Quebec will never separate from Canada because the French and English are locked in a sado-masochistic love relationship, says Clotaire Rapaille, a marketing guru hired to rebrand Quebec City.
Rapaille told a breakfast meeting of communications experts he finds a lot of "love" in the city. But there is a kinky side to that love, he said, citing the alternately tense-relaxed relations between francophones and anglophones.
"That makes the best couples, the most stable," he added, when asked where Quebec's independence fits into his scenario.
"There is pleasure in sado-masochism," Rapaille said. "Otherwise it would not work."
Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume brought in Rapaille to give the "old capital" a facelift.
Rapaille, who practised psychoanalysis after graduating from the Sorbonne in Paris and has a doctorate in medical anthropology. He decodes marketing trends by tapping into the "reptilian brain" — or primal instincts — of his subjects.
He has worked for carmakers, major Canadian banks and places like Dubai and Singapore.
In Quebec City, he is meeting about 300 locals in 10 focus groups.
People in Quebec City, he said, have a "deep love and almost possession" of their city. "When I work in Los Angeles, people don't say, 'My city.'"
Most important, he says, Quebec City has a mission: to show the world its model.
"You are a historic aberration," he said. "You have to fight all the time."
But Quebec City has preserved its language and identity in North America, against the odds.
"How did they do it?" people will ask. "It isn't impossible."
Rapaille, who has a $300,000 U.S. contract with the city, began his focus groups in February and said he now has a lot of material to process before he delivers his report in May.
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