Product Description

Winner of the 2000 Quebec Writers' Federation First Book Award and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction

A hip, enlightening portrait of a place most Canadians find baffling: Quebec without the politics.

Why do three million Quebecers tune in the same absurd sitcom every week? How did they get the nickname "pepsis"? Why does Celine Dion put on a down-home accent when she returns to her home province?

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.

Sacré Blues serves up a spicy, irreverent, inside view of this unique and little-known part of North America. With side orders of poutine, maple syrup, and Vachon snack cakes. And scarcely a mention of Lucien Bouchard.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #323155 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-24
• Released on: 2001-04-24
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.23" h x .89" w x 6.14" l, 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Review
"…a thorough, thoroughly entertaining Ski-Doo ride through [Quebec's] economy, language, climate, and popular and spiritual culture."
–Quill & Quire


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover
"…a thorough, thoroughly entertaining Ski-Doo ride through [Quebec's] economy, language, climate, and popular and spiritual culture."
–Quill & Quire


From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author
Taras Grescoe has made a specialty of writing about foreign cultures for such publications as the Times of London, National Geographic Traveller, The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune Magazine. His critically acclaimed book, Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec, won the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction, the First Book Award, and The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction.


From the Hardcover edition.