2001: Taras Grescoe, Sacré Blues

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Description

For referendum-weary English Canadians, Quebec is an enigma wrapped in a yawn. Taras Grescoe treats the province as an exotic destination. He takes readers onto the shuffleboard courts of Florida, to a francophone country-and-western festival in rural Mauricie, to the café tables of expatriate Quebecers in Paris. He deconstructs a Montreal Canadiens hockey game, explores the stunning diversity of Quebec’s newspapers, 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 explores 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.

Judges' Comments

“The judges felt that Sacré Blues provides a no-holds-barred approach to the study of modern Quebec,” says Staebler award administrator Kathryn Wardropper. “As a new ‘insider,’ he brings a journalist’s zeal to his research and presents a fresh, even irreverent portrait of Quebec and its peoples. It may infuriate some, but it is a landmark book that portrays the challenges and opportunities for modern Quebec.”

Learn More

• Publisher: Macfarlane Walter & Ross

Explore the works of our previous Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction winners.