In her first state visit to France, Governor-General Michaëlle Jean has been extolled in the media as the "almost Queen of Canada" and a symbol of successful multiculturalism - and all in this decidedly anti-monarchist country where immigration is widely seen as a problem.
"I perceive my role as a kind of catalyst," she said in an interview yesterday. "And I find myself in that role here."
Ms. Jean met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and is scheduled to join him again today in Normandy for memorial services marking the anniversary of the Second World War armistice in Europe. They are also to visit a Canadian military cemetery.
In interviews with the French press, Ms. Jean said one of her aims is to impress upon French officials that French-speaking Canada extends well beyond Quebec. While her comments were welcomed in Paris as confirmation of the health of what the French call the francophonie, they prompted indignation from the Bloc Québécois. Pierre Paquette, the Bloc's deputy leader, called Ms. Jean's statements an insult to Quebeckers.
The other theme to Ms. Jean's visit was the 400th anniversary celebrations of the founding of Quebec City. She will spend half a day in La Rochelle, the port city that was the embarkation point for Samuel Champlain, founder of Quebec, and for later French settlers sailing for Canada in the 17th and 18th centuries.
[. . . T]he French government has signalled a possible policy shift away from official neutrality on the issue of Quebec sovereignty.
Last month, Alain Joyandet, the French minister in charge of relations with francophone countries, said France considered the political question of separatism to be a "non-issue." But he also said Mr. Sarkozy favoured a "direct and privileged" relationship with the province that could include special agreements on trade and labour exchanges.
Ms. Jean's five-day state visit ends on Saturday with another ceremony in Bordeaux, once a thriving port for the African slave trade, where she will join French government ministers to commemorate France's abolition of slavery 160 years ago.
One of her public themes for her visit is what she called "the duty of memory." As the great-great-granddaughter of slaves, she said the Bordeaux leg of the trip would be a particularly personal undertaking.
"I know it's going to be a deeply emotional experience for me to be there on the docks in Bordeaux," she said, "there where at least one of my ancestors was probably selected for transfer ... and where slaves were loaded onboard the boats like cargo."
[B]itterness is widely shared among the world's 10m Palestinians, 70% of whom are refugees or their descendants. Other peoples have suffered great tragedies, but the Palestinians' trauma not only refuses to reach closure, it has a horrible habit of repeating itself. Worse yet, its effects continue to poison politics within the wider region and beyond. In annual polling over the past six years, three-quarters of Arabs consistently place the issue of Palestine among their priorities.
In other words, little has changed since 1948, when street sentiment prompted five reluctant Arab governments to send troops on a vain mission to block the creation of Israel. During the ensuing war, the Palestinians' initial nakba, more than half the native population of Palestine, some 750,000 people, fled or were driven from the territory that became the Jewish state, whose troops then barred their return and systematically razed 531 of their ancestral villages. The six-day war in June 1967 brought the remaining 22% of historic Palestine under Israeli rule, and pushed out 250,000 more refugees.
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