About the Book

In May 2022, Guy Rex Rodgers released a documentary film about waves of immigration in Quebec, from the British Conquest to the arrival of university students in the 21st century. A month later, the CAQ government passed Bill 96 to protect Quebec from too many English speakers, immigrants and foreign students. For the next three years, Rodgers toured his film to every region of Quebec, and after each screening invited audience members to share their stories. The collective portrait that emerged explodes some of Quebec’s most persistent myths about who is Québécois. 

The heartland of Nouvelle France was the Saint-Lawrence Valley but it was never pure Catholic or francophone. Scottish and Irish soldiers fought on both sides of the Plains of Abraham. The first English school established after the Conquest was not in Quebec City or Montreal but in the Gaspésie. The first immigrant settlements in the Eastern Townships and the Ottawa Valley were established by English speakers. Then the 20th century saw an explosion of immigration that did not fit the French/English, Catholic/Protestant binary. The reality is far more interesting than Two Solitudes.  

These ‘immigrants’ — who come from different places and speak a variety of languages — are proud to be Quebecers. During the CAQ era of Bill 96, they were treated as a problem and a threat to Quebec. What We Choose To Forget gives a voice to ‘outsiders’ who have a lot to say about Quebec and their place in it!