Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction

Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction

Editor-in-Chief Rédacteur en chef

Robert S. Schwartzwald, University of Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Associate Editors Rédacteurs adjoints

Caroline Andrew, Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa, CanadaCoral Ann Howells, University of Reading, United Kingdom

Daniel Salée, Concordia University, Canada

Managing Editor Secrétaire de rédaction

Guy Leclair, ICCS/CIEC, Ottawa, Canada

Advisory Board / Comité consultatif

Maria Cristina Rosas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, MexicoGiovanni Dotoli, Université de Bari, ItalieSaturo Osanai, Chuo University, Japan

Jacques Leclaire, Université de Rouen, FranceBernd Dietz, Cordoba University, Spain

Vadim Koleneko, Russian Academy of Sciences, RussiaMichael Behiels, University of Ottawa, Canada

Maria Bernadette Veloso Porto, Universidade Federal Fluminense, BrésilWolfgang Kloos, Universität Trier, GermanyMyungsoon Shin, Yonsei University, Korea

Wilfredo Angulo Baudin, Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Liberator,Venezuela

Coomi Vevaina, University of Bombay, IndiaHelen O’Neill, University College Dublin, IrelandJane Moss, Romance Languages, Colby College, U.S.

Jiaheng Song, Université de Shantong, ChineMalcolm Alexander, Griffith University, AustraliaInes Molinaro, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Therese Malachy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, IsraëlErling Lindström, Uppsala University, Sweden

Leen d’Haenens, University of Nijmegen, Les Pays-Bas

The International Journal of CanadianStudies (IJCS) is published twice a yearby the International Council forCanadian Studies. Multidisciplinary inscope, the IJCS is intended for peoplearound the world who are interested in thestudy of Canada. The IJCS publishesthematic issues containing articles (15-25pages double-spaced), research notes(10-15 pages double-spaced) and reviewessays. It favours analyses that have abroad perspective and essays that willinterest a readership fromawidevarietyofdisciplines. Articles must deal withCanada, not excluding comparisonsbetween Canada and other countries. TheIJCS is a bilingual journal. Authors maysubmit articles in either English or French.Individuals interested in contributing to theIJCS should forward their papers to theIJCSSecretariat, alongwithaone-hundredword abstract. Beyond papers dealingdirectly with the themes of forthcomingissues, the IJCS will also examine papersnot related to these themes for possibleinclusion in its regularOpenTopic section.All submissions are peer-reviewed; thefinal decision regarding publication ismade by the Editorial Board. The contentof articles, research notes and reviewessays is the sole responsibility of theauthor. Send articles to the InternationalJournal of Canadian Studies, 325Dalhousie Street, S-800, Ottawa,CANADA K1N 7G2.For subscription information, please seethe last page of this issue.The IJCS is indexed and/or abstracted inAmerica: History and Life; CanadianPeriodical Index; Historical Abstracts;International Political Science Abstracts;and Point de repère.ISSN 1180-3991 ISBN 1-896450-18-0© All rights reserved. No part of thispublication may be reproduced withoutthe permission of the IJCS.The IJCSgratefully acknowledges agrantfrom the Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearch Council of Canada.

Paraissant deux fois l’an, la Revueinternationale d’études canadiennes(RIÉC) est publiée par le Conseilinternational d’études canadiennes.Revue multidisciplinaire, elle rejoint leslecteurs de divers pays intéressés à l’étudedu Canada. La RIÉC publie des numérosthématiques composés d’articles (15-25pages, double interligne), de notes derecherche (10-15 pages, double interligne) etd’essais critiques, et privilégie les étudesaux perspectives larges et les essais desynthèse aptes à intéresser un vaste éventailde lecteurs. Les textes doivent porter sur leCanada ou sur une comparaison entre leCanada et d’autres pays. La RIÉC est unerevue bilingue. Les auteurs peuventrédiger leurs textes en français ou enanglais. Toute personne intéressée àcollaborer à la RIÉC doit faire parvenirson texte accompagné d’un résumé decent (100) mots maximum au secrétariatde la RIÉC. En plus d’examiner les texteslespluspertinentsauxthèmesdesnumérosàparaître, la RIÉC examinera également lesarticles non thématiques pour sa rubriqueHors-thème.Tous les textessontévaluéspardes pairs. LeComité de rédaction prendra ladécision finale quant à la publication. Lesauteurs sont responsables du contenu deleurs articles, notes de recherche ou essais.Veuillez adresser toute correspondance à laRevue internationale d’études canadiennes,325, rue Dalhousie, S-800, Ottawa,CANADA K1N 7G2.Des renseignements sur l’abonnement setrouvent à la fin du présent numéro.Les articles de la RIÉC sont répertoriéset/ou résumés dans America: History andLife;CanadianPeriodical Index;HistoricalAbstracts; International Political ScienceAbstracts et Point de repère.ISSN 1180-3991 ISBN 1-896450-18-0© Tous droits réservés. Aucune repro-duction n’est permise sans l’autorisationde la RIÉC.La RIÉC est redevable au Conseil derecherches en sciences humaines duCanada qui lui accorde une subvention.

Cover photo: National Archives of Canada, C-1882Lieutenant Arthur L. Howard behind a Gatling gun used during the 1885 Riel Rebellion

Photo de la couverture : Archives nationales du Canada, C-1882Lieutenant Arthur L. Howard derrière une mitrailleuse Gatling utilisée lors

de la Rébellion de Riel en 1885

Daniel SaléeIntroduction / Présentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Colin M. CoatesThe Rebellions of 1837-38, and Other Bourgeois Revolutions inQuebec Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Peter CampbellEast Meets Left: South Asian Militants and the Socialist Party ofCanada in British Columbia, 1904-1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Émile J. TalbotLiterature and Ideology in the Thirties: Fictional Representations ofCommunism in Quebec. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Guy Chiasson et Joseph Yvon ThériaultLa construction d’un sujet acadien : résistance et marginalité . . . . . . . . . . 81

Martin PapillonMouvements de protestation et représentation identitaire :l’émergence politique de la nation crie entre 1971 et 1995 . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Annis May TimpsonRoyal Commissions as Sites of Resistance: Women’s Challenges onChild Care in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women . . . . . . . . 123

Open Topic Section / Articles hors-thèmesBernhard KitousUn réveil de la foi publique au Canada? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Donna Palmateer PenneeCulture as Security: Canadian Foreign Policy and InternationalRelations from the Cold War to the Market Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

International Journal of Canadian StudiesRevue internationale d’études canadiennes

20, Fall / Automne 1999

Rebellion and ResistanceRébellion et résistance

Table of Contents / Table des matières

Review Essays / Essais critiquesAlvin FinkelRebellion and Resistance of Aboriginals and Labour. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Lynette Hunter and Susan RudyLiving Together: Critical Writing by Women in Canada 1994-1999 . . . . 231

Valerie Raoul and Keongmi Kim-BernardWomen’s Writing in Quebec in the Last Five Years: New Products? . . . . 257

Authors / Auteurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Canadian Studies Journals Around the WorldRevues d’études canadiennes dans le monde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

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The concept of rebellion issomething that most people rarelyassociate directly with Canadiansociety. The historian A.R.M. Loweronce wrote that English Canadianswere “a dour and unimaginativefolk,” and it was not so long ago thatthe primary image associated withQuebec was that of an ossified,reactionary and eminentlyconservative society. And yet,episodes marked by a spirit ofresistance and transgression are notlacking in Canadian history. TheRebellions of 1837-38 in Lower andUpper Canada, the NorthwestRebellion of 1885, many famouslabour conflicts and the terroristmovement for Quebec independencein the 1960s come to mind asnotorious examples of socialupheaval which should give the lie tothe stereotypical image of Canadiansas a placid and conciliatory nation,little inclined to indulge in majorpublic uprisings. It is true that thosemovements have often misfired andthat they were resounding failures;consequently, official history hasalways found it easy to minimizetheir significance and theirconsequences.Regardless of the outcome of thosekey moments, the history ofCanadian society, like the history ofany other society, has been shapedby, and continues to take shapethrough, the reality of highly variedforms of resistance to power, in itsmultifarious expressions. Whetherwe are dealing with major collectivemovements calling the status quointo question or with more ordinaryinstances of personal revolt, it is a

Il est plutôt rare que l’on associed’emblée l’idée de rébellion à lasociété canadienne. L’historienA.R.M Lower a déjà dit desCanadiens anglais qu’ils étaientaustères et dotés d’une imaginationpolitique limitée. Et il n’est pas siloin le temps où le Québec évoquaitsurtout l’image d’une sociétéossifiée, réactionnaire etéminemment conservatrice.Pourtant, l’histoire du Canada nemanque pas d’épisodes importantsmarqués au coin de la résistance etde la transgression. Lessoulèvements de 1837-38 au Bas etau Haut-Canada, celui dunord-ouest en 1885, plusieursconflits ouvriers célèbres et leterrorisme indépendantistequébécois des années soixantes’imposent à l’esprit comme autantd’exemples notoires de tourmentesociale qui devraient faire mentir lestéréotype selon lequel lesCanadiens seraient un peupleplacide, conciliant et peu enclin auxgrands emportements populaires. Ilest vrai qu’il s’est souvent agid’actes manqués et d’échecsretentissants : l’histoire officielle aeu beau jeu d’en minimiser le senset la portée.Il n’empêche, quelle que soitl’issue de ces moments clés,l’histoire de la société canadienne,à l’instar de l’histoire de toute autresociété, s’est déroulée et continuede prendre forme à travers la réalitédes résistances les plus diversesaux manifestations polymorphes dupouvoir. Qu’il s’agisse de grandsmouvements collectifs de remise enquestion ou de révoltes

IntroductionPrésentation

International Journal ofCanadianStudies /Revue internationale d’études canadiennes20, Fall / Automne 1999

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individuelles et ordinaires, de touttemps, résistance et rébellion ontémaillé la dynamique sociétalecanadienne. En choisissant cethème, la RIÉC se penche donc surune dimension centrale, maissouvent négligée, du devenircanadien.Le numéro s’ouvre sur un article deColin M. Coates qui porte surl’historiographie des rébellions de1837-38 au Québec. Souventprésentée comme une tentativeratée de « révolution bourgeoise »et pratiquement érigée en mythefondateur par nombre d’historienssoucieux d’identifier la source de lamodernité au Canada, cette périodede l’histoire canadienne revêt uneaura particulière dansl’historiographie. L’idée derébellion et de résistance estsouvent liée dans l’imaginairecanadien, et de manière presqueautomatique, aux soulèvements de1837-38. Aussi, ce texte duprofesseur Coates sert en quelquesorte d’entrée en matière et, enmême temps, de mise en gardethéorique. En effet, Coates nousinvite à la prudence quant àl’application à la situationcanadienne d’analyses conçuespour rendre compte de réalitéshistoriques qui n’ont pas d’abordprise dans l’expérience canadienne.Il admet que le fait de voir lesrébellions de 1837-38 comme unerévolution bourgeoise a le méritede situer ces événements dans uncontexte sociohistorique global quidépasse le seul cadre québécois oucanadien. En revanche, lacompréhension que nous en avonsest bien souvent calquée surl’expérience européenne de larévolution bourgeoise, présentéecomme un modèle de

demonstrable fact that resistanceand rebellion have been a constantcomponent of the dynamics ofCanadian society. By selecting thisparticular theme, the IJCS isdrawing attention to an essentialdimension of the Canadianexperience, albeit one which isoften neglected.The current issue opens with apaper by Colin M. Coates, whoexamines the historiography of the1837-38 rebellions in Quebec. Thisperiod is often described as a failedattempt at a “bourgeois revolution”and has been practically raised tothe status of a founding myth by anumber of historians, anxious topinpoint the source of Canadianmodernity. As a result, this periodin Canadian history enjoys specialstatus in historiography. In theCanadian imagination, the ideas ofrebellion and resistance are oftenlinked with the uprisings of1837-38. Thus, Professor Coates’paper is, as it were, ideally suited toserve as an introduction to thissubject as a whole, as well as toprovide a word of theoreticalcaution. Indeed, Coates wants tocaution against the temptation toapply, to the Canadian context,some analytical tools which werecreated to account for historicalrealities which have not been rootedin the Canadian experience. Heconcedes the fact that there is meritin defining the rebellions of1837-38 as a bourgeois revolution,for doing so help situate theseevents within a global,socio-historical context whichextends far beyond Quebec orCanada. On the other hand, ourunderstanding of these events isoften patterned on the Europeanexperience of the bourgeois

7


développement. Pour ColinCoates, cela constitue un traversinterprétatif qui empêche leshistoriens canadiens de chercher lesens propre des rébellions de1837-38 et de saisir cette périodeen fonction de la dynamiqueinhérente aux rapports sociaux etde pouvoir de l’époque. L’auteurexhorte plutôt ses condisciples àrejeter le concept de révolutionbourgeoise pour comprendre lesrébellions. Partant, il deviendrapossible de les aborder non pluscomme une tentative manquée detransformation sociopolitique, maiscomme un moment précis dont lapertinence participe d’abord etavant tout de la logique intrinsèqueet des conditions particulièresd’évolution de la sociétécanadienne.Lorsque l’on aborde le vingtièmesiècle, ce sont souvent les luttesouvrières, et les organisations demobilisation politique surlesquelles elles s’appuient, quiévoquent plus naturellement lethème de la rébellion et de larésistance. Bien qu’elles n’aientpas nécessairement joui d’uneinfluence aussi profonde que ce futle cas ailleurs dans ledéveloppement politique duCanada, les idéologies de la gauchetraditionnelle ont quand mêmeanimé l’essentiel de la critiquesociale et inspiré les principauxmoments de résistance politiquependant la majeure partie duvingtième siècle. Peu, tant parmi laclasse ouvrière à qui elless’adressent d’emblée que parmileurs détracteurs, y resterontinsensibles. Les deux textes quisuivent nous le rappellent. Lepremier, signé par Peter Campbell,nous fait découvrir une facette

revolution, which is set out as amodel for development. For ColinCoates, this practice constitutes aninterpretative shortcoming thatprevents Canadian historians fromlooking for the proper meaning ofthe rebellions of 1837-38 andunderstanding the period in light ofthe inherent dynamics of socialrelationships and power patternsthat prevailed at the time. He callsupon his colleagues to reject theconcept of bourgeois revolution ifthey want to understand the truesignificance of these rebellions.Once this is done, it will bepossible to discuss these rebellions,not in terms of failed attempts atbringing about social and politicalchanges, but in terms of a point inCanadian history whose relevancedepends first and foremost on theinner logic and the particularconditions that have shaped theevolution of Canadian society.Insofar as the 20th century isconcerned, the theme of rebellionand resistance tends to call to mindthe labour conflicts and theorganizations devoted to politicalmobilization that took part in theseconflicts. Even if the traditionalleft-wing ideologies did notnecessarily enjoy widespreadinfluence in Canada, they oftenwere the main driving force behindsocial criticism, and they inspiredmajor political resistancemovements throughout most of thetwentieth century. Few people, bothamong those opposed to thesemovements and among the workingclass, which was their intendedaudience, were indifferent to theseideologies. In that respect, thefollowing two papers will serve asuseful reminders. The first, by PeterCampbell, introduces us to a little-

