by Conrad Black
Finally, on the splendid morning of July 23, 1967, came the man and the moment. The graceful cruiser Colbert eased up to the main pier at Wolfe’s Cove in Quebec, and de Gaulle, in his general’s uniform and cap, emerged to be greeted by the new governor general, Roland Michener (a Conservative and former Speaker of the House of Commons), and by Premier Johnson. De Gaulle and Michener reviewed an honour guard of the Royal 22nd Regiment in its guardsmen’s uniforms with bearskin busbies, and the opening speeches were emollient and appropriate. The Quebec City part of the visit was fine, including a trip to the splendid basilica twenty miles downriver at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, and on July 24, on another beautiful summer day, de Gaulle and Johnson drove in an open car the 120 miles along the north shore of the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Montreal, with several stops, including at Trois-Rivières. The highway, which was built by Taschereau and Duplessis, was claimed for the purpose of the visit to be the Chemin du Roy originally constructed by Louis XV, had fleurs-de-lys painted on it every few hundred feet, and the province’s school buses were used to bring in crowds from across Quebec to line the entire route. Johnson had pulled out all the stops, and there were perhaps a million people all along the roadsides. The two men, de Gaulle seventy-six years old, stood almost the entire distance to acknowledge the crowds.* In general, the Québécois have never liked the French, felt they were abandoned by them and owed them nothing, and have been keenly aware of the French tendency to disparage them as unlettered and almost incomprehensible corn-cobbers. But Charles de Gaulle was different; he was a giant of history who had resurrected France, raised up the French fact in the world, and brought it out from the shadow of the Anglo-Saxons, made France one of the world’s great powers again, and spoke French with such clarity and erudition that he made all French-speaking people proud of their culture.†
As the motorcade crossed Le Gardeur Bridge at Repentigny onto Montréal Island, there were dense crowds, more than five hundred thousand as de Gaulle and Johnson drove through streets jammed with cheering onlookers to Montreal City Hall in Place Jacques-Cartier. The square was filled with applauding spectators right to the Champ de Mars. Many of the people present held separatist placards and shouted the separatist slogan “Vive le Québec libre.” Undeterred by Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau’s statement that there was not a microphone on the balcony of City Hall, de Gaulle requested the installation of one and proceeded to it about five minutes after his arrival. The world was watching; for French Canada, after centuries of obscurity, their hour had come at last. No one, and certainly not Johnson or Drapeau, as they explained to me later, had any idea what a blockbuster was about to be detonated.
It was one of the most dramatic moments in Canadian history. In his powerful voice and piercingly eloquent articulation, the greatest Frenchman since Napoleon said,
My heart is filled with immense emotion in seeing before me the French city of Montreal. In the name of the old country, in the name of France, I salute you with all my heart. I am going to confide to you a secret that you must not repeat: this evening, and all along the route I travelled today … with my friend Johnson [considerable applause], I found myself in an atmosphere like that of the Liberation. Beyond that, I noted what an immense effort of progress, of development, and, as a result of it, of emancipation you are accomplishing, and it is here, in Montreal, that I must say this, because if there is a city in the whole world that is outstanding for its successes in modernization, it is yours. And in saying it is your city, I permit myself to add that it is also ours. That is what I have come here to tell you this evening, and I must also tell you that I will take unforgettable memories away from this immense gathering in Montreal. All France knows, sees, and hears what is happening here, and I can tell you that it will learn from it. Vive Montréal! Vive le Québec! Vive le Québec libre!” (An uproar interrupted the sequence.) “Vive le Canada Français! Vive la France!”
It was an unspeakable outrage. The crowd was almost delirious, but in France opinion was largely hostile after the speech and there was a widespread feeling that the general had gone too far. This was an unprecedented insult to a friendly and distinguished country where he was an invited and honoured guest. International opinion, which has never taken Quebec independence very seriously, was nonplussed, and despite de Gaulle’s effusions of the balcony, France never cared much about Quebec, going back to Henry IV. Nor were the Québécois as susceptible as de Gaulle imagined; the nationalists were flattered and excited, and Johnson got some impetus for constitutional changes, but no one but a few loopies wanted to liberate Quebec from the economic arrangements it had as a recipient of Canadian transfer payments. There were generous and naïve people who thought de Gaulle had got carried away, as Tommy Douglas said, kindly man as he always was, “at the end of a gruelling day.” There were those who recommended a gentle reaction and to let the incident pass. This was Paul Martin’s view, but he was not blameless in allowing matters to get to this extremity. It was also what French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville recommended, but his advice could hardly be credited. De Gaulle had insulted Canada and opened a domestic sore that almost everyone had been assiduously trying to ignore. De Gaulle himself, and his entourage, left no doubt of his premeditated intention to break up the Canadian federation.4 De Gaulle spent the night at the French consulate in Westmount (in the very bowels of Anglo-Montreal, which was 40 per cent of the “French city of Montreal” and had probably 60 per cent of its money), and the next day toured the Expo 67 World’s Fair site.
