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I am sitting in a folding chair in what appears to be a large abandoned car garage.

I am sitting in a folding chair in what appears to be a large abandoned car garage. The lights dim over the oddly constructed wrestling ring in front of me and a spotlight points to a worn set of red ribbons that hide the backstage. To the left, a row of middle-aged, mentally challenged adults hunch in their seats, swearing amongst themselves and dropping potato chips on the floor. The sound system begins playing “Know Your Enemy” by Green Day and a tall, chunkily developed man with a goatee steps out from the curtains onto the stairs facing the ring. He raises his hands in a primitive victory salute, a crude championship belt around his waist. He is wearing light blue spandex shorts with pink spirals on the ass, and his name is “Big Mac”.

“Tu pues en hostie,” (You fucking stink) shouts someone from the back.

“Va chier,” (Go shit) he responds.

This is what they call “La Lutte”, a homegrown semi-professional wrestling league in Jonquiere, a small town along the Saguenay fjord in Quebec. I’m here for five weeks taking a French immersion course. In an attempt to encourage cultural exchanges between French and English-speaking Canadians, the federal government has established a summer program that pays for the food, lodging, and tuition for anyone interested in improving their second official language.

You know that Quebec is different because we can’t stop bringing it up. But considering that our country is founded on a precarious balance between English and French, you can understand why we’re so obsessed with it. After all, telling Canadians to get over Quebec is like telling Americans to get over race. This shit takes time.

I’m staying in a room in the basement of Pauline and Serge, a middle-aged Quebecois couple. My first day at their house they took me to an open pit on the other side of the river where jacked-up trucks took turns driving into a giant puddle of mud, getting stuck, and then pulling each other out. There must have been at least a thousand people there. It kind of reminded me of that scene in AI where the cyborgs get ripped apart for the amusement of the redneck humans, except without the bad vibes.

Every night after class we watch “Little House on the Prairie” dubbed in French. For dinner we have meat pie, cheeseburgers covered in gravy with peas on the top, or “Chinese”, which consists of macaroni and fried onions in soy sauce. They talk about sex all the time and are always slapping each other’s asses. One morning during breakfast I asked Pauline how they had met. She told me that she had been physically abused during her first marriage. After the divorce, she had nothing to do with men for 19 years. Then, one day she went on a dating service website and found Serge. They got married 9 months ago. After she told me that she went to the bathroom and cried for a little bit.

This region was one of the strongest in favor for the independence of Quebec in 1995, but you don’t really feel it. In fact, you could make an argument that at least on the surface there really isn’t that much different from a small town of a similar size in Manitoba, or for that matter in Wisconsin. People eat at McDonald’s, drive pickups, and shop at malls. Still, there is something intangibly, undeniably different about it. This inability to describe what makes them distinct must be part of the frustration that drives separatist sentiment. After the fact that they speak French, Quebeckers have a hard time defining their culture. Attempts to do so are often colored by uncomfortable assertions, or hide an ugly xenophobia.

When it comes down to it, people in Quebec just want to have a good time, and they are tired of ruining their buzz by having to translate everything. English Canadians have a bad habit of rolling their eyes every time someone mentions a “famous” French-Canadian actor they haven’t heard of, and after a while it gets on their nerves. Add to that a stubborn pride and a near-allergy to uncomfortable situations and you can understand why they care so much about hearing their own stories in their own language. Personally, it’s a nice change to see people who care enough to go to the effort of making their own productions instead of just recycling what they’ve seen on TV.

Back at La Lutte, Serge politely boos as Big Mac passes us to mount the ring. When he reaches the front row, one of the spectators arises from the heckling to confront him. They stop and stand in a bizarre stare-down, the fan sneering from under a faint mustache and cradling a can of Pepsi, Big Mac trying to look angry. There is a brief moment where it almost turns real, and then a man in a white t-shirt comes to distract them and Big Mac gets in the ring.

There are probably 40 people in the garage, some with signs, some with kids, and most of them yelling obscenities. As the scripts unfold, I begin to feel like I understand what Quebec is about. The characters are exaggerated figures of their daily life – the goon manipulated by the sleek businessman, the cocky champion who is defeated by the underhanded move of an opponent, even the female wrestler who is body slammed by a much larger male opponent despite the fact that she is wearing a full-leg plastic cast. It doesn’t always make sense, but that’s not the point. It’s about having a laugh and enjoying life. The Quebecois just can’t understand why English Canadians have such a hard time getting that.

- Nelson

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