by John English
Understandably, some university teachers who had fought the battle for increased funding in Cité libre now complained that the independently wealthy Trudeau did not understand their personal plight. As tempers flared, traditional nationalists and, of course, Duplessis warily accepted the support of their often bitter antagonist, but Trudeau shunned their embrace. If Quebec universities were poor, he said, the fault lay within Quebec, specifically within the provincial government that had refused to fund universities adequately. At a student congress at Laval in November 1957 he urged professors and students to begin a general strike to force Duplessis to become more generous.* An outraged editorial writer at Le Soleil, Quebec City’s leading newspaper, countered with a lead editorial attacking his irresponsibility.36
Trudeau might be unpredictable, yet he was usually consistent as he carefully honed his political identity. In Vrai he wrote a series of articles on democracy, liberalism, politics, and political thought.37 In other writings, principally in Cité libre, he defined his stand on particular themes. On radio and on television he took part in numerous debates on contemporary issues, often stirring criticism. One radio program caused much controversy: he asked when it was right to assassinate a tyrant. Given that many critics called Duplessis a tyrant, Trudeau surely knew he would provoke a response. In an article in Vrai he had already written that if the social order was perverse, citizens should follow their conscience rather than any authority: “And if the only sure means to re-establish a just order is to wage a revolution against a tyrannical and illegal authority, well, then, do it.” On radio, the qualifications that appeared in print—“personally I dislike violence”—were lost. A municipal politician jumped into the debate and declared Vrai and Trudeau more dangerous than the “yellow press” that the religious authorities had condemned. Pierre Trudeau’s article, he fumed, was “a direct call for sedition.” It was a serious offence “to preach revolution.”
Jacques Hébert, the editor, replied on Trudeau’s behalf in the sarcastic and personal tone increasingly common in Quebec political debate in the mid-1950s: “Brave M. Lauriault, you thought you read: ‘Is it necessary to assassinate an imbecile?’ and you became terrified. But rest assured; it is only about tyrants. Therefore, you are not endangered. Sleep quietly. The revolutionaries won’t waste their cannonballs on wet noodles like you.”38
To escape this parochial and disputatious environment, Trudeau sought new intellectual outlets. In March 1957 the University of Toronto Quarterly had invited him to write an article on political parties in Quebec. He refused, saying that “the orientation of my actions within the next several months hinges upon a series of decisions which are still being collectively pondered and are still in the making. It is fundamentally a question of what is going to happen to a new democratic [“political” is crossed out] movement we have founded—the Rassemblement.” He did, however, begin to prepare an article for a book to be edited by Mason Wade, author of the standard history textbook The French Canadians. When the book was delayed, Trudeau submitted his piece to the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science (CJEPS), which published it in August 1958 under the title “Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec.”
Trudeau’s arguments flowed from a familiar stream of analysis of Quebec’s political development, and echoed other voices, such as recent work by Michel Brunet, a nationalist historian at the Université de Montréal, which claimed there were three dominant themes in French-Canadian social and political thought: “l’agriculture, l’anti-étatisme et le messianisme.” But to most English Canadians at the time, these views were new. CJEPS was read by virtually every economist, political scientist, and historian working in the English language, and some politicians and journalists also subscribed. In common rooms, cocktail parties, and even a few Muskoka cottages, Trudeau’s article caused a stir.39
In forceful prose and polemical argument, Trudeau made his case that, “in the opinion of the French in Canada, government of the people by the people could not be for the people, but mainly for the English-speaking part of that people; such were the spoils of conquest.” French Canadians had democracy but did not believe in it: “In all important aspects of national politics, guile, compromise, and a subtle kind of blackmail decide their course and determine their alliances. They appear to discount all political or social ideologies, save nationalism.”
