Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec, by GENEVIÈVE ZUBRZYCKI

Abstract

The dramatic nature of social change in Quebec is a fascinating story skillfully told by Geneviève Zubrzycki in this beautifully written and deeply researched book, Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec. The secularization of Quebec is dramatic in two senses. It occurred in a relatively compressed interval, conveyed for example by the fact that the birth rate dropped from 4.0 to 2.09 within the space of 12 years (between 1959 and 1972). It is dramatic too in that its process of becoming secular was acted out, literally, in public performances—and it is this performance work that drives much of the book. What a treat! Zubrzycki, keenly attuned to cultural icons and their dynamic centrality to the construction and contestation of collective identities (already on fine display in her earlier book, The Crosses of Auschwitz), attends here to St. John the Baptist. It was he who, for many good reasons, became the figure-head in the making of a distinctively Catholic and French Canadian identity, with the Church at the center of institutional and everyday activity (chapter 2). His feast day, June 24, became Quebec’s ethno-national holiday and, happily coinciding with summer solstice, was celebrated with elaborate pageant-like public parades, festivals, and bonfires, as well as special Masses and commemorative medals.