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Professor Anne Trépanier’s fourth year course Quebec Studies & Language, Culture and Power in Canada is one of two �Ӱ�ԭ�� courses that has travelled to Quebec City to achieve a greater sense of understanding of the identity of Canada as a nation, but also to facilitate a more enhanced comprehension of each student’s identity within the “True North Strong and Free.”

Trépanier and co. are currently gearing up for the 2015 and third edition of the course, which will occur this Spring semester.

Quebec Studies & Language, Culture, and Power in Canada takes a comparative and in-depth look at Canada’s two national capitals: Ottawa and Quebec City.

Students will examine the history and culture of Quebec City, and then contrast these representations and public histories with perceptions of Ottawa, to ask how they shape our conceptions and depictions of Canada as a bilingual whole.

The course will analyze how the idea of “nation” is expressed through local narratives, public spaces, museums and other national institutions, and in what way this notion secures specific relations of authority.

In other words – how do ideas of nationalism in the Quebecois and Canadian context harness explicit relations of power between language and culture?

“The goal with this course is that every student completes it with an understanding of themselves and their own identity within Canada,” said Trépanier. “On the trip, students are required to do travel logs of their experiences and observations, as they organize their realities in the two cities, they begin to achieve a more thorough comprehension of what’s happening on a national level.”

The ten-day trip to Quebec is chockfull of activities saturated in both local and national culture. Staying in Quebec City immerses students in a francophone environment in which they are able to practise their French speaking skills if they have any, or learn at least to say “Bonjour!” if they don’t. By no means is French language a requirement to take this course.

Students will achieve an understanding of how language has become a defining and powerful tool for the beautiful and unique culture in Quebec within a country that is still wrangling with its officially bilingual identity.

Prof Trépanier says that ” students understand better the national meaning making system that they study if they are able to be immersed in it. “National narrations exist in text, at the History museum, at the Art Gallery, but also in statues, in cultural landscapes, in the built heritage, in the sociability of the local city that is also the national capital. The national performance is everywhere, even in the 3D space.”

Among the many engaging scheduled learning events, some highlights include a guided tour of the Musée de l’Amérique Française, an evening at the Musée des beaux arts du Québec, an afternoon with Wolfe and Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham, a day on Île d’Orléans, a guided tour of the National Assembly and brisk walks on the fortification walls of Quebec!

Though much of the itinerary is focused on experiential learning (a Socratic style of teaching that is championed by Trépanier), the Quebec trip still affords students time to socialize independently in their picturesque surroundings. Group meals (including two very extravagant ones offered by the Dean of FASS), strolls, and movie screenings are all part of this once in an academic lifetime opportunity.

“The Canadian Studies students will share the youth hostel’s space with the French Department students, friendships and collaborations are often great outcomes for this course” explains Trépanier.

Before venturing to Quebec for a 10 day period, students will take a one-day Ottawa based field trip where they will explore landmarks that define the city as a national capital, including a trip to the National Gallery and a meeting with the NCC.

“I believe that any reporting or scholarly analysis should proceed through sharpening of critical thinking,” proclaims Trépanier. “Comparisons are tempting for students and professors alike; but without a thorough examination of both elements to compare, pitfalls and fallacies enter public discourse. Experience of otherness can provide that extra eye sharpening that will benefit the writer and the traveler’s skills. The trip also proved to be an incubator for fostering ideas about graduate research projects and a turning point in some students’ imagination of their future carriers.”

Part 2: Quebec City as a Colonial Capital

Student Testimonials

“I so greatly enjoyed the trip to Québec city. It was a wonderful adventure and great way to build closer friendships with my classmates and enjoy deep and meaningful conversations about the academic material and the way it entwined with our experiences in the city. Academically, it was a pleasant intersection of my previous studies in (Canadian and Quebecois) history, culture and the French language. Dr. Trepanier’s pedagogical approach is (/was, in my experience) a very student centered way that encouraged the development of analytical skills through the discovery and experience of the city and to permit the students the time and space to interpret and discuss the connections between the readings and the tours.” – Jessica Helps

“Studying in Quebec City helped me connect with national narratives in ways a textbook can’t replicate. From an evening singing Quebecois folk songs by an orchard on l’Île d’Orléans, to an afternoon at Place Royale exploring the first French settlement of North America, the trip meant intimately connecting to the past. In short, I felt completely transported and deeply inspired.” – Valerie Luchak

