Oldal 198 [198]
MARIE-CLAUDE GILL-LACROIX
colonization shaped the coming decades for Québec.” It situated its French
population “in a global movement of resistance and revolution.”*” Lévesque
would become a key revolutionary player.**
Once the Parti Québécois was officially formed in the late 1960s, Lévesque
did not shy away from adopting talking points reminiscent of Frégault, Brunet,
and Séguin’s scholarship. During a heated Q&A at Scarborough College in
1968, the leader of the PQ compared Québec’s sovereigntist aspirations to the
strife experienced by African-Americans south of the border:
The fact is that [French-Québécois] are a minority [...] The negro happens to be
a sort of minority inside the melting pot [of the United States] with a hell of a lot
of problems [...] this all means this: [...] federal or quasi-federal or any kind of
political set-up which has been organized to get people of different cultures inside
one house [...] are not necessarily the best possible set-up.”
Feeling as though a separate Québec would be the optimal “set-up” for the
province’s French-Canadian inhabitants, Lévesque and the PQ’s ministers
would continue to present the province’s French-speakers as victims of
colonization throughout the late 1960s and the early-to-mid-1970s. In an op¬
ed scribed for La Presse in 1969, Lévesque claimed that Québécois, “whether
they like it or not, are part ofa colony within Canada.” 1970’s La Solution
which outlined the PQ’s political program, began with a short blurb asserting
that the goal of nationalism in Québec was to “create a modern nation within
56 Ibid., 275.
57 Ibid., 278.
»® Following an illustrious career as a journalist for Radio-Canada, Rene Levesque would enter
the political arena in 1960. He joined Jean Lesage’s Liberal cabinet as Minister of Water
Resources and was soon promoted to Minister of Natural Resources in 1961. Levesque spent
much of his time ensuring the provincial government enacted control over the province’s land
and waterways. He was crucial in orchestrating the nationalization of Québec’s hydro energy
through the creation of Hydro-Québec. Lévesque ultimately left the Liberal Party in 1966 in
order to form his own party — one which would aim to see Québec gain independence from
Canada (Richard Foot — Daniel Latouche, René Lévesque, The Canadian Encyclopedia (2015),
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rene-levesque [accessed 8 April 2020]).
See 16:30-19:00 in Lévesque, René, René Lévesque speaks with students of Scarborough
College (25 March 1968), University of Toronto Archives (13 July 2016),
https://youtu.be/ga-T1W T7qmE (accessed 8 April 2020).
6 Original text: "A ce point de vue, l’indépendantisme, lui aussi, est relié à un phénomène
universel: le Québec arrive à la queue de la grande vague de décolonisation qui a suivi la
Deuxième Guerre mondiale. On est à la veille d'arriver trop tard si on ne se dépêche pas. On
est, qu'on le veuille ou non, une colonie intérieure dans le Canada.” Extracted from: Nicolas
Toupin, La politique identitaire de René Lévesque: portrait d’un paradoxe, Le Québec des
Années 1950, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Fall 2015), 106.
+ 196 +