Although he criticized English Canadians who believed in democracy for themselves but not for others, his critique of the authoritarianism of the Quebec past, the corruption of contemporary Quebec politics, and the blend of nationalism with a conservative Roman Catholic Church and a weak Quebec state resonated widely in English Canada—too widely in some cases. John Stevenson, a veteran Ottawa journalist for The Times of London, praised the article generously in a letter to Trudeau: “For a French-Canadian to make such an arraignment of his racial compatriots required great moral courage, and you certainly showed it in your article.” He even asked for some off-prints to send to the Queen’s private secretary.40 The following year Trudeau’s article won the prize sponsored by the president of the University of Western Ontario for the best scholarly article in English. Grace Trudeau reported that the award received prominent mention in the English press of Montreal but not in the French press.41
Wherever he could, Trudeau pressed his case for greater democracy in Quebec. He covered the provincial Liberal convention in May 1958 for both Vrai and the CBC and concluded that the party and the convention were anti-democratic:
It would be unjust to impute to the Liberal Party alone an anti-democratic tendency which is the characteristic of our people as a whole. To be sure, a party that has dominated the political life of our province for so long bears a major responsibility for our political infancy. But other factors also make a significant contribution: the authoritarianism of our religious and social institutions, the insecurity complex deriving from the Conquest, the systematic degradation of our civic life under the Union nationale, and many other factors as well.
Trudeau condemned the Liberal Party Congress as undemocratic not because of party officials or even party rules but because the Liberal Party itself failed to realize that a party cannot be built from above. The congress had been given little time for policy discussion; its purpose, after all, had been to choose the leader. He recognized that the new leader, Jean Lesage, a federal MP for thirteen years, was “a fighter, an energetic organizer and a charming and ambitious man,” but there was no evidence, he said, that he was a democrat or that a party under his leadership would become the mass-based political movement essential to obliterating the forces of reaction and authoritarianism in Quebec.42
On a copy of Lesage’s acceptance speech, Trudeau underlined Lesage’s call for the party to seek the active sympathy of “all honest citizens who want to serve the democratic ideal,” and for those groups that wish to “pursue their action from the margins of existing political parties” to rally under the Liberal banner to defeat Duplessis. At this point in the document he scrawled, “Drapeau?”43
In 1954 Jean Drapeau had won the Montreal mayoralty as the head of the non-partisan Civic Action League. Might not the mayor and his movement be an alternative to Lesage if it were to spread its democratic embrace beyond Montreal? Drapeau, who perhaps shared the dream, invited Gérard Pelletier, Trudeau, and the activist Jean-Paul Lefebvre to the basement of his home in the Cité-Jardin. The talk went badly when, according to Pelletier, Trudeau and Drapeau fought over the nature of democracy and “Trudeau invoked principles that were very disturbing to the practical mind of Drapeau.”44 Trudeau truly believed a popular movement based on the young and an educated working class could achieve genuine social change in Quebec. Drapeau thought he was unrealistic.
Trudeau’s consistency of views was becoming the enemy of compromise—and he increasingly antagonized his former colleagues and friends. In the minutes of meetings of the Rassemblement, he is central in defining its purpose and direction. He took the lead in s
teering the group away from the Parti social démocratique, to the distress of Thérèse Casgrain and its new leader, Michel Chartrand, who had hoped that Trudeau’s socialism would bring about his definite commitment to the party. He had worked closely with Chartrand in the anti-conscription campaigns of the early 1940s and through all the labour actions of the 1950s. Now they were becoming antagonists.
But if Trudeau disappointed Drapeau, Chartrand, and others, he thrilled an eighteen-year-old Ottawa student who met him at a Rassemblement meeting in Ottawa in April 1957. Madeleine Gobeil, who was to play a major part in his personal life, had read Cité libre and the book on the Asbestos Strike. Now, she wrote, she would like to know more about the myths surrounding Pierre Trudeau.45 He responded to her letter with a serious discussion about politics, but he remained elusive about himself. Nevertheless, her interest charmed him, and they stayed in contact with each other until his marriage in 1971.