By now, as Pearson had feared, the Quebec position was slipping and events in that province threatened to get out of control. Strong French-Canadian federalists had been packed into the highest reaches of government, and new policies were already being devised to carry the fight back against the separatists for the heart and mind of Quebec. Pierre Trudeau (justice minister since April 4), Marchand (whom de Gaulle had declined to receive in Paris, unlike the least member of Johnson’s government)5, Marc Lalonde, Jean Beetz, and Martin’s undersecretary of state for external affairs, Marcel Cadieux, were all hardline federalists who could argue the case in French, and they called for radical measures. Pearson would have been within his rights to expel de Gaulle, but he didn’t go that far. Following a cabinet meeting on July 25, Pearson issued a statement that referred to the pleasure of all Canadians that General de Gaulle was welcomed to Quebec but pronounced his remarks “unacceptable.” Pearson said that all Canadians were free, all provinces were free, and no Canadians were in need of liberation, and mentioned the heavy sacrifices Canadians were proud to have made in assisting in the liberation of France. Pearson spoke of Canada’s “friendship with the French people” and purported to look forward to discussing these matters with de Gaulle later in the week.
It was obvious that no such discussions would take place, and de Gaulle abruptly announced that he would return to France the following day (on his aircraft, which had come ostensibly to take him to Ottawa and home). He did this after a morning ceremony at the University of Montreal, where the chancellor, Paul-Émile Cardinal Léger, one of the few people, Canadian or otherwise, whose French was approximately as sonorous and refined as de Gaulle’s, gave a cautious address that conspicuously failed to pander to the Quebec nationalists, and a luncheon tendered the departing leader on Île Sainte-Hélène by the City of Montreal. Mayor Drapeau and the formidable metropolitan chairman, Lucien Saulnier were the hosts. Drapeau spoke, in his distinctly Quebec accent that flattens vowels, but with great force, of how the Québécois had had to hang their culture on the barn door for centuries but had persevered and welcomed the return of French interest in them. De Gaulle departed, and Governor General Michener cancelled his official dinner and distributed the fine food that had been prepared for it to underprivileged children in the Ottawa area.
Canada was shaken by the incident. Most English Canadians thought Pearson had responded sensibly and condemned de Gaulle. Most French Canadians were favourable to de Gaulle as a
person and thought their anglophone compatriots had overreacted. Drapeau’s comments were much admired by all, and Johnson had done well. The outspoken federalists ran ahead of the outright separatists, but the province was shifting in a large zone between constitutional options. It must be said that if Mackenzie King had acted on his call to French Canada to stand in for stricken France in 1940 and been more tangibly supportive of Free France (though his attitude was much preferable to that of Churchill and Roosevelt toward de Gaulle), and if Diefenbaker and Pearson had had any idea of how to make common cause with some of de Gaulle’s reservations about American leadership of the Alliance, and especially if Pearson had not been such a priggish scold about the sale of uranium, even de Gaulle would not have behaved so egregiously. In terms de Gaulle had himself employed in the greatest crisis of modern French history, by the light of the Gaullist thunderbolt, Canadian Confederation was revealed in a state of unsuspected infirmity.
