Lionel Groulx
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Image:Lionel Groulx c019195.jpg Lionel-Adolphe Groulx (January 13, 1878 - May 23, 1967), called Abbé Groulx (Canon Groulx), was a Roman Catholic priest, historian, nationalist, and traditionalist.
Groulx was born at Chenaux, Quebec, Canada, the son of a farmer and lumberjack, and died in Vaudreuil, Quebec. After his seminary training and studies in Europe he taught at Valleyfield College, then the Université de Montréal. In 1917 he co-founded a monthly journal called Action Française, becoming its editor in 1920. The journal took its title from a journal in France of the same name founded and edited by the right-wing anti-democratic nationalist Charles Maurras, but the Quebec journal later changed its name to L'action canadienne-française after Maurras' movement was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church in 1927. In the inter-war period, Groulx was an avowed admirer of António de Oliveira Salazar and Benito Mussolini and hoped Quebec would find strong leadership. The occupation of that role by a politician like Duplessis was for him a bitter disappointment.
In 1928, the University of Montreal insisted that Groulx sign a paper saying that he would respect Confederation and English-Canadian susceptibilities as a condition of receiving a respectable salary for his teaching work. He would not sign, but finally agreed to a condition that he would limit himself to historical studies; he resigned from the editorship of L'action canadienne-française soon after, and the magazine ceased publication at the end of the year.<ref>Mason Wade, The French-Canadians 1760-1967, vol. 2, p. 894</ref>
Lionel Groulx called the Canadian Confederation of 1867 a failure and espoused the theory that Quebec's only hope for survival was to bolster a French State and a Roman Catholic Quebec as the means to emancipate the nation and a bulwark against English power. He believed the powers of the provincial State of Quebec could and should be used, within Confederation, to better the lot of the French Canadian nation, economically, socially, culturally and linguistically.
He also developed a Quebec history curriculum that emphasized the heroism of New France, the challenge British Conquest posed to the survival of the "Canadiens", and how this challenge was met by lengthy political struggles for democratic rights. He particularly insisted, as had many before him, on the Quebec Act of 1774 as the official recognition of his nation's rights. He bore particular affection for the undertaking of Baldwin and La Fontaine, that in 1849 successfully restored the rights of the French language along with the obtention of responsible government, thus thwarting the assimilation plans of Lord Durham's policiy of forced Union between Upper and Lower Canada. (See Lord Elgin).
Groulx was one of the first Quebec historians to study Confederation: he insisted on its recognition of Quebec rights and minority rights, although he believed a combination of corrupt political parties and French Canadian minority status in the Dominion had failed to deliver on those promises, as the Manitoba conflict exposed. Groulx believed that only through national education and the Quebec government could the economic and social inferiority of French Canadians be repaired. Groulx was quite successful promoting his brand of ultramontanism.
Through his writings and teaching at the university, and his association with the intellectual elite of Quebec he had a profound influence on many people including Michel Chartrand and Camille Laurin although the many intellectual youth he influence often did not share his conservative leanings, such as his personnalist successor at the Université de Montréal, Guy Frégault. While studying in Europe between 1906 and 1909, he fell under the influence of disciples of the prominent 19th century French racist Joseph de Gobineau<ref>Mason Wade, The French-Canadians 1760-1967, vol. 2, p. 867</ref> (author of An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, the first systematic presentation of general racist theory, who had a strong influence on German and French anti-semitism). During this period, he wrote letters to his family in which he asserted that everything possible should be done to keep Jews out of Quebec.
Groulx's conservative Catholicism was not very appreciative of other religions, although he also acknowledged that racism wasn't Christian, and that Quebec should aspire to be a model society by Christian standards, including intense missionary action. [Le Canada français missionnaire, Montreal, Fides, 1962].
His main focus was to restore Quebecker's pride in their identity by knowledge of history, both the heroic acts of New France and the French Canadian and self-government rights obtained through a succession of important political victories : 1774, the Quebec Act recognized the rights of the Quebec province and its people with respect to French law, Catholic religion and the French language ; in 1848, responsible government was finally obtained after decades of struggle, along with the rights of the French language ; in 1867, the autonomy of the province of Quebec was restored as Lower Canada was an essential partner in the creation of a new Dominion through Confederation [La Confederation canadienne, Montreal, Quebec 10/10, 1978 (1918)]. In order to inculcate such pride in a nation he considered degraded by Conquest, he engaged in national myth-making, celebrating the days of New France as a golden age and elevating Dollard Des Ormeaux into a legendary hero. He has been described as the first French-Canadian historian to consider the period of the French regime superior to that of the English rule that followed it, evaluating the Conquest as a disaster rather than the common nineteenth century view of it as a blessing that saved Quebec from the atheist terror of the French Revolution.<ref>Olivar Asselin, L'Oeuvre de l'abbe Groulx, 1929</ref>
At the Ligue d'Action française, Groulx and his colleagues hoped to inspire revival of the French language and French Canadian culture, but also to create a think tank and public space of reflection, so that the French Canadian nation's elites would find was to remedy French Canada's underdevelopement and exclusion from big business.
Some collaborators of the review thus actively participated in the development of the HEC business school. Others yet were actively involved in the promotion of the Church's Social doctrine, an official Catholic answer to socio-economical distress that was meant to prevent the appeal of socialism and improve capitalism.
