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MAITRES CHEZ QUI?...
COLONIZATION IN QUEBEC AS PRESENTED BY LEVESQUE AND THE PQ
The Quiet Revolution can broadly be described as the moment French¬
Québécois entered modernity.*® It saw political and economic reforms
instigated by Liberal Premier, Jean Lesage, take power away from the Catholic
clergy and place it in the hands of the province’s elected officials.*” Alan Wong
describes the period as having taken a “life of its own in Québec’s national
mythology” since it was then that “much of the Québécois populace was gripped
by neo-nationalist fervor.”** Although Wong’s work tends to be overly critical
of Québec, his assessment regarding the Quiet Revolution’s “neo-nationalist
fervor” rings true. David Meren has stated that the works of “neo-nationalist
historians” helped trigger the revolution.” Guy Frégault, Michel Brunet, and
Maurice Séguin based much of their research on “Third World movements
dedicated to anti-imperial and anti-colonial resistance.”°° By building on
people of color’s experiences, they attempted to give plausibility to the idea
that Québec’s French-Canadians were “the victims of [...] colonial authority”
enacted by English-Canadians.*! The above-mentioned historians were not
the first to present French-Québécois as colonized by English-speakers and
they were certainly not the last,*? however, their ideas came to be promoted
at a time when the ill-effects of colonialism were being disseminated
globally thanks to the growing influence of mass media.** In Québec, the
newspaper Le Devoir and the international affairs program Point de mire
extensively covered the Algerian War during the 1950s.°* Point de mire,
which (appropriately enough) was hosted by René Lévesque, gained special
prominence as it premiered with a one-hour special on Algeria on the eve of
the Suez Crisis.** Meren’s work argues that growing resistance to colonialism
as well as the emergence of scholarship emphasizing French-speakers’ own
46
Alan Wong, The Disquieting Revolution: A Genealogy of Reason and Racism in the Québec
Press, Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2011), 146.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
14 David Meren, An Atmosphere of Libération: The Role of Decolonization in the France¬
Quebec Rapprochement of the 1960s, The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 2 (June
2011), 273.
50 Ibid., 264, 273.
51 [bid., 273.
52 Lionel Groulx claimed that Québécois were “serfs” (Kaplan, Maitres Chez Nous, 416-417).
Pierre Valliéres termed the province’s French-speakers “Négres blancs d'Amérique” (Pierre
Vallières, Nègres blancs d'Amérique, Paris, Cahiers Libres, 1968).
55 Meren, An Atmosphere of Libération, 272.
54 Ibid., 272.
5 Ibid., 272.