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Deaths from tobacco-related illness like lung and throat cancer accounted for most of the differences in longevity, the study found.

Data comparing smoking habits in Quebec are hard to come by, but a 1995 Statistics Canada survey found that 35% of francophones across the country smoked, compared to 26% of anglophones. Within the province, a 1994 survey suggested that almost twice as many francophones as anglophones consumed over 25 cigarettes a day.

A colourfully written 1988 report for Health Canada argued that French Quebecers had a “carefree” attitude toward their health that led to more smoking.

“Francophones seem to turn to unhealthy means of attaining a state of well-being more frequently than anglophones,” wrote Georges Létourneau, the late University of Montreal anthropologist. “Francophones are reputed to be jovial, romantic, good company, merrymakers and sensualists who are less inhibited but also less rational than anglophones.”

With two of the three big cigarette companies headquartered in the province, cigarettes were also entrenched in the culture, said Jarrett Rudy, a historian at McGill University and author of The Freedom to Smoke, a social history of tobacco. Manufacturers even appealed to Quebec nationalism in their marketing, he said, using French-Canadian folk songs as jingles and calling one cigarette simply La Québecoise.

Though Quebec had one of the steepest smoking rates in Canada for years, the numbers fell through the 2000s to close to the national average. For the deaths studied by Dr. Auger and her colleagues, though, it was cigarette use 20-40 years ago that would have spawned the cancers and other tobacco-linked diseases that killed them.

Alcohol-related causes – like road crashes and liver disease – were next in accounting for the life-expectancy divide, the study found. Francophones do not necessarily imbibe larger volumes of alcohol, but may be engaging in more binge drinking, which can lead to accidents and health problems, said Dr. Auger.

Suicide was another factor in the longevity gap, possibly because it was once seen as a “solution to oppressive life conditions” among francophones and has remained a cultural norm, the authors speculate.

National Post

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