When the Loudest Voices Don’t Speak for Us

I grew up in Québec.

That sentence alone tends to make people brace themselves — as if what follows must be an argument, or a grievance, or a warning. But it isn’t. It’s a fact. And like most facts worth keeping, it contains more than one truth at the same time.

I am an Anglophone, raised in both French and English. I understand why Québec needed language laws. I saw, firsthand, how French-speaking people were locked out of opportunity in their own province — underpaid, overlooked, and expected to assimilate quietly. They were, in many ways, the marginalized class of Canada. That injustice was real. And it demanded correction.

But correction is not the same thing as punishment.
Protection is not the same thing as coercion.
And justice, once stripped of humility, curdles into something else entirely.

I was there during the referendum years — not at the centre of power, but at the edges where democracy actually happens: polling stations, conversations, neighbourhoods holding their breath. The early days were frightening. Families divided. Businesses frozen. Futures postponed. After the first referendum, Québec lost more than a vote — it lost confidence. And then, somehow, it found its footing again.

Until it didn’t.

The second referendum was different. It hollowed out Montreal. Headquarters left in waves. Not because companies hated French — but because uncertainty became permanent. You cannot build a life, or a city, on a maybe that never resolves.

And what hurt most wasn’t just the political instability. It was the cruelty of the commentary that came from outside Québec.

“Let them go.”
“We don’t need them.”
“Good riddance.”

English Canada said those words — casually, repeatedly — as if Québec were a tantrum-throwing child instead of a province full of Canadians who didn’t want to leave. People like my family. People like me.

It erased us.

It erased the bilingual Canadians who loved their province and their country. It erased the teachers, nurses, shopkeepers, civil servants, and ordinary voters who wanted reform without rupture. It erased the quiet majority — because the loudest voices always seem to get the microphones.

That lesson never left me.

Which is why, when I hear similar language now — about Alberta — my chest tightens.

Once again, I hear people saying:
“Let them go.”
“They’re not like us.”
“They chose this.”

And once again, it’s wrong.

Inside Alberta are Canadians fighting for their country. Canadians who believe in public institutions, social responsibility, and belonging. Canadians who feel trapped by governments that don’t speak for them — just as many Québecers once did.

So I make a point of reaching out to them. I tell them what no one told us back then:

You belong here. You are Canadian first. The noise does not speak for you.

Because history has taught me something essential:
It is almost never “the people” who want to tear a country apart.
It is a small, relentless minority — amplified by fear, grievance, and attention — who make the most noise.

Québec lived that truth. So did Montreal. And now, so does Alberta.

I don’t pretend Québec politics were simple. I remember the leaders. I remember the contradictions. I remember how ideals hardened into dogma, how protection slid into enforcement, how the original moral clarity was slowly lost. I agreed with the intent of the language laws. I still do. But intent does not absolve harm. And enforcement without compassion fractures the very society it claims to defend.

What came after — the slow rebuilding, the fragile balance, the quiet coexistence — mattered. It proved something important: that nations can survive tension if they resist absolutism.

That’s why I vote strategically. Not because I lack conviction — but because I have memory. I know what happens when purity tests replace pragmatism. I know what happens when leaders exploit fear instead of calming it. I know what happens when we stop listening to the people caught in between.

And I know this: A country is not held together by shouting. It is held together by restraint.

Canada doesn’t need louder voices right now. It needs older wisdom. It needs people who remember what fracture actually costs.

I remember.

And that’s why, whenever someone says “Let them go,” I answer quietly — but firmly:

No. They’re ours. And we don’t abandon our own.

Québec is again living this cycle.

The current government rose not on an explicit platform of division, but on a promise of competence and calm. What followed instead was something familiar: language weaponized, identity hardened, resentment cultivated. The zealots grew louder. Enforcement replaced empathy. And slowly, the government stopped speaking to Québec and started speaking at it.

Now, that leadership is leaving.

Not in triumph. Not with applause. But the way these movements almost always end — diminished, exhausted, and rejected by the very people who once gave them power.

Because zealotry burns hot, but it burns out.

It always does.

That’s the lesson Québec keeps relearning, and one the rest of Canada — and frankly, the United States — would do well to remember. Leaders who thrive on grievance and exclusion rarely fall because their opponents defeat them. They fall because their own contradictions catch up with them. Because governing requires steadiness, not fury. Because people eventually tire of being governed by fear.

Québec will rebalance again. It always does. Not perfectly — but enough. The loudest voices will recede, and the quieter majority will once again do what it has always done: rebuild, coexist, and carry on.

That’s why I still believe in this country.

I’ve seen what happens when we let the noise define us — and I’ve seen what happens when we refuse to. The work is slower. Less satisfying. Rarely dramatic. But it lasts.

And so, when I hear people say “Let them go” — whether about Québec, or Alberta, or any other place where frustration has been allowed to masquerade as identity — I think of what history actually teaches.

The zealots will have their moment. They always do.

But they never get the last word.

That belongs to the people who stay.