>>REVIEW
YOUNG TRUDEAU, 1919-1944: SON OF QUEBEC, FATHER OF CANADA
Max and Monique Nemni
(McClelland & Stewart, 343 pp.)
We are all fascinated by Trudeau, who helped shape his own myths as much as the events he participated in. We love to argue about Trudeau in a way we do about no other Canadian. For all the books and biographies though, he remains an enigma.
Max and Monique Nemni, former editors and compatriots of Trudeau from Cite Libre, have launched an ambitious two volume intellectual biography of Trudeau. Starting with full access to all of Trudeau’s papers, notes, and fully endorsed by Trudeau himself, the Nemnis have attempted to unearth a history of what Trudeau read, wrote, and thought, and the impact exposure to these ideas had on his developing political theories.
Soon after beginning though, Trudeau passed away, leaving the couple to continue alone. What they lost in terms of access to the man, they gained in independence and critical distance, allowing an intimate portrait of the young Trudeau to emerge. It is important to remember that the Nemnis were friends and colleagues of Trudeau, for in tracing his intellectual history back to his school days at the elite Jesuit school, Brebeuf, they have unearthed facets of Trudeau that have long been hidden and will be much argued over in the public realm.
One of the main controversies in the history of Quebec is the relationship that the Québécois social and political elites had to emerging fascist movements in France and Europe, leading to tacit support for the Vichy regime during the Second World War. The Nemnis demonstrate that much of this pro-fascist enthusiasm stemmed from the educational influence of the Jesuit colleges who, in following Rome’s anti-left wing stance, found themselves moving down a fascist path. The Jesuits wedded these tendencies to the desire for an independent Catholic Quebec, free from the tyranny of Protestant English Canada, inculcating these sentiments in a generation of Québécois youth.
Trudeau was no exception. The Nemnis have uncovered pages and pages of Trudeau’s notes, commenting on and endorsing the corporatist fascist economic theories promoted in Italy and l’Action Francais. A devout Catholic, very few instances of Trudeau the rebel and hell-raiser emerge, as we read polite letters written to various archbishops requesting permission to read books placed on the Church’s censorial Index. The Brebeuf mentality was so imprinted on Trudeau that by 1942, at age 23, he was actively involved with several classmates and a few former Jesuit teachers in planning a coup to create an independent, fascist Quebec. This is a long way from the left-leaning individual rights’ champion of later years.
The Nemnis’ revelations are turning into one of the most fascinating controversies in Canadian history. The opening up of Trudeau’s personal archives, timed with the publication of this pioneering work, lays the groundwork for further historians to argue aspects of interpretation. The Nemnis are quite upfront in acknowledging the limits of our knowledge about Trudeau’s fascist past. Without corroborating correspondence, we have no way of knowing how involved Trudeau was, when he first became involved, when he left, and whether he stored weapons in his house as seemingly implied at times, or even if it was all done tongue-in-cheek. That he was somehow involved in such plans is beyond a doubt.
Similarly, educators should be lining up to exam how the Brebeuf institution managed to exert such a strong cultural hold on Trudeau, bringing us back to what surely will become the central question in this debate: what is the relationship between the individual and the society one is educated in? Can we ever escape our school ties? Trudeau did, somehow, and that remains the question left for Volume II. |
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