Квебектің ресми ұраны: «Мен есіме сақтаймын»

Official motto of Quebec

Je me souviens (ʒə mə suvjɛ̃) is the official motto of Quebec, and translated literally into English means: "I remember." The exact meaning of this short sentence is subject to several interpretations, though all relate to the history of the Quebec people. The motto can be found on all Quebec licence plates, among other things.

Étienne Paschal Taché is credited with having popularized the phrase. In 1883, his son Eugène Étienne Taché, Assistant Commissioner for Crown lands in Quebec and architect of the provincial Parliament building, had the motto carved in stone below the coat of arms of Quebec which appears above the Parliament Building's main entrance door. The motto then came into official use, even though the coat of arms was not adopted until 1939.

Taché appears not to have left an explanation of the motto's intended meaning but he wrote a letter to the deputy minister of public works, Siméon Lesage, that showed what he intended to accomplish with the statues on the building's façade and described what they were intended to remind people of. All around the Parliament building are 24 statues of historical figures. They originally included founders (Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain and de Maisonneuve), clerics (de Laval, de Brébeuf, Marquette and Olier), military figures (de Frontenac, Wolfe, de Montcalm and de Levis), First Nations Peoples, French governors (D'Argenson, de Tracy, de Callières, de Montmagny, d'Ailleboust, de Vaudreuil) and, in the words of Taché, "some English governors the most sympathetic to our nationality"
In 1896, Gagnon wrote that the motto "admirably sums up the raison d'être of Champlain and Maisonneuve's Canada as a distinct province in the confederation." In 1919, seven years after Taché's death, the historian Pierre Georges Roy underlined the symbolic character of the three word motto: "which says so eloquently in three words, the past as well as the present and the future of the only French province of the confederation." This sentence would be cited or paraphrased several times afterwards. or possibly Victor Hugo's poem "Lueur au couchant". Writer André Duval thought the answer was simpler and closer at hand: In the hall of the Parliament building in which the motto is carved above the door, are the arms of the Marquess of Lorne whose motto was ne obliviscaris ("do not forget"). Consequently, Duval believed "the motto of Quebec to be at the same time the translation of the Marquess of Lorne's motto and the answer of a French Canadian subject of Her Majesty to the said motto." Research published in English before 1978 led to the same conclusions regarding the motto's origin, the number of words it has and its interpretation. Encyclopedias and quotation dictionaries, including those of Wallace, Hamilton, Colombo, and Hamilton and Shields, all provide the same information as the French language sources.

In 1978, Je me souviens replaced the tourism oriented motto [[La Belle Province (nickname) ("the beautiful province") on Quebec's vehicle registration plate. According to the historian Gaston Deschênes, this event marks the start of a new period of attempts to reinterpret the meaning of the motto in the mainstream media of Canada. On February 4, 1978, Robert Goyette signed an article entitled "Car owners argue over motto" in The Montreal Star. This article attracted the attention of a reader, Hélène Pâquet, a granddaughter of Taché who replied on February 15 in an open letter entitled Je me souviens. It reads in part:

The lily refers to France while the rose refers to England, both relating to the floral emblems of the nations. The idea that the motto had a lesser known second part spread widely. This new piece of information had a long life in the media before it was investigated by Deschênes in 1992. When Deschênes contacted Hélène Pâquet in 1992, she was unable to specify the origin of text she quoted in her letter. Her statements were not conformable to those of her father, Lieutenant Colonel Étienne Théodore Pâquet Jr., who on March 3, 1939, wrote in a letter to John Samuel Bourque, Tâché's son in law, and Minister of Public Works, that "the one who synthesized in three words the history and traditions of our race deserves to be recognized"

Je me souviens appears on the badge of the Royal 22e Régiment, a francophone regiment of the Canadian Forces. The first version of the badge was designed in 1914.