by John English
41. Richard Gwyn, The Northern Magus: Pierre Trudeau and Canadians (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1980), 23.
42. “Notes sur la succession JCE Trudeau et la Cie Trudeau-Elliott,” TP, vol. 5, file 17.
43. TP, vol. 1, file 25.
44. Conversation between Trudeau and Suzette, his sister, TP, vol. 23, file 5.
45. “Cahiers d’exercices,” TP, vol. 2, file 8.
46. Fernand Foissy, Michel Chartrand: Les vois d’un homme de parole (Outremont, Que.: Lanctôt, 1999), 29.
47. The files on his Querbes period are found in TP, vol. 1, files 16–22.
48. The three essays are “Dévouement de Dollard,” “Danger des armes à feu,” and “L’enfant poli.” Ibid., file 22.
49. Trudeau, Memoirs, 25, 31–32.
50. Radwanski, Trudeau, 36. Bernier confirms the character of the political discussion on page 37.
51. The best description of the origins of Groulx’s nationalism is in Bouchard, Les deux chanoines, 38ff. Also, Pierre Hébert, Lionel Groulx et L’appel de la race (Montreal: Les Éditions Fides, 1996), 20–21.
52. Frédéric Boily, La pensée nationaliste de Lionel Groulx (Sillery, Que.: Les Éditions du Septentrion, 2003), 50.
53. Lionel Groulx, L’appel de la race (Montreal: Bibliothèque de 1’Action française, 1922). See the account of the reception of the novel in Boily, La pensée, ch. 5.
54. Quoted in Donald Horton, André Laurendeau: French-Canadian Nationalist, 1912–1968 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 82.
55. See Louise Bienvenue, Quand la jeunesse entre en scène: L’action catholique avant la révolution tranquille (Montreal: Les Édition du Boréal, 2003), 42–44.
56. Trudeau, Memoirs, 21. For the water incident, see Trudeau to mother, April 14, 1937, TP, vol. 2, file 8. On friends, see Radwanski, Trudeau, 53; and Clarkson and McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, 1: 36–40.
57. Personal Journal 1938, June 8, 1938, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
58. Interview with Alexandre Trudeau, Feb. 2006.
59. François Hertel, Leur inquiétude (Montreal: Les Éditions de Vivre, 1936), 14.
60. See Louise Bienvenue et Christine Hudon, “‘Pour devenir homme, tu transgresseras …’: Quelques enjeux de la socialisation masculine dans les collèges classiques québécois (1880–1939),” Canadian Historical Review 86 (Sept. 2005): 485–11. See also their “Entre franche camaraderie et amours socratiques: L’espace trouble et ténu des amitiés masculines dans les collèges classiques (1840–1960),” Revue d’histoire de 1’Amérique française 57 (spring 2004): 481–508.
61. Trudeau, “My Interview with King George of England,” Feb. 17, 1935, TP, vol. 2, file 5.
62. The comment is found ibid., file 10; for the underlining, see TP, vol. 37, file 9.
63. TP, vol. 2, file 8. On the incident with the other Catholic youth groups, see Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 131–32. This book indicates that Trudeau and Pelletier had not met at the time; however, his Journal entry for November 12, 1939, shows that he met Pelletier at a student conference in Quebec City. TP, vol. 39, file 9.
64. TP, vol. 2, file 8.
65. Ibid., file 10.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., file 8. Story “L’aventure.”
68. Vastel makes the comment in his April 8, 2006 “blog”: http://forums.lactualite.com/advansis/?mod=for&act=dis&eid=1&so= 1&sb=1&ps=10. The Nemnis’ account of the 1937 speech is found in their Trudeau, 83–85.
69. The comments on Maritain are in TP, vol. 2, file 8. See also Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 308ff.
70. The “Semaine sociale” program is in TP, vol. 4, file 6. The Fordham letter is in vol. 2, file 10.
71. TP, vol. 2, file 9.
72. Personal Journal, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
73. Ibid., Aug. 18, 1937.
74. Ibid., Jan. 2–5, 1938.
75. Ibid., Feb. 2, 1938.
76. Letter to mother, Dec. 19, 1936; undated poem, TP, vol. 2, file 8.
77. Ibid., Oct. 1937.
78. Ibid., Feb. 5, 1938.
79. François Hertel, Le beau risque (Montreal: Les Éditions Fides, 1942), 130.
80. The draft of the play is found in TP, vol. 1, file 29.
81. The original text reads: “Une des qualités du genre epistolaire est le tact. C’est à dire que celui qui écrit doit prendre ton proportionné aux circonstances et adapté aux sentiments de celui qui lira la lettre.”
82. Pierre to Grace Trudeau, TP, vol. 2, file 10.
83. TP, vol. 39, file 9.
CHAPTER TWO: LA GUERRE, NO SIR!
