The third time as tragedy, again

A couple of marginal notes, in advance of my Wednesday column. 1) It's worth recalling, in view of Ignatieff's insistence that any constitutional recognition of Quebec as a nation would be purely symbolic, the short, unhappy life of the "distinct society" clause. As originally proposed by the Quebec Liberal Party in 1986 (I have the hard copy somewhere, but perhaps somebody could provide me with the link), the clause was to be inserted in the preamble to the Constitution, meaning it would not be "justiciable" -- offering substantive legal guidance to judges in interpreting the Constitution, and hence altering the Constitution by way of jurisprudence. But the Parti Quebecois, then led by Jacques Parizeau, would have none of that. The "multicultural heritage" clause, after all, was in the body of the Constitution, explicitly instructing that the Charter should be interpreted in this light. Was the Quebec nation to take a back seat to a bunch of ethnics? (Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but consider the source.) So a justiciable distinct society clause it was. But the story doesn't end there. Recall the history of another great constitutional drama, the Charter/patriation debates of 1981, and the circumstances surrounding the multicultural heritage clause, among others. The original draft of the Charter had spoken simply of the equality of every individual before the law, specifically mentioning the usual list of grounds, including sex. But notwithstanding that assurance, women's groups were concerned that the "multicultural heritage" or "aboriginal rights" clauses might trump sexual equality. So another clause was added, stipulating that, notwithstanding Section 15's assurance that women and men were equal, they were also equal. Fast forward to distinct society. Once again, the concern was raised that women's rights were in peril. And so, at one point, it was seriously proposed -- I think by Frank McKenna -- to insert yet a third clause guaranteeing the equality of the sexes. At any rate, it was all cleaned up by the time we got to the Charlottetown Accord, which helpfully spelled out just which Canadians' rights would take precedence over others'. 2) On CTV the other day, a reporter was explaining that the Ignatieff proposals would probably encounter a lot of opposition from Canadians outside Quebec, who had not been properly taught their history: specifically, that Confederation was the meeting of "two founding nations," the English and the French. Uh, no. Let me quote two of our most distinguished historians, Donald Creighton and Frank Underhill, polar opposites politically but in agreement on one point: Confederation was in no way a compact between two founding nations. Prof. Underhill first:

"This interpretation is a modern Laurentian fantasy, which can only be fitted into the historical facts by a painful straining of evidence. The conferences out of which the British North America Act originated were conferences among delegates from the colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. The Canadian delegates were the members of the Canadian coalition cabinet of 1864; they spoke for Canada as a whole; they did not divide on racial lines. There were no delegates there who had been chosen by a French-Canadian or English-Canadian 'race' or 'nation.' If the Canadian delegates at these conferences spoke in any role but that of Canadians, they spoke as Conservatives and Reformers."

Now Prof. Creighton:

"Before 1867, British North America still remained, and was still regarded not as a cultural duality but, in the words of Georges Cartier, as 'a diversity of races.'... Language was only one of the many components that made up (this) curious cultural medley... National origin and national tradition - Irish, Scotch and English, as well as French - might be equally influential, and religion, so often sharpened by sectarian bitterness, was perhaps the most important of all. The Fathers of Confederation had to take account of these differences; but their great aim was not the perpetuation of cultural diversity but the establishment of a united nation."

There are indeed repeated references in the Confederation debates to the desire to create "a new nationality," a "political nation," and so forth. Not two, or 10, or 600: one.