You’re right. Fight or no, though, the rest of the description stands, I think. While the break with England was relatively gradual and smooth, the break with France was more sudden, and Quebec was far more isolated from France than the rest of Canada (or Quebec, too, for that matter) were from Britain.
The description of French colonists (in Nouvelle-France) perceiving the treaty as an abandonment sticks with me from history class. My teacher, herself Quebecois, emphasized that point.
I can’t understand some speakers of Pidgin English. I know it varies a lot. Toronto is a long way from Polynesia. But I could understand almost any English speaker in North America or Western Europe. My francophone, professional roommate could not understand French spoken by workers from Lac St. Jean, only a few hundred miles from Montreal.
Most Quebecois films, TV shows do seem to use “realistic” Quebecois slang. I think some take it a bit far, but I don’t claim to understand all Quebecois accents and slang by any means, so my opinion is far from authoritative.
Which can have political implications. During the run-up to the war last year, with all the debate in the U.N., statements by President Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin would be available directly on Quebec media, while statements by President Bush and Secretary of State Powell would be translated. Some commentators speculated that the fact that unilingual francophone Québécois heard the opponents to war in their own language, but the proponents of war via translation, tended to make them more receptive to the French position. I’ve not seen any empirical studies, but it has some intuitive appeal.
A friend claims that about half of Quebec doesn’t give a damn about France and the other half acts like its their motherland. I’ve spent a lot of time with some Quebecois lately and they all were very focused on all things French, much more so than what went on in Canada. It seemed strange to me, since I can’t imagine an English-speaker being interested in anything and everything that goes on in the UK.
I can’t remember who it was, but a Québécois intellectual once said something to the effect that if there were 50 million people living in Québec, they wouldn’t give a damn what anyone in France thought. The point is that there are a lot more French speakers in France than in Canada and because of that France does act like a cultural magnet for the rest of the francophone world. It’s a simple matter of demographics. The English-speaking world is much more multi-focal IMO, although the US does draw a lot of attention.