8


méconnue de l’histoire de lagauche politique au Canada. Lesecond, d’Émile J. Talbot, exploreles représentations romanesques ducommunisme dans la littératurequébécoise des années trente.Peter Campbell examine les liensprivilégiés qui se sont établis audébut du vingtième siècle entre leParti socialiste du Canada et lacommunauté d’origine indienneinstallée en Colombie-Britannique.À l’époque, les villes portuaires dela côte ouest, Vancouver en tête,accueillaient une population issuede l’immigration indienne parmilaquelle on pouvait trouver uncertain nombre de militants etd’activistes de gauche voués àl’abolition du régime colonialbritannique en Inde et despolitiques d’immigration racistes etdiscriminatoires au Canada. PeterCampbell nous fait connaître lesprincipaux protagonistes de cemilieu, leurs combats et leuridéologie. À travers un texte richeen informations peu ou malconnues, il explore la dynamiquequi, en dépit d’un environnementsocial et d’une culture politiqueouvrière généralement hostiles àl’immigration asiatique, a favoriséune certaine convergence de lacommunauté d’origine indienne dela Colombie-Britannique vers leParti socialiste du Canada.Campbell note surtout combien,malgré le dogmatisme qui lecaractérisait, ce parti s’ouvrit à lacommunauté d’origine indienne etappuya ses luttes sans chercher àinfluencer ou à modifier le cadre deréférences politico-religieuxparticulier qui animait la plupart deses membres. Dans la Colombie-Britannique du début du vingtièmesiècle, le Parti socialiste du Canada

known aspect of the history of thepolitical left in Canada. The secondpaper, by Émile J. Talbot, exploresthe way in which Communism wasdepicted in Quebec literaturepublished during the 1930s.Peter Campbell explores the specialrelationships which began to takeshape, in the early 20th century,between the Socialist Party ofCanada and members of the EastIndian community, who had settledin British Columbia. At the time,the port cities on the West Coast,and Vancouver primarily, wereplaying host to a large contingent ofEast Indian immigrants, amongwhom a number of left-wingactivists dedicated to the dual causeof bringing about the end of bothBritish colonial rule in India andthe racist and discriminatoryimmigration policies that thenprevailed in Canada itself. PeterCampbell introduces us to the mainprotagonists of that movement,their struggles and their ideology.In a paper abounding withlittle-known or unknown facts, heexplores the particular dynamicswhich, in spite of a socialenvironment and a political culturegenerally hostile to Asianimmigration within the labourmovement itself, was nonethelesssuccessful in fostering a certainconvergence of the East Indiancommunity of British Columbiatowards the Socialist Party ofCanada. Campbell is particularlykeen in noting that, despite itscharacteristic dogmatism, the Partymanaged to make itself accessibleto the East Indian community andto support its struggles, but withouttrying to influence or attempting tomodify the particular political andreligious framework within which

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s’est battu pour et avec les militantsindiens contre le racisme etl’exclusionisme ambiant. PeterCampbell dévoile un pan nouveaude l’histoire politique canadienne etjette un éclairage insoupçonné surles origines de la traditiond’engagement politique profondqui continue encore de marquer leprocessus d’intégration del’immigration indienne au sein dela société canadienne.L’étude d’Émile J. Talbot noustransporte dans le Québec desannées trente. Bien que toujoursgardés à la marge de la viepolitique, les communistes et autressympathisants socialistes nelaissaient personne indifférent.L’influence internationale et laplausibilité grandissante de l’Unionsoviétique comme modèlesociopolitique de remplacementauprès des classes ouvrièresoccidentales au cours de cettedécennie inquiètaient forcémentl’élite traditionnelle etconservatrice du Québec.L’analyse que fait Émile Talbot ducorpus littéraire québécois produitpendant ces années révèle toutefoisque ce n’était pas tant la critiquecommuniste et socialiste del’économie de marché qui posaitproblème pour cette élite, mais bienle caractère anti-religieux etfoncièrement étranger del’idéologie. La productionromanesque québécoise s’arrêtaitrarement à la pensée anti-capitalistedu communisme, en partie parcequ’elle concordait dans ses grandeslignes avec les enseignementsdominants de l’Église catholique enmatière sociale. La littératured’alors table surtout sur la menaceque représente le communismepour l’intégrité et la pérennité de

most of its members functioned. InBritish Columbia, in the early 20thcentury, the Socialist Party ofCanada took part in a struggleagainst racism and the prevailingexclusionism. The Party acted onbehalf of, and in collaboration with,East Indian activists. PeterCampbell reveals a whole chapterin Canadian political history,shedding light on the heretoforeobscure origins of the tradition ofmajor political commitment whichcontinues to characterize theintegration of West Indianimmigrants within Canadiansociety.Émile J. Talbot’s paper takes usback to the Quebec of the 1930s.Even though Communists and theirsocialist sympathizers were beingshunted to the margins of politicallife, they did not leave anyoneindifferent. The internationalinfluence of the USSR which, in thecourse of that decade, increasinglyappeared to be a viable socio-political alternative in the eyes ofthe working classes in westerncountries, naturally became a majorsource of concern to Quebec’straditional and conservative elite.However, Émile Talbot’s analysisof the Quebec literary corpusproduced in those years reveals thatthe elite was not so muchconcerned with the Communist andsocialist critique of the marketeconomy as it was with the anti-religious stance and the essentiallyalien character of left-wingdoctrines. These Quebec novelsrarely deal with the anti-capitalistaspect of Communism, in partbecause the Communist critique ofcapitalism largely concurred withthe Catholic Church’s primaryteachings on matters of social

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l’Église comme institution etcomme source privilégiéed’inspiration des pratiquessocioculturelles québécoises. Dansla mesure où le projet communistesemblait surtout porté par desétrangers, la hantise ducommunisme allait de pair avecune peur atavique de l’Autre;anti-communisme et xénophobie aucours des années trentereprésentaient les deux faces d’unemême réalité. L’étude d’Émile J.Talbot raffine notre connaissancede l’histoire intellectuelle d’unedécennie qui, au Québec, futparticulièrement fertile enbrassages idéologiques.Aujourd’hui, les revendicationsidentitaires servent de plus en plusd’ancrage à l’expression de larébellion et de la résistance. Bienque le radicalisme de gauchetraditionnel reste encore présentdans le paysage discursif etpolitique canadien, on assistedepuis une quinzaine d’années à lamontée de l’identitaire commecadre de référence central desdiscours et pratiques de résistance.La critique de l’ordre établi et desrapports de pouvoir dominantss’exprime désormais beaucoup plusà travers et en rapport àl’expérience du sujet moderne quepar le recours à des grandescatégories socioéconomiquesd’agents sociaux. Il en va aussi del’analyse même de la résistance,quel que soit le moment ou lapériode historique à l’intérieur delaquelle elle se situe : lesaspirations identitaires du sujet(individuel ou collectif) et le procèsde construction de son identitéconstituent de plus en plus souventla pierre d’angle des travaux quitentent de rendre compte des

justice. The literature of the timeplaces greater emphasis on thethreat that Communism representedto the integrity and permanence ofthe Church as an institution and asthe primary source of inspirationfor the social and cultural practicesthat prevailed in Quebec at thattime. Inasmuch as the Communistideal seemed to be advocatedmostly by foreigners, the obsessivefear of Communism came hand inhand with the atavistic fear of theOther: in the 1930s, xenophobiaand anti-Communism were merelyflip sides of the same coin. Émile J.Talbot’s paper contribute to a betterunderstanding of the intellectualhistory of a decade which, inQuebec, was particularly rich andvaried.Nowadays, the expression ofrebellion and resistance isincreasingly rooted in demands forrecognition of an identity. Eventhough the form of radicalismcharacteristic of the traditional leftremains embedded in the discursiveand political fabric of Canada, thelast fifteen years have witnessed theemergence of identity as a keyvector of resistance. Criticism ofestablished order and of theprevailing power relationships isincreasingly being expressedthrough, and in relation with, theexperience of the modern subjectrather than through references tothe major social and economiccategories traditionally used todefine social and historical agents.The same holds true for the analysisof the concept of resistance itself,regardless of the historical contextin which it takes place. Theaspirations of the subject (whetheran individual or a collective) , andthe process of building that identity,

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dynamiques (anciennes etnouvelles) de résistance.Le texte de Guy Chiasson et JosephYvon Thériault participe clairementde cette nouvelle approche qui tendà poser l’identité comme principed’interprétation de la réalitésociopolitique. Les deux auteurstentent de saisir la dynamiquesociétale de l’Acadie depuis 1860 àtravers une analyse desmanifestations identitaires de cequ’ils appellent l’acadianité. Seloneux, la construction du sujetacadien moderne s’est effectuéed’abord et avant tout parl’articulation de la marginalité danslaquelle les Acadiens ont étéconfinés, et l’expression de leurrésistance à ce qui leur étaitsouvent imposé de l’extérieur.Deux temps longs marquent ceprocessus. Le premier couvre lapériode qui va de 1860 à 1960. Ilest marqué par la volonté combinéedes Acadiens de préserver leséléments fondamentaux de leurculture traditionnelle — ce quiaccentuera leur marginalisation —et de se voir reconnaître commesujet autonome — ce qui lesamènera à s’opposer régulièrementaux définisseurs de l’espace publicdans lequel l’histoire les auraplacés. Le deuxième temps débuteavec les années 1960 et s’étendjusqu’à aujourd’hui. Il s’agit d’unepériode au cours de laquelle lediscours traditionnel des élitescléricales perd sa positionhégémonique au sein de la sociétéacadienne alors quel’individualisme et sareprésentation d’une identitédélocalisée se substituent à lareprésentation collective qui avaitdominé jusqu’alors. Malgré lafragmentation des pratiques

are increasingly being presented ascentral explanatory factors in thedynamics of resistance, both newand old.The paper co-authored by GuyChiasson and Joseph YvonThériault provides a clear-cutexample of this new approach, thattends to define identity as theprinciple used to interpret socialand political reality. The twoauthors attempt to define the socialdynamics which have characterizedAcadia since 1860, through ananalysis of the various expressionstaken by the movement towards theconstruction of an Acadian identitywhich they call “l’Acadianité.”According to Chiasson andThériault, the construction of themodern Acadian identity cameabout, first and foremost, as a resultof an expression of the marginalstatus to which Acadians wererestricted, and as an expression ofresistance to what was oftenimposed on them by externalforces. Two major periods can bedistinguished within that process.The first period lasted a wholecentury, from 1860 to 1960, andwas characterized by a collectivedesire, on the part of the Acadians,to preserve the basic elements oftheir traditional culture — whichresulted in marginalizing theseAcadians even more. Furthermore,Acadians wanted to be recognizedas an autonomous subject — whichfrequently resulted in pitting themagainst the definers of the publicspace in which history had setthem. During the second period,which covers the years since the1960s, the traditional discourse ofthe clerical elite has come to lose itsdominant position within Acadiansociety, at the same time as

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sociales contemporaines, Chiassonet Thériault estiment que laréférence identitaire acadiennecontinue d’animer les protestationset l’esprit de résistance dont lesAcadiens restent imbus. Bien queles pratiques de résistance ne soientplus désormais acadiennes àproprement parler, l’acadianitécontinue d’opérer comme médiumde transformation des marginalitésen sujet historique.L’article de Martin Papillon faitécho au précédent en abordantégalement l’identité comme enjeuet moyen de résistance. L’auteurexamine plus particulièrement lerôle des revendications identitairesdans l’émergence politique de lanation crie du Québec entre 1971 et1995. Martin Papillon raconte etanalyse la transformation demouvement de mobilisation de lacommunauté crie au début desannées 1970 contre les projetshydro-électriques du gouvernementdu Québec en un mouvementd’affirmation qui utilisera de plusen plus un discours identitairefondé sur l’appartenance nationalepour justifier sa légitimité. Papillontente de dépasser les analysesactuelles des mouvementsd’affirmation ethnique ou culturellequi s’intéressent à la fonction del’identité collective dans leprocessus de mobilisation ens’attardant plutôt à la dynamique deformation, puis de transformationde l’identité qui l’anime. Loind’être une donnée préalable etinvariable susceptible de favoriserla mobilisation d’un groupe oud’une communauté, l’identité,soutient Martin Papillon, peut jouerun rôle stratégique dans la mise enforme et le succès d’un mouvementde protestation. L’action politique

individualism and its representationas an identity which is no longerspecific to a particular place isreplacing the collective presentationwhich had prevailed until then. Inspite of the fragmentation thatcharacterizes contemporary socialpractices, Chiasson and Thériaultbelieve that the reference to anAcadian identity continues toinspire the protests and the spirit ofresistance which remain very muchalive among Acadians. Even if thepractices of resistance are no longerspecifically Acadian, “Acadianité”continues to operate as a mediumwhich serves to transformmarginalized identities intohistorical subjects.Martin Papillon’s paper also positsidentity as both an issue at stakeand as a means of resistance. Moreto the point, the author examinesthe role played by claims for anidentity, as expressed in theemergence of the Cree nation inQuebec between 1971 and 1995.Martin Papillon both narrates theevents and explains how themobilization movement of the Creecommunity in the early 1970sagainst the Quebec government’shydro-electric projects wastransformed into a movement ofnational affirmation which,increasingly, went on to make useof a discourse of identity based onnational belonging in order tojustify its own legitimacy. Papillonattempts to go beyond the currentanalyses of movements strugglingfor the assertion of a national orethnic identity, which focus mainlyon the role played by the collectiveidentity in the mobilization process,by taking a greater interest in thedynamics of creating andtransforming the identity which

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des Cris de la Baie James enconstitue un exemple éloquent. Letexte de Martin Papillon montrecomment les représentants des Crisde la Baie James ont utilisé unestratégie de représentationidentitaire dont le but premierconsistait surtout à faire des gainspolitiques au sein de l’espacepublic québécois afin de se fairereconnaître comme acteur depremier plan dans un débat duquelils avaient été exclus au départ. Lastratégie a porté ses fruits, caraujourd’hui les revendicationsterritoriales et identitaires des Crissont bien implantées dans lediscours public et sont devenus unedonnée incontournable de toutdébat sur l’avenir du Québec.Annis May Timpson clôt la sectionthématique du numéro avec untexte qui, tout en posant la questionidentitaire en filigrane de la logiquede résistance, s’intéresse surtout aurôle que peuvent jouer certainsmécanismes institutionnels commelieu de résistance civile. Elle enveut pour exemple la Commissionroyale d’enquête sur la situation dela femme au Canada dont lestravaux eurent lieu en 1967.Contrairement à ceux qui croientque les Commissions royalesd’enquête sont utilisés par lesgouvernements pour coopter lepublic, contrôler la formulation depolitiques publiques particulièresou simplement retarder le processusdécisionnel et législatif concernantcertains enjeux socioéconomiqueslitigieux, Annis May Timpsonestime au contraire qu’il faut voircomment les citoyens parviennent àutiliser ce mécanisme comme sitede contestation pour interpeller etremettre en cause l’État de mêmeque les idéologies et les groupes

drives this mobilization process.Far from being a prerequisite andinvariable datum with the potentialto foster the mobilization of a groupor a community, Martin Papilloncontends that this identity can playa strategic role, both in shaping aprotest movement, and in ensuringits successful outcome. Thepolitical action taken by the JamesBay Cree constitutes a tellingexample of that role. In his paper,Martin Papillon shows how therepresentatives of the James BayCree nation did make use of astrategy to represent their identity.The main objective of this strategywas to make political gains withinthe Quebec public space, in order toget the Cree nation recognized ascentre-stage actor and party to adebate from which it had initiallybeen excluded. That strategy didbear fruit, inasmuch as Creeterritorial and identity claims havenow become part and parcel ofpublic discourse in Quebec, and aninescapable factor within anydebate on the future of theprovince.Annis May Timpson concludes thethematic section of this issue with apaper which, while raising the issueof identity as part of the basis forlogic inherent in resistance, takesmore of an interest in the rolewhich certain institutionalmechanisms may perform as meansof civil resistance. As an example,she cites the 1967 RoyalCommission on the Status ofWomen in Canada. Contrary tothose who believe that royalcommissions are used bygovernments to court publicopinion, to control the shape whichparticular public policies will takeor simply to delay the