1. Pierre Trudeau, Personal Journal, June 19, 1938, Trudeau Papers (TP), MG 26 02, vol. 39, file 9, Library and Archives Canada (LAC). The original French reads: “Je me demande quelque fois si je pourrai faire quelque chose pour mon Dieu et ma patrie. J’aimerais tant être un grand politique et guide mon pays.”
2. See Farley Mowat, And No Birds Sang (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1979).
3. Debate transcript in TP, vol. 2, file 10.
4. Corriveau to Trudeau, Sept. 7, 1939; Trudeau to Corriveau, Sept. 12, 1939, TP, vol. 45, file 4.
5. “Entrevue entre M. Trudeau et M. [Jean] Lépine, 27 avril 1992” [Lépine interview], Trudeau Papers, (TP), MG 26 03 vol. 23, file 2, Library and Archives Canada.
6. J.L. Granatstein, Canada’s Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 180. More detail is found in Jean-Yves Gravel, ed., Le Québec et la Guerre (Montreal: Les Éditions du Boréal, 1974), especially Gravel’s own contribution, “Le Québec militaire,” 77–108.
7. Trudeau to Grace Trudeau, Nov. 26, 1935, TP, vol. 2, file 5.
8. In an influential work on the mid-1930s, political scientist André Bélanger argued that the period is marked by the intellectuals’ turning away from direct political action as they responded to the “mêlée” by concentrating on religion, nationalism, and economic organization through corporatism. There was, in his view, “a major turning” in 1934–36. Bélanger, L’apolitisme des idéologies québécoises: Le grand tournant de 1934–1936 (Quebec: Les Presses de 1’Université Laval, 1974). Of course, ideas do matter, and the political retreat of the intellectuals does not mean that their writings and thoughts failed to affect the actions of their students or their readers. Trudeau’s claim that he paid little attention to politics is valid in the sense that he and his classmates apparently did not participate in elections.
9. “Propos d’éloquence politique,” Feb. 10, 1938, TP, vol. 2, file 10.
10. Interview between Pierre Trudeau and Ron Graham, April 28, 1992, TP, vol. 23, file 3. Max and Monique Nemni have not seen this document or the reference to Trudeau’s participation in demonstrations against Communists cited in chapter 1. They assume, correctly, that Trudeau did take part in the numerous demonstrations against Communism by Catholic students. See their Trudeau, Fils du Québec, père du Canada, vol. 1: Les années de jeunesse, 1919–44 (Montreal: Les Éditions de 1’Homme, 2006).
11. No title, note of Oct. 6, 1937, TP, vol. 2, file 10.
12. Lucienne Fortin, “Les Jeunes-Canada,” in Fernand Dumont, Jean Hamelin, and Jean-Paul Montminy, eds., Idéologies au Canada français (Quebec: Les Presses de 1’Université Laval, 1978), 219–20.
13. Quoted in John Herd Thompson with Allen Seager, Canada 1922–1939: Decades of Discord (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1986), 313–14.
14. Douglas Letson and Michael Higgins, The Jesuit Mystique (Toronto: Macmillan, 1995), 143.
15. Quoted in Louis-P. Audet, Bilan de la réforme scolaire au Québec, 1959–1969 (Montreal: Les Presses de 1’Université de Montréal, 1969), 14.
16. “À 1’aventure,” nd [1936?], TP, vol. 3, file 8.
17. Personal Journal, entry of April 10, 1938, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
18. Pierre Trudeau, Memoirs (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993), 22. For a later appreciation of Hertel’s impact on students, see J.-B. Boulanger, “François Hertel: Témoin de notre renaissance,” Le Quartier Latin
, Feb. 14, 1947, 4. See also Trudeau, Memoirs, 23–24. On Hertel more generally, see Michael Oliver, The Passionate Debate: The Social and Political Ideas of Quebec Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Montreal: Véhicule, 1991), 130–35; and Jean Tétreau, Hertel: L’homme et 1’oeuvre (Montreal: P. Tisseyre, 1986).
19. Boulanger, “François Hertel: Témoin de notre renaissance,” 4. Trudeau saved this article in his papers. TP, vol. 38, file 30.
20. Tétreau, Hertel, L’homme et l’oeuvre, 64–65.
21. Lionel Groulx, “La bourgeoisie et le national,” L’Action nationale 12 (1939): 292–93.
22. On Groulx and democracy, see the discussion in Gérard Bouchard, Les deux chanoines: Contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx (Montreal: Les Éditions du Boréal, 2003), 91–93.
23. See H. Stuart Hughes, The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation, 1930–1960 (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1968), 67.