Gradually, television also contributed to the myth that was developing about Pierre Trudeau. Although he appeared much less often on the magic screen than Lévesque or Laurendeau, sometimes, he stole the scene. On one occasion on his program Pays et Merveilles, Laurendeau taunted him about being a young millionaire touring the world. “Did you use a rickshaw, the Chinese vehicle where ‘coolies’ pull the rich?” he demanded, archly. “Yes,” responded Trudeau, “but I put the coolie in the seat and pulled the rickshaw myself.”46 The quick repartee that was the mark of the public Trudeau was already apparent.
By the fall of 1958 it was clear that Jean Lesage was having some success in rallying the opponents of Duplessis behind him, but his arguments did not convince Trudeau. Rather, in the October 1958 issue of Cité libre, Trudeau announced the creation of yet another new grouping—the Union des forces démocratiques—a movement that aimed to bring together everyone who shared a belief in democratic principles. Those who committed themselves to its Democratic Manifesto were not allowed to be members of political parties that refused to support the new Union. With the lowest cards in the deck, the Union bluffed and pretended it had the highest trump. The Rassemblement continued to exist, but the Union became the new vehicle for popular political reform—primarily through the accumulation of signatures that were intended to indicate political strength.* Trudeau signed the document as the president of the Rassemblement, but there were few other prominent or inspiring new faces.47
Over at Cité libre, Gérard Pelletier was becoming uneasy regarding the finances, the gaps between issues, and, increasingly, the divisions within the group. The directors gathered on November 11, 1958, in the grand Outremont home Trudeau still shared with his mother—the first time since a sparsely attended meeting in May. The minutes bear a strained sense of humour: “Mr. Pierre Vadeboncoeur’s absence was regretted by no one; Mr. Gilles Marcotte’s, whose sympathy for Cité libre was notorious, was lamentable. The absence of two directors, Messieurs Charles Lussier and Roger Rolland, whose commitment to Cité libre has become more and more intermittent, has been noted.” Trudeau began with a complaint about the funding of the journal, pointing out that, in the past, a few of the directors had been obliged to pay personally for the publication of some of the issues. How the other directors reacted as they sat in a room with a famed Braque and a startling Pellan painting on the walls, elegant china in a cabinet nearby, and Grenier, the chauffeur, outside was not recorded in the minutes. They agreed to prepare another issue, for which the missing Vadeboncoeur was given major responsibility. They did not accept Guy Cormier’s suggestion that the journal should add a statement on its cover page that “the articles published in the review do not reflect the opinions of Cité libre but only the authors themselves.” Pelletier argued that such a statement would “separate” the journal too much from the opinions expressed in it.
The directors met again just before Christmas at Gérard Pelletier’s more modest home at 2391 Benny: “One doesn’t know whether it was the approaching Christmas season, the Jingle Bells on St. Catherine Street, the Santa Clauses in the store windows that stirred the spirits of the participants, but the assembly was a wild one.” At one point, Pelletier, who was chairing the meeting, pointed his index finger at Trudeau and told him to shut up because, for once, he was not the chair, so couldn’t talk whenever he wished.* Trudeau, the minutes recorded, refused to heed the chair’s rebuke. Once again the meeting went badly. Pierre Vadeboncoeur, who was absent again, had told Trudeau that he had no time for an issue on “peace” that he had earlier proposed. They were left with a few potential articles, most of them already overdue. Trudeau would see if a December 1958 conference in Ottawa on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had any useful material. Réginald Boisvert promised a piece on three university students who were protesting outside Duplessis’s office, including Laurendeau’s daughter Francine and the future Trudeau minister Jean-Pierre Goyer. Before long, however, Boisvert resigned from Cité libre, declaring he had lost interest.48
The two groups—the Rassemblement and the Union des forces démocratiques—had brought attention to Trudeau’s belief that a broad democratic mass movement was necessary to defeat the Union nationale and the forces of reaction. Now another new argument became strongly identified with Trudeau in these years: that participation in the democratic process and individual rights took precedence over the collective rights of the group and the authority of leaders, whether of church or state. He became a crusading lawyer for the cause, taking on cases that supported the rights of aggrieved individuals against both the state and the church. His clients ranged from the Canadian Sunbathing Association, which was violently raided by Quebec provincial police officers bearing cameras as well as guns, to the inmates of asylums and hospitals. The sunbathers seemed to intrigue him—he spent considerable time researching their case. He also vigorously supported Jacques Hébert’s defence of the accused murderer Wilbert Coffin and, after Hébert was convicted for contempt of court, he successfully took his appeal to the Quebec Court of Appeal. He became even closer to Frank Scott, after the law professor moved directly from the classroom into the courtroom to win victories in the Supreme Court in the Roncarelli case and the Padlock Law case. Trudeau made sure to attend some of the sittings for these historic cases.