2. The Twilight of Pearson and Diefenbaker and the Dawn of the Trudeau Era, 1967–1968
In Quebec, the ground began to tremble. René Lévesque, a great public figure in Quebec for decades because of his television newsmagazine program Point de mire, and a nationalist of the middle left – who was generally assumed to be a separatist but had always said he was not one, though he could become one – once deprived of the perquisites of the government after Lesage’s defeat, left the Liberal Party and founded the Mouvement Souveraineté-Association (the Sovereignty-Association Movement), which was, as its name implied, a somewhat hazy effort to imagine that Quebec could both eat and retain its constitutional cake: become an independent country while retaining all the benefits of being part of Canada. It was an astute approach, as it slid into independence as gently and gradually as possible, like a turtle into water, as Lesage and Johnson’s constitutional adviser, Claude Morin, had already told Marcel Cadieux was the plan. These nationalists of the moderate to medium far left had infiltrated the conventional wisdom of the new waves of Quebeckers educated in the social sciences, thanks to Duplessis’s great expansion of education, and their antlike movements were everywhere, even under strong provincial leaders of more traditional views; Lesage was the nephew and protégé of one of Lapointe and St. Laurent’s principal organizers and had been a cabinet protégé of St. Laurent and Pearson’s, and Johnson, as Duplessis’s understudy, was neither a leftist nor a separatist. Where Duplessis had said that Quebec would only depart Canada if English Canada wished that it go, and Lesage had said that he was anti-separatist but that the separatists could prevail if his demands were not met, Johnson wrote a book entitled Equality or Independence, meaning that Quebec would seek independence if it was not a fully equal entity to English Canada, and Lévesque was now calling for independence but with a connection retained. The Rassemblement pour l’Indépendance Nationale leader, Pierre Bourgault, was calling for outright independence and the devil take Canada, so the whole range of options was on offer on the nationalist side before the federalists had advanced beyond the complacent assumption that it was all a matter of concurrent taxation. (Johnson’s sons, Daniel and Pierre-Marc, would personify their father’s options: Daniel as Liberal premier of the province and Pierre-Marc as Lévesque’s successor as the separatist premier.)
The federal Progressive Conservatives had finally recognized that they simply could not go on with John Diefenbaker as leader, that he was a somewhat splendid anachronism but not a man for this era, and a review of the leadership was successfully promoted by the party chairman, Toronto advertising executive Dalton Camp. The principal candidates to succeed Diefenbaker were the provincial premiers Robert Stanfield of Nova Scotia and Dufferin “Duff” Roblin of Manitoba, as well as holdovers from the Diefenbaker wars Davie Fulton of British Columbia, George Hees, and Donald Fleming, and Senator Wallace McCutcheon of Toronto. It was suspected that John Diefenbaker might also seek to resume the leadership. Roblin and Fulton were the closest the Conservatives had to a bilingual candidate, and Camp had pushed across the slogan “Two Nations,” by which he meant two cultures, but which, in common English parlance, sounded perilously like a schismatic approach to the Quebec issue, which the president of France had thoughtfully brought to the attention of the country with a passion that had not been seen since the conscription crises, if then. (Even in the world wars, Quebec nationalists were only threatening non-compliance, not secession, and especially not secession when English Canada had a large army that could be despatched in response to a constitutional crisis.) At the Progressive Conservative convention in Toronto in the first week of September 1967, Diefenbaker did enter the lists at the last moment, but came fifth, after Stanfield, Roblin, Fulton, and Hees, and it quickly came down to a runoff between Stanfield and Roblin, which Stanfield won, fairly narrowly. It was a good convention, and the party emerged in a rather united condition and looked as if it might be able to defeat the Liberals, if Pearson remained as leader. But Pearson still had three years to run in his mandate, was seventy, and, especially with Diefenbaker (to whom Pearson publicly sent a gracious message) departing, he was unlikely to lead another election.
In the autumn of 1967, the respected Ontario premier John P. Robarts, successor to George Drew and Leslie Frost, called a Confederation of Tomorrow conference of all the provincial premiers. Johnson, on the heels of his spectacular hosting of Charles de Gaulle, was at his suave and courtly best, scrupulously polite and charming, and electrified the televised conference and millions of viewers with a summary of what Quebec sought. He left no doubt that Quebec could be permanently happy in Canada. He sought explicit priority in many shared jurisdictions and the tax sources to pay for them, but sought nothing from the other provinces or the federal government for the status of French in the country as a whole. He put his views with tact and cogency and exquisite courtesy and concluded, “For decades, my predecessors, M. Taschereau, M. Duplessis, M. Lesage, and I have been asked: ‘What does Quebec want?’ This is what Quebec wants, and it wants a Canada that is comfortable with it. What does Canada want? I ask you: Que veut le Canada?” It was as successful as Duplessis’s tremendous exposition of Quebec’s constitutional goals at the Federal-Provincial Conference of 1946 (which King later claimed reminded him of Molotov – Chapter 7).
