Why the Battle of the Plains of Abraham isn't over yet

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090221.wlivequebec0223/BNStory/specialComment/home


"There will be no 250th anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, after all," The Globe's Konrad Yakabuski wrote Saturday in his Globe essay Montcalm and Wolfe fail to meet again

"The National Battlefields Commission, a federal agency embroiled in a war of its own, has bowed to Quebec nationalists and its taskmasters in Ottawa, and cancelled the event it had hyped as 2009's 'premier summer event in Quebec City.'
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"The 'sides' here are not Quebec and the rest of Canada. They are the feuding clans within the Québécois nation itself.

"On one side, the federalist warriors characterize 1759 as the starting point of French Canadian liberation, when the colonists of New France threw off an exploitative and uninterested ruler that was at least a century behind the British on the road to democracy.

"The sovereigntist combatants, on the other hand, see the Conquest as the tragic moment when they were forced into chronic inwardness and a still incomplete struggle for cultural survival and self-rule.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Plains_of_Abraham


The culmination of a three-month siege by the British, the battle lasted less than an hour. British troops commanded by General James Wolfe successfully resisted the column advance of French troops and Canadian militia under Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm. Both generals were mortally wounded during the battle; Wolfe died on the field and Montcalm passed away the next morning. In the wake of the battle, France's remaining military force in Canada and the rest of North America came under increasing pressure from British forces. Within four years, nearly all of France's possessions in eastern North America would be ceded to Great Britain.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France


The monarchy ruled France until the French Revolution, in 1789. Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were executed (in 1793), along with thousands of other French citizens.


Time for a good old fashion contraversy Here.

Looks like the Plains of Abraham is where France lost the colonies that eventually became Canada / Quebec. But this was in 1759 , France didn't have it's revolution and over throw its hated monarchy until 1793, so it could be argued that the people of quebec got a better deal by being part of their own nation rather than being oppressed from afar.

On the other hand the pro-french seperatists are pretty hot under the collar about any kind of French defeat, deeming it a personal insult against all quebecers.

My Opinion

Too many May Haves and Might Have Beens. If France had won , if there had been a tie, there might have been this, there might have been that ... In logic and debating this kind of thing is considered a fallacy , no one knows what would have happened next if some different event in the past had come to pass, thats pure speculation it proves nothing.

It also seems to be buried under layers of propaganda from the Seperatists , who love France dearly even though France consistantly snubs them and tells them to take a hike. One has to wonder whether these Seperatists really want a nation of their own or if they want to go back to being a french colony. The fact that at the time the french monarchy was a rather cruel entity (so were the brits as a matter of fact) seems to escape them.

It all seems pretty muddled to me, with the Seperatists trying to twist it to mean whatever they want.