The Marxist Quarterly Autumn 1965

Current Studies of Quebec

THE QUEBEC REVOLUTION by Hugh Bingham Myers, Harvest House, Montreal, 109 pp., cloth $4.00, paper $2.00.

THIS IS ONE of the French-Canadian Renaissance Series in English, which includes volumes like The True Face of Duplessis by Pierre Laporte, The Impertinences of Brother Anonymous by Père Jérôme and The Nationalization of Electric Power by Paul Sauriol. Appearing originally in French and published by either Les Editions de l*Homme or Les Editions du Joury Harvest House is performing a unique service to non-French-speaking Canada in providing the English editions.

The book is based mainly on newspaper accounts and reports of the events of 1958 up to and including 1963. The author dates the start of the "revolution" as 1959 with the death of Somebody -- the late and unlamented Maurice Duplessis. His sole incursion into the "pre-revolutionary" years is restricted to 1958, which necessarily limits his ability to portray fully the significance of events today. The revolution per se is defined as "a reaction against the Establishment," one that goes beyond separatism to a declaration of war against the established French-Canadian, Quebec order of things.

The year-by-year chronicle is a useful, although eclectic, summary of the main features of contemporary life in Quebec, clearly of informative value to the non-reader of the French press. However it does fall short of providing a sufficiently deep-going account of the turbulent developments in Quebec, the complex social movements at work, the possible direction of events there, and in particular the solutions being urged by the labor and socialist movements.

The author's personal bias in favor of André Laurendeau, co-chairman of the Royal Commission on Biculturalism, and his uncritical approach to this latter body contribute to the inadequacy of the book.

One would have hoped that in a book entitled The Quebec Revolution some further words about the work of actual practising social revolutionaries would be forthcoming -- but scant attention is paid the role of labor and the people in toppling Duplessis from power. Also one notes the absence of significant commentary on the heroism of those devoted thousands of ordinary people -- including many who were neither English nor French-Canadian, but Quebec citizens all -- who did so much throughout the '30s, '40s and '50s to prepare the ground for the great movements now under way in Quebec.

It would not have been amiss to have mentioned the trailblazing writings, speeches and activities of Marxists and members of the Communist Party, those who gathered the great petitions against the Padlock Law, the sweeping labor struggles (only barely dealt with) -- and the current attitude of labor and socialist spokesmen. Surely, a volume dealing with just this aspect of the problem is indicated.

M. Frank

 

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-- This OCR was prepared by Kathleen Moore in August 2014 for the legal research purposes of Habeas Corpus Canada. --