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dominants. À partir d’une analysede mémoires présentés par desfemmes à la Commission royaled’enquête sur la situation de lafemme, elle montre commentcelles-ci ont réussi à utiliser laCommission à leurs propres fins demanière à faire valoir et à fairecomprendre tant aux autoritéspolitiques qu’à l’ensemble de lasociété canadienne combien lesdimensions publiques et familialesde leur vie de travailleuses étaientliées. Timpson soutient qu’enétablissant des liens entre l’emploiet les responsabilités familiales,elles sont parvenues à créer unebrèche importante dans le concepttraditionnel de citoyenneté, fondéavant tout sur une visionmasculiniste du social et desrapports socioéconomiques,contestant du coup les a prioris et lemandat trop étroit de laCommission de même que lespostulats théoriques du féminismelibéral.La section des articles hors-thèmescomprend deux textes, un deBernhard Kitous sur les méga-fusions bancaires au Canada, et unautre de Donna Palmateer Penneesur la politique étrangèrecanadienne de la guerre froide auxguerres commerciales actuelles.L’article de Bernhard Kitous noteque depuis 1987 la structure dusecteur financier canadien sembleévoluer irrémédiablement vers unedéréglementation importante envertu de laquelle pratiquement toutintervenant se voit reconnaître lapossibilité d’offrir tous les servicesfinanciers existants. Les cloisonsqui séparaient les banques, lescompagnies d’assurance, lesfiducies et les sociétés de courtageen des aires d’activités spécifiques

decision-making and legislativeprocesses surrounding certaincontroversial social and economicissues, Annis May Timpson isconvinced that more attentionshould be paid to the way in whichcitizens succeed in transforming themechanism which thesecommissions provide into a locus ofprotest, which these citizens use tochallenge the State and question it,and confront established groups andprevailing ideologies in society.Through an analysis of submissionsfiled by women with the RoyalCommission on the Status ofWomen in Canada, she shows howthese women succeeded in usingthe Commission to further theirown ends, so as to argue and makeboth political authorities andCanadian society as a whole awareof the full extent to which thepublic and the family aspects oftheir working lives were closelyintertwined. Timpson claims that,by showing the connection betweentheir employment and their familyresponsibilities, those womensucceeded in making a large breachin the traditional concept ofcitizenship, based mainly as it wereon a male-dominated vision ofsociety and the social and economicrelations, thus disputing the basicassumptions and the excessivelynarrow mandate of theCommission, as well as thetheoretical assumptions of liberalfeminism.The Open-Topic section iscomprised of two papers. Onepaper, by Bernhard Kitous, dealswith the mega-mergers in thebanking sector in Canada. Theother paper, by Donna PalmateerPennee, discusses the evolution ofCanadian foreign policy, covering

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propres à chacune tombent une àune. À la lumière du tollé deprotestations de la part desassociations canadiennes deconsommateurs, des dirigeantsd’entreprises, d’économistes et decertains gouvernementsprovinciaux contre deux projets defusion bancaire proposés par quatregrandes banques canadiennes en1998, Bernhard Kitous soutientqu’on pourrait voir émerger auCanada une vision originale dudéveloppement d’activitésfinancières en accord avec l’intérêtpublic. L’auteur analyse le rapportde la Commission MacKay (1996)sur l’avenir des services financiersau Canada et voit là le signe d’unnouveau paradigme d’économiepolitique fondé sur l’intérêt dupublic et selon lequel, en dépit despressions de la mondialisation enfaveur des méga-fusions, la tailledes banques au Canada constitueraun point nodal des éventuellesstratégies nationales etinternationales.Donna Palmateer Penee pour sapart nous entraîne dans uneréflexion sur la politique étrangèredu Canada non pas selon les termeshabituellement utilisés par lespoliticologues spécialistes desrelations internationales et desquestions de sécurité, mais à traversla lunette des études culturelles.Elle s’interroge plutôt sur le rôle etle sens de la culture dans lesrelations internationales du Canadaet soulève un nombre de questionsimportantes qui donnent àréfléchir : quel est l’état de laculture canadienne tant au paysqu’à l’étranger au regard de l’Étatcanadien? Quel usage l’Étatcanadien fait-il de la culture dansses relations avec le monde?

the period starting with the ColdWar and extending to the currentperiod of trade wars.In his paper, Bernhard Kitousremarks that, since 1987, thestructure of the financial sector inCanada seems to be irrevocablyheaded towards a majorderegulation initiative which wouldallow practically anybody toprovide all financial services nowcurrently available. The traditionaldivisions between banks, insurancecompanies, trusts and brokeragefirms, which defined the specificspheres of activity proper to eachone of these intervenors, are nowfalling, one by one. In view of thegeneral outcry raised by Canadianconsumer groups, business leaders,some economists and someprovincial governments against twomajor bank merger initiativescontemplated by four of the largeCanadian banks in 1998, BernhardKitous argues that one might expectto see the emergence in Canada of anew vision for the development offinancial activities, based on thebest interests of the public. Heanalyses the Mackay Commissionreport (1996) on the future offinancial services in Canada and heinterprets its findings as a sign ofthe coming of a new paradigm inpolitical science, one based onpublic interest and according towhich, in spite of the pressurestowards mega-mergers resultingfrom globalization, the size of theCanadian banks will constitute afocal point for possible strategies,at both the national and theinternational levels.Donna Palmateer Penee invites usto reflect on Canadian foreignpolicy, not in the terms customarilyused by political scientists who

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Comment le rôle de la culturelittéraire, si important dans leprocès de construction de la nation,est-il compris dans le contexted’une culture mondiale et despressions économiquesinternationales sur lesÉtats-nations? Questions prenantesauxquelles Donna PalmeteerPennee offre des linéaments deréponse à travers une revuepanoramique des diversespolitiques étatiques de productionet de propagation de la culturecanadienne depuis le rapportMassey (1951) jusqu’à l’énoncé de1995, Le Canada dans le monde/Canada in the World.Trois essais critiques viennent clorece numéro. Chacun offre unerecension d’écrits récents autour duthème principal. Alvin Finkel fait letour de la production savante desdernières années sur lesmouvements de résistanceautochtones et ouvriers. LynetteHunter et Susan Rudy analysent lesessais littéraire publiés par desfemmes sur l’écriture féminine auCanada entre 1994 et 1999. Enfin,Valerie Raoul et KeongmiKim-Bernard font le bilan de laproduction littéraire des femmesquébécoises depuis cinq ans.La RIEC offre encore une fois unesérie de textes variés, animés pardes perspectives et des visionsdifférentes et stimulantes de laréalité canadienne. Bonne lecture!

Daniel SaléeRédacteur adjoint

specialize in international relationsand security issues, but from theperspective of cultural studies. Sheprefers to question both the role andthe meaning of culture withinCanada’s international relations,and she raises a number of keyissues: what is the current status ofCanadian culture both at home andabroad with regard to the CanadianState? What use does the CanadianState make of culture in its relationswith the rest of the world? How dowe understand the role played byliterary culture, which is soimportant within the process ofnation building, in a global culturalenvironment and at a time when thenation-states are faced with majorinternational economic pressures?Those are some compellingquestions to which DonnaPalmeteer Pennee suggests someanswers through a sweepingoverview of the variousgovernment policies relevant to theproduction and the diffusion ofCanadian culture, and which tookeffect during the period between theMassey Report (1951) and the 1995statement entitled Canada in theWorld/Le Canada dans le monde.Finally, the issue concludes withthree critical essays, each of whichconsists of a review of recentpublications on the main theme.Alvin Finkel provides a synthesis oflearned studies published in recentyear and which deal with resistancemovements among Aboriginalpeoples and the working class.Lynette Hunter and Susan Rudyperform an analysis of some literaryessays published between 1994 and1999 by women, and dealing withwriting by women in Canada.Lastly,Valerie Raoul and KeongmiKim-Bernard offer a progress

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report on the literary production ofQuebec women writers during thelast five years.Once again, the IJCS is offeringyou a series of diverse paperswritten from different perspectives,and which convey stimulatingvisions of the Canadian experience.Enjoy!

Daniel SaléeAssociate Editor

Colin M. Coates

The Rebellions of 1837-38, and Other BourgeoisRevolutions in Quebec Historiography1

AbstractAccording to some of the best historians of Quebec, the Rebellions of 1837-38represent a “bourgeois revolution,” usually a failed one. This paperexamines the concept of “bourgeois revolution” in Quebec historiography. Itargues that both marxist and non-marxist historians have used the concept,implicitly or explicitly, to locate the roots of modernity — or the failure tomodernise — in a “bourgeois revolution.” In addition to 1837-38, theConquest and the 1840s have been cast as the appropriate period. Followingthe lead of scholars such as François Furet and George Comninel, this paperexplores difficulties with the theory, and evaluates how the concept hasrestricted Canadian historians.

RésuméD’après certains des meilleurs historiens du Québéc, les rébellions de 1837 et1838 constitueraient une « révolution bourgeoise » que l’on présente le plussouvent comme un échec. Le présent article se penche sur le concept de« révolution bourgeoise » tel qu’il a cours à l’intérieur de l’historiographiequébécoise. L’auteur y soutient que des historiens, tant marxistes que nonmarxistes, se sont servis de ce concept, implicitement ou explicitement, pourretrouver les racines de la modernité — ou de l’échec d’une tentative demodernisation — dans une « révolution bourgeoise ». Et les événements de1837-1838 ne constituent pas un cas unique : la Conquête et les années 1840ont aussi été identifiées comme la période propre de cette révolution. Dans lafoulée de la réflexion de chercheurs universitaires comme François Furet etGeorge Comninel, l’auteur s’interroge sur les difficultés inhérentes à unetelle théorie et évalue la mesure dans laquelle ce concept a pu imposer desbornes à la pensée historique.

The problem with Canada, we are sometimes told, is that it lacks arevolution. This shortfall has limited the country’s political culture bydenying it a foundingmythwithwhich all Canadiansmay identify. Canadacannot revel in a momentous occurrence such as the American War ofIndependence. Towhat event could aCanadian apply thewords ofMichaelKammen: “the American Revolution stands as the single most importantsource for our national sense of tradition”?2 On a popular level, Canadiancommentators have deplored this lack of a common reference point.3 Yet ithas posed a problem in historical narrative as well, particularly concerning


Quebec. Where is the turning point in Canadian history, the moment thatdivides the previous and subsequent periods into distinct blocks of time?

With its history of a seigneurial structure of land-holding, Quebecprovides the most likely Canadian historical setting for such a markedtransition as it changed from a feudal to a capitalist society. According tohistoriographical theory, the transition from the class structures associatedwith feudalism to a bourgeois-dominated capitalist state requires arevolution, whether within the framework of a violent upheaval or by lessradical means.

Two of the first professional historians of Canada, W.B. Munro ofHarvard University and George Wrong of the University of Toronto,focused on the features of French Canada that situated it within the ancienrégime by writing monographs on the seigneurial system.4 For Munro, thestudy of Quebec’s history allowed it to be cast in a Western Europeanmould: “when one comes to analyse conditions in New France in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one finds that they were not veryunlike those existent inWesternEurope during the ninth and tenth.”5 Otherearly twentieth century writers had similar perspectives. For JohnCommons, French Canadians were “a bit of medieval France, picked outand preserved for the curious student of social evolution.”6 If Quebec has a“feudal” past to conjurewith, its history can bewritten as that of a “normal”(i.e. Western) country. But, according to many historians, nothing but arevolution, a bourgeois revolution, can punctuate the proper historicaltransition from feudalism to capitalism.

The most obvious problem is that Quebec never did experience asuccessful political uprising, at least of the nature of the French or theAmerican Revolutions or the English CivilWar. Nonetheless, many of theprovince’s leading historians have used the concept of a bourgeoisrevolution by locating failed or successful upheavals at various points inQuebec’s past. Much debate has focused recently on the perception ofQuebec as a “normal” society.7 This essay will extend some parameters ofthat debate by focusing on the rhetorical device of the “bourgeoisrevolution” in the historiography of Quebec.

The Concept of Bourgeois RevolutionA bourgeois revolution involves the interplay of a number of linkedprocesses: the rise of the bourgeoisie, the transition to capitalism and achange in political structures, often involving liberal democratic forms. Itrequires the political destruction of feudalism and establishes thefoundations for capitalism. Perry Anderson has summarised the conceptmore briefly as “the political assault by the bourgeoisie on the AnciensRégimes of the late feudal order.”8

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The archetype was, of course, the French Revolution of 1789. By the1820s, historians suchasFrançoisMignet andAdolpheThierswerealreadyproposing that the French Revolution resulted in the victory of thebourgeoisie.9 This argument did not in itself imply a marxist framework.Liberal writers, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, supported this analysis.Although he primarily focused his interpretation of the French Revolutionas a further centralisation of power in the hands of the state, Tocquevillealso isolated the class which benefited most from this change. The middleclass was, he argues, “the aristocracy of the new and thriving social orderwhich had already taken form and was only waiting for the Revolution tocome into its own.”10 The concatenation of political, economic and socialupheavals is the defining aspect of this transition.

KarlMarxwould adopt this concept aswell in theCommunistManifesto,interpreting the French Revolution as the victory of the bourgeoisie in anhistorical narrative exemplified by class struggle. Because of hisuniversalistic explanation of history, the bourgeois revolution has beenconsidered a necessary step for peoples tomake on their way tomodernity.“Thebourgeoisiehasat last, since theestablishmentofmodern industryandof the world market,” the Communist Manifesto states, “conquered foritself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway.”11Nonetheless, Marx’s references to the Revolution were not as rigidlydeterministic asmany have subsequently assumed. The FrenchRevolutiondid not in itself determine the ascendancy of the French bourgeoisie.Rather, the rise of the bourgeoisie was a process: writing in 1844, Marxclaimed that “[t]he history of the French Revolution, which dates from1789, did not come to an end.”12 Nonetheless, marxists and others haveoften adopted a narrow version of Marx’s perspective.

Despite its liberal origins, the concept of bourgeois revolution is oftenassociated with marxist interpretations of history. Georges Lefebvreprovides a summary of a standardmarxist perspective: “The revolution [of1789] is only the crown of a long economic and social evolution which hasmade the bourgeoisie the mistress of the world.”13 Defeating thearistocracy, a rising middle class assumed the reins of power in a politicaleventwhich, although not led by it exclusively, benefited it predominantly.ColinLucas provides a caricature ofwhat he typifies as the “receivedview”of the French Revolution:

It was... a deeper conflict between the progressivecapitalist-orientated classes and the retrograde aristocraticclasses. The French Revolution was won by the bourgeoisie,despite some interference from below, thus establishing theframework for the emergence of the capitalist economyand a classsociety and — eureka — the modern world.14

The bourgeois revolution, many historians posit, is the linchpin ofmodernity. By extension, the historiographical stakes are rather high: a

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The Rebellions of 1837-38, and Other Bourgeois Revolutions in QuebecHistoriography

country’s successful modernisation requires a successful bourgeoisrevolution.

This concept has, in turn, been applied to other political revolutions thatmadeway for the transition to bourgeois hegemony, and in some cases laidthe groundwork for a subsequent communist revolution. The PuritanRevolution, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, theRussianRevolution of 1905 and theChineseRevolution of 1911 have beeninterpreted as specific examples of this universalistic historical necessity.15More recently, Robert W. Stern has argued that contemporary India caninstructively be considered in the throes of a similar process.16 Many otherinstances could be located in the historical literature. It was considereduseful, if not indeed necessary, for nations to experience this change. As acorollary, nations that failed to experience this caesura did not developnormally.

