Voice of the Vanishing Minority

Book excerpt: Widely regarded as the authentic voice of English-speaking farmers in Quebec, Robert Sellar, editor of the Huntingdon Gleaner, was the most-quoted rural newspaperman in Canada. Voice of the Vanishing Minority recounts Sellar's crusade against the tide of Frenchification that would displace English-speaking people from the townships they had pioneered. As a result of his outspokenness Sellar endured character assassination, physical violence, legal harassment, arson, clerical condemnation, disappointment, and the apathy of the dwindling communities he was defending. His provocative beliefs about Quebec's first "English exodus" - shared by the grass roots but dismissed by politically correct politicians, journalists, and academics as Anglo-Protestant bigotry - cut to the core of the unity crisis already developing in Canada. Book jacket.