This is not to say there are no challenges involved with celebrating English-speaking culture in Quebec. Official interest at the provincial level in celebrating the 150th anniversary of Canada is likely to be muted. There will also be some opposition to any event that smacks of bilingualism or any initiative that overtly or covertly undermines the French language. We need to be sensitive to these concerns and seek ways to share stories of linguistic duality in a positive manner.
The English-speaking community in Quebec is unique within Canada, and the arts are our primary way of expressing this uniqueness. It's therefore likely that the English official linguistic minority arts community could be a significant generator and driver of ideas for celebrations. Moreover, it will be important to focus on specific communities and the institutions that represent them within education, arts and culture, and community vitality. These include the English school boards, museums, and performance venues that feature primarily English programming, and of course organizations such as ELAN, the Quebec Writers' Federation, the Quebec Drama Federation, the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network, and the QCGN.
ELAN has already done quite a bit of groundwork toward celebrating the achievements of Quebec's English-language community. In 2008-09 ELAN undertook the RAEV, the recognizing artists enfin visibles project, which created profiles of 150 prominent artists and 25 short videos that allowed artists to articulate the benefits as well as the costs of living in a minority-language context. In addition, the RAEV project created histories to document the contribution to Quebec culture of English-language artists from each artistic discipline over the past 100 years.
All of this material is available in English and in French online. The English-language texts were published by Guernica Editions as “Minority Report: An Alternative History of English-language Arts in Quebec”.