There is some debate whether the concept involves a revolution both byand for the bourgeoisie. While the classic definition might involve bothprepositions, others have argued, in trying to rescue the concept from thedifficulties raised by historical evidence, that a revolution for thebourgeoisie is enough. Thus, Christopher Hill writes on the English CivilWar:

The English Revolution, like all revolutions, was caused by thebreakdown of the old society; it was brought about neither by thewishes of the bourgeoisie, nor by the leaders of the LongParliament. But its outcome was the establishment of conditionsfar more favorable to the development of capitalism than thosewhich prevailed before 1640.17

The core significance of the concept regards the FrenchRevolution. Formany years, this was the dominant interpretation from all sides of thehistoriographical spectrum. Only in last few decades has the interpretationbeen subjected to considerable assault, primarily from liberal historians butalso from scholars of other political stances. It has proved difficult in thecase of the French Revolution to argue that the aristocrats were inexorablyfeudal, that the middle class was rising, that the changes in legal structureparticularly favoured thebourgeoisie, and that themiddleclass fosteredandindeed benefited primarily from the Revolution.18 Far from encouragingthe spread of capitalistic relations, the Revolution retarded the economicdevelopment of thenation. Furthermore, theFrencharistocracy remainedadistinct and influential social group into the nineteenth century, threatenedmore by demographic than social decline.19While therewas little about theFrench Revolution that was bourgeois, the question of class interests is notnecessarily an unworthy line of questioning, as some would imply.20 It issimply more complicated than the concept of the “bourgeois revolution”often indicates.

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Quebec’s Bourgeois RevolutionNot surprisingly, early Canadian historians, with their reference points andtraining oriented towardWest European history, sought to impose aspectsof a standard West European narrative onto Canadian developments,despite the inherent difficulties. Numerous Canadian historians, includingmanyof the best, have employed the concept of bourgeois revolution, somemaking it central to their analysis and others using it as a form of rhetoricalshorthand. First, let us examine historians who have located a bourgeoisrevolution in the history of Quebec, and then turn to thosewho did not. Theinfluence of the theory should be apparent in either case: both groups ofscholars believed that a bourgeois revolution should have occurred andwere willing to look for it.

In Quebec historiography, a number of events vie for the title ofQuebec’s bourgeois revolution: the British Conquest, the Rebellions of1837-38, and the aftermath of the rebellions. The political transformationwhich accompanied the British take-over between 1759 and 1763, somesuggest, had fundamental social and economic implications as well. Thecombination of social, political and economic forces in these discussionspoints to a larger concept than the shift from feudalism to capitalism. TheConquestushered inmore thanachangeof economic forces; it broughtnewforms of political and social hegemony as well. For Roberta Hamilton, themilitary defeat of the French armies heralded dramatic changes: “theEnglish Conquest of Quebec was just the second capitalist takeover inhistory.”21 Likewise, Gérard Bernier in a preliminary article discusses theimportance of the change of metropolitan powers in 1759-63. A morecapitalist Britain supplanted a more feudal France, with significantconsequences for the St. Lawrence colony. For Bernier, this represented a“rupture structurelle”: “En bref, la Conquête abrège singulièrement laduréede la transitiond’une économiedominéepar unprocès et des rapportsde production de type féodal à une économie capitaliste.”22

However, as Claude Couture has pointed out, this argument relies on aninflated view of the British advance over the French economy and anunderestimation of colonial realities.23 That the military conflict did notlead to bourgeois hegemonywas only too clear from the subsequent period,replete with the merchants’ struggles for political influence. Against themstood the British governors who favoured the political stability offered bycollaborating French-Canadian churchmen and nobles over the quickprofits of the British traders. Given their lack of formal institutional power,it is indeed difficult to argue that the bourgeoisie dominated society in thisperiod. More importantly, the Anglo-Celtic merchants were the wrongbourgeoisie in any case. The French-speakingmerchants who remained inthe colony failed to clear the path for broader capitalist endeavours, andindeed had difficulty adapting to the new political circumstances.

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Moreattentionhasbeengiven to theone large-scaleuprising inQuebec’shistory, the Rebellions of 1837-38. In an early work, the path-breakingmarxist historian Stanley Ryerson emphasised the bourgeois character ofthe Rebellions:

The 1837 Rebellion was in aim and content an anti-feudal,anti-colonial bourgeois-democratic revolution. As such, it takesits place in the long series of battles waged by the rising capitalistclass against the mediaeval restrictions of feudalism, and for theconquest of democratic rights, state power and independentnationhood.24

The rebellions were, then, a faithful echo of the French Revolution in aimand form.Supportingsuchaperspective is evidence that someof the leaderspreached at least a few decidedly anti-feudal ideas, such as the abolition ofseigneurial tenure, even if others such as Louis-Joseph Papineau were lesscoherent in their aims.

But locating the archetypical bourgeois revolutionaries among thePatriote leaders has proved difficult. As Allan Greer has pointed out,critiques of the Patriot leaders often try to hold them up to unreasonablestandards. “Rather than trying to categorize the Patriots as simply for oragainst capitalism, we should try to see them, against the backdrop of theirtimes, as political actors grappling with the dilemmas of liberalism.”25

Of course, the principal difficulty in interpreting the 1837-38Rebellionsas the bourgeois revolution of Western metanarratives is the fact that theyfailed.26 One may argue that the political leaders of the rebellions shared abourgeois outlook, andperhaps abourgeois agendaon social issues, suchasthe abolition of seigneurial tenure, particularly after Robert Nelson andC.-H.-O. Côté assumed leadership, but they were not successful inachieving their aims. The rebels of the St. LawrenceValley came close, butdid not produce the appropriate event. Ryerson attempted to rescue theconcept by arguing that the rebellions nonetheless led inexorably toresponsible government and industrialisation,27 but this contention alreadyplaces greater weight on the aftermath of the uprising. In his later work,Ryerson explained the failure of the Rebellions of 1837 by the prematurecharacter of the democratic revolt. It was, he claimed, a “révolutionbourgeoise sans bourgeoisie.”28 Robert Sweeney adopts a similarperspective in typifying the Lower Canadian Rebellions as “cetterévolution bourgeoise avortée.”29

Perhaps the following period, also eminently political, could beconsidered as the coronation of the bourgeoisie. The virulent repressionfollowing the Rebellions modified the economic, social and politicallandscape of the colony and created the bases for bourgeois domination.Michael S. Cross, in an article with the telling subtitle, “1837: TheNecessary Failure” suggests that bourgeois hegemony arose in theaftermath of the rebellions and the failure of yeoman farmers’ protests in

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Upper and Lower Canada. “The fall of the radicals and their aristocraticopponents,” he writes, “left Canada to the mercies of the ‘corporations,monopolies, banks of issue,’ to the men of ‘mercinary character.’”30 Morerecently, Brian Young has pursued this analysis: “The collapse of therebellions served to clear the political marketplace and facilitated theestablishment of a society in which capitalist relations would dominate.”31Supplanting feudal and aristocratic power, bourgeois hegemony ineconomic and social relations was achieved in this period: governmentfunctions expanded, newformsof socialisationwereadoptedandQuebec’scivil code was reformed. The combination of upheavals inherent in theseanalyses fulfil the requirements of the bourgeois revolution, in this case,clearly a revolution from above. This is a sharply more convincingperspective on the issue, and one that makes a good deal of sense of thetroubled 1840s and 1850s.

The marxist tinge to such discussions does not preclude a liberalinterpretation of the same period. Through the 1840s, bourgeoisFrench-Canadian politicians waged a brilliant struggle to obtainresponsible government, which they achieved despite the stone-throwingTories of 1849. In doing so, they assumed their appropriate role in history.In any case, this is J.M.S. Careless’ opinion: “the struggle over responsiblegovernment in French Canada must be viewed in social terms as the effortof the middle class to achieve power.”32 Careless manages in this analysisto reconcile two important Canadian historical metanarratives: colony tonation and the bourgeois revolution.

There may indeed be some utility in arguing that, at a certain point in itshistory, Quebec became more bourgeois and capitalist than not. There canalso be little question that a tremendous expansion of state structures tookplace in the decades following the Rebellions.33 However, to argue for aspecific event, or a discrete series of events, linking political, economic andsocial transformations exaggerates the rapidity of change. Certainly, thereforms and state suppression that followed 1837-38 served to hasten thespread of capitalistic practices in Quebec. But how soon after didcapitalistic social relations involve the majority of the population? Recenthistorians have tended to emphasise urban developments at the expense ofrural continuities inQuebec. The vastmajority of the population ofQuebeccontinued to live as before in the countryside – that is, when they were notemigrating to the factories ofNewEngland orMontreal. In their discussionof the economy of nineteenth-century Quebec, Jean Hamelin and YvesRoby conclude that, over all, in 1851, Quebec still exhibited the signs of“une économie d’AncienRégimeoude type colonial.”34 The commutationof seigneurial tenure in 1854 (1840 inMontreal), in its gradual approach tothe introduction of freehold, cannot really fulfil the rhetorical requirementsof the “bourgeois revolution.” Nonetheless, it is still surprising that so fewhistorianshave lookedat the commutationof seigneurial tenure in1854andits survivals into the twentieth century.35 While focusing on the important

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changes that occurred in the colony in the nineteenth century, significantpersistences should not be overlooked.36

Failed Bourgeois RevolutionsNot all historians of Quebec have believed that a bourgeois revolutionoccurred. Some scholars attempt to explain why it did not, therebyassuming that it should have. For instance, underlying the debate over theimportance of the merchant class in New France is the belief that if themerchants did not already control politics in the colony, they would havedone so in due course had the colony been left to its own devices.With theirlinks to their contacts in France severed, the French-speaking merchantswere cast into decline.Michel Brunet assumes the revolutionary role of thebourgeoisie to argue that without a strong French-Canadian middle class,the nation could not develop normally. In their stead, the British-Canadianbourgeoisie underwrote the unification of Canada between 1840 and1867.37

Arguably, much of the emphasis on the bourgeoisie of New France andthe immediate impact of theConquest stems fromvariants on theconcept ofthe bourgeois revolution. If the bourgeoisie under the French regime wasstrong, influential and increasingly politically potent, the bourgeoisrevolutionwouldhave followed its logical course.NewFrance, in this light,would already be a “normal” society, following the usual historicalnarrative of national development (and indeed in advance of the mothercountry itself).38All suchcases involvean implicit acknowledgementof theforce of the concept of bourgeois revolution. Moreover, the staple thesiswas one way historians gave the bourgeoisie a central role in Canadianpolitical and social as well as economic development (andunderdevelopment). Frequently, an implicit conflation of merchants andbourgeois discounts the political and imperial context within whichentrepreneurial decisions were made. Taking issue with this perspective,Dale Miquelon writes, “Exaggerating to make a point, we could concludethatwhatever the fur tradeofNewFrancehadbeen, it certainlyhadnot beena business.”39

Nonetheless, a number of influential scholars have argued that theCanadian bourgeoisie was unable to rise to the appropriate challenge. In adifferent, but nonetheless equally important, way they have drawninspiration from thegrandhistorical interpretation.Theyhaveusually doneso in describing the failure of the bourgeois revolution.

One of the most important, if implicit, uses of the concept of bourgeoisrevolutionwasproposedbyDonaldCreighton.Creighton,wewould recall,was initially trained as a French historian at a time when the bourgeoisrevolution interpretation prevailed. In a 1931 article, Creighton applied theclassic French narrative, with appropriate modifications, to thecircumstances in Quebec:

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In the financial issue, two classes, two civilisations, two ages ofeconomic and social development met and clashed. The lastdefenders of the French old régime and the early aggressivechampions of the English industrial revolution collided inevitablyin the financial issue...41

Indeed, one reading of Creighton’s Empire of the St. Lawrence is as alament for the failure of thebourgeois revolution in theperiod following theBritish Conquest. For Creighton, the inability of the mercantile class toseize political power, dominated by francophile aristocrats and their allies,was theprincipal failureof the time: “Toavery largeextent therefore—andthe contestants were quite conscious of the fact — it was a battle betweenthe new commercialism and the stiffened feudalismof the St. Lawrence.”42Thus, the classic struggle occurred in Quebec; only the dénouement wasdifferent. The sense of failure that pervades Creighton’s work and that isepitomised by the burning legislative buildings in 1849, concerns a nationwhich did not fulfil the proper historical narrative. Because Quebec/Canada failed tohaveabourgeois revolution, it failed todevelopnormally.

More positive than Creighton, Jean-Pierre Wallot’s early work arguesthat some aspects of a wider Atlantic revolution touched Quebec. Theintroduction of the colonial legislature and the circulation of liberal ideasshow this influence. But the ethnic divisions within the bourgeoisieprecluded any successful union of the necessary forces:

Avant 1815 une révolution politique partielle et une “révolutiondes Lumières” sont survenues dans leBas-Canada. Elles n’ont pasréussi à déclencher une révolution bourgeoise non plus qu’unerévolution nationale.

The problem,Wallot contends, lay in the ethnic diversity, the abnormalityof the colony: “La colonie, en effet, ne présente pas une structurationsociale normale (aristocratie, bourgeoisie, peuple), mais plutôt une doublestructuration sociale ou deux systèmes sociaux ethniquementdifférenciés.”43 Were it not for this ethnic split, this “civil war,” thebourgeoisie should have been able to fulfil its proper historical function.

On this issue, if perhaps few others, Fernand Ouellet shares a similarperspective. Ouellet criticises the lack of class consciousness of theFrench-Canadian bourgeoisie, which rejected co-operation with itsforward-looking British counterpart. Intraclass divisions precluded thesuccessful prosecution of the bourgeois revolution: “Marchands ethommes de profession auraient pu se donner la main en vue d’une réformeglobale des institutions de la société traditionnelle. Il est certain qu’ilsauraient travaillé de concert à réduire l’emprise des cadres cléricaux et àabolir la seigneurie. Mais une telle option supposait la primauté du clivagesocial sur le clivage culturel et ethnique.”44

In amore recent analysis, Bernierwith his colleagueDaniel Salée appealto the theory in their discussion of the failed Rebellions. In doing so, they

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follow the lead of Stanley Ryerson: “in Lower Canada an attemptedbourgeois revolutionwaswagedwithout the presence of a true bourgeoisiein its midst.”45 Instead, the rebel leaders comprised a petite bourgeoisieincapable of delivering the anticipated result. In this sense, the rebellionsprematurely challenged the socio-economic constraints of the ancienrégime in Quebec, which embarked upon a different path of historicalevolution. While the larger thrust of the argument does suggest interestinginterpretative possibilities, the brief discussion of the Rebellions doomsthem to failure based on the colony’s difference from the theoreticalarchetype.

It is perhaps easier to accept the arguments of those historians whodemonstrate that Quebec did not have a successful bourgeois revolution.However, we do not need to believe that Quebec should have had asuccessful bourgeois revolution. Indeed, the very testing of the hypothesisimplies an acceptance of its utility. That class and ethnic interests have acomplicated history and relationship is undoubtedly true, but to attempt toshoehorn those interpretations into a “standard West Europeanmetanarrative” is unnecessary, particularly when such interpretations areincreasingly under attack. For instance, we must take as important pointsthe colonial character of the society and the economy, and the moral andsocial preponderance of agrarian life. The perspective that the bourgeoisieof Quebec somehow failed its anointed role discounts the degree of itssuccess on its own terms, given the relative poverty of the colony and itspolitical subservience to the United Kingdom.

