Mad Men is one of the most fastidiously detailed shows ever made. The wallpaper is researched. The clothes are a model of historical recreation. When they do get something wrong, like using a Dusty Springfield song for a show set six months before the song was released, they are deeply embarrassed and try to correct their mistake immediately. The number of period errors that the nitpicking bastards of the Internet have discovered can be counted on two hands. Given that Weiner and co. are recreating a period forty years ago, that feat verges on the miraculous. Which is why the fact that a major character's nationality is completely misrepresented is just plain weird. They have one of the strongest research departments of any television show ever. Why does Mad Men get French Canadians so wrong?

Don Draper's wife, Megan Draper (née Calvet), is a Canadian "of French extraction." When she first appeared, I was confused. Calvet is not a particularly French Canadian last name, and "Megan" is in no way French Canadian. Marie, maybe. Or Marie-Therese or Marie-Angelique or Marie-Catherine. Then there was the fact that Megan and her parents do not speak French Canadian French. Not at all. They act and speak like French people.

A quick guide. French people talk like this:

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French Canadians talk like this:

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For a while, I assumed that Megan's family would turn out to be French immigrants to Canada, as unlikely as that sounds. But then Megan used the word "calice," which is pure Quebec swearing and could not come from anybody who isn't Quebecois.

Needless to say, I'm not the first Canadian to notice these discrepancies. It's as if Roger Sterling's mother arrived in a scene and spoke in a thick Australian accent. But Megan's bizarre half-Quebecois status didn't really bother me last season. With Sunday night's opening episode of season six, however, the gap between Megan's character on screen and how a French Canadian woman in New York would have experienced that period has passed beyond what I can bear. The reason is the date. 1968 is a big year in a lot of histories, of course. But 1968 was the year of the foundation of Quebec's nationalist party, Le Parti Quebecois. A French Canadian, Pierre Trudeau, was about to become Prime Minister of Canada, after decriminalizing homosexuality as justice minister. Both the nascent nationalism and Trudeau's uniquely open-minded cosmopolitanism — his wife was caught partying with the Rolling Stones — were products of what was called "The Quiet Revolution" when the province threw off its Catholic heritage and embraced modernity in all its complications. Megan's father, if he were a Marxist professor, would have been right in the thick of these debates. It all came to fruition in a series of terrorist attacks in 1970, which led to the country briefly declaring martial law.

In short, some pretty bloody fascinating stuff was happening in Quebec in 1967 and 1968. And the thing that is so frustrating to me is that the history of Quebec in that period is so close thematically to what is happening in Mad Men. The Quiet Revolution would be a viable subtitle to the show. I cannot stomach Megan's indifference — that's my objection. Too many exciting things in that time were happening in Quebec — sex, nationalism, revolution — for her to ignore them, especially given that her father's a public intellectual. The motto of Quebec is "Je me souviens," or, "I remember." How Megan could possibly forget her homeland as deeply as she has in this show simply passes belief. Even if she has just come back from Hawaii.

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Stephen Marche Stephen Marche is a novelist who writes a monthly column for Esquire magazine about culture.

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