A new edition of a classic biography of one of the most charismatic politicians Quebec - and Canada - has ever known.
Nominated for the Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction, René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois in Power has been described as the classic work on one of the most important periods in recent Quebec history. Graham Fraser paints a vivid portrait of one of the most dynamic political figures of the twentieth century, describes the origins of the Parti Québécois, and gives a graphic account of key events that still resonate in Canadian political life: Quebec's language law, the 1980 referendum, and the patriation of the constitution.
In a new preface, Fraser completes the story of the last months of the PQ government and the period leading up to Lévesque's death in 1987, detailing how Lévesque's leadership continues to mark his successors.
Details
496 Pages
ISBN 9780773523234
November 2001
Formats: Paperback, Cloth, eBook
"Wise and fair-minded, it reveals the author's unusual understanding of Quebec's culture and public life." Macleans' top choices of 1984
"Here is a remarkable book, written with warmth, sympathy and good will, but without flattery, by a conscientious and rigorous journalist." Gilles Lesage, Le Devoir
"Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best examinations possible of the Parti Québécois ... an honest and remarkably well-researched book." Laurent Laplante, Le Soleil
"Graham Fraser has written a superb chronicle of the Parti Québécois' eight years in office since the election of November 15, 1976, dense with fact and anecdote, and brilliantly illuminated by word-pictures of the party's charismatic leader, his colleagues, rivals and enemies." Peter Desbarats, The Globe and Mail
"Fraser's is the best book so far on the extraordinary history of the PQ and its leader, and a very well-written one to boot." Mason Wade
"Fraser traces the events ... with a rare writing skill, rich in imagery, a mix of the anecdotal and the intimate with the solid substance of political developments ... he combines the best of journalistic and academic writing - on the one hand, fast-paced, readable, with a sense of immediacy as compelling as the daily newspaper; on the other hand, balanced and perceptive, an authoritative record." Donald C. MacDonald, The Toronto Star
"Fraser is an intellectual journalist ... But the strength of this work is the quality of the narrative, the ability to weave the events of the pre-1976 period and of the subsequent eight years into a well-honed political history." Philip Resnick, University of British Columbia
"The best book on Quebec for many years." J.L. Granatstein, York University
Graham Fraser reported on Quebec politics from 1976 until 1986 for Maclean's, The Gazette, and The Globe and Mail. Since then he has been parliamentary reporter, Ottawa bureau chief, and Washington bureau chief for The Globe and Mail and a national affairs writer and weekly columnist for The Toronto Star. His books include Fighting Back: Urban Renewal in Trefann Court, and Playing for Keeps: The Making of the Prime Minister.
René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois in Power, Second edition
Graham Fraser
Table of Contents and Excerpt
Excerpt
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition xi
Prologue xliii
Part 1 Winning
One The Greenhouse Years 2
Two Rene Levesque: Prelude to Politics 12
Three Whirlwind on the Margin 26
Four Leader 39
Five Three Elections 53
Part 2 The Politics of Pride
Six Forming a Government 72
Seven Camille Laurin and the Politics of Language 91
Eight Flying High 113
Nine Mr. Ryan Goes to Gilford Street 136
Ten Jacques Parizeau and the Sales Tax War 152
Eleven The Hesitation Waltz 169
Part 3 The Referendum
Twelve The Question 190
Thirteen The Divided Elite 208
Fourteen The Campaign 215
Part 4 The Politics of Humiliation
Fifteen A Provincial Premier 242
Sixteen Slump and Recovery 257
Seventeen The Constitution 279
Eighteen Morbid Symptoms 302
Nineteen Crisis Politics 321
Epilogue 347
Acknowledgements 359
Chronology 362
Appendix: Members of the Levesque Cabinets, 1976-84 379
Notes 384
Bibliography 412
Index 419
Excerpt: Rene Levesque, Prelude to Politics
"Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or an elite, was once a child. He was once small. A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably. His triumphs will be measured against this smallness, his defeats will substantiate it."
Erik H. Erikson
By November 1976, Rene Levesque was already a mythic figure in Quebec. A full-blown star for twenty years, first as a television host and then as the most outspoken member of the Liberal cabinet of Jean Lesage from 1960 to 1966, he projected a personality that seemed transparently honest, impulsive, mischievous, modest, outspoken, and provocative. His foibles - a chain-smoking sloppy dresser, he was a notorious night owl, working and then relaxing until the early hours - were as endearing as his strengths.
A study of Levesque is, in large part, a study of language, gesture, and culture - for, in a homogeneous society with a strong oral tradition, Levesque was a cultural force as much as a politician. An artist. A performer. A star.
In 1964, the novelist and filmmaker Jacques Godbout called Levesque "Quebec's first lay teacher", and compared him to Quebec's symbolic hero, Maurice Richard. It was a telling comparison, for Maurice Richard, the dark, explosive hockey legend with the smouldering eyes, is a symbol of both pride and humiliation, remembered for his scoring triumphs, his martyred rage, and his bitterness against the NHL and Les Canadiens management. (Richard is the only hockey player whose suspension provoked a nationalist riot.)
Levesque's career had been a torrent of words: a seemingly unending exhortation to Quebecers, emerging in a stream of prose that has been described as "an original mixture of joual, popular phrases, freshly coined words, American or English expressions that have been more or less gallicized, all expressed in long sentences plaited with an incredible association of ideas."
At his best, Levesque personified simplicity and action: in place of the vanity and rhetoric of traditional politics in Quebec, he brought a new energy and openness. He spoke in provocative, firecracker phrases, constantly surprising, exciting, challenging his audiences. As a public figure, he seemed rumpled, casual, informal, and accessible. Levesque was a constant smoker; cigarettes seemed part of his restlessness, together with his squint, his twitches, his shrugs; they filled his spaces, just as the rhythms of the smoke seemed to shape his looping sentence structure.
Politically, Levesque would adopt labels and self-definitions - and then thrust them away impatiently. Ultimately, he lived his ideological commitment in an intensely personal way, forging his political decisions out of events rather than ideas. Long after he might have been isolated by his own celebrity, he remained intellectually curious, questioning ordinary people he met with a seductive intensity, reading widely and voraciously, bolting from people or ideas that might limit him.
But there is another side to Rene Levesque. He is a restless, solitary man. Distrustful of many of the people around him, distant, suspicious, stubborn, he remembers slights, embarrassments, and grudges with slit-eyed bitterness years after everyone else has forgotten them. And despite his apparent casualness, he calls very few people "tu"; people who have worked with him for years call him "vous" and "Monsieur Levesque".
Sometimes it seems as if there are two Rene Levesques: one modest, witty, curious, tolerant and open, widely read and taking a spontaneous pleasure in new people and new ideas; the other distant, cool, suspicious, and narrow, with a vindictive streak. He seems to oscillate between humility and humiliation, pride and resentment, generosity and vengefulness.
Many people have remarked on his paradoxical impulses. Camille Laurin, the psychiatrist who was to become an important member of his cabinet, once described them vividly. It is a description that has remained valid over the years.
"Ever since I began working with him, Rene Levesque seems to me to have understood and empathized with the contradictions facing every Quebecois which compel him to strive for liberation and at the same time prevent him from achieving it. This is why he himself oscillates between the light and the dark, impatience and confidence, tenderness and seventy, scolding and the call to self-betterment, whenever he thinks to himself or talks to others. This is why he plumbs his own depths when in need of counsel during times of crisis. This is why he is a symbol of contradiction in everyone's eyes, and an object of recognition, hatred, and love."
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