Who Needed A Bourgeois Revolution?Perhaps Quebec did not require a full-fledged bourgeois revolution. Afterall, historians tell us, Quebec is not the only place where the bourgeoisrevolution failed. German historians have used the failed bourgeoisrevolutionof1848 toexplain theparticularitiesof thenation’sdevelopmentand the rise of fascism in the1930s. A.J.P.Taylor’s account of the failure ofthe 1848 revolution is telling: “German history reached its turning-pointand failed to turn.”46 Because the German bourgeois revolution wasunsuccessful, the surviving but antiquated mentalité precluded theappropriate adjustments. Similarly, the Meiji Restoration in Japan did notculminate in a larger social revolution, and Japan’s subsequent politicalhistory bore the brunt of this failure.47 As David Blackbourn points out,historians in making such arguments place more emphasis on studyingwhat did not happen than what did happen: as he paraphrases Ranke, “Wiees eigentlich nicht gewesen.”48

Let us return to first principles. If the FrenchRevolution of 1789was notmeaningfully bourgeois, need we expect other nations to achieve thathistorical development? If the grand sources of our historical narratives canno longer lay claim to a bourgeois revolution, we probably cannot expect

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revolution-less Quebec or Canada to do so either. If the French Revolutionis no longer bourgeois, need other countries experience such a transition inpolitical, economic and social structures all at once? Are we not assumingan historiographical precedentwhere one does not exist? The very idea thatthe bourgeoisie must fulfil a revolutionary role has come under attack.“Quantitatively,” Immanuel Wallerstein writes, “the number of nationalbourgeoisies that are said tohave ‘betrayed’ their historic roles turns out notto be small but very large — indeed, the vast majority.”49

Still, the desire to locate such a bourgeois revolution in Quebec reflectsan attempt to fit the region’s historical development within the receivedviews of the history of France and England. As we have seen, this is notlimited toCanadian historians. To take another case, JohnStuartMill in thenineteenth century posited that England had itself failed to evolve in anormal fashion: “French civilization more closely approaches the normaltype of human civilization than any other, while English history diverges...very far from the usual path.”50

Recent research has shed light on the degree to which some forms ofcapitalism and seigneurial tenure were not necessarily incompatible.51 Wecould argue that Quebec society, until well into the nineteenth century atleast, was less feudal than it should have been to necessitate a bourgeoisrevolution, was more agrarian than a bourgeois-dominated nation wouldsuggest, andwasmore colonial thanmanyof the current analyses allow. Byfocusing on the internal dynamics of power, important as they may be, theexternal political relations of the country have often been downplayed orignored. Perhaps the political relationship of colonial realities is anecessary starting point. The nationalism inherent in projecting Canadianor Québécois nationhood backward onto previous periods has sometimesled historians astray. As John Bosher demonstrates for New France,merchants and government officials would not have seen themselves asCanadians, but rather as part of the largerAtlanticworldswithinwhich theycarved out their niches.52 And much of the political and economic success(or failure) of the Canadian bourgeoisie is imputable not so much to theirlocal activities as to their contacts in the mother country.

The concept of a bourgeois revolution has the merit of encouragingCanadianhistorians to seekbroadermeaning inhistorical events. It isworthreiterating that many of the best Canadian historians are included in thisdiscussion. But it has also fostered the view of Quebec’s history as apalimpsest of European narratives, marxist or non-marxist. In E.P.Thompson’s famous phrase, it is important to rescue the people of the pastfrom the “condescensionof posterity.” It is also important to rescueQuebec— and Canadian — history from the “condescension of place.” Themargins of the British Empire experienced the rise of capitalistic socialrelations and bourgeois political control in a way reflective of colonialstatus and new world settings. By rejecting the rhetorical device of abourgeois revolution to crown this development, it becomes possible to

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avoid the historiographical viewpoint that Quebec’s history has somehowfailed to live up to some predetermined historical mould that hinges on aparticular typeof revolutionary social change. The search for othermodels,linked to Quebec’s and Canada’s colonial and new world setting, mayprovide more fruitful paths.

Notes1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Canadian Historical

Association annual conference, the Imperial History seminar at the University ofLondon, and the Irish Association of Canadian Studies biannual meeting. I wouldlike to thank those who have commented on the paper on those occasions, as wellas Megan J. Davies and the anonymous assessors for this journal.

2. Michael Kammen, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and theHistorical Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 256.

3. See, for instance, Philip Resnick, Thinking English Canada (Toronto: Stoddart,1994), p. 44; Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The UnbearableLightness of Being Canadian (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1995), p. 17.

4. William Bennett Munro, The Seigniorial System in Canada: A Study in FrenchColonial Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1907); George M.Wrong, A Canadian Manor and its Seigneurs (Toronto: Macmillan, 1908).

5. William Bennett Munro, “Historical Introduction” in Documents relating to theSeigniorial Tenure in Canada, 1598-1854 (Toronto: The Champlain Society,1908), xix.

6. J.R. Commons, Races and Immigrants in America (New York: Macmillan,1907), p. 97.

7. See the debates surrounding Ronald Rudin’s “Revisionism and the Search for aNormal Society: A Critique of Recent Quebec Historical Writing” in CanadianHistorical Review [hereafter CHR] LXXIII, 1 (March 1992): 30-61 and hisMaking History in Twentieth-Century Quebec (Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 1997). Two issues of the Bulletin d’histoire politique 4, 2 (hiver 1995) and7, 1 (automne 1998) contain articles challenging Rudin’s perspective. See alsoJean-Marie Fecteau, “Entre la quête de la nation et les découvertes de la science.L’historiographie québécoise vue par Ronald Rudin,” in CHR 80, 3 (September1999): 440-463.

8. Perry Anderson, English Questions (London: Verso, 1992), p. 107.9. Norman Hampson, “The French Revolution and its Historians” in Geoffrey Best,

ed., The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and its Legacy,1789-1989 (London: Fontana, 1988), pp. 211-234. Robert R. Palmer points outthat Edmund Burke essentially blamed the French Revolution on the bourgeoisieas well: “tradesmen, bankers, and voluntary clubs of presuming young persons:advocates, attorneys, notaries, managers of newspapers, and those cabals ofliterary men called académies.” Burke, quoted in Palmer, “The Great Inversion:America and Europe in the Eighteenth-Century Revolution” in Richard Herr andHarold T. Parker, eds., Ideas in History: Essays Presented to Louis Gottschalk(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1965), p. 10.

10. Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, trans. Stuart Gilbert(New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955), p. 63.

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11. Karl Marx and F. Engels, “The Communist Manifesto” in Dale Miquelon, ed.,Society and Conquest: The Debate on the Bourgeoisie and Social Change inFrench Canada, 1700-1850 (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1977), pp. 52-3.

12. Marx, quoted in Jerrold Seigel, “Politics, Memory, Illusion: Marx and the FrenchRevolution” in François Furet and Mona Ozouf, eds., The French Revolution andthe Creation of Modern Political Culture. Vol 3. The Transformation of PoliticalCulture, 1789-1848 (Oxford: Pergamon, 1989), p. 631. See also, GeorgeComninel, Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism and the RevisionistChallenge (London: Verso, 1987).

13. Lefebvre quoted in Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the FrenchRevolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 8.

14. Colin Lucas, “Nobles, Bourgeois and the Origins of the French Revolution” inDouglas Johnson, ed., French Society and the Revolution (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 88.

15. Barrington Moore, Jr. classifies the English Civil War, the French Revolution andthe American Civil War “as stages in the development of thebourgeois-democratic revolution.” Social Origins of Dictatorship andDemocracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston:Beacon Press, 1966), p. 427. [His emphasis.]

16. Robert W. Stern, Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 4.

17. Christopher Hill, “A Bourgeois Revolution?” in J.G.A. Pocock, ed., Three BritishRevolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p.111. On the refinements of Hill’s argument, see Richard F. Hamilton, TheBourgeois Epoch: Marx and Engels on Britain, France, and Germany (ChapelHill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 44-5, 219.

18. Now much literature criticises the view of the French Revolution as a bourgeoisrevolution: Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution; FrançoisFuret, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1981); Jacques Solé, Questions of the FrenchRevolution: A Historical Overview, trans. Shelley Temchin (New York:Pantheon Books, 1989), chap. 3; George Comninel, Rethinking the FrenchRevolution. But see Gwynne Lewis, The French Revolution: Rethinking theDebate (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 72-3: “to deny the importance of theabolition of feudalism and the legal and juridical changes which the Revolutiondid introduce, all of which did mark an important stage in the evolution of Frenchcapitalism, is to barter historical truth for ideological advantage.”

19. David Higgs, Nobles in Nineteenth Century France: The Practice ofInegalitarianism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

20. Hamilton, The Bourgeois Epoch.21. Hamilton, “Feudal Society and Colonization: A Critique and Reinterpretation of

the Historiography of New France” in D.H. Akenson, ed., Canadian Papers inRural History vol. VI (Gananoque, Ont.: Langdale Press, 1988), p. 135.

22. Bernier, “Sur quelques effets de la rupture structurelle engendrée par la Conquêteau Québec: 1760-1854” in Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française [hereafterRHAF] 35, 1 (juin 1981): 70.

23. Couture, “La Conquête de 1760 et le problème de la transition au capitalisme” inRHAF 39, 3 (hiver 1986): 369-389.

24. Stanley Ryerson, 1837: The Birth of Canadian Democracy (Toronto: FrancisWhite, 1937), p. 26.

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25. Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellion of 1837 in Rural LowerCanada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), p. 131.

26. Allan Greer discusses other metanarratives in which the Rebellions of 1837-8 aresituated in “1837-38: Rebellion Reconsidered” in CHR lxxvi, 1 (March 1995):1-4.

27. Ryerson, 1837, p. 127.28. Ryerson, “Luttes de classes et conflits nationaux” in Jean-Paul Bernard, dir., Les

rébellions de 1837-1838: Les patriotes du Bas-Canada dans la mémoirecollective et chez les historiens (Montréal: Boréal Express, 1983), p. 257.

29. Robert Sweeney, “Paysan et ouvrier: du féodalisme laurentien au capitalismequébécois” in Sociologie et sociétés XXII, 1 (avril 1990): 156.

30. Michael S. Cross, “1837: The Necessary Failure” in Cross and Gregory S.Kealey, eds., Pre-Industrial Canada, 1760-1849 (Toronto: McClelland &Stewart, 1982), pp. 157-8.

31. Brian Young, “Positive Law, Positive State: Class Realignment and theTransformation of Lower Canada, 1815-1866” in Allan Greer and Ian Radforth,eds., Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 51. See also Brian Young andJohn Dickinson, A Short History of Quebec 2nd edition (Toronto: Copp ClarkPitman, 1993), p. 168.

32. J.M.S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas: The Growth of CanadianInstitutions, 1841-1857 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967), p. 25.

33. See the articles in Allan Greer and Ian Radforth, eds., Colonial Leviathan.34. Hamelin et Roby, Histoire économique du Québec, 1851-1896 (Montréal: Fides,

1971), p. 6.35. Brian Young has made some important contributions to this issue: In its

Corporate Capacity: The Seminary of Montreal as a Business Institution,1816-1876 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986);The Politics of Codification: The Lower Canadian Civil Code of 1866 (Kingstonand Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), pp. 54-60.

36. The principal interpretations of the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s emphasise itscharacter as a bourgeois revolution, although this is not the “bourgeoisrevolution” of historiographical theory that concerns us here. Historians andpolitical scientists argue that it was indeed a revolution by and for theFrancophone bourgeoisie, and provide detailed analyses concerning whichfactions of the bourgeoisie were most influential through the process and whobenefited most. For examples of these discussions, see Marc Renaud, “Quebec’sNew Middle Class in Search of Social Hegemony: Causes and PoliticalConsequences” and Kenneth McRoberts, “The Sources of Neo-Nationalism inQuebec” in Michael Behiels, ed., Quebec since 1945: Selected Readings(Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman 1987). In 1964, labour leader Michel Chartrandweakly invoked the concept by assuming the historical stages through whichcountries must pass. He suggested that the Quiet Revolution was essentiallybourgeois in character, and was a prelude to a more important, and equallynecessary, socialist revolution. Chartrand, “La révolution québécoise: unerévolution bourgeoise” in Les Nouveaux Québécois (Québec: Les Presses del’Université Laval, 1964), pp. 123-142.

37. Brunet, “Le sens national” in Canadians et Canadiens: Études sur l’histoire et lapensée des deux Canadas (Montréal: Fides, 1954), pp. 86-7.

38. For literature reviews on this important and contentious topic, see S. DaleStanden, “The Debate on the Social and Economic Consequences of the

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Conquest: A Summary” in R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith, eds.,Readings in Canadian History: Pre-Confederation 4th edition (Toronto:Harcourt Brace, 1994), pp. 262-272; Serge Gagnon, “Pour une consciencehistorique de la révolution québécoise” in Cité Libre XVI, 83 (janvier 1966):4-19; Dale Miquelon, ed. Society and Conquest.

39. Miquelon, The First Canada: to 1791 (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1994), p.99.

40. Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-CanadianHistorical Writing: 1900-1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), p.210.

41. Creighton, “The Struggle for Financial Control in Lower Canada, 1818-1831” inCHR 12, 2 (June 1931): 120.

42. Creighton, The Empire of the St Lawrence (Toronto: Macmillan, 1956), p. 160.43. Wallot, “Le Canada et la Révolution atlantique: une problématique” in Un

Québec qui bougeait: trame socio-politique au tournant du XIXe siècle(Montréal: Boréal Express, 1973), pp. 323, 321. Wallot’s more recent workapproaches the issue in a much more subtle fashion, expressing the transition ofthe early nineteenth century in terms that do not denote failure to fulfil a particulartheory: “il y a eu une grande discontinuité dans le jeu socio-économiquebas-canadien au tournant du 19e siècle.” Gilles Paquet et Jean-Pierre Wallot, LeBas-Canada au tournant du 19e siècle: Restructuration et modernisation(Ottawa: Société historique du Canada, 1988), p. 4.

44. Ouellet, Histoire économique et sociale du Québec: 1760-1840 (Montréal: Fides,1966), p. 201.

45. Gérard Bernier and Daniel Salée, The Shaping of Québec Politics and Society:Colonialism, Power, and the Transition to Capitalism in the 19th Century(Washington, D.C.: Crane Russak, 1992), p. 100.

46. Taylor quoted in Richard J. Evans, “The Myth of Germany’s MissingRevolution” in New Left Review 149 (January/February, 1985): 70.

47. John W. Dower, ed., Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings ofE. H. Norman (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975).

48. Blackbourn, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” in Populists andPatricians: Essays in Modern German History (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987),p. 70.

49. Wallerstein, “The Bourgeois(ie) as Concept and Reality” in New Left Review 167(January/February 1988): 95.

50. Mill quoted in Alan S. Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and PoliticalThought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 11.

51. François Noël, The Christie Seigneuries: Estate Management and Settlement inthe Upper Richelieu Valley, 1760-1854 (Montreal and Kingston:McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). Research drawing on the concept ofprotoindustrialisation tends in the same direction as well: see the work of TomWien, “Peasant Accumulation in a Context of Colonization: Rivière-du-Sud,Canada, 1720-1775” (McGill University: PhD dissertation, 1988); SylvieDépatie, “La transmission du patrimoine dans les terroirs en expansion: unexemple canadien au XVIIIe siècle” in RHAF 44, 2 (automne 1990): 171-98;Christian Dessurault, “L’égalitarisme paysan dans l’ancienne société de la valléedu Saint-Laurent” in RHAF 40, 3 (hiver 1987): 373-408.

