The New Nouvelle France.

I am French, born in France, and American and Canadian (very confusing for custom agents ;-).

I spent most of my formative years in Montreal as a child and teenager at a time when being French in Quebec was not an advantage. They called us the maudits français (the damned French). Admittedly for good reasons, the French, and I know what I am talking about, always complain, and they have a self-proclaimed claim to superior knowledge and perception of what the empirical truth should be. Now wrap this little package in an impeccable linguistic mastery of nuances, and voila! You currently have the perfect recipe to create an obnoxious persona that all secretively envy and hate out loud. 

Living from time to time in France, Canada, and the United States has given me an interesting perspective on how the French are perceived, see themselves, and see others. What appears to be universal is that the French hold a high position in culture and knowledge from centuries of self-affirmation and recognition by others mimicking their social contract, art and engineering-focused education, entrepreneurship (sorry W, but the entrepreneur is a French word), and gastronomy. No wonder why the French can afford to be so damn arrogant. To further feed this perception, I am always amused to see how wealthy Americans, Russians, and now Chinese seek to adopt the French style as if it allows them to pretend to be understanding of the French. It is faltering, but all I can think of is that they are being taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous merchants of objects and services designed to dress the naked emperors that they are; If you want to be French, you need to learn to control, show-off what you know to claim victory, confront people about it, do not care if people hate you, and when asked to do something always say "non" first so that they offer you something to change your mind. If you can master that, they purchase your Louis XVI furniture, but by then, you might just think that it is too gauche and predictable. And that is something that is just beneath you at that stage.

I had fun writing the last paragraph. So what about the New Nouvelle France? For the last few years, I have been going back and forth from Boston to Montreal for business and noticed an incredible influx of young and well-educated French immigrants at a time when things could be better for French graduates in France. This generation is impressive, smart, and fun and has something I have not seen in French people since my days in Paris during the mid-90s tech boom. They want to succeed, create, learn, and enjoy a life intertwined with intellectual pursuit and real social connections to others (and not just the French). This is a departure from the sad and doomed France of today, where people expect to be helped by the government as they are depressed by the lack of job opportunities. Unfortunately, some believe that socialism is a refuge for a secure future. Not the case at all for those who take a Darwinian leap of faith to come to Quebec to seek opportunities and a new lifestyle. This is why I now call Quebec "the New Nouvelle France." It is being colonized by a generation of French citizens who have a superior ability to take risks and be open-minded. I applaud them for leaving a France that is less and less enviable, corrupted (let's put this one on hold for now), dependent, and doomed to fail for lack of innovation and a false confidence that is rooted in exploits of the past.

The future of the true French spirit, quench for knowledge and conquest, is being revived in the New Nouvelle France.