Xavier Gélinas and Lucia Ferretti, eds - Duplessis: Son Milieu, Son Époque

Xavier Gélinas and Lucia Ferretti, eds

Duplessis: Son Milieu, Son Époque

Quebec: Septentrione, 2010

iv + 513 pp. Paper. $39.95. ISBN 978-2-89448-625-2.

Beginning with a preface by Denis Vaugeois, who in 1976 captured Maurice Duplessis's former riding for the Parti Québécois, this collection of 23 essays discusses aspects of the right-wing nationaliste politician who dominated Quebec for a quarter century before his death in 1959. The volume rounds off with a round table discussion at a fiftieth anniversary conference in 2009, plus research notes on library and archive material. The prevailing theme is that Duplessis was not as bad as his opponents alleged: how could a government that backed rural electrification be dismissed as La Grande Noirceur? Charles-Philippe Courtois blames Cité Libre, the mouthpiece of Pierre Trudeau and Gérard Pelletier, for creating the myth that Duplessis was anti-democratic (but dragging in Ceausescu surely distorts Trudeau's invective?), an exponent of an immobile nationalism that was rooted in a backward clerical culture. Paradoxically, much of this has been adopted as gospel by separatists, thereby ignoring intellectuals like André Laurendeau whose leftist nationalism reconciled state intervention with Catholic social thinking. True, there are intellectual ambiguities in the labelling of the successor period. Did the Quiet Revolution cause the election of Jean Lesage in 1960, or was it created by reforms introduced by his Liberal government? Either way, as several contributors point out, its roots must lie in the Duplessis years; hence, it is a short step to arguing that his Union Nationale administration paved the way for change. A rare exception is Yves Lever's bleak summary of film censorship: one imported Nouvelle Vague film sacrificed 86 of its 185 minutes to be screened in Quebec. This volume contains many interesting essays, such as the statistical analysis by Denis Monière and Dominique Labbé of the vocabulary of Duplessis speeches (which, of course, did not contain the word 'Québécois'). Michael Sarra-Bournet's review of the Quebec's alliance with the Tory provincial government of Ontario places Duplessis in a more conventional context of federal-provincial relations. Politicians should be studied from the bottom up, and the attempt by Lucia Ferretti and Maélie Richard to reconstruct the relationship between Duplessis and the voters of Trois Rivières is useful. (Only three of the thirty contributors are women.) John-Charles Panneton's essay on Pierre Laporte, murdered in 1970, rescues a neglected figure, but where is Paul Sauvé, the long-time dauphin, whose famous first word on inheriting power in 1959, "Désormais", is barely mentioned? Sauvé's death, just four months after taking office, opened the way for Lesage. Until we determine whether Sauvé represented continuity or fundamental change, we cannot truly assess his predecessor. Both in its timing, just as the Bloc Québécois has run its course and separatism has lost its drive, and in its avoidance of extended discussion of such topics as the family and the Church, this volume looks like Quebec intellectuals trying to stop worrying and learning to love Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis – an interesting exercise but not entirely persuasive.