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52. J.F. Bosher, The Canada Merchants: 1713-1763 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1987); Bosher, Business and Religion in the Age of New France, 1600-1760:Twenty-two Studies (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1994).

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Peter Campbell

East Meets Left: South Asian Militants and theSocialist Party of Canada in British Columbia,

1904-1914*

AbstractThe first two decades of the 20th century were full of promise for bothsocialism and anti-imperialist struggle. With the possible exception ofIreland, it was in India that these two related struggles came most forcefullyinto focus. In India, anti-colonial movements influenced by Western thoughtwere having a significant impact on the boycott movements and the leaders ofworker and peasant struggles. As Western socialists sought to incorporateanti-imperialism in India into the socialist cause, South Asian militants inboth India and the West were attempting to use Western ideas to overcomereligious sectarianism and unite Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in a commonstruggle against the British Raj. In the years 1904-1914, the attempt of SouthAsian militants and Western socialists to find common ground in theanti-imperialist struggle took place on the west coast of Canada. Their“racial” and cultural differences notwithstanding, the leaders andspokespersons of these movements shared a common challenge — theeducation of the rank and file of their own movements, and the daunting taskof fostering unity across identities. In Ghadar, the movement created by SouthAsian militants on the west coast of North America — among them membersand supporters of the Socialist Party of Canada and the Industrial Workers ofthe World — we find coalesced the attempt to create a non-racialist,non-sectarian movement dedicated to ending British imperialism andcreating an egalitarian society.

RésuméLes deux premières décennies du 20e siècle se sont montrées riches depromesses tant pour le socialisme que pour la lutte anti-impérialiste. Àl’exception peut-être de l’Irlande, c’est en Inde que ces deux combatsapparentés l’un à l’autre se sont manifestés avec la plus grande force. EnInde, des mouvements anti-coloniaux influencés par la pensée occidentale onteu une incidence marquée sur les mouvements de boycottage et les chefs defile des luttes des travailleurs et des paysans. Tandis que des socialistesoccidentaux s’efforçaient d’intégrer à la cause du socialismel’anti-impérialisme qui se manifestait alors en Inde, des militantsanti-impérialistes de l’Asie du Sud tant en Inde qu’en Occident tentaient de seservir d’idées occidentales pour transcender le sectarisme religieux etrassembler les Musulmans, les Sikhs et les Hindous dans une lutte communecontre le Raj, la domination britannique en Inde. Dans la période qui s’étendde 1904 à 1914, une épisode de la recherche, par des militants de l’Asie du


Sud et des socialistes occidentaux, d’un terrain commun dans le cadre de lalutte contre l’impérialisme, s’est déroulé sur la côte Ouest du Canada. Sanségard à leurs différences « raciales » et culturelles, les chefs de file etporte-parole de ces mouvements se voyaient confrontés au même défi —l’éducation des militants de la base de leurs propres mouvements et la tâcheformidable de favoriser l’unité par-delà les identités. Le Ghadar, lemouvement créé par des militants de l’Asie du Sud sur la côte Ouest del’Amérique — et à l’intérieur duquel se retrouvaient des membres et dessympathisants du Parti socialiste du Canada et des Industrial Workers of theWorld — offre un exemple de tentative concrète de créer un mouvement nonracial et non sectaire voué à la disparition de l’impérialisme britannique et àla création d’une société égalitaire.

On the eve of the FirstWorldWar, theGhadarmovementwas organised onthewest coast of theUnited States and quickly spread toCanada. Ghadar, amovement dedicated to overthrowing British rule in India and to fightingthe racist and discriminatory immigration policies of Canada and theUnited States, united Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus inspired by theirrespective religions and the ideas of Western liberals and socialists.1RousedbyLalaHarDayal, the radicalBengali nationalistwhospearheadedthe formation of themovement, hundreds ofGhadar supporters sailed fromCanadian and American ports in late 1914 and early 1915 for India,Southeast Asia and the Philippines determined to foment a mass uprisingagainst British rule on the Indian subcontinent.2

The return of the Ghadarites confirmed the fears of British colonialofficials alarmed about the influence of Western thought on Indianrevolutionary nationalists since the 1890s. On September 2, 1897 LordGeorge Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, wrote to ViscountCurzon: “I think the real danger toour rule in India, not nowbut say50yearshence, is the gradual adoption and extension of Western ideas of agitationand organization.”3 By 1902, Lord George had become concerned aboutthe influence that radicals and socialists were exerting on Indian studentsstudying in London, England.4 In 1909, Lord John Morley, who becameSecretary of State for India in 1905, gave as one of his reasons for opposingIndian emigration to Canada the fact “that there is a socialist propaganda inVancouver, and the consequent danger of the East Indians being imbuedwith socialist doctrines.”5 Morley’s fears were not unfounded, as it wasindeed Vancouver which became “the first centre of seditious propagandaamong Indians” in North America.6

Historians of the Ghadar movement, like the British colonial officialsbefore them, have tended to generalise about the influence of Westernsocialists and “anarchists” on the Ghadarites, with little analysis of theactual content and extent of that influence.7 Doreen Indra and NormanBuchignani, for example, observe that “Ghadar’s leadership was heavilyinfluenced by IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), anarchist, andpopular socialist thought, especially in its analysis ofBritish rule in India.”8

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The use of the expression “heavily influenced” is misleading: apart from abrief period of influence on Har Dayal in California and leading SouthAsianmilitants inBritishColumbia in the period just before theFirstWorldWar, it is difficult to identify any lasting effect the IndustrialWorkers of theWorld had on the Ghadar movement.9 One of the few “anarchist”influences was Emma Goldman, but Har Dayal appears to have met heronly once, and they did not work together.10 Apart from the odd quotationfromTolstoy in thepublicationsputoutbySouthAsianmilitants, inCanadait is difficult to trace ideas in the Ghadar movement of anarchist origin.

Lala Har Dayal’s adoption of Marxian socialist ideas did not becomewidely known until the publication of his landmark article entitled “KarlMarx: A Modern Rishi” in the March 1912 issue of Calcutta’s ModernReview. Even at this relatively late stage in the development of SouthAsianmilitance, Har Dayal demonstrates just how tenuous his Marxism is byarguing that Marx’s ideas are “one-sided and defective,” and that“Carlyle’s theory of civilisation as a product of personal influences ismuchnearer the truth than that of mechanical scientific evolution advanced byMarx and Spencer.”11 In British Columbia, Har Dayal’s criticisms ofMarxian socialism were not likely to receive a sympathetic hearing frommembers of the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC), who consideredthemselves Canada’s leading exponents ofMarx’s ideas. Themembershipof the SPC, organised in British Columbia in 1904-05, never exceeded3,000 to 4,000 members, a figure roughly equal to the number of SouthAsians in Canada in the decade prior to the First WorldWar.12 Their smallnumbers notwithstanding, Socialist Party members were Canada’sforemost advocates of the scientific socialism that Har Dayal dismissed,and were long-standing critics of the great man theory of history espousedby Thomas Carlyle.13 With the possible exception of Hussain Rahim, theHindu militant most deeply involved with the Socialist Party of Canada,there were few, if any, leading members of Ghadar more influenced byMarx’s theories than was Har Dayal. The fact that even he espoused ideasabout Marxism that were anathema to the vast majority of Socialist Partymembers raises serious questions about the impact of Marxist ideas onSouth Asian militants in British Columbia.

Nevertheless, the concerns expressed by Lord John Morley and otherBritish colonial officials about the Canadian situation were not entirelymisplaced, because the SouthAsianmilitants andmembers of the SocialistParty ofCanada shared a commitment to educating the rank and file of theirrespective movements. As Harish Puri points out, prominent Ghadarleaders such as Harnam Singh Sahri, Sohan Lal Pathak and Kartar SinghSarabha, “thought of organising a mass movement on the basis of politicaleducation,” precisely what the Socialist Party of Canada was attempting todo amongwhite workers in Canada.14 The belief in political education wasinfluenced by Marx’s commitment to the emancipation of the working

37

East Meets Left: South Asian Militants and the Socialist Party of Canada inBritish Columbia, 1904-1914

classes by theworkers themselves, an idea espoused byLalaHarDayal andadapted to the struggle against British imperialism in India.15

It is here that we can begin to understand what happened when East metLeft. It was notMarxism or socialism per se that had the greatest impact onSouth Asian militants, but rather this idea that the Indian people, throughtheir own efforts, could overthrow theBritishRaj. This idealismwas one ofthe distinguishing characteristics of members of the Socialist Party ofCanada,men andwomenwho could not believe that theworkers, once theyunderstoodhow thecapitalist systemactuallyworked, andhow theworkerswere exploited, could fail to become socialists andwork toward the demiseof the capitalist system. South Asian militants shared that idealism, whichled them to believe that the self-evident injustice and brutality of Britishrule in Indiamade themass of the Indian people ready to follow a dedicatedband of courageous leaders. The encounter with Canadian Marxistsfortified the idealist tendency among the South Asian militants, andconfirmed their belief that the people of India had already committedthemselves to overthrow their British rulers — they were only waiting forthe militants to appear to lead them in revolt against their masters.16

The South Asian militants who returned to India and Southeast Asia tofoment rebellion were overwhelmingly Sikh. Yet the fact that the greatmajority of South Asians in British Columbia in the years 1904-14 wereSikhsdoesnot, in itself, explainwhysomanyof themchose todoso. Oneofthe leading explanations is that many of them underwent a process ofsecularisationwhile inNorthAmerica.Forexample, KhushwantSinghandSatindra Singh suggest that Canadian Sikhs who joined Ghadar becamepart of a “purely secularmovement.”17RichardFox agrees, concluding thatGhadar was characterised by an “adamant secularism.”18 On the evidence,this interpretation is difficult to accept.Many Sikhmilitants had little or nounderstanding of English: they related to the society in which they foundthemselves through the medium of their religious leaders and in their ownlanguage. Describing the ideas and activism of Sikh militants as “secular”fails to capture the genesis of their commitment. It will be argued in thispaper that the idealism of the Sikh militants was at heart a religious, not asecular, idealism, and that socialist ideas became influential and effectivewhen theyconfirmedand legitimated ideasalreadypart of theSikh religion.Sikh militants were influenced by members of the Socialist Party ofCanada, but returned to fight on their own terms and in dedication to theirown traditions.

Asian Immigration: Socialist Party Members RespondTo begin, however, we need to explain on what basis, in a working-classpolitical culture overtly hostile to Asian immigration, BC socialists wereable to forge aworking relationshipwith SouthAsianmilitants. Ethnic andlabour historians have noted the widespread existence of what David

38


Bercuson calls “anti-oriental paranoia” in the British Columbia workingclass.19 Ross McCormack describes opposition to Asian labourers as “oneof the fundamental drives of the province’s labour movement.”20According to Peter Ward, the homeland of South Asian immigrants wasdepicted as “a land of teeming millions, of filth and squalor, of exotic,peculiar customs. The Indians seemed a lesser breed of men, given toweakness, servility, and in some cases villainy.”21 In effect, there seems tohave been little possibility of BC socialists working with South Asianmilitants in a common struggle against Canada’s racist immigration lawsand British rule in India.

Indeed, some leading members of the Socialist Party evinced the samefear of Asianworkers that characterised the labourmovement as awhole.22In a speech given by J.H. Hawthornthwaite at the Dominion Theatre onOctober 13, 1907, the SPCmember forNanaimo defended the exclusion ofAsianworkers on the grounds thatAsian productionwould one day swamp“every white market” and threaten western civilisation.23 W.J. Curry’sanalysiswas alsodrivenby thevisceral fear ofAsianworkers that existed inthe labourmovement as awhole.Curry excludesAsians fromhis definitionof the working class, arguing that once workers — meaning “white”workers — control the means of production they will not need the“assistance” of Asian workers. Like some latter-day Moses, he proclaimsto Asian workers: “Go ye back across the ocean, join the party of revolt inyour country, and do aswe have done.” In effect, Curry is saying thatAsianlabour is only needed to operate a capitalist economy, and will not beneeded in British Columbia once a socialist economy based on productionfor use, not profit, has been created.24 He sees the coming to classconsciousness of Asian workers as something that should happen in theirhomeland, not in alliance with white workers in western countries.

Yet to simply lumpmembers of the Socialist Party in a category labelled“racists” serves to disguise a complex set of attitudes that varied fromspokesperson to spokesperson and was in the process of changing in theyears leading up to theFirstWorldWar.25 Asianworkerswere perceived asa threat, but they were also defended as victims. As the Socialist Party’spaper theWestern Clarion observed in a 1906 editorial, Asian labour wascoming to Canada “through no fault of its own,” and the “unfortunateHindus” were being used by the capitalist class “to beat down the standardof living of theCanadianworkman.”26 If we look beyond the obvious racistand patronizing views of the daywhichmost SPCers sharedwith the widersociety, we recognise a group of socialists struggling — as their Marxistbeliefs dictated— to see the capitalist class, and not Asian workers, as theenemy. Individual members of the party, such as D.G.McKenzie,Clarioneditor and member of the party’s Executive Committee, were moresuccessful than others. In a 1909 editorial, revealingly entitled “All SlavesTogether,” McKenzie commented on a recent United Mine Workersconvention in Lethbridge which voted to admit Chinese and Japanese

39


workers: “It is aportentof evil omen to themaster classwhenworkers arriveat suchaclearunderstandingof theirposition thatnot even the redherringofrace hatred will longer serve to turn them aside from the trail of theirenemy.”27 McKenzie took his critique even further in the lead-up to the1909BCprovincial election, observing that theLiberals andConservativeswouldonce againplay the racismcard inorder to garner votes. McKenzie’sreaction to this “red herring” is to observe: “‘A White Canada’ will nolonger serve.”28McKenzie was, of course, placing far toomuch faith in theability ofwhiteworkers to resist such racist appeals, but he and a number ofother party members were indeed developing a conception of the workingclass that included, rather than excluded, Asian workers.

