Lately I've been hearing anglo-Canadian doom-and-gloomers spread the word that the separation papers have been drawn up, that the divorce from Quebec is imminent and that, in Montreal at least, it's already a fait accompli.

"How well rid of each other we'll all be when the great day comes," say the Cassandras. Last week I sat among moist-eyed Trudeauphiles in Toronto's Convocation Hall listening nostalgically to the charismatic one reiterate his concept of One Great Nation under a flexible constitution, as he delivered the oration many of us expected to hear.

Later I couldn't help asking myself what has happened to good old Canadaland? Our baneful bungling boggles the brain. After free trade, Meech Lake, Oka, the recession and (curses) the goods and services tax, we have sorely socked it to ourselves.But, if you will pardon my, ahem, patriolism, may I suggest that our problems are a) transitory, b) sore evidence of growing pains, and c) solvable.

What a strange brew we are: First Nations, French Canada, English Canada and PEEVED (Practically Everybody Else Vaguely Ethnically Defined).

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Past injustices conceded, il faut le dire-, Québec has fared pretty well as part of Canada. As far as I can tell, no one has tried to stop les Québécois from being fruitful and multiplying and getting well paid for it, or prevented them from making superb films, writing great plays, cooking fabulous food, Iooking sexier, having more civilized liquor laws, capitalizing on their talents, exploiting the First Nations and the environment, or making silly xenophobic generalities about English Canada.

The fact is that what they persist in calling English Canada doesn't exist any more. The exceptions are Victoria, Chester, N.S., Niagara-on-the-Lake, for a few weeks a year, and some streets in Rosedale (Toronto), Kerrisdale (Vancouver), and Westmount (Montreal). Today, English Canada might be more correctly referred to as The Rest of Canada, or TROCANA. Let's create a new Trocanian Union of Monarchies (TUMS). Quebec has always fancied itself another country, and for most intents and purposes it is. The uniqueness of this arrangement is that we needn't fuss with customs, borders and currency exchange. If we decide on a new form of separation-association, fine. We can call it the Good Neighbour Alliance Deal (GONAD).

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Permit this native Torontois some nostalgic recollections. In 1958, my impassioned high-school French teacher, Dr.Verna Curran, suggested I go on a Visite interprovinciale, part of an exchange program sponsored by the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews to familiarize students from The Rest of Canada with Quebec, and vice versa. That summer I made a commitment to learning French and meeting the people of The Other Solitude.

After north Toronto, east Montreal seemed positively mysterious. My host family turned out to be from Belgium, their French slightly different from the joual of the neighbours. No matter. At 15, I soaked it up. They were devout Catholics; father worked in the Cadbury's chocolate factory, mother minded the modest apartment in a working-class housing block and son Hubert guided me through a maze of linguistic jargon. It was a summer of adventure and joy.

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We drove to Quebec City, clip-cropped around in a horse-drawn calèche, visited the grand historical museums, the plains of Abraham, the old town. The history of la Nouvelle France came alive. I soon came to realize that le Canada and les Canadiens were words that described Quebeckers long before Canadian came to mean the rest of us. The folk song Vive la Canadienne stirred me then and still does.

We stood below les Chutes de Montmorency, frozen versions of which I'd seen in textbook reproductions of Cornelius Krieghoff paintings, visited St. Anne de Beaupré with its theatrical shrine to the grandmother of Jesus, and climbed the steps of the Oratoire to ogle the dessicated heart of Brother André in a glass case. It was mystical, hokey and bizarre and it made me feel that Canadaland was a place of unimaginable diversity.

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I couldn't guess what would interest Hubert about Southern Ontario when he came here a few weeks later on an exchange visit. But he was awestruck at Niagara Falls, and so impressed by our north Toronto mock-Tudor house with the garage door that closed automatically that he described it in a letter to his parents as "un vrai chateau de Monsieur Hulot.”

As a young adult, I was determined to be part of Expo 67. I landed a job on the island site installing sculptures brought from around the world for the Exposition Internationale de Sculpture Contemporaine. I took an apartment overlooking Parc Lafontaine in downtown Montreal. My cousins, secure in the anglo ghetto off Côte des Neiges, were astonished that I chose to live east of "the Main”. I couldn't have been happier. Only once did I expenence unease, when my little car with Ontario licence plates had its window smashed in. So I bought a plastic Jesus and installed it on the dashboard.

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I printed lithographs in the atelier of Pierre Ayot on rue Rachel, drank in noisy bars on rue Saint Denis and sat late into the night in Square Saint Louis discussing separatism with my Expo colleagues, exulting in this ambiance that Toronto still didn't possess.

I spent unforgettable winter weekends snowbound in the Laurentians with my Expo boss, writer Guy Robert and his wife, Louise Labelle, and visited poet Cécile Cloutier in her elegant 18th century farm house at Neuville overlooking the mighty St. Lawrence.

Then, in the summer of 1972, I drove with friends to the Gaspé for a rare eclipse of the sun. We sat in a fragrant green hay field near Matane in mid afternoon as the wide, bright sky got mysteriously darker and sheep bleated disconsolately.

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We swam in the rushing amber waters of the Matapedia River as a tooting CN train chugged by, the conductor smiling at us from the cab like a model in a travel brochure. I fell in love with the stone cottages and tin-roofed church spires of the town of St. Jean Port Joli. In 1988, I returned to exhibit some large paintings in a downtown Montreal hotel. The opening felt like a homecoming celebration.

I ‘m still not convinced that all Quebeckers want out. Though fewer trains now snake through the scenic parts of the Rockies and the occasional bewildered royal visitor sporting matched purse and gloves wonders what on earth they're doing in Regina, I still think there's more than enough Canada for all of us. What we seem to have overlooked is how emminently re-inventable this place is. We haven’t even begun to give it our best shot. Chips and vinegar or poutine, butter tarts or tourtière, dim sum or bagels or chapati or baklava are à votre choix. Where else in the world is all this diversity so taken for granted?

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If the country's present weakness is confusion (think of the immigration lineups at Pearson International), its strength is the future. Where else in the world does it work the way it works here? Have we forgotten how far ahead of other countries we are in our commitment to living together with a comparative degree of tolerance?

Hole up in a faux château hotel in the wilderness or in a strange and mysterious restaurant in your own neighbourhood where you don't have a clue what you're eating but are willing to take a chance, or bitch about whether Mounties look better in Stetsons or turbans or skirts, but don't write Canada off, eh?

Other countries cling to the cultural philosophy that monolithic is terrific. They make great places to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

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Some Quebeckers are ineluctably committed to creating a new unilingual nation that would cut The Rest of Canada in two. The Canadian patient needs a second opinion. Is surgery necessary? With a new diet, the body may return to a healthier state. Let's get to work on the recipes.

Charles Pachter is a Toronto artist.

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