IN 1945, HUGH MacLENNAN, a Glace Bay boy, published a novel whose title gave Canada the phrase that continues to encapsulate the relationship between Quebec and the rest of the country: Two Solitudes.

Mr. MacLennan, who lived in Montreal and loved his adopted province, took the phrase from German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

When Michaelle Jean was appointed Governor General a year ago this week, she promised to do what she could to "briser les solitudes" — to break them.

This week Ms. Jean said that Quebecers "are sometimes very disconnected from the rest of Canada" and called for Canadians to travel more within the country.

She said we if we saw more of each other we would see that people in Halifax have more in common with people in Chicoutimi than they realize, and she chided Quebecers for being fixated on Europe.

Andre Pratte, a columnist for Montreal's lively La Presse, defended Ms. Jean, writing that Quebecers often have a "paradoxical superiority complex" regarding the rest of the country. "Don't we take it for granted that Quebec's culture is superior to that in the other parts of the country? Don't we still hear that Toronto is a boring city? That Albertans are all rednecks?"

And Ms. Gagnon pointed out that there is no guarantee that more travelling would mean more love. "There are Quebec federalists who have never been west of the Ottawa River, and many sovereigntists who have many, many friends in English Canada."

Proving that exposure does not guarantee love, the next day Parti Quebecois MLA Jonathan Valois wrote a piece in La Presse: "Myself, I spent a summer in Ontario when I was 14. I returned bilingual and a sovereigntist."

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a Radio Canada reporter that he disagrees with Ms. Jean and said Quebecers are not disconnected from the rest of the country.

"If you're asking my opinion, Quebecers are identified more with their province than other Canadians," he said. "There are differences in each province but I think Quebecers, like other Canadians, have provincial identities, and national or federal identities."

At the same time as some Quebecers were debating Ms. Jean's comments, they were discussing L'affaire Wong — the controversy over a Globe and Mail story about the Dawson College shooting.

In an uncharacteristically careless piece of writing, Jan Wong, one of the country's best reporters, suggested that the shooting might be blamed on Quebecers' resistance to accepting outsiders, a proposition that would be very difficult to defend, given that deranged adolescents seem to be regularly shooting up schools around North America.

Premier Jean Charest and Mr. Harper both wrote to the Globe to complain and some Quebecers said her piece was racist. Le Devoir's cartoonist drew Ms. Wong opening a fortune cookie with the caption Beware Bill 101. Ms. Wong complained that the cartoon was racist. The Globe apologized. Le Devoir did not. Alain Gravel, the president of la Federation professionnelle des journalistes du Quebec, wrote a column in La Presse suggesting that what Ms Wong wrote went beyond acceptable limits on the freedom of the press.

In the next day's La Presse, the front of the entertainment section had a big story announcing that the most commercially successful Canadian film of all time (if you don't count Porky's, which you shouldn't) had just changed.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop, which is in theatres now, has just dethroned the Quebec family drama Seraphin. Next on the list: La grande seduction, a movie about the efforts of an isolated Quebec fishing village to attract a doctor. After that: Les Boys, a film about a plucky Montreal recreational hockey team. You must go far down the list — around number 10 — to find an English Canadian movie. We prefer Hollywood movies.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop is the brainchild of Quebec comic Patrick Huard and co-stars Colm Feore, an English Canadian actor. The two men play cops who must work together to catch a serial killer after a body is discovered on the Quebec-Ontario border.

It's a light-hearted, bilingual buddy movie, with sex, violence, Rick Mercer, evil Americans, hockey and a lot of the colourful religious swearing that Quebecers find so amusing.

This is cache, read story here