Wilfrid Laurier Quotes
I am branded in Quebec as a traitor to the French, and in Ontario as a traitor to the English. In Quebec I am branded as a Jingo, and in Ontario as a separatist. In Quebec I am attacked is an imperialists, and in Ontario as an anti-imperialist. I am neither. I am a Canadian.
Attacked by so many after years of service, he was finally defeated.
Wilfrid Laurier, 1841-1919, First French Canadian Prime Minister of Canada (Liberal), Speech, 1911 election campaign
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
McGee was one of the first visionaries of a pluralistic Canada. his advocacy of multi-ethnic unity and multiculturalism which brought him assassination at his home in Ottawa by a fellow Irishman.
Richler was disliked by Levesque and other French Quebec Separatists because he opposed not only separatism but special privileges for Francophiles compared with other minorities. However, he was an admirer of the French Canadians as people and Canadians and was a supporter of Trudeau—he just opposed the separatists and special privileges for them. But some French Canadians were surprised by this quotation.
French Canadian separatists had begun a movement for an independent Quebec. The area that was to be an independent nation, however, included the land of several Indian tribes including the Cree. They insisted on the same right of self-determination within Quebec as the French Canadians claimed within Canada. Their opposition among others led to the failure of the Meech Lake Accord.
The second child of Carolus Laurier and Marcelle Martineau, Wilfrid Laurier was born in Saint-Lin, Canada East (modern day Saint-Lin-Laurentides, Quebec), on 20 November 1841. Laurier was among the seventh generation of his family in Canada. He was a sixth-generation Canadian. His ancestor François Cottineau, dit Champlaurier, came to Canada from Saint-Claud, France. He grew up in a family where politics was a staple of talk and debate. His father, an educated man having liberal ideas, enjoyed a certain degree of prestige about town. In addition to being a farmer and surveyor, he also occupied such sought-after positions as mayor, justice of the peace, militia lieutenant and school board member. At the age of 11, Wilfrid left home to study in New Glasgow, a neighbouring village largely inhabited by immigrants from Scotland. Over the next two years, he familiarized himself with the mentality, language and culture of British people. Laurier attended the Collège de L'Assomption and graduated in law from McGill University in 1864.
