Two Quebec Luminaries Rethink Sovereignty, Cause Furor

Artists and celebrities frequently gather on the cutting edge of controversial issues, and in Quebec, that’s always meant a general consensus among the province’s artists in favor of gaining independence from Canada. “So when two of the province’s artistic luminaries questioned their sovereigntist faith this week, their remarks fell like a bombshell. Michel Tremblay, the world-acclaimed playwright whose works have helped capture Quebec’s soul, declared that he was no longer a separatist. It was as if the Pope were renouncing Catholicism. Mr. Tremblay’s words were front-page news. Then another light of the Quebec stage, Robert Lepage, enjoined that he, too, was ‘less convinced’ about independence.”