enRoute


	ENROUTE TV ENROUTE FM MEDIA KIT AIR CANADA LINKS WRITERS' GUIDELINES

HOLY MATRIMONY! (p. 2 of 2)

1 | 2 | OCT '04

For this faction, it’s the celebration rather than the institution of marriage that incites them to fork out a truckload of cash. Quebec’s wedding industry generates more than $300-million annually, not counting honeymoon travel. When gay marriage becomes legal here (inevitably following the lead of British Columbia and Ontario), the stakes will be even higher. According to the organizers of Quebec’s first Gay and Lesbian Wedding Show, almost one-third of gays and lesbians in Quebec intend to marry as soon as legally possible.

Whether you opt for a medieval feast, a sylvan ceremony or seaside vows, Quebec companies are cashing in on the personalized wedding trend, complete with New Age celebrant – no priests, please. "People know perfectly well that nothing lasts anymore. Since the deeper meaning, the content, has been lost, they focus on the more superficial elements," says the University of Ottawa’s Pacom. "Hence the current extravagance."

But once the party’s over, there are still those who believe in the institution of marriage – as long as they can reinvent it with their own rules. The founders of the new-and-improved brand of marriage, our third group, are, not surprisingly, mostly boomers. The baby-boom generation seizes every opportunity to buck tradition, and, in a final act of rebellion, former champions of free love are tying the knot: Daniel Cohn-Bendit (French leader of the May 1968 revolutionary activities in Paris), Gloria Steinem (queen of American feminism), Diane Dufresne (flamboyant Quebec singer) and Denise Bombardier (anti-establishment author) have all taken vows late in life.

Are the boomers simply regressing back to their parents’ values? Not at all. "People used to see getting married as the first step in founding a family. It was a rational decision. Today love trumps all of that," says historian Martine Tremblay, author of a Université du Québec doctoral thesis on 20th-century marriage rituals. Neo-traditionalists have invested marriage with a radically different meaning than it had for their parents: Instead of a practical and necessary step, it’s an extraordinary act of devotion.

Will Quebec’s marriage habits become increasingly conformist as the postrevolution society matures? In the end, Quebecers may be forced to admit that they can’t come up with anything that celebrates the glory of love better than marriage. According to psychologist Marc Therrien, "The need to confess our attachment to another before our peers is an enduring human need," a need that has driven the legalization of gay unions.

Or perhaps the blood of their ancestors – the coureurs de bois – means that Quebecers will only be happy when exploring new territory. What direction their relationships will take lies in the mysterious combination of historical and political forces and North American and European influences in Quebec. But don’t mistake the reconfiguration of relationships for the fall of romance. A postmodern, postconjugal, postinstitutional society? Yes. But a postlove Quebec? Never. [ ]

ADD YOUR COMMENTS > letters@enroutemag.net

1 | 2 | OCT '04