Autres temps …

Autres temps ... In the uncertain aftermath of Meech Lake, I have once again been reading Andre Laurendeau. His journalism from the late 1940s through to the mid 1960s covers a wide variety oftopics, but its persistent themes are twofold - FrenchEnglish relationships within Canada, and the place of Quebec within Confederation.1 Laurendeau may not be the most brilliant mind to emerge from Quebec in this century. He does not possess the guillotine logic of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, nor does he exhibit the cosmopolitan preferences ofJean Le Moyne, who found his native Quebecois literature embarrassingly thin and unappetizing, and who felt more at ease with Bach, Don Quixote, and Schubert, with Mr. Pickwick, Mozart, and Henry James. Least ofall does Laurendeau resemble Hector de Saint-DenysGarneau , whose spiritual intensity twisted his vision towards neurosis, so that even a passage from a Borodin symphony becomes a "rough road bordered by chasms."2 Laurendeau's political outlook was of a kind that is fast disappearing since Meech Lake - a Quebec-based nationalism joined to a firm commitment to Canadian federalism. That is, he understood that Quebec needed sufficient autonomy at home to preserve its distinctive nature, but he also believed that Quebec gained from its minority status within Canada. There is thus significant distance between Laurendeau's Bloc Populaire and Lucien Bouchard's Bloc Quebecois. Over his long public career, Laurendeau became increasingly disaffected with separatist politics in Quebec, primarily out ofa sense that political minorities needed protection from somewhere; that Quebec out on its own would not only lose the shelter of Confederation, but also that French-Canadian minorities outside of Quebec would be sacrificed in the drive for Quebec provincial autonomy. As for the failure of Meech Lake, Laurendeau might well conclude that its demise began when M. Bourassa used the override in Clause 33 ofthe Charter to legitimize Bill 178 and, by so doing, showed the rest ofCanada the shape that Quebec as a "distinct society" could begin to take. Again, for Laurendeau, it would be a question ofa wrong decision in which the rights ofa minority (in this case, the Anglophones of Quebec) were simply ignored because of the incessant needs of nationalism "chez nous." Nowhere does Laurendeau's complex political outlook show more clearly than in his attitude to Mackenzie King. The key issue was military conscription during World War II. Laurendeau never saw the war as his war, or even as Quebec's or Canada's war. He watched with fascination as King inched his way towards the 1942 plebiscite in which about 90 percent of French voters in Quebec said "No" to conscription. In the trail of bad faith and deviousness which led up to the vote, Laurendeau had the imagination and generosity to grasp the crucial importance of King's role: Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 25. No. 2 (Ete J990 S11111111er) 3 During the war King demonstrated his genius for manipulating men. He knew the trick ofholding a vast, divided country together. .. . He was the still centre; his qualities were wisdom and practicality, at least in appearance . In fact, he pursued a ceaselessly shifting centre with a quick and penetrating intuition ofwhat was possible at any given moment. That was his secret, and it made him irreplaceable. Ifhe had disappeared, a reign of violence would have followed. His gift was to guess the point of balance and to stick with it as long as necessary . (p. 119) Laurendeau understood that King's often infuriating style ofpolitics was the price it was necessary to pay in order to keep Confederation from being torn apart. Because Confederation's survival depended on a delicate balance between the interests ofthe majority and those ofa number ofvital minorities, Laurendeau knew that minority interests would need to be handled with particular sensitivity. He was convinced ofthat view whenever he thought about Quebec's historic flirtation with sovereignty. His political goal was to strengthen Quebec's place within Confederation because the separatist route would lead la belle province into a much more dangerous minority position. In the.anger surrounding the Meech Lake affair, many ofQuebec's leaders - both in politics and business - are now actively courting the very outcome which Laurendeau found...