24. Brébeuf, May 27, 1939.
25. TP, vol. 39, file 9.
26. Jerome Kagan, Three Seductive Ideas (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000), 138.
27. TP, vol. 39, file 9, July 1939.
28. Trudeau to Camille Corriveau, Jan. 11, 1939, TP, vol. 45, file 4.
29. Personal Journal, Jan. 28, 1938, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
30. Ibid., April 12, 1938.
31. Ibid., July 7, 1938. Also in his notebooks, July 1, 1938, TP, vol. 2, file 10.
32. Clarkson and McCall argue that, throughout his life, Trudeau identified with Cyrano, the romantic poet and protector of the weak whose “life dream took on a particularly dramatic form … He would yearn, as he openly admitted, to climb alone to the heights.” Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, vol. 1: The Magnificent Obsession (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 44. Max and Monique Nemni disagree with the Clarkson-McCall interpretation and argue that Cyrano was a favourite of most French adolescents. However, the strength of Trudeau’s admiration for Cyrano’s individualism in 1938 is clear in the journal entry and seems to support the interpretation of Clarkson and McCall.
33. Interview quoted in George Radwanski, Trudeau (Toronto: Macmillan, 1978), 35. For a different view, see Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 89ff. They did not see the journal containing these remarks.
34. Personal Journal, July 29, 1938, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
35. Ibid., Aug. 1, 1938.
36. Ibid., Sept. 1, 1939.
37. Ibid., Sept. 3, 1939.
38. Ibid., Sept. 6, 1939: “J’ai peu lu, mais j’ai baisé une femme.”
39. Ibid., Oct. 9, 1939.
40. Ibid., Oct. 20, 1939.
41. Brébeuf, Nov. 11, 1939.
42. Personal Journal, Oct. 9–31, 1939, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
43. Alex Gourd to Rhodes Committee, Jan. 8, 1940, with enclosure of Trudeau’s record; “Recorder-en-chef de la cité de Montréal to Rhodes Committee,” Jan. 10, 1940; and Trudeau, “Statement of General Interests and Activities,” Jan. 7, 1940, TP, vol. 5, file 7.
44. Gérard Pelletier, then a leading figure in Jeunesse étudiante catholique, asked student journals to express their opinion on the war, but Brébeuf did not respond. See Michel Vastel, Trudeau: Le Québécois, 2nd. ed. (Montreal: Les Éditions de L’Homme, 2000), 34, for background on this incident.
45. Quoted in Catholic Register, May 30, 1940.
46. Kagan, Three Seductive Ideas, 145–46.
47. Max and Monique Nemni, who wrongly believe that Trudeau had not encountered Jacques Maritain, describe Maritain’s liberal democratic view and indicate that Trudeau opposed them. In fact, both Hertel and Trudeau had expressed agreement with elements of Maritain’s individualistic thought. It is a measure of the change during the Vichy years. Maritain was identified with the personalist movement, and it is clear that Trudeau, who first read Maritain in the mid-1930s, had learned about the personalist approach long before he studied in Paris—the time when the Nemnis assert he assumed its outlook as the core of his Catholicism. In his biography of Trudeau “le Québécois,” Michel Vastel points to 1940 as the decisive year when Trudeau decided to go to law school in Montreal and to move more deeply into the “French” world. His argument, which was new when it was presented in 2000, is based on a careful and, to my mind, accurate reading of Trudeau’s pieces in the school newspapers: Brébeuf and Le Quartier Latin. Vastel, however, did not have access to the full evidence on Trudeau’s political involvements—evidence that would have strengthened his argument. In their biography of Trudeau, Clarkson and McCall emphasize that Trudeau was “contradictory,” but they argue, much too strongly in light of the evidence of Trudeau’s own papers, that his father’s death was the principal explanation for his behavioural patterns. His own record suggests that he was not so ambivalent towards his father but much more reflective of the nationalist ethos as it developed at his school—Brébeuf. See Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 308–13; Vastel, Trudeau, 27–41; and Clarkson and McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, 1: 39–46.
48. Trudeau to Corriveau, March 30, 1940, TP, vol. 45, file 5. The Nemnis describe Trudeau’s favourable reception to Carrel and are justifiably critical. Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 98–103.
49. Personal Journal, June 19, 1940, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
50. Kenner to Trudeau, March 17, 1940; Trudeau to Kenner, May 1, 1940, TP, vol. 49, file 37.
51. Esther Delisle has argued that Trudeau became a strong nationalist in 1937 and pushed that agenda through membership in a secret society and, later, by intense political action with other strong nationalists during wartime. This account exaggerates Trudeau’s nationalism, especially before 1940, although it does add much detail to the existing record. It also refutes Trudeau’s own arguments that he stood outside politics and beyond the wartime controversies, except for a couple of eccentric interventions. See Esther Delisle, Essais sur 1’imprégnation fasciste au Québec (Montreal: Les Éditions Varia, 2002), 20–50. The sources she uses are an interview with François Lessard and Lessard’s book Messages au “Frère” Trudeau (Pointe-Fortune: Les Éditions de ma grand-mère, 1979), 122; and an interview with Hertel in La Presse, July 9, 1977. Dr. Delisle has kindly given me some of her original material, including Lessard-Trudeau correspondence.
