IF YOU`RE English-speaking and liberalminded, Quebec is a difficult place to be these days. You`re just not appreciated; the French insist on picturing you as a fallen master, whereas you see yourself as an innocent victim of a historical turnaround. That`s Reed Scowen`s problem in A Different Vision: The English in Quebec in the 1990s (Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 172 pages, $15.95 paper). Though his book is argued in achingly clear, reasonable tones, in Quebec people have seen it as an English rights manifesto, simply because Scowen has advised English people to speak their native language wherever and whenever they can. There is absolutely nothing incendiary in A Different Vision, though the author does let off some richly justified steam against the provincial Liberal party for reneging on the promises it made to Quebec`s English. Scowen travels across Quebec`s social landscape, stopping at all the major cultural and social institutions to explore the changing role of the English community, and urge it on to something better than mere survival. His conclusion? The English community has a historical right to exist and prosper, and there should be room for it in the new Quebec, whatever shape it takes. Scowen`s book will serve as an excellent guide for Canadians outside the province, many of whom know nothing about what has gone on there over the last 30 years except what they can glean from a biased media. For this particular reviewer, the major problem with the English community in Quebec is the lack of political leadership. The current English-speaking elite - and this includes Scowen isn`t doing much to capture the awareness of young (and not-so-young) people who don`t relate to their style or class loyalties. If that is true, it simply proves that the English community in Quebec is anything but homogeneous.