Historians of race in British Columbia have failed to explain why thatattempt resulted in SPC members working much more closely with SouthAsians than with the Chinese and Japanese. There were at least threereasons for the difference. First, South Asians were fellow-subjects of theBritish Empire, and at times recognised as such by SPCers. Second, whenSPC writers dealt with the threat of economic competition they usuallyfocussed on China, sometimes on Japan, but only rarely on India.29 Third,leading members of the SPC accepted northern India as the birthplace ofEuropean civilisation, and did not perceive South Asians as belonging to adifferent race. As a result, while the involvement of SPCers in fightingdiscrimination against South Asians was on-going and in some casesextensive, there was relatively little response to the head tax imposed onChinese immigrants.30

Sikhs in British Columbia: Background and BeliefsBefore detailing the actual relationships existing between Socialist Partymembers and South Asian militants, it is necessary to explore thecomposition, cultural and political beliefs, and political activism of SouthAsians in general, and Sikhs in particular, in British Columbia in the years1904-14.More than 90 percent of South Asian immigrants to CanadaweremaleSikhswho tended to come from themost populous states in thePunjab—Hoshiarpur, Jullundur, and Ferozepore in particular. They were largelyJat Sikhs, members of landowning Sikh families who could be quitepoverty-stricken or relativelywell off. Since themid-19th century, Jats hadformed the core of the British army’s Sikh regiments in India.31 There wasevery reason to believe, therefore, that most Sikh immigrants to Canadawould be loyal British subjects whose preferred mode of dealing withgrievances would be negotiation and compromise. From the beginning ofSikh immigration in 1904-05 to roughly 1910 the prominent Sikh leaderswere indeed “moderates,” educatedmen such asDr. Sundar Singh andTejaSinghwho felt that just treatment for SouthAsian immigrants could be hadat thehandsofBritish, Indian andCanadianofficials.32Even themoderates,however, were outspoken critics of Canada’s racist immigration laws, andafter 1910, Dr. Sundar Singh worked hand-in-hand with militants such as

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Hussain Rahim. By 1914,Major T.W.G. Bryan of the District IntelligenceOffice in Victoria was reporting to the Chief of the General Staff in Ottawathat even a “certain number” of ex-sepoys had joined the seditiousmovement, and thatMajorBingHall of the 88thVictoria Fusiliers believedthat 30% of the South Asian population was “actively seditious,” while10% remained loyal and 60% were “waverers or unconcerned.”33 Themilitants were now predominant among politically active Sikhs, apredominance enhancedby the relatively small numbers of SouthAsians inBritish Columbia and their domicile in, or on-going connections with,Vancouver and Victoria.34

It is crucial to understand that the increasing radicalism of Sikhmilitantsdid not involve a repudiation of their religious faith, and in some cases theirfaith was strengthened in the course of their radicalisation. Their faith wasfounded in the early 16th century byGuruNanakwho, although influencedby both Hinduism and Islam, rejected key elements of both religions,including the importance of the pilgrimage to Islam and the caste system tothe Hindu brahmans. The teachings of Guru Nanak called on his followersto fight for the downtrodden and to foster equality among Sikhs whilerespecting the religious beliefs of others. In the late 17th century, the tenthguru, Gobind Singh, created the Khalsa, or community of baptised Sikhswho took the name Singh, wore turbans, carried kirpans and wereunshaven. In British Columbia the embracing of socialist ideas by Sikhmilitants occurred in a community already firmly grounded in the valuesand institutions of the Khalsa Sikhs. Lala Har Dayal believed that Sikhmilitants inNorthAmerica, far from abandoning their religious beliefs andembracing secularism, instead underwent a “revival of religiousconsciousness.”35 Balwant Singh, one of the Sikh religious leaders mostclosely associated with the Socialist Party, travelled to California inFebruary 1909 to preach the Sikh religion, and while there baptised a largenumber ofSikhs.36Nor didKhalsaSikhs accept the abandonment ofKhalsacustoms easily. In Lahore in 1917, during the trial of the Ghadar militants,Karam Singh gave testimony to the effect that Munsha Singh, one of thenine Sikh Ghadarites in the Canadian group, was mocked by the KhalsaSikhs for shaving his hair and beard and not going to gurdwara.37

Several points need to be emphasised. First, those Canadian Sikhs whowere most radical, and most closely connected to the Socialist Party ofCanada, were often Khalsa Sikhs who had served in the British army andwere religious leadersdefendingKhalsabeliefs andpractices.38Second, themocking of Munsha Singh should not be misunderstood as indicatingdeep-seated prejudice against non-Khalsa Sikhs. Sohan Lal, for example,played an active role in the Vancouver gurdwara and the Chief KhalsaDiwan (CKD), the central organising body of the Khalsa Sikhs. It was partof theKhalsa tradition to respect the ideas of non-Khalsa Sikhs, whose roleincluded reading the Guru Granth Sahib in meetings.39 Third, the irony ofSocialist Party members thinking of South Asians as sojourners, not

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citizens, is that their ideas are as a result remarkably free of attacks on Sikhreligious beliefs. In fact, there is more evidence of conflict within the Sikhcommunity concerning religious beliefs than there is between whiteSocialists and South Asian militants, although these conflicts were mutedby the need to unite against a common enemy. As a result, association withmembers of the Socialist Party left Sikh militants free to maintain theirreligious values while adapting socialist ideas in the struggle againstCanada’s racist immigration laws and British imperialism in India.

The encounter of the Sikh militants with the formally atheist SocialistParty of Canada, which could quite easily have been antagonistic, resultedinstead in the discovery of allies whowere also outspoken critics of Britishimperialism in India, and whose class politics helped legitimise the valueson which Sikhism was originally founded. Those values included help forthe poor and disadvantaged, the rejection of prejudices based on caste andcreed, and opposition to the abuses of religious hierarchies, opposition towhich members of the Socialist Party of Canada wholeheartedly agreed.While Sikh criticisms of Hindu brahmans andMuslim ulamas and sheikhshad the potential to create conflicts among South Asian militants alongreligious lines, it also allowedallianceswith bothMuslims andHinduswhowere seeking to validate the more egalitarian elements of their owntraditions.

The Politics of Protest: Convergence and DivergenceThe protests of South Asian militants in British Columbia were fed by thedenial of citizenship and thepassingof racist andexclusionary immigrationlaws. The apparent influx of South Asians in the fall of 1906 led the BClegislature, on March 27, 1907, to pass by unanimous vote a bill todisenfranchise all South Asians. In April 1907, South Asians were deniedthe vote in Vancouver municipal elections. South Asians were therebyexcluded fromservingas school trustees, servingon juries, beingemployedby the public service, or getting jobs on public works contracts.40 As theyear progressed the attention of South Asians was drawn to a much moreimmediate and potentially dangerous form of racism, the organisation ofthe Asiatic Exclusion League in August 1907. The League was aided anddirected by like-minded exclusionists in the United States, where onSeptember 5, 1907 over 500 white lumber workers in Bellingham,Washington attacked South Asian mill workers, evicted them from theirlodgings anddestroyed their property. Someof the instigators of this attackthen proceeded to Vancouver, where their presence and inflammatoryrhetoric helped produce the anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese riots that tookplace on September 7. In Vancouver few, if any, South Asians wereattacked by the mob, but they were very much affected by a subsequentOrder-in-Council of January 8, 1908 that required all immigrants arrivingat a Canadian port to come on a continuous journey from the point oforigin.41 While the legislation applied to all immigrants, the main targets

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were Japanese coming toCanada bywayofHawaii, andSouthAsians,whowere effectively barred from the country because there was no directsteamship line from India to Canada.42

Commentary in the Western Clarion following the Vancouver riot of1907 indicates that, while its spokespersons had not freed themselves fromthe politics of exclusion, they cannot simply be lumped together with otherwhite racists:

The working class mind is being inflamed with the idea that theJapanese, Hindu or Chinese workingman coming to Canada,comes as an enemy to thewhite worker. As racial prejudice is oneof the meanest in the category and least founded upon reason, it isoneof theeasiest to stir up. Whenstirredup it is virulent andbestialin the extreme and capable of being used to carry out the purpose,howevervile, of thosewhoknowhowtomanipulate it and turn it toaccount.43

A week later, another comment on the riots indicated that, while SPCerssometimes used racist language and promoted racial stereotypes, itsmembers also demonstrated a penetrating insight into the hypocrisy ofwhite racism:

The Japanese are coming into this Province in large numbers.They will keep on coming so long as it may be to the interest ofJapanese capital to send them or white capital to bring them in.That they are not coming here with the intention of remaining asubject people is to their credit. If theyare comingwith theavowedpurpose of seizing the country and enslaving its inhabitants thewhites should in decency refrain from making a fuss about it, forthe little brownmanwould be only following the precedent set bythe white man through all history. The white man, however, ischiefly remarkable for the ability to preserve his equanimitywhenhe is a winner and squeal like a stuck pig when a loser.44

The focus on the hypocrisy, not the cruelty, of white racism is instructive.South Asians in British Columbia were well equipped to fight through theday-to-day racism they encountered. It was the hypocrisy that rankled, themockery that Britain’s acquiescence to Canada’s racist immigration lawsmade of Queen Victoria’s November 1, 1858 declaration that all membersof the British Empire were equal citizens, regardless of caste, sex or race.While we know very little about personal contact between members of theSPC and South Asian militants, it is difficult to believe, given the extent ofracism in Vancouver at this time, that white socialists could have come tothis kindof penetrating insightwithout being influencedby the experiencesand feelings of Asian immigrants.

Yet right from the early association of South Asian militants and SPCmembers in the 1907-08 period, there weremarked differences in the ideasand approaches of the two groups. Those differences are revealed bylooking at the ideas of a Bengali Hindu militant like Taraknath Das, who

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was closely associated with the Socialist Party in this period. Beforecoming to Canada, Das had been a member of Anushilan Samiti, arevolutionary nationalist secret society organised in Calcutta onMarch 24,1902.45 Das had been involved in organising a branch of the AnushilanSamiti at Calcutta University in the midst of the nationalist agitationopposing the partition of Bengal in 1905, and had been instrumental inorganising the Hindustani Association the year before. According to onehistorian of Anushilan Samiti, Das was among a group of members sentabroad to acquire weapons for the movement, which employed bombingsand political assassinations among its tactics.46 In Canada, however, hisactivities mostly involved the dissemination of ideas and the seeking ofallies among the Sikhs and BC socialists. In February 1908, Das publishedan article entitled “Hindu Fitness For Self-Rule” in the Western Clarion,then under the editorship of D.G. McKenzie.47

In his article Das commented that men “like Luther, Mazzini, PatrickHenry, Thomas Paine and other workers for the cause of humanity, wereinvariably in a minority at the beginning and came out victorious in theend.”48 The emphasis on the revolutionary minority reflects the tactics oftheHindu-inspired revolutionary nationalist organisations fighting againstBritish imperialism in Bengal. It foreshadows the fact that the Ghadariteswhowent to India to foment revolution tended to forget that as important asa dedicated, self-sacrificing revolutionary minority was to the cause, itcouldnot replace thepolitical educationandself-organisationof themasseswhich the Ghadarites themselves believed to be so important.

Das’s espousalof thekey roleof the revolutionaryminority representedamarked divergence from the revolutionary politics of the Socialist Party ofCanada. While McKenzie and many other SPCers agreed wholeheartedlywith Das’s assertion of Indian fitness for self-government, they placedmuch less emphasis on the role of the revolutionary minority, and muchmore emphasis on the long, slow process of educating workers to theresponsibilities of power. In an article that reads verymuch like a responseto Das’s February piece, D.G. McKenzie commented in May 1908:

What hope is there for the people of India? An outbreak is notimprobable but what would suit the government better? TheBritish hirelings with bayonet and gallows would soon settle thequestion. The Indian revolutionary movement would be drownedout in India’s best blood, and the reign of “PaxBritannica” be oncemore established.49

McKenzie’s assessment is eerily prophetic in the way inwhich it describeswhatwould actually happen toGhadar supporterswho attempted to fomentrebellion against the British in India and Southeast Asia during the FirstWorld War period. McKenzie is also alerting us to the Socialist Party ofCanada’s basic disagreement with the tactics of the leading South Asianmilitants in British Columbia, such as Das and G.D. Kumar, who was anassociate of Das in Calcutta.50

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In April 1908, Das began publication of the Free Hindusthan, the firstSouthAsianpublicationof anykind inCanada.HarishPuri believes that thepaper, written in English, was directed at a white audience, on theassumption that few South Asian labourers could read English.51 HughJohnston, on the other hand, believes that Das was attempting to reach aSikh audience.52 Puri’s point is well taken, but there seems little doubt thatDas was attempting to influence Sikh readers, and that he had a potentialaudience among Sikh immigrants who had learned at least some Englishwhile serving in the British military.53 In any event, the Free Hindusthancertainly attracted the attention of the Canadian authorities, who were asconcernedwith developing linkswithCanada’s socialists as theywerewiththe militance of the South Asians themselves. According to Sub-DistrictIntelligence Officer W. McLeod of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police,theFree Hindusthanwas published in the press room of the Socialist PartyofCanada,whichalsoproduced theparty’spaper, theWesternClarion.The fact that both the Western Clarion and the Free Hindusthan were

published in the press room of the SPC led to great concern amongimmigration officials and the RNWMP that Socialist influence was asignificant factor inSouthAsianunrest. Onecan speakof the importanceof“socialist” influence only if the word is very broadly defined. Two yearsafter Das’s article appeared in theWestern Clarion, he based an appeal forrevolution in India in his paper The Free Hindusthan on the ideas ofAbrahamLincoln andGuiseppeMazzini, not on those ofMarx. Das quotesMazzini: “Education and insurrections are the only methods by which wecan rouse the mass of the people.”54 On the need for education andself-organisation the South Asian militants and the SPCers were of onemind. This would be a central organising idea of the Ghadar movementwhen it was founded on the American west coast in 1913.55 On the otherhand, South Asian militants like Das were much more attracted to thefomenting of “insurrections” led by a revolutionaryminority thanwere theCanadianMarxists, andon this question the influence ofMazzini is ofmoresignificance than that of Marx.

Michael O’Dwyer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab fromMay 1913to May 1919, believed that the Sikh militants, these “ignorant but sturdymen of the peasant type,” had fallen under the influence of “cleverintriguing Hindu revolutionaries.”56 There is some truth to his claim,because Hindu revolutionary nationalists like Taraknath Das encouragedthe efforts of Khalsa Sikh veterans of the British army to forsake theirallegiance to theBritish crown. Khalsa Sikh army veterans represented thecourageous and well-trained fighters who would prove invaluable in anyattempt to overthrow British rule in India. Das, in his paper The FreeHindusthan, appealed especially to Sikh army veterans, commenting in theSeptember-October 1909 issue on a meeting held at the Vancouvergurdwara on October 3, 1909. At that meeting, Sardar Natha Singhpresented a resolution to the effect that no member of the Executive

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Committee of the gurdwara should wear “any kind of medals, buttons,uniforms or insignia which may signify that the position of the partywearing the article is nothing but a slave to the British supremacy.” Das’spaper reported that “the audience solemnly and unanimously accepted theproposal,” and Gharib Singh, an executive member, took off his medal.57Bhag Singh later burned his honourable discharge certificate. While Dasclearly approved of this development, there is no reason to doubt,O’Dwyer’s attitude notwithstanding, that this rejection of service in theBritish army came fromwithin the Khalsa Sikh community itself. Nor didthe break necessarily represent any lessening of the importance of Sikhvalues and practices to Khalsa Sikhs like Balwant, Bhag and Hari Singh.The orthodoxy being challenged was a political, not a religious, one.

Hussain Rahim: Unity Forged, Unity FracturedUntil 1910, therefore, we can do nomore than claim that the Socialist Partyof Canada sympathised with the South Asian militants and shared some oftheir ideas, but there was little active support coming from the CanadianSPCers. The Socialist Party’s efforts to educate and organise Canadianworkerswere largely confined toworkers born inCanada, theUnitedStatesandEurope.However, a significant change in the relationshipwassignalledon January 14, 1910with the arrival inCanada ofHussainRahim. Rahim, aHinduwhose real namewas ChaganKhairaj Varma, was Lohana Bania bycaste. A native of Porbander State in Kathiawar, Rahim was arrested andheld fordeportationonOctober27, 1910.58His confiscatedeffects includedletters from Taraknath Das, notes on manufacturing explosives, and theaddresses of Indian agitators in France, the United States, Switzerland,Natal and Egypt.59 Rahim was resolute when faced with the possibility ofdeportation, responding to the interrogation by telling Royal NorthwestMountedPoliceagentWilliamC.Hopkinson: “YoudriveusHindoosoutofCanada and we will drive every white man out of India.”60 The applicationfor a writ of habeas corpus overturning Rahim’s deportation order, heardbefore Justice J. Murphy on February 15, 1911 was granted on March 9,1911, on the argument that Rahim was a tourist at the time of his arrival inCanada. A second deportation order was quashed on November 9, 1911.61William Hopkinson was distressed about the negative impact on “theprestige of the Government,” noting that the two failures to deport Rahim“have so bolstered up his position in the Hindu community here as tomakehim a leader and a counsellor in respect to all matters concerning theircommunity.”62

HussainRahim’s influencewas pronounced bothwithin andwithout theSouth Asian community. In the spring of 1911 he, G.D. Kumar and Dr.Spencer, Chief of the LocalOptionLeague, formed theHinduTemperanceAssociation.63 Rahim, along with Atma Ram, also organised the UnitedIndiaLeague.64 ByFebruary1912,hewas involved in the free speech fightsbeingconductedby the IndustrialWorkersof theWorld and somemembers

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of the Socialist Party.65 W.C. Hopkinson reported that Rahim had beenassisting the IWW “by furnishing bail to release some of them arrested forcreating a disturbance in the streets.” Rahim had also espoused the IWWcause at a recent meeting. Hopkinson noted that Rahimwas being assistedby two Muslims, one of whom, Nawab Khan, would later become afounding member of the Hindu Association of the Pacific Coast and animportant leader in the Ghadarmovement.66 The other, Baggae Khan, wasone of the South Asian militants who contributed to Rahim’s fund-raisingcampaign for the Socialist Party of Canada.67 While the number ofMuslimmilitants in British Columbia at this time was quite small, and not verymuch is known about them, Nawab and Baggae Khan’s association withRahim demonstrates the way in which South Asian militancy cut acrossreligiousdifferences and indicates thepivotal roleHussainRahimplayed inbringing Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and white Socialists together.

