Les deux chanoines: contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensee de Lionel Groulx (review)

Gérard Bouchard summarizes and examines the thought of Lionel Groulx (1878-1967) - priest, nationalist mentor, literary figure, and the pre-eminent francophone historian in Canada until the 1960s. At the outset, Bouchard immediately addresses Esther Delisle's provocative Le traître et le juif: Lionel Groulx, Le Devoir, et le délire du nationalisme d'extrême droite dans la province de Québec 1929-1939 (1992). While essentially concurring with Delisle that Groulx's rationale bespeaks an anti-Semitic intellectual, Bouchard protests the reduction of Groulx's 'entire ideological world into a defense of anti-Semitism' (159, all translations mine). By the same token, it seems cursory to treat this complex issue in only ten pages, especially since Bouchard employs numerous quotations.

In fact this book largely comprises small excerpts from Groulx, juxtaposed so as to illustrate the ostensibly Janus-faced nature of his thought. For example, Bouchard chronologically marshals quotes from 1904 to 1967 that mark Groulx as a pro-independence thinker. Bouchard then mobilizes 'another series of excerpts that evince the opposite position' (124-5), of Groulx as a federalist thinker. By deploying this dualistic strategy across a range of topics, Bouchard provides a survey of Groulx's thought. This feature makes Les deux chanoines required reading.

However, Bouchard's treatment of primary sources raises concern. To substantiate his argument he sometimes assembles mere single-sentence quotes from disparate publications by Groulx. Indeed, Bouchard regularly quotes only a phrase, and frequently just two or three words from Groulx. Following this scheme he reduces Groulx's pro-independence thinking for a whole year to one line: 'In 1904 he considered the idea of an independent French Canada a "political and national ideal"' (119). Further, decrying the 'extremely repetitive' character of Groulx's publications, Bouchard tends to give them perfunctory analysis, minimize their amplitude, and blur their multifariousness. Not without reason then, in 'L'après Groulx' Benoît Lacroix warns that in the study of Groulx, his

corpus stands as the first and foremost difficulty to overcome because it constitutes an immense, extraordinarily varied body of work ... He practiced almost every form of contemporary literature: poetry, novels, historiography, essays, discourses, lectures, radio talks, 30 books, hundreds of articles. (Revue d'histoire de l'Amerique français 28, no. 3

[December 1974]: 415)

Bouchard cannot do justice to these primary sources by skirting their contexts, which span seven tumultuous decades whose course Groulx keenly noted - despite Bouchard's assertion that Groulx often failed to comment on the 'undeniably burning issues' (208) of the day. As an example, Bouchard cites the conscription crisis of the First World War and maintains that Groulx 'paid scant attention' (208) to it. On the contrary, during the winter of 1917-18 Groulx delivered a popular series of lectures immediately published as La Confédération canadienne (1918), which, Mason Wade suggests in The French Canadians, fostered opposition to the Military Service Act. Groulx severely criticized the Act, albeit under the guise of a historical examination of the Dominion. The impetus behind this subterfuge lay in the censorship initially imposed by the War Measures Act (1914) and increasingly toughened by subsequent orders in council that Jeffrey Keshen notes, 'sought to contain growing internal dissent - especially in Quebec.' Groulx's dissemblance notwithstanding, French Canadians deciphered his call to resist what Wade calls 'coercion by their English compatriots.' Coming amid enforcement of the Military Service Act and bloody anti-conscription riots, Groulx's critique assumed an inflammatory tenor, which he ultimately acknowledged in Mes mémoires: 'The war so fuelled the fervour of imperialists that the sense of indignation between them and French-Canadian nationalists nearly exploded. Even an historian had great difficulty staying calm. Did I sometimes forsake the equanimity of this profession? I fear so. I allowed myself patent references to contemporary tensions' (298-9).

This avowal vitiates Bouchard's claim that Groulx...