Quebec’s renunciation of its Catholic past was now well along, the first stage in the shattering of the nationalist-conservative alliance Duplessis had built and Johnson had salvaged. Johnson said to intimates that the 1966 election was like Duplessis’s of 1944 – very close, and won by the Union Nationale despite a larger Liberal popular vote – but that the next election would replicate Duplessis’s mighty sweep of 1948. Now the nationalists thought, logically in some respects, more and more ambitiously, and had been steadily less impressed by the Diefenbaker-Pearson circus that for nearly a decade had been the government of their ostensible country. As Johnson was making his final charge to resurrect the Duplessis coalition, the province was in full evolution. Duplessis had warned Cardinal Léger of the Church’s hold on the people: “Squeeze a fish hard enough and it will get away.” Léger replied that it was Duplessis who was the chief author of the process,6 Both men wanted some level of modernization and secularization, but the rural bishops wouldn’t hear of it. Léger had received some votes in the papal conclave of 1958, partly in respect for Léger’s intimacy with Pius XII – the late pope’s mother’s amethyst and diamonds formed his cardinalitial ring given by the pontiff – and partly because de Gaulle urged the French cardinals to try to elect a French-speaking pope. He was a very astute, contemporary, and popular leader of the Church, but for personal motives he retired as archbishop of Montreal in 1967, though only sixty-three, and departed for the Cameroons, where he launched a successful foundation and hospital for the treatment of leprosy and other illnesses and disabilities.
Johnson commanded the majority in the province and was convinced that he could make the centre a position of strength and keep both Lesage and Lévesque on the shoulders. And Pearson had rai
sed the numbers and quality of federal Quebec ministers and senior civil servants to the highest point in history, and on December 14, 1967, at the end of the centennial year – which had been an immense and joyous success apart from the single, loud, discordant Gaullist note – he announced that he would retire as prime minister and Liberal leader. Pierre Trudeau soon emerged as the favourite to succeed him, as now, above all other times, the Liberals wished to retain their practice of alternating French with English leaders, and Marchand declined the prospect. The crisis was rising, and the federal Liberals were responding with a new Laurier as Quebec came under the steady and artful influence of a modernized Duplessis. The forces both men would deploy and seek to lead surged and spilled beyond any previous parameters. Centuries of pent-up French ambition were oozing or rushing forward, and the federalists too, after decades of almost comatose complacency, were rising and bracing themselves. An epic contest for the adherence of Quebec and the continuity and character of the country was already underway.
Pearson had announced in the Federal-Provincial Conference of 1965 that Ottawa would pay half the cost of a medical-care plan that covered doctors and hospitals, that would be universal and administered by the provinces, and would be seen as the first step to covering all related matters, including dentistry and drugs. After the usual disputes within the cabinet, where Mitchell Sharp led the faction that wished to go slow because of the costs and the currently rising deficit, it was agreed to defer the date of implementation from the day of the centenary of Confederation, July 1, 1967, for one year. Pearson’s government also adopted a generous program of regional economic assistance, which in fact was largely directed at Quebec as a preliminary effort, in effect, to buy votes for federalism. Pearson called his last Federal-Provincial Conference for February 5 to 7, 1968, and Trudeau, as justice minister, carried the message for the federal government. He was effectively replying to Johnson’s brilliant advocacy of the previous autumn at Robarts’s Confederation of Tomorrow conference of the provincial premiers when Johnson ended by asking what Canada wanted. Trudeau served notice that he was opposed to any further devolution of authority to provinces, and he attacked the entire concentration on jurisdiction and evoked the whole matter to a determination and charter of the rights of citizens, which, he said, was vastly more important than scrapping between jurisdictions over their prerogatives. It was a brilliant tactic that caught Quebec off guard, and many English Canadians and even some French-Canadian federalists were delighted to see Trudeau more than hold his own with the cunning and articulate Johnson, in what became, despite Pearson’s attempts at asserting a halcyon influence, a rather sharp exchange between them. In the eyes of those inclined to credulity, Trudeau made Johnson and the others look like wolves devouring their prey when they should all be assuring the inalienable rights of all the people. It would not placate the hard-core separatists, but they were not going to be placated, and it uplifted or constructively confused almost everyone else.