This Catholic social doctrine later became part of the 1930s Action liberale nationale party, a new party that intellectuals close to Groulx and the defunct Action française appreciated. When Duplessis's victory became apparent, some instead accepted to cooperate with his government and its reforms. But Groulx, and with him a large number of intellectuals, chose to oppose him. This led to their partial alliance with Liberal Leader Adelard Godbout, who served as Premier from 1939 to 1944. They soon broke with him on account of his submission to the Federal Liberals. Yet in 1944 they opposed Duplessis yet again, this time placing their hopes in another new party, the Bloc populaire canadien, lead by André Laurendeau. Future Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau was part of this young party, who soon suffered the same fate as the previous third party, the ALN. After the 1948 election, the Bloc populaire canadien disappeared.
Groulx was later remembered both for his strong case in favour of economic reconquest of Quebec by French Canadians, defense of the French language, pioneer work as the first chair of Canadian history in Quebec (Universite de Montreal ; see Ronald Rudin, Making History in Twentieth Century Quebec, Toronto University Press, 1997). Rudin underscores Groulx's founding role in scholarly History with the development of the Montréal History Department. Groulx founded the Institut d'histoire d'Amérique française in 1946, an institute located in Montreal that is devoted to the historical study of Quebec and of the French presence in the Americas and the publication of La revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, still today arguably the main publication for professionnal historians in Quebec.
[edit] Antisemitism
Groulx's antisemitism has made him a controversial figure. Those who have championed his ideas, principally members of Quebec's national movement that seeks separation from Canada, have sought to minimize his life-long, openly expressed, antisemitism. Groulx's supporters have declared that his antisemitism has to be understood in the context of his conservative Catholic beliefs. Groulx perceived that adherents of religions different from his own Catholic church opposed his religion. While Groulx was opposed to all non-Catholics, Groulx had expressed a particular hatred of Jewish people and Judaism in particular. Groulx opposed immigration to Canada by Jews, Mennonites, Mormons, and other non-Catholics.
While studying in Europe, between 1906 and 1909, Groulx openly expressed his hatred of Jews in correspondence with his family in which he asserted that everything possible should be done to keep Jews out of Quebec. Groulx was opposed to admitting, even temporarily, Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Europe; as outlined by historians Abella and Troper in their study None is Too Many.
The writings of Lionel Groulx also espoused the idea of ethnic superiority. His pedagogical novel, L'Appel de la race (The Call of Race) taught that "the children of ethnically mixed marriages suffer from a form of schizophrenia because they are inhabited by two different souls." A character in Father Groulx's book exclaims: "So it is really true that the mixing of races produces cerebral disorders." <ref>Nemni, Max, & Nemni, Monique. Young Trudeau: 1919-1944: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada p. 15. (2006) Douglas Gibson Books. ISBN 0771067496</ref> His writings contained vehement denials of any possibility that the French-Canadian race had been tainted by metissage with the blood of native Indians or African slaves. Lionel Groulx also espoused the l'achat chez nous policy that warned French Canadians not to shop at Jewish-owned stores. <ref>Nemni, Max, & Nemni, Monique. Young Trudeau: 1919-1944: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada p. 58. (2006) Douglas Gibson Books. ISBN 0771067496</ref>
All the same, Groulx's conception of the French Canadian race resembles the conception of the Jews as God's Chosen People. He considered the French-Canadians to be a race descended from heroes, degraded by the Conquest and lured away from their birthright by the foreign gods of American materialist culture, yet whose suffering was ordained by God, part of a divine plan to bring the true faith to the American continent.
In her 1993 book, The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929-1939, (Antisémitisme et nationalisme d'extrême-droite dans la province de Québec 1929-1939), French-Canadian historian and political theorist Esther Delisle documented Lionel Groulx's antisemitism as expressed in his writings from 1929 to 1939. Delisle exposed that Groulx's writings were rampant with various attacks against the Jewish people; blaming Jews for what Groulx viewed as his own society's social, and other, ills. However, Delisle's work has also been criticized, even by scholars such as Gérard Bouchard who agreed with her assessment of Groulx's antisemitism, for altering or misquoting many of her actual citations of Groulx's work, criticisms with which Delisle has strongly disagreed. Delisle's work linked Groulx to the race-based, authoritarian ideology of European fascism, not just for its anti-semitism, but also for his nationalist myth-making, his contempt for the current state of his people's culture, his admiration for dictators of the right in Europe and his desire for a strong authoritarian leader, and his condemnation of French-Canadian opponents as traitors to their race.
Groulx's writings and views were virtually unknown outside of French Quebec; however, he has been recognized as having a profound influence on French Quebec, its representatives, and its politicians. The reminders of Groulx's openly expressed hatred of Jewish people by scholars and other writers raised the issue of the appropriateness of having a prominent Montreal Metro station—-serving a city with Canada's oldest Jewish community—-named after Groulx. Consequently, in November 1996, a request was made to the Executive Committee of the Montreal Urban Community to remove Groulx's name from the Lionel Groulx Metro station. This prominent Metro station, a hub in the city's subway network, continues, however, to bear Groulx's name.
[edit] Other writing
In November 2005, Michel Bock won the Governor General’s Literary Award in the category of Non-fiction for the book Quand la nation débordait les frontières : les minorités françaises dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx (When the nation overflowed its borders: the French minorities in the thoughts of Lionel Groulx). Gérard Bouchard's Les deux chanoines is another important recent study of one of Canada's most important intellectuals of the XXth century. Two of his contemporaries, Andre Laurendeau and Olivar Asselin, have written studies of him.
Lionel Groulx's major writings include "Histoire de la Confédération", "Notre grande aventure", Histoire du Canada français (1951), and Notre maître le passé.