Past Student Quebec Trip Diary Entries

Day 5 by Trina Bolam

Today, we toured the walls and fortifications of Québec City and the archaeological site of the Fort St. Louis, the distinct incarnations of which – at once an evolution and a re-creation, each bearing the stamp of its master – offers perfect example of palimpsest. The city itself is no different, and one can say that many Québec Cities have manifested where the river narrows, over time. Today we considered the walls and fortifications of the city, conscious of Professor Trépanier’s description of the wall as a symbol for the Québécois, protecting something precious within, keeping Others/outsiders away, delineating identities by proximity and placement, either inside or outside city walls. Although the French had built its own system of fortification in the 1600s, the current wall and gate system was primarily constructed by the English, beginning after conquest, in late 1700s, and has since weathered considerable change. Kieran Keohane in Socializing with Cyborgs introduces the notion of the leader as the one who “articulates the desire of the abstract empire,” whose secret is to “recognize the circularity of the dialectic of desire for identification around an empty place, and to enter that void and fill it by the articulation that ‘I,’ ‘We,’ and ‘The Nation’ are one” (Keohane 168). Keohane stipulates however, that not only is there a void of place (the manifestation of which in post-conquest Québec is a whole other discussion), but also a lack in the leader without which the leader becomes a tyrant. I believe that the people of Québec City were, and are able, to regard, and perhaps even cherish, the walls as an important symbol because the lack in the leader (Britain or Canada, depending on the era) is apparent and the “articulation [of its leadership] is [perceived to be] contingent and unstable… [its] occupation of the place of power,… temporary” (Keohane 168). Survivance, waiting it out, then becomes part of the story of the walls and the hard-won reclamation of Québéc by its new leaders, the Québécois, claims them as part of their own palimpsestic narrative construction of  ‘I,’ ‘We,’ and ‘The Nation’.

Day 7 by Jessica Helps

The Montcalm interpreter was a wonderful balance of history and theatricality; it was a performance and an effective one. Our experience of the enjoyment of history was akin to being an audience of theatre because the “histouric” elements were so prevalent.

The interpreter mentioned that the archive is fragment as a result of the fires of war that some of the documents in the French archives are translations but the original documents had been destroyed and so permitted the opportunity of historical doubt and uncertainty. Also, that the Treaty of Paris 1763 determined more than the outcome of the battle was mentioned, when so often the narrative is simplified to only the fifteen minutes on the battlefield.

Later, we visited a Martello tower that had been built by the British to protect the city from Americans, and these barracks would have been painted white inside to increase the light, but are stone now. Montcalm would have been long dead and buried by the time these towers would have been erected, but his performance made the suspension of disbelief easier.

The interpreter was able in his tours to remind us, through his performance of Montcalm, that historic actors were people, imperfect, fallible, humorous and charming. The distant and unfamiliar past that he recounted was made familiar through its performance and the humanizing nature of theatricality.

Day 3 by Sarah Baker

Place Royal was an interesting case study in national identity performance, pedagogy, and space-claiming. Going as far as to use building methods and materials identical to those originally used is exactly what performing identity is about. The physical rebuilding happened at the same time as the ideological building of Québec as a secular state. Place Royal goes beyond commemorative identity performances like acting and writing by being a physical illusion of permanence. It’s goal is “authenticity,” providing legitimacy to  structures that are inherently devoid of meaning. As it has been pointed out, authenticity is a big part of faith in one’s nation. This piece of the past is not truly the past, but it is a tangible example of a “present image of an absent thing.” (Ricoeur, 280). Paul Ricoeur’s ideas about history and memory apply to more than words and language: physical sites are communication mediums, and can be read as texts. I wonder where else in Canada this type of recreation with original materials and methods has been enacted. If other cases like Place Royal exist, it would be interesting to see if they were also motivated by nation-building. Québec City’s drive to construct authenticity at Place Royal reminds me of Max Weber’s work in interpretive sociology.  Place Royal is an example of “recapturing the experience” of Québec. Place Royal is not just a place where contemporary tourists and citizens come to  “capture the experience” of Québec’s foundations for touristic purposes; perhaps it can be read also as a place where people who lived the revolution felt compelled to “recapture” an imaginary past as a foundation for the rebuilding of an unknowable future.