A man remembers the referendum in Quebec as regards to the language issue.
ΑΝ.: Impression… a great impression it made on me, when the two referendums for the secession of Quebec were about to take place. I remember them, in fact I was very scared. I didn’t want… If Quebec seceded, I was ready to leave for Ontario and in fact I had already transferred my money to Ottawa as well.
RES.: Why were you scared?
ΑΝ.: I was scared. I didn’t want to stay over here due to… due to what they call ‘Backlash’ from the French-Canadians who were saying that if we secede, we’ll burn your homes and so on and so on, because we knew that there’s no way… we would never vote for the secession. At Park Extension nobody… nobody… nobody voted for ‘Yes’. We all voted ‘No’. And we were worried that there would be backlash from the French-Canadians. And this thing made an impression on me, an extremely bad impression and for this reason we were calling each other and saying what’s going to happen in case it’s a ‘Yes’ and in fact, the second referendum was a very close one. That was such. I said “Stop!”. Within me I thought about it “Stop!”. They’ve got a nice country over here and they want to split it. I couldn’t understand this with my own mind, but it was a nationalist issue and the French of course think… No, normally they feel they are different from the English. This thing is true. I understand this, but to split a country in half, I didn’t consider it right. But this for me was hard. I couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t figure it out and for this reason I took care in case something happens, I’ll take my wife and my children and we’ll leave here, we’ll go to Ontario and for this reason I transferred my money. Only the house would remain over here.
RES.: And the French said that they’ll burn all the homes of those who didn’t say…
ΑΝ.: There was… there was this fear that there would be backlash.
RES.: Yes, yes.
ΑΝ.: It was heard that if the ‘Yes’ won, we’ll burn your homes. You’ll all leave.
RES.: The immigrants, the English?
ΑΝ.: Especially the Greeks and Jews, because they knew they would vote ‘No’. The Portuguese no. The Portuguese voted ‘Yes’. Because you know, the French with the Portuguese have a friendly something. We, however, are more attached to the English population and for this reason we knew we would be a target and we were very scared.
