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Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal

MG: When did the idea for the film come to you?

JW: It came when my father died. That was 2008. I’ve wanted to make this film for a long time. When my father died, that’s when it hit me, and that’s the sequence in the film (where we’re) burying him (in Lachute) and it all came back like a tidal wave on a beach. He was a Montrealer. He had a lot of fun in Montreal. He did well as a graphic artist. He loved Montreal. But his clients were leaving and it was hard for him at 55 (to leave Montreal). His mother and sisters stayed in Quebec. The film is dedicated to him.

MG: You mention in the film how you felt anger and sadness about this migration. What’s your view on the exodus now?

JW: What I (heard often from francophones) was that it was people with money. They took their money and left. That rich people left. Well, (600,000) people didn’t live in Westmount. But the idea was that it was rich people from Westmount who left and took their money with them. There were some of those. I’ve articulated all the complexity of my emotions in the film. I’m not angry. I think anglophones who live in Quebec understand Quebec culture and understand what was going on. I’m always the first, (when I’m) outside of Quebec, in the rest of Canada, to leap to Quebec’s defence. I’m always defending their decisions. A lot of that comes from my own historical background, of being Irish and Scots, and the oppression we were escaping, and the importance of language — the Irish language. There are a lot of similarities between Ireland and Quebec. So I had a great sympathy for culture and language and independence. I voted for (René) Lévesque. I thought this was going to be a social-democratic movement that was going to benefit us all, but there was a certain point when (they were) chanting “Le Québec aux Québécois” that I thought, “Uh-oh.” I didn’t think it included me. As Jacques Godbout says in the film, there was a turn toward ethnic nationalism.