On Sunday, April 17, 1977, five months after the first accession of the Parti Qubcois to power under Ren Lvesque, journalist Robert Guy Scully wrote an article in the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post called "What It Means To Be French In Canada".[17] Page A2 of the paper summarized the article, which presented the historical disenfranchisement of French Canadians experienced at the hands of English Canada: "French Quebec is a culturally deprived, insecure community whose existence is an accident of history, one which shouldn't have happened, says a French-Canadian writer. Page C1."[28] Two columns of the front page of the section and an entire inside page were devoted to the article. In it, Scully called the French Qubcois society incurably "sick". He decried the economic poverty found in the French-speaking eastern part of Montreal: "No one would want to live there who doesn't have to," he wrote. "There isn't a single material or spiritual advantage to it which can't be had, in an even better form, on the English side of Montreal."
