Sovereigntists insist separate Remembrance Day ceremony not political
Brian Daly
Canadian Press
Friday, November 12, 2004
MONTREAL (CP) - Quebec flags outnumbered Maple Leaf banners by a 10-to-one margin Thursday at a Remembrance Day ceremony organized by a prominent sovereigntist group that insisted the event wasn't political.
The Societe St-Jean-Baptiste of Montreal held the hour-long event in the military section of the Cote-des-Neiges Cemetery at the same time as the city's official ceremony at the downtown cenotaph. Several Bloc Quebecois MPs and Parti Quebecois members of the legislature were present at the cemetery along with more than a dozen veterans, mostly francophones.
Some of the ex-soldiers said the ceremony on Mount-Royal was more in tune with the sacrifices of French-speaking Second World War veterans.
Rene Lanouette, 82, said he decided it was time for a change after 50 years of attending the main event.
"The event (downtown) is mostly anglophones," said Lanouette, who served in the 3rd Canadian Division that landed at Bernieres, France, on D-Day in 1944.
"Sometimes I go to the Legion and I'm the only francophone there."
Another veteran, Joseph Duval, was even more to the point.
"Here is Quebec," he said. "There (downtown), it's Canada."
The Societe St-Jean-Baptiste first held its own Remembrance Day gathering in 1998 after efforts to take part in ceremonies organized by the Royal Canadian Legion proved too complicated.
But Guy Bouthillier, past president of the sovereigntist group, insisted the event aims to be inclusive.
"I made sure it wouldn't be (only sovereigntists)," said Bouthillier, noting that handouts mentioned anglophone and francophone war dead.
The lone federalist politician at the ceremony was deputy Quebec premier Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, who presented special medals to 12 war veterans.
Also present was Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe, who faced outrage last week when fellow MP Andre Bellavance refused to provide Canadian flags to a Legion branch in Quebec.
Duceppe later decided the party would send flags to the branch in Richmond, Que.
He denied Thursday the Remembrance Day event had political overtones but he also made his own sovereigntist convictions abundantly clear.
"In Quebec, it was important for the nationalist movement to remember (veterans) as well," he told reporters.
"We're talking about a world war and people from every nation participated - Canadians and Quebecers."
But veteran Pierre Bourget, 81, bristled when asked whether the event was a nationalist statement.
"I refuse to give any political implication to my being here, whatsoever," said Bourget, who was shot down by the Germans as a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot in the Second World War.
One former soldier marking the day near the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City said the Bloc flag flap was only one symptom of a deeper disregard for Remembrance Day in the province.
Derick Noonan, a Quebec City native who served with regiments in Alberta and Ontario, noted only a few dozen civilians attended the ceremony in the Quebec capital.
He also remarked how few Quebecers wear poppies, partly because they're very difficult to find in stores.
"That's something I feel very sad about," said Noonan, 32, who lost friends while serving in Somalia and Bosnia.
© The Canadian Press 2004
(sorry, I didn't find a quebec flag!!!)
