-mail from young franco Quebecers with the same story: they go somewhere in the rest of Canada and get mistreated by anglos, then return angry and devoted to the anti-Canada cause.

It’s sad that the essential goo of one’s identity—and this doesn’t only go for indépendentistes—is so often spat up under the dark moon of negation.

Bullying is the ultimate counterproductive act; it’s a brutal ballet of irony; it’s the pendulum that swings back and smacks you; it’s the Columbine Trenchcoat Mafia.

Many indépendentiste leaders, whose séparatiste iron was forged by the cruel anglo anvil, subsequently reverted to their own tactics of schoolyard intimidation. These include Parizeau’s “money and ethnic vote” slur, Landry’s verbal assault on the Mexican hotel clerk, Bouchard’s “Quebec needs more white babies” remark as well as much divisive verbiage from Bourgault and Yves Michaud.

These vulgar comments—both the legacy and perpetuation of cruelty—surely scattered untold numbers of potential recruits. And they demonstrate that the bullied often becomes the bully.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca