Back in 1969, Honduras and El Salvador went to war over soccer.
It was more complicated than that but World Cup qualifying games sparked fighting over some long-standing disputes. It was called the Soccer War and it lasted less than a week.
This wasn’t t about to happen here, but I’m sure the PQ was drooling at the thought of soccer becoming a lightning for hostilities with the rest of Canada.
Thank goodness for some common sense from FIFA.
Pauline Marois is having a hard time convincing Quebecers to follow her down the separatist yellow brick road to the promised land of perpetual bliss.
She would, and will, support anything that goes against the national interest.
This is much more though than a handful of kids being told to play in their own backyards.
The PQ loved this dispute because it fits in so well with their policy of identity politics.
This is just the beginning.
In the fall the PQ will unveil its Charter of Quebec Values and it hopes it will be the springboard to a majority election victory sometime next spring.
And what exactly are Quebec values? I’m not sure, but the PQ’s definition of secularism is not inclusive.
As defined by the PQ, it is basically being opposed to anything that might be different – well, different from traditional Quebec Catholic values.
Let’s face it, there are different rules in place for symbols such as the crucifix in the National Assembly. Nobody wants to touch that one.
No one is proposing to bring down the cross on the mountain or cancel Christmas.
Our heritage defines who we are and we cannot erase our history but we can’t always have it both ways.
If it is deemed proper to have Christian religious symbols in public buildings, then why is it so wrong for a kid on a soccer field to wear a turban or a kippah or anything else?
That is why, come October, the Marois government will be brewing up a dangerous cocktail of language, identity and fear.
You've seen it with the indignation over the parking regulations outside of a Montreal synagogue, with pastagate and other affronts to the collectivity.
Just wait until they ramp up the rhetoric and cheap politics all the time, wrapping themselves as the only defenders of identity and the faith.
It is a desperate strategy from a government which has proven itself unfit for power in less than a year, a government without any seemingly coherent direction, that takes two step backs for every one it takes forward.
We need a government focused on the things that matter to people: jobs, healthcare, education and good roads; not a government whose first order of business was to bring back the pestiferous language debate.
You know as well as I that the language wars were settled a long time ago and we know who came out on top.
But this government sometimes seems fanatical and its goal is not to unite us but to feed the fires of intolerance.
As Churchill said a fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