In the spring of 1912, Rahim launched a challenge toBritishColumbia’sracist voting laws, which prohibited South Asians from voting, by gettinghis name placed on the voters’ list for the provincial election held onMarch28. Not only did he vote, but he also served as a scrutineer for the SocialistParty in the Ward Four Polling Station, which was in the Vancouver CityHall. When William Hopkinson found out about Rahim’s activities, hetracked him down and had him arrested, then had his house searched. Thesearch turned up a substantial quantity of SPC and IWW literature, anewspaper clipping dealing with the preparation of bombs, and evidencethatRahimhadsolicitedmore than$100 fromSouthAsians for theSocialistParty and IWW. Hopkinson was clearly disturbed by this evidence, andcommented:

The Hindus have up to the present never identified themselveswith any particular Political party and the introduction by Rahimof the socialist propaganda into this community is, I consider avery seriousmatter, as themajority of these people are uneducatedand ignorant and easily led like sheep by a man like Rahim. Thedanger to the country is not here but the question iswhat effectwillall these Socialistic and Revolutionary teachings have on thepeople in India on the return of these men primed with Westernmethods of agitation and Political and Social equality.68

Hopkinson’s assessment of the danger to the British Empire is bothinsightful and misleading. He is right in arguing that the real threat wouldoccur in India, not in Canada. He is wrong, however, in believing that thethreat lay in themilitants adopting “Westernmethods of agitation”— theyalready had their own methods, methods which the Socialist Party ofCanada rejected.

In the April 1, 1912 letter in which he reported on Hussain Rahim’sactivities William Hopkinson also informed Ottawa that leading SouthAsian activists were subscribing money to the Socialist Party of Canada.The supporters included Muslim militants such as Baggae Khan, and

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“moderates” such as Dr Sundar Singh, as well as prominent Khalsa Sikhssuch as Bhag and Balwant Singh.69 In June 1912, Hopkinson reported thatRahim and at least 12 other South Asians, including Bhag Singh, BalwantSingh andGharibSingh, had formeda local of theSocialist Party ofCanadain order to translate SPC and IWW literature into Indian languages.70Again, however, one must be cautious in assessing this evidence.71 First,while itmaybe true thatRahimhadacommitment fromtheSikhmilitants toform a local, there is no actual evidence that the South Asian local everfunctioned as such. Second, Balwant Singh’s feelings about HussainRahim raise questions about their ability to work together. During histestimony at the Second Supplementary Lahore Conspiracy Trial in 1917,Singh observed that Rahim had attempted to convince the Khalsa Sikhs tocut their hair, shave their beards, “and to become like himself.”72 It may bethe case that as early as 1909Balwant Singh had “imbibedWestern ideas ofliberty and socialism,” but his willingness to join the Socialist Party andsupport Hussain Rahim’s fight against racist immigration laws and Britishimperialismdid not involve the repudiation of his identity as aKhalsa Sikh,or mean that socialism had replaced his religion as the basis of his beliefsand politics.73

While theKhalsa Sikhs remained on the periphery of the Socialist Party,HussainRahimbecameoneof the party’s leadingmembers. Sometime latein 1912 or early in 1913, Rahim became amember of theVancouver-basedDominion Executive Committee (DEC) of the SPC. This is a significantdevelopment: no historian of the Socialist Party has recognised that aperson of colour ever attained such an influential position in the party.Rahim’s importance to the party emerged in a meeting of the DominionExecutiveCommittee held on February 13, 1913. At thatmeeting theDECreacquired ownership of the party’s paper, theWesternClarion. The paper,the lifeblood of the Socialist Party, was not published between November1912 andMarch 1913. The partywas in bad shape at this time following thedefection of the great majority of itsManitoba and Ontario members to theSocial Democratic Party in 1910-11. The timing of Rahim’s involvementseems to indicate that he played a major role in putting theClarion and thepartybackon its feet. At the February13meeting,heoffered theSPCofficeroom and free rent at 516 Main Street, the offices of the Canada-IndiaSupply Company, where the DEC held its meetings until late in 1914.74

Hussain Rahim’s involvement with the Socialist Party of Canada wasdoubly significant. As manager of the Canada India Supply and TrustCompanyLimited,which traded in real estate, Rahimwas apetit bourgeoisattempting to organise andmobilise Sikhworkerswhoworked forwages.75InVancouver, therefore,Rahimwasengaged in the sameprocess asGhadarmembers would be in the Punjab, “the process of an attempted bridging ofthe gap between the political orientation of the petit bourgeois intellectualsand the peasant masses.”76 On February 22, 1913, nine days after Rahimoffered free office space to the Dominion Executive Committee of the

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Socialist Party, he spoke at a meeting in the Dominion Hall in Vancouverorganised by the Khalsa Diwan and the United India League. In a ringingcondemnation of the Canadian ImmigrationDepartment, Rahim identifiedAsian immigrants with the working class. He claimed, according to acorrespondent to the local immigration agent, that “it was no new thing thispersecution of the working classes, they had at all times been fooled anddown trodden: but although this had always been the case, it could only betemporarily, the working class would always win out.”77 By identifyingSouth Asian workers as members of the working class, Rahim was cuttingdirectly against the white racism of even some members of his own party,who joined in the general chorus of racism and exclusionism in BritishColumbia at this time, an exclusionism that did not seeworkers of colour asfellowmembers of the working class.78 Rahimwas that most dangerous ofagitators, an educated petit bourgeois appealing to the “illiterate” masses,and a socialist attempting to build bridges between white and South Asianworkers.

The task of building those bridges faced daunting obstacles, includingcultural and linguistic differences, and the racism of white workers. Thetask was made even more difficult by Rahim’s own conception of theworking class. Hussain Rahim was not really talking about the Indianworkingclassheknew,or theCanadianworkingclasshe livedamong. Ifhisworking class had a historical reality, it was the European working classMarx talked about. In a sense Rahim’s working class, like that of many“white”members of the Socialist Party,was theworking class that ought tobe, not the working class as it actually existed. Like Lala Har Dayal, whoobserves that the “educated classes of India have no idea of the horribledestitutionof themassof thepeople inEurope,”Rahimalmost suggests thatthe workers and poor of Europe are in greater need than the workers andpoor of India.79 Har Dayal and Rahim were not so much arguing from theactual material reality of the Indian and European working classes on theeve of the FirstWorldWar, as theywere arguing fromMarx’s impassioneddescription of the working class of his own day.

Thegreatmajority ofwhiteworkers inBritishColumbiaon the eveof theFirst WorldWar were more concerned with protecting their own jobs thanthey were with seeking solidarity with their Asian brothers. By 1913,unemployment inBritishColumbia had become a serious problem, and theBritish Columbia labour movement was concerned with wages, workingconditions and protecting jobs, a task that was perceived to include theexclusion of competitors from India, China and Japan. Hussain Rahim andothermembers of the Socialist Party fighting for the rights of SouthAsianswere increasingly at odds with the trade union leadership and the majorityof rank and file white workers in the province. Rahim’s idealisedconception of the working class was difficult for Sikh workers to accept,facing as they did the often prejudiced thoughts and actions of the whiteworking class amongwhomtheyactually lived andworked. Concernswith

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wages and working conditions notwithstanding, it was Canada’s racistimmigration laws and British rule in India that continued to be the focus ofSikh anger and protest.

The Ghadar Revolt: Meetings and PartingsIn the fall of 1913, hundreds of SouthAsians rallied behindBhagwanSinghwhen hewas chargedwith entering Canada under a false identity. Singh, anative of Amritsar, was granthi of the Sikh temple in Hong Kong in theyears 1910-13. He left Hong Kong in May 1913, calling himself NathaSingh, and became known in North America for “preaching sedition.”80Arrested and ordered deported on September 30, Singh was finally forcedout of the country on November 19, in spite of two writs of habeas corpusfiled by defence lawyer and Socialist Party of Canada member J. EdwardBird.81

Themorepublic efforts and influenceof socialists suchas J.EdwardBirdshouldnot be allowed toovershadow the reality that, in these timesof crisis,Sikh militants themselves turned to their religious beliefs for inspirationand strength. Just how powerful and central thismotivationwas appears ina letter written in Gurmukhi by an unknown Sikh resident of Berkeley,California toLall Singh, the jemadar of police atHongKongwhohad jailedBhagwan Singh prior to his departure for Canada. The author writes:

Doyou think thatGuruwill call you aSikh now? No, hewill nevercall you a Sikh ...Why have you become a slave to the British, andan enemy to your country? The guru made us uproot oppressionnot countenance ... You remember, the oppression just nowagainst aman,whohasnotkilledyour children ... Whydoyougiveshame to your ancestor, Guru and parents and oppress your ownpeople? ... Do you not feel shame? Reflect what yourGuru did foryou and what you are doing?82

Although not identified, the author is in all probability a Sikh studentattending the University of California at Berkeley, where Lala Har Dayaland the Ghadar supporters actively recruited followers. The influence ofCanadian socialists notwithstanding, the ideas expressed here moreaccurately reflect the primary motivation of Canadian Sikh supporters ofGhadar. In 1914, Hussain Rahim would note that “there are half a dozenpreachers connected with the Sikh church who today may be preachingfrom the pulpit of the church and next day handling lumber.”83 Rahimwould have had much more difficulty finding half a dozen Sikh lumberhandlers capable of addressing an audience on Marxist theory.

The deportation of Bhagwan Singh occurred at precisely the time whenthe first issue of Ghadar was published in the United States. BhagwanSingh quickly became both a hero and a martyr to Ghadar supporters inCanada and the United States, and word of what was happening in NorthAmerica rapidly spreadacross thePacific. Gurdit SinghSanhali, a nativeof

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Amritsar District currently living in Hong Kong, decided to challenge thepassingofOrder-in-council 2642,whichprohibited “the landingat anyportof entry in British Columbia” of “Artisans” and “Labourers, skilled andunskilled.”84 Hedid so by chartering a ship, theKomagataMaru,which leftHong Kong on April 4, 1914 with 165 passengers on board. Stops inShanghai,Moji andYokohamabrought to 376 the number of passengers onboard— 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus— including two womenand three children. On May 23, the ship anchored off Vancouver, but itspassengers were not allowed to land.83

In response, a temple support committeewas establishedbyBhagSingh,Balwant Singh, Mit Singh and Hussain Rahim, all Ghadar supporters. OnMay 31, 600 South Asians attended a protest meeting in Vancouver’sDominion Hall addressed by Balwant Singh and Hussain Rahim. WilliamHopkinson’s account of this meeting indicates the extent to which it wasbased on an appeal to the Sikh martial tradition and the Sikh religion. Inseeking support for the people on board the Komagata Maru, BalwantSingh hearkened back to the “Sikh warriors” who had fought against theBritish in the Sikh Wars of the 1840s, telling his audience that they, liketheir forebears, should not submit to English tyranny. Balwant Singh,Sohan Lal andOjagir Singh as well, appealed to the “religious sentiments”of the audience, not to socialist ideas, in asking for donations.86

On June 21, 1914 the South Asian community joined with the SocialistParty of Canada to stage an even larger rally at the Dominion Hall.According to the Vancouver Sun, the meeting was attended by 800Hindusand 200 whites. Several Hindu speakers “raised the red flag.” ChairmanHussain Rahim introduced Socialist Party member J. Edward Bird assomeone who had “ever been a friend of the working man.” Following abrief history of the Orders-in-council excluding Asian immigrants, andattempts made to overturn those Orders-in-council, Bird talked of SouthAsians as fellow socialists and challenged white workers who wouldexclude South Asians from the ranks of the working class:

I have heard from time to time that these men are anarchists andthey are all bad, all Socialists. I have myself the honour ofbelonging to the Canadian Socialist party for years and I havenever seen a Socialist yet who was not a decent man ... don’tbelieve all these stories that you hear about the Hindus. I believethere is no finer race physically or mentally than the Sikh ...Physically they are our superiors andmentally our equals ... to ownup frankly is it not thatwe are afraid of thesemen, because they areour competitors, because they are coming here for the purpose ofcompetingwithus, is not that the fact? We talkaboutkeeping this awhite man’s country — and see if that is not prejudice in yourheart.87

While itwasnot uncommon in this period for “white”Canadians to speak inglowing terms about the religiosity, intelligence, resourcefulness, courage

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and capacity for hard work of the Sikhs, it was quite uncommon for aspeaker to directly confront white workers and condemn their racism.88

H.M. Fitzgerald followed Bird, and began his direct address to SouthAsians in the audience by saying that he did “not know of any collection ofhuman society that did not have an Asiatic origin.” Echoing the politics ofthe South Asian militants, Fitzgerald said that because of the oppositionexpressed between sect and sect in India “a little tin pot people in thenorth-east part of the Atlantic can go into your country and dominate you,”and in spiteof the fact that “yourheroismhasbeenextolled theworldover ...I say to you now if the white men of the British Empire keep you frommovingwithin that Empire it is up to you.” Fitzgerald described India as “acountry from which civilization flowed out over the entire world when wemembers of a bull-dog breed were wandering around the swamps ofGermany.” Shifting Bird’s emphasis somewhat, Fitzgerald advised hisAsianaudiencenot towaste its timeon theKomagataMaru, but to “get backto your own land filled with the spirit of revolt and sweep the country, andthen fight the people that we Socialists of North America are fighting.”89

H.M. Fitzgerald’s speech provides a crucial insight into thecontradictory nature of the Socialist Party of Canada’s racial attitudes andrelationship with South Asian militants. On the one hand, his praise of theIndian militants, and the argument that South Asians held the power tooverthrow British imperialism, set him apart from the white racists of hispolitical culture, and served to inspire South Asian militants. On the other,his advice to “get back to your own land” echoes W.J. Curry’s December1908 directive to “Go ye back across the ocean.” Fitzgerald’s advicedemonstrates the continuing failure of even themost sympathetic SocialistParty spokespersons to fully accept South Asians as future citizens ofCanada. Where the fate of the Ghadar movement is concerned, however,the important consideration is that Fitzgerald’s call to arms serves tovalidate a decision that has alreadybeenmadebymanySikhmilitants in theaudience.

On the question of socialist influence, it is worthy of note thatFitzgerald’s ideas are not Marxist in any decided