In 2007, about a month after Christmas, André Drouin saw what was on the horizon and decided he’d had enough. A town councillor in Hérouxville, a community of about 1,300 located about 200 kms northeast of Montreal, Drouin believed his responsibilities extended well beyond the plowing of snow and the collecting of trash.

His duty, as he saw it, was both simple and profound: He was going to save Hérouxville from the world creeping closer and closer to its borders.

The core message of the five-page screed Drouin helped to draft for town council was simple enough: Immigrants, while welcome, had to abide by certain rules. They must realize that women are allowed to ski on the same mountains and skate on the same ice as men. With the possible exception of Halloween, women are expected to have their faces uncovered. Because women are equal to men, under no circumstances could they be burned alive or stoned to death in the public square, have acid thrown at them or be circumcised. Also, get used to Christmas trees and crucifixes. “You will appreciate this new lifestyle, by sharing our habits and customs,” it read.

Hérouxville’s council unanimously adopted Drouin’s pensées as the town’s official code of conduct. The resulting derision arrived quickly and in three waves — first from the province’s Montreal-based opinion corps, then from their English language counterparts, finally from world media. Hérouxville, home to all of three non-white people at the time, was a scene of country-bumpkinism gone horribly awry — yet another example of Quebec’s pure laine obsession with the possible contamination of its language and culture.

All of which may well be the case. But anyone suggesting that the Hérouxville code of conduct is somehow a phenomenon only Quebec could come up with is either being ignorant or magnificently haughty. Ten years after Herouxville officially reminded its immigrants that it was illegal to stone their womenfolk to death, we find ourselves in an almost identical debate over immigration, belonging and history. This time, however, the stakes are much higher.

A friend of mine — a smarter person than I am — once said that Quebec is the country’s amniotic sac. It is here where social issues grow and are born into the world, after being noisily fought over and occasionally mocked by the rest of the country. After a ten-year gestation period in Quebec, these issues almost always end up being debated again outside the province. Abortion, worker and consumer rights, universal daycare, the plight of women in marriages and the workforce: All were social policy arguments that started in Quebec before moving on to English Canada.

Today’s Tiki marauder may be younger, and he probably wears a beard and a polo shirt, but his worldview is couched in the same sense of pride and victimhood as was André Drouin’s 10 years ago. Today’s Tiki marauder may be younger, and he probably wears a beard and a polo shirt, but his worldview is couched in the same sense of pride and victimhood as was André Drouin’s 10 years ago.

While some of Drouin’s words sound as hokey today as they did then (‘We listen to music, we drink and we dance’ — sounds like a horrible Men Without Hats lyric, doesn’t it?), the context and intentions behind them are entirely familiar.

Drouin sketched a caricature of an entire religion — Islam — then demonized the resulting distortion for political gain. He presented himself as a bulwark not only against the supposed Islamic hordes waiting to take up residence in his sainted town, but against the urban and urbane elites he saw as wilfully closing their eyes to the demographic danger those hordes present. He praised the virtues of today’s secular society, while giving a hearty nod to its historical (and decidedly Christian) underpinnings. Finally, he made a show of being utterly unrepentant even as the criticism became louder and more caustic.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because the streets of America are currently the stage for a very similar morality play, albeit one with a much larger audience and far more bloodier outcomes. Girded by a Red State president, himself the electoral product of white angst and vitriol, those Tiki-torched marchers in Charlottesville bayed for a return to history, and a muzzling of their enemies.

For Drouin, that enemy was Islam, encroaching on the land like a stain from the big city. In the U.S. it’s Islam and so much more: blacks, Mexicans, Arabs, Jews, feminists and the liberal ‘cuckservatives’ who enable them. In both cases, immigration is seen as the mortal threat. Today’s Tiki marauder may be younger, and he probably wears a beard and a polo shirt, but his worldview is couched in the same sense of pride and victimhood as was André Drouin’s 10 years ago.

“Ah,” (I hear you say) “what of those riots in the streets of Quebec City last weekend? Surely those were a Quebec-only phenomenon, right?” Not entirely. It’s true that the proudly xenophobic group known as La Meute has its roots in Quebec. Yet the group is actively (and successfully) recruiting outside the province. As well, English Canada is home to similarly thriving (and arguably more odious) groups like the Soldiers of Odin. Finally, the rash of migrants streaming in from Trump’s America are disproportionally coming through Quebec, giving xenophobes a ready-made flashpoint. Similar demonstrations are planned across the country.

Ten years after Hérouxville, Quebec is still mired in the debate over the place and space given to immigrants and religious minorities. Despite this past weekend’s hateful noise, there are signs that the province is moving on. In 2014, the Parti Québécois cynically attempted to harness this insecurity for electoral gain — and failed miserably as a result. The party is still trying to dig itself out of this rut three years later.

The Liberal government has tabled Bill C-42, which would (among other things) dictate that anyone giving or receiving a government service must do so with their faces uncovered, in the interests of safety and identification. Should it pass as expected, the government will have put a legislative end to the populist cri de coeur issued a decade ago.

André Drouin himself died of cancer earlier this year. He went to the grave convinced of his own righteousness — though Hérouxville certainly isn’t. The code of conduct quickly became an embarrassment and the town council jettisoned it 2009; when I called the city clerk a few months ago to inquire about its status, she laughed nervously and said she’d rather talk about tourism.

“We’ve moved on,” she said. I can’t blame them.

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