Les nationalismes au Quebec du XIXe au XXIe siecle (review)

This anthology of articles by twenty authors originated with a symposium held in 1995. The shadow of the Quebec referendum that year thus looms large in this collection (330, 338-42). From the outset it strives to articulate an apologia for Quebec nationalism:

Nowadays, we often associate nationalism with intolerance, exclusion, and right-wing ideologies. However, history has shown the randomness of this link. In fact, the idea of nationhood arose at the same time in Quebec as the battles for democracy, and experienced a resurgence when socialist thought enjoyed its finest hours.

(1-2. All translations by the reviewer.)

While immediately situating contemporary Quebec nationalism within a social democratic framework, this compendium hastens to distance the former from the seemingly discriminatory, if not racist spectre Quebec nationalism assumed when Premier Jacques Parizeau publicly imputed the defeat of the referendum to 'ethnic votes.' Eschewing the latter (3), historian Jocelyn Saint-Pierre alternatively points to the Patriotes of the 1837-8 Rebellions in Lower Canada. He contends that far from espousing an 'intolerant, xenophobic, backward, and insular' nationalism (5), they imbibed the ostensible broad-mindedness of the fledgling American republic next door. In this historiographical vein Louis-George Harvey affirms,

Their North American frame of reference enabled the Patriotes to incorporate all the inhabitants of Lower Canada into a political identity founded on a common territorial and historical reality. The movement could draw its inspiration from the American Revolution because it constituted the shared heritage of all Lower Canadians by virtue of their North American rootedness.

(24)

Yet several writings by the founders of the American republic do not bear out the inclusiveness that Saint-Pierre and Harvey idealistically attribute to them. (See M. Marty, The One and the Many, on the Federalist papers and Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia.)Nevertheless, following a similar rationale, political scientists Gérald Bernier and Daniel Salée maintain that the discourse of the Patriotes' spokesmen evidences 'a virtual absence of any ethnolinguistic preoccupation' (27).On the contrary, Bernier and Salée posit the Patriote movement as the archetype for 'a territorial, civic, indeed republican concept of the Quebec nation, a conception whose triumph many nationalists today seek' (35). This last phrase belies the revisionist interpretation that runs throughout this book and risks lapsing into an anachronistic, early twenty-first-century historical remake of Quebec nationalism into the image of its current, liberal advocates. Furthermore, Bernier and Salée's conclusion epitomizes the overall apologetic intent of this anthology:

The failure of the Patriotes trapped Quebec into a binary national ontology ('Us' against 'Them') from which it still proves very difficult to extricate itself ... The churlishness of the unfortunate remarks about (not) belonging to the 'Nation,' made in the bitterness of the 1995 referendum defeat, painfully remind us of this.

(35)

Sociologist J.-Yvon Thériault argues that after the debacle of the Rebellions, journalist and civil servant Étienne Parent (1802-74) advocated a nationalism 'consistent with, rather than opposed to liberalism' (41). Thériault asserts that in so doing Parent alone appears to have gone against 'the pre-1960s mainstream of nationalist thought' (41). However, this generalization does not stand the test of history. Take, for example, the career of provincial Liberal party leader, co-founder of the Parti national, and premier of Quebec, Honoré Mercier (1840-94) (see Lamonde and Corbo, Le rouge et le bleu, 1999, 275-9). Or consider his grandson Paul Gouin (1898-1976) and the Action liberale nationale that he headed in the 1930s (Lamonde and Corbo, 407-13). Nor does Thériault's assertion account for journalist and politician André Laurendeau (1912-68) who, from the late 1940s, vigorously opposed the 'purely negative' (Lamonde and Corbo, 459) provincial autonomy of Maurice Duplessis (1890-1959) and outlined a progressive nationalism that foreshadowed the Quiet Revolution (Lamonde and Corbo, 455-64, 472-4, 507-10).

Nonetheless...