Belonging: Who Really Belongs in Quebec?
This event is held in partnership between the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival and the Quebec Writers’ Federation.
In keeping with the theme of this edition of the Festival, ‘Words to Understand Each Other,’ two gripping and passionate discussions about Québécois identity and who can claim it. Two consecutive and uninterrupted discussions in English and French.
First discussion: What does it mean to be a Québécois? Is being born here enough? Whatever success you may have here, however many generations you are removed from those who arrived here, are you ever fully accepted as l’un des nôtres? Last year, author Kim Thúy suffered dramatic backlash after speaking out about the injustice she has witnessed—and experienced—in spite of being widely lauded as an iconic author in francophone Quebec. Award-winning journalist Toula Drimonis has written movingly about the challenges for immigrants and their descendants in Quebec, both in her column in The Gazette and in her 2023 book We, the Others (Nous, les autres, translated to French by Mellisa Verreault). Be a fly on the wall as they share their ideas about where Quebec is on this issue, and where it might be going.
Second discussion: Immigrants or those who are considered “outsiders” have had to face the different challenges of trying to make Quebec their home. Over time, they have begun to experience a strong sense of belonging and become fully integrated into their adoptive chez nous. They have subsequently seen changes in Quebec that have made them question that sense of belonging. Writer and director Guy Rex Rodgers transformed Quebec’s linguistic landscape with his book, What We Choose to Forget, an account of a three-year tour of his film What We Choose to Remember. Journalist Francine Pelletier has reflected on the question of who Québécois in her book Dream Interrupted: The Rise and Fall of Quebec Nationalism.
Discussions in English and French.
Participants: Discussion 1: Kim Thúy, Toula Drimonis; Discussion 2: Guy Rex Rodgers, Francine Pelletier
Moderator: Anne Lagacé Dowson
The Participants
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal-based journalist, opinion columnist, and writer. A former news director for TC Media, her byline appears in national and international publications, with a focus on politics, social justice, immigration, and women’s issues. She currently writes a weekly column for the Montreal Gazette and Cult MTL, and a monthly for The Walrus. She’s worked in television, radio, and print in English, French and Greek. She was on the advisory board for Use the Right Words, a national media guide on how to report on sexual violence. In 2022 she published her first book, We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada. Her second book, Seeking Asylum: Building a Shareable World was published in 2024.
Kim Thúy a quitté le Vietnam avec les boat people à l’âge de dix ans et s’est installée avec sa famille au Québec. Diplômée en traduction et en droit, l’écrivaine a travaillé comme couturière, interprète, avocate et propriétaire de restaurant. Kim Thúy a reçu plusieurs prix, dont le Prix littéraire du Gouverneur général 2010, et a été l’une des quatre finalistes du Nobel Alternatif en 2018. Ses livres, dont les ventes montent à plus de un million de copies partout dans le monde, sont traduits en 31 langues et 43 pays et territoires. Kim Thúy vit à Montréal et se consacre à l’écriture.
Anne Lagacé Dowson is a bilingual Montrealer by choice, born in Toronto with a Québécoise mother and an Ontarian dad. A long-time aficionado of the arts, libraries and everything connected to them, she is an avid reader with an MA in Social and Women’s History. Anne was a reporter, editor, researcher, host and commentator at CBC, BellMedia and Radio-Canada for over 25 years, prioritising authors, libraries, education, public interest issues, and literacy in her on-air work. She is very proud of her two daughters, who are bilingual products of Québec’s public school system.
Francine Pelletier is a journalist based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and former co-host of CBC’s Fifth Estate (1995-2000). She is the co-founder of a feminist magazine, La Vie en Rose, and has written for La Presse, Le Devoir, and the Montreal Gazette.
Guy Rex Rodgers arrived in Quebec as a young adult to study at the National Theatre School. He has been a writer, columnist, interviewer, translator, filmmaker and community activist: founder of the English Language Arts Network (ELAN). In 2015, he was appointed a companion in l’Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2020, Rodgers began filming a series of eight documentaries about waves of immigration, and how immigrants successfully adapted to Quebec since it adopted the first language laws half a century earlier. His three-year tour of Quebec with We Choose To Remember, as the government imposed harsh new language laws, is the story of What We Choose To Forget.