Director John Walker on Mount Royal in his documentary Quebec My Country Mon Pays.Katerine Giguére
"If you had spoken French, you would have felt less excluded," filmmaker and writer Jacques Godbout says, making a point that John Walker spends very little time considering in this 90-minute film about his estrangement from the province of his birth. Walker's Scottish and Irish ancestors came to Quebec to escape famine and land seizures, but he can point to no such compelling reason for his own flight down the 401 to Toronto. There was the FLQ, Bill 101 and the first sovereignty referendum, but mostly he just doesn't feel welcome in Montreal any more. He gathers anecdotal support from family and friends, and pointed commentary from Godbout, Denys Arcand and other eminent francophones, but never gets beyond his feeling that things were more comfortable before the Quiet Revolution. Yes, many others like Walker also left. "Why didn't they fight if it was their home?" asks Louise Pelletier, whose father, Gérard, fought for his vision of Quebec in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet. Walker doesn't even try to answer.