[BRIEF NOTE] More on Belgium

[rfmcdonald]

Saturday, I made a brief note about the differences between Belgium and Canada which make the former country's model of federalism incompatible for the latter. In today's Globe and Mail, Lysiane Gagnon makes the case in her article "Belgium is no model for harmony" (page A13) that the most critical difference lies in the fact that the Flemish and the Walloons hate each other.

Where on earth did Stephen Harper get his idea that Belgium could be an inspiration for Canadian federalism? There is no worse model than Belgium, a country where linguistic feuds have been fraught with extreme bitterness--to a point where the country had to be split into two completely unilingual regions; the north is Flemish and the south is Francophone Walloon, with only Brussels remaining as a bilingual territory.

[. . .]

Belgium is the country where a five-century-old university, l'Université catholique de Louvain, had to be rebuilt in another part of the country--and its precious ancient manuscripts transported in trucks--because once the linguistic frontier was drawn, the university found itself in Flemish territory.

Belgium is theoretically a bilingual country, but try speaking French in Anvers--sorry, Antwerp. You will be rudely ignored, even by people who actually know French. Better switch to English.

In the early eighties, I was part of a week-long study tour of Wallonie, at the invitation of the Communauté Wallone. Over, I must say, magnificent meals, we were subjected to the most obnoxious tirades against the Flemish by our hosts. According to the many politicians and journalists we met, the Flemish--all of them--were former Nazi supporters, greedy businessmen, congenital bigots, and generally unbearable.

I had covered the "language wars" of the seventies in Quebec and the tensions wrought by the Parti Québécois victory of 1976. I had interviewed Canadian rednecks and Quebec xenophobes and closely followed the divisive 1980 referendum campaign. Never had I met such visceral interethnic hatred as I saw in Belgium.