52. Delisle, Essais sur 1’imprégnation fasciste au Québec, 42; and Sandra Djwa, A Life of F.R. Scott: The Politics of the Imagination (Toronto and Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1987), 170–76.
53. The question was asked by René Matté on April 5, 1977. Trudeau did not respond orally, but the Speaker indicated that Trudeau had nodded his agreement. Hansard, April 5, 1977.
54. Personal Journal, June 15, 1940, TP, vol. 39, file 9.
55. The trip is described in Personal Journal, June-July 1940, ibid. The draft of the letter to Camille in which he speaks about the family is found in his papers, vol. 41, file 2. It is undated but, obviously, July 1940.
56. Toronto Daily Star, April 8, 1968. Robert McKenzie and Lotta Dempsey interviewed Raymond Choquette, a Trudeau family accountant.
57. Brébeuf, Oct. 30, 1941.
58. Le Quartier Latin, March 3 and March 15, 1939.
59. He began classes on September 18, 1940. His notes indicate that Groulx was very detailed in his explanations and that he commented frequently on the physical attributes of the individuals he mentioned. TP, vol. 6, file 13.
60. TP, vol. 5, file 23.
61. Corriveau to Trudeau, Nov. 21, 1940; Corriveau to Trudeau, Dec. 30, 1940; and Trudeau to Corriveau, Dec. 31, 1940, TP, vol. 45, file 5.
62. Trudeau to Corriveau, Feb. 4, 1940 (1941 by content), and March 18, 1941, ibid., file 9.
63. This description comes from an interview with Charles Lussier. See Clarkson and McCall, Trudeau and Our Times, 1: 41.
64. Archibishop of Montreal to Trudeau, April 9 and April 17, 1941, TP, vol. 4, file 8.
65. Hertel to Trudeau, Aug. 27, 1941, TP, vol. 49, file 8.
66. Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall, Trudeau and Our
Times, vol. 2: The Heroic Delusion (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 35, based on an interview with Rolland.
67. Hertel to Trudeau, Aug. 25, 1941, TP, vol. 49, file 8.
68. Trudeau to Hertel, Oct. 18, 1941, ibid.
69. Ibid., Nov. 15, 1941.
70. Tétreau, Hertel, 70; Delisle, Essais sur 1’imprégnation fasciste au Québec, 58–59.
71. Delisle has provided me with several letters from d’Anjou to Lessard which mention Trudeau. Most are referred to in her Essais sur 1’imprégnation fasciste au Québec, 59.
72. TP, vol. 5, file 21.
73. Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 230ff. See Trudeau’s comments in his Memoirs, 24.
74. Trudeau to Corriveau, Feb.17, 1942, TP, vol. 45, file 6.
75. TP, vol. 5, file 12.
76. Hertel to Trudeau, Dec. 1941, TP, vol. 49, file 8; Trudeau to Hertel, Jan. 13, 1942, ibid.
77. Le Quartier Latin, March 20, 1942.
78. Montreal Daily Star, April 8, 1942. Delisle, Essais sur 1’imprégnation fasciste au Québec, 61. Trudeau has the clipping in his files. Riel did not remember that event when Delisle asked him about it. Lessard confirmed that Trudeau was a witness at the trial.
79. Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 243.
80. Hertel to Trudeau, April 17, 1942, TP, vol. 49, file 8.
81. Much of the letter is quoted in Nemni and Nemni, Trudeau, 216ff. The letters to Boulanger are in TP, vol. 44, file 6.
82. Trudeau, Memoirs, 26–27; Nancy Southam, ed., Pierre (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005), 66–67. A note in Trudeau’s papers, vol. 3, file 5, describes what he took on the trip. He had $70 in traveller’s cheques and $25 in cash—a fairly large sum for a motorbike trip.
83. Le Devoir, Nov. 26, 1942, found in TP, vol. 5, file 19.
84. Ibid., Nov. 28, 1942.
85. Trudeau to Roméo Turgeon, Dec. 9, 1942, TP, vol. 53, file 45.
86. Le Quartier Latin, Nov. 29, 1942.
87. Roger Rolland to John English, June 7, 2006.
88. Trudeau, Memoirs, 36–37; Lépine interview, TP, vol. 23, file 2; Claude Bélanger, “The Resignation of Jean-Louis Roux,” Nov. 1996, www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/events/roux.htm. See also Delisle, Essais sur 1’imprégnation fasciste au Québec, 43; and, especially, Jean-Louis Roux, Nous sommes tous des acteurs (Montreal: Éditions Lescop, 1998), in which he describes his membership in a secret “cell.”
