the Nuck ambush: the vengeance marked Québécois — oaths and maple-leaf

The vengeance wears its nationality openly: the Nucks vow "to unembowel this craven bâtard" for having "killed somebody they call either Pépé or Bébé," their oaths studded with the Québécois idiom — "sans-Christe," "bâtard," the threat to get someone "frapped or fropped" — that marks the same anti-Gentle register as the Antitois' "Sans-Christe Gentle" (097). And Gately reads them by their "maple-leaf belt buckles," the national emblem worn on the body. The revenge is personal in its object but national in its whole grammar; even a back-street reprisal is conducted in the vocabulary and iconography of the Québécois cause.