These decisions, along with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s announcement of a Canadian Bill of Rights, intrigued Trudeau and drew his attention to the courts outside Quebec. At the December 1958 conference on the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in Ottawa, he encountered Bora Laskin, the future chief justice, who was emerging as the major legal academic in English Canada. Laskin, like Frank Scott, had begun to argue strongly for a Canadian bill of rights in the mid-1950s—Laskin, in particular, believed that the debate over the bill raised fundamental issues of Canadian federalism. His approach was highly layered: “The most fundamental civil liberties (freedom of association, speech, and religion) were exclusively assigned to federal authorities,” while others, including those associated with legal process or economic entitlements, might be either federal or provincial, depending on the precise right.
Scott differed from Laskin on this issue by arguing for the constitutional entrenchment of all important rights. Trudeau sided with Scott: he looked on the Constitution not only as a protector of political rights but as a means of placing limits on “the liberal idea of property” that was “hampering the march toward economic democracy.” It was a debate in which Trudeau, who had already argued for a bill of rights encompassing “the most fundamental civil liberties” in his presentation to the Tremblay Commission four years earlier, was to become an important participant and, ultimately, the most significant one.49 The debates linking federalism and civil liberties flowed directly into discussions about the future of Quebec—once Maurice Duplessis was out of the way. Moreover, Trudeau’s increasing participation in these debates and the publication of his article in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science made him much better known among English Canadians.
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No person was more important in Trudeau’s introduction to English Canada than Frank Scott—a foremost literary talent, legal scholar, and socialist political activist. Trudeau recalled first meeting Scott when he came to the Université de Montréal in 1943 to speak understandingly of French Canadians and their opposition to conscription. Scott, for his part, believed that he first saw Trudeau at an anti-Semitic and anti-Communist rally in the late thirties. He was deeply concerned by what he termed “fascism in Quebec” and became a leader in the transformation of Canadian socialism from the authoritarianism evident in the Regina Manifesto to a Western European democratic socialist party. Despite his loathing of fascism, he had initially been opposed to Canadian participation in the Second World War, and was the most prominent English-Canadian voice arguing the case of Quebec opposition to conscription.
Scott and Trudeau met each other frequently as they worked on civil liberty questions in the early fifties and became active in the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Scott was Trudeau’s anglophone ideal: a highly intellectual man whose ideas were balanced by the practical needs of everyday politics; a constitutional lawyer who sought to protect individual rights within a bill of rights; and a poet who was also an eminent social scientist. A large man whose ubiquitous pipe created a pensive presence, Scott intimidated gently. Women adored him, and he responded generously—to his artist wife Marian’s considerable dismay. Trudeau welcomed invitations to Scott’s parties at his country house in the Eastern Townships, where beautiful young anglophone students clustered about the professor. He also gained access to leading European socialists through Scott’s introduction. Here was a man of considerable substance—and he intrigued Trudeau.50