The French Atlantic

Abstract

Abstract In July 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle boarded the Colbert and set out across the Atlantic to Canada. In Montreal, he was greeted by crowds of well-wishers who occasionally sang the Marseillaise, and in a public speech he shouted, “Vive le Québec Libre!”—”Long live Free Qué- bec!” After a brief moment of stunned silence, the crowd, 15,000 strong, exploded into applause: De Gaulle had just shouted the slogan of the movement for Québecois sovereignty. The Canadian government was furious, but one of De Gaulle’s advisers complimented him by saying, “My general, you have paid the debt owed by Louis XV.” In embracing the aspirations of the Québecois, according to this interpretation, De Gaulle had made up for the abandonment of their ancestors two centuries earlier. Quebec nationalists have, since then, used their history of participation in the French Empire as the foundation for their contemporary demands for cultural and political autonomy, notably by changing the province’s slogan to “Je me souviens”—”I remember.”