Sacré Blues : An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec

Why do three million Quebecers tune in the same absurd sitcom every week ? How did they get the nickname “pepsis” ? Why does Celine Dion put on a down-home accent when she returns to her home province ? And is Quebec really a racist state, or does Mordecai Richler just not get out much anymore ?

For referendum-weary English Canadians, Quebec is an enigma wrapped in a yawn. Taras Grescoe  takes readers on an eye-opening tour of this most misunderstood province, from a francophone country-and-western festival to the shuffleboard courts of Florida, from Mordecai Richler’s Crescent Street hangouts to the café tables of expatriate Quebecers in Paris. He deconstructs a Montreal Canadiens hockey game,  and dismantles Bombardier snowmobiles. En route, he meets Mohawk Warriors, Yiddish-speaking French Canadians, and the UFO-obsessed followers of Raël.

Informed and incisive, Sacré Blues finds the heart of contemporary Quebec : its love-hate relationship with France and the United States ; the dance, theatre, and literary productions celebrated in Europe but little known here ; its fears about distinctness on an increasingly uniform continent. Along the way we meet such Quebec residents as the playwright Michel Tremblay and the novelist Neil Bissoondath, Teleglobe CEO Charles Sirois and the arctic explorer Bernard Voyer, the foul-mouthed columnist Pierre Foglia and the esteemed philosopher Charles Taylor.

Sacré Blues serves up a spicy, irreverent, inside view of this unique and little-known part of North America. With side orders of poutine, maple syrup, and Vachon snack cakes. Oh – and hold the politics.