French Canadians Dept: When those cigarettes and martinis caught up with us, we couldn’t turn to national health insurance. Medicare remained the dream of a minority of social democrats, not yet the cornerstone of Canada’s version of the welfare state, according to Globe And Mail. In 1960, the revolution in Canadian families had yet to dawn. Later in the decade, Pierre Trudeau, then justice minister, would liberalize laws on divorce and homosexuality, but 50 years ago divorce was difficult to obtain and extremely rare. From the 1960s to the 1990s, divorce rates increased more than fivefold. Homosexuality was illegal and could earn you a prison sentence – never mind spousal rights, marriage, or elected office and in 1960, Canada was a different place and Canadians were a different people. To begin with, there were fewer of us 17.8 million compared with today’s 34 million and we didn’t live as long. Hedonism was a cigarette and a martini after work. Doctors had only recently stopped endorsing cigarette brands, and the average Canadian consumed about a fifth of the wine they consume today the old guard preferred the hard stuff, despite the protestations of their livers . Speaking of the state, ours did not yet have much national swagger. In 1960, we had no national flag and no national anthem. The Ensign and God Save the Queen served as surrogates. French Canadians were second-class citizens and Quebec was a solitude on the brink of a “quiet revolution.” As
reported in the news.
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