Читать книгу Here's Proof Only We Conservatives Have Our Heads Screwed On Straight!!! - Lowell M.D. Green - Страница 6

Three days later (October 30, 1995) a small crowd of grim-faced, obviously very nervous people, begins to gather around my makeshift broadcast location assembled on Montreal’s Ste-Catherine Street just across from la Baie. Amazingly, local radio and TV in Montreal are providing almost no daytime coverage of this, perhaps the most historic event in Canada’s history, so those drawn to our location are hungry for any kind of information.

I’m broadcasting to 12 different radio stations spread across the country from Halifax to Vancouver, so in an effort to paint as vivid and accurate a picture as possible of how Montrealers are dealing with what could be their last day as Canadians, I’m doing live interviews on the street and on several occasions we manage to hook things up so those gathered around me can talk directly to listeners in places like Regina, Edmonton and Calgary.

For the most part the Montrealers we’re talking with are staunch and very worried federalists and aren’t afraid to say so. It quickly becomes obvious that many of those outside the province have never really considered the plight of federalists, especially Anglos, in an independent Quebec.

One very concerned caller from Edmonton points out that this lack of understanding between the two solitudes is another failure of Liberal policy. “Most of us in the West never think of the plight of federalists in Quebec, mainly because no one has ever told us they even exist. When most of us out here look at Quebec all we tend to see is a bunch of damn separatists who never seem happy about anything unless we’re pumping money into their pockets hand over fist! Hells bells,” he says, “if I’d known there were so many loyal Canadians in Quebec I’d have joined you at the big rally down there!” It’s a sentiment shared by several western callers.

When I raise the possibility of armed resistance from native Indians or others a look of concern and sometimes fear leaps into the faces surrounding me.

At one point a lively debate breaks out on-air between a federalist and a separatist. The federalist claims the referendum is really nothing more than racism—the separatist, of course, denies it. It’s a very heated exchange that, as much as anything we have heard from either camp, illustrates the deep mistrust and animosity between the two sides. (When I interview that same separatist the next day after the narrow federalist victory he breaks into tears.)

The one thing agreed on by almost everyone—on the phone from faraway places and here on windy Ste-Catherine Street—is that the Liberals, from Trudeau right through to Jean Chrétien have really screwed things up. I make no attempt to argue with them. How could I?

It is a caller from Calgary who sums it up best.

“No matter what happens with the vote today,” he says bitterly, “after this bloody mess anyone who ever again votes Liberal just cannot have their head screwed on straight!”

Thus is born a new Conservative and eventually, the idea for a book!