Book Launch: What We Choose To Forget: A Quebec Story of Unshared Memories
Meet Guy Rex Rodgers and discover his book What We Choose To Forget!
RSVP at guyrexrodgers@gmail.com
About the Book
In May 2022, Guy Rex Rodgers released What We Choose To Remember, a documentary film about waves of immigration in Quebec, from the British Conquest to the arrival of university students in the 21st century. A month later, the CAQ government passed Bill 96 to protect Quebec from too many English speakers, immigrants, and foreign students. For the next three years, Rodgers toured What We Choose To Remember around Quebec, and after each screening invited audience members to share their stories. The collective portrait that emerged explodes some of Quebec’s most persistent myths about who is Québécois.
The heartland of Nouvelle France was the Saint-Lawrence Valley, but it was never pure Catholic or francophone. Scottish and Irish soldiers fought on both sides of the Plains of Abraham.
Most of the first settlers in the Eastern Townships and the Ottawa Valley were English speakers. Then the 20th century saw an explosion of immigration that did not fit the French/English, Catholic/ Protestant binary. The reality is far more interesting than Two Solitudes.
These ‘immigrants’—who come from many countries and speak a variety of languages—are proud to be Quebecers. What We Choose To Forget gives them a voice—and they have a lot to say about Quebec and their place in it!
Credit: Pantea Pezeschkan
About the Author
Guy Rex Rodgers is a filmmaker who has made eight documentaries about anglophones and allophones in Quebec, and he writes a column in The Montrealer magazine about history, culture, and politics. Rodgers is also a community activist who founded ELAN (English Language Arts Network) and co-founded the Quebec Writers’ Federation and the Quebec Drama Federation. In 2015, he was appointed a Compagnon of the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec.
RSVP at guyrexrodgers@gmail.com