me for lunch at bistro m sur masson, to understand what many feel is at stake. so i was going to talk about the whole history of french quebecoisism, but i have to get to the pressing matter of the day pasta-gate. what do you want to know about pastagate? for those not up on current quebec politics, pasta-gate refers to an incident where local authorities notified an italian restaurant that they were in violation of french were in violation of french laws because they used the word pasta, which is italian. this is okay. stop apologizing. okay? don t get me wrong. my last name is bourdain. i lean french. hard. i am enormously sympathetic to the language laws. you don t think it s preposterous? i do not think it s preposterous. but i hear we have a situation it is stupid. i agree with you completely that this province 40 years ago was in some respects an english
how canadian is quebec? are they truly one entity or two? this is a question that has been wrestled with for some time. quebec is certainly part of canada, but in many ways both culturally, spiritually, and linguistically, it s very much another thing entirely. there s a lot of history, much of it contentious. go back far enough and you get a clearer picture of why. the french arrived on the shores of quebec city in the early 16th century but succumbed to the military might of great britain in the mid 18th. thus began a gradual but steady persecution of all things french. the quebecois have struggled mightily to hang on to their french heritage and language. the issue of seceding entirely, a notion that persists to some extent even today. journalist patrick legasse meets me for lunch at bistro m sur masson, to understand what many