Lionel Groulx

Lionel-Adolphe Groulx (January 13, 1878–May 23, 1967), often called by his priestly titles "Abbé Groulx" or "Chanoine Groulx" (Canon Groulx), was a Roman Catholic priest, historian, nationalist, and traditionalist.

Biography

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 in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, and 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 far right writer Charles Maurras, but the Quebec journal later changed its name to "L'action canadienne-française" after Maurras' movement was condemned by the Vatican in 1926. In the inter-war period, Groulx was an avowed admirer of far-right dictators António de Oliveira Salazar and Benito Mussolini and hoped Quebec would find strong leadership. The occupation of that role by a politician like Maurice Duplessis was for him a bitter disappointment.

In 1928, the Université de Montréal insisted that Groulx sign a paper saying that he would respect Confederation and English-Canadian sensibilities 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. [Mason Wade, "The French-Canadians 1760–1967", vol. 2, p. 894.]

Lionel Groulx called the Canadian Confederation of 1867 a failure and espoused the theory that French Canada'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 government 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 Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, 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 policy of forced Union between Upper and Lower Canada. (See Lord Elgin). His curriculum and writings de-emphasized or ignored conflicts between the clergy and those who were struggling for such democratic rights, and de-emphasizes any conflicts between the "habitants" or peasant class and the French-Canadian elites. He preferred the settled habitants to the more adventurous and, in his view, licentious coureurs de bois.

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 young intellectuals he influenced often did not share his conservative leanings, such as his personalist successor at the Université de Montréal, Guy Frégault. Some historians have claimed that, while studying in Europe between 1906 and 1909, Groulx fell under the influence of disciples of the prominent 19th century French racist Joseph de Gobineau [Mason Wade, "The French-Canadians 1760–1967", vol. 2, p. 867.] (author of "An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races", 1853–55, the first systematic presentation of general racist theory, which had a strong influence on German and French anti-semitism), although later in his life Groulx denied any such influence. During the period he was studying in Europe, 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 was not Christian, and he maintained 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 Quebeckers' 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. [Olivar Asselin, ..L'Oeuvre de l'abbé Groulx.., 1929.]

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 ways to remedy French Canada's underdevelopment and exclusion from big business.

Some collaborators of the review thus actively participated in the development of the HEC business school. Others were actively involved in the promotion of the Church's Social doctrine, an official Catholic answer to socio-economic 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 (ALN) party, a new party that intellectuals close to Groulx and the defunct Action française appreciated. When Maurice 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 Party of Quebec 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 again, this time placing their hopes in another new party, the Bloc populaire Canadien, led by André Laurendeau. Future Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau was part of this young party, which 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, and 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 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 professional historians in Quebec. His main intellectual contribution was to create a rapprochement between nationalism and the Catholic religion, blunting the hostility between them that had existed in the nineteenth century.

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 adherents of religions different from his own Catholic church as being 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." [Translated by J.S. Wood as "The Iron Wedge", Carleton University Press, 1986, and quoted in Nemni, Max, & Nemni, Monique. "Young Trudeau: 1919–1944: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada" p. 15. (2006) Douglas Gibson Books. ISBN 0771067496.] His writings contained vehement denials of any possibility that the French-Canadian race had been tainted by metissage (miscegenation) with the blood of native Indians or African slaves. Lionel Groulx also espoused his "l'achat chez nous" policy that warned French Canadians not to shop at Jewish-owned stores. [Nemni, Max, & Nemni, Monique. "Young Trudeau: 1919–1944: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada" p. 58. (2006) Douglas Gibson Books. ISBN 0771067496.]

Groulx's conception of the French Canadians as race resembles his Roman Catholic conception of the Jews as a Holy Nation and God's Chosen People. As he explained in his diary, the French were "l'Israël des temps nouveaux choisi par Dieu pour être le suprême boulevard de la foi du Christ venu, l'épée et le bouclier de la justice catholique". [Lionel Groulx, "Journal 1895–1911", vol. 1, Huot and Bergeron, eds., 1984, pp. 393–94.] Groulx posited the existence of the French-Canadians as a heroic pure-blooded race that had been degraded by conquest, and lured away from their birth-right by foreign influences; the negative aspects of which he identified with Jews, as well as with the English and Americans. In this context, Groulx could be seen as playing a role analogous to the Biblical prophets, denouncing the worship of the false gods of secularism, modernity and urban culture while calling his people back to what he understood as their true heritage. The French-Canadian "nation" whose suffering, Groulx imagined, had been ordained by God, was part of a divine plan as he saw it, to bring the "true faith," in his conception of Roman Catholicism, to the North American continent.

In her 1993 book, "", (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 for altering or misquoting many of her actual citations of Groulx's work, criticisms with which Delisle has strongly disagreed. One such critic is Gérard Bouchard, who agrees with the basic premise that Groulx expressed antisemitic opinions, but who strongly disagrees with Delisle over the importance of Groulx' antisemitism to his over-all body of thought. Delisle's work linked Groulx to the race-based, authoritarian ideology of European fascism, not just for its antisemitism, 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 are virtually unknown outside of Quebec; however, he has been recognized as having a profound influence on French Quebec, its representatives, and its politicians. His anti-semitism had been noted by historians such as Mason Wade and heavily documented by archivist David Rome, but because of the controversy over his openly expressed hatred of the Jewish people that Delisle's writing brought to the forefront, some Quebeckers raised the issue of the appropriateness of having a prominent Montreal Metro station 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 to bear Groulx's name, although a campaign has been launched to rename the station after the Montreal jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, who died recently.

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".

References

External links

* [http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/biblio/BibliographieGroulx.htm Bibliography on Lionel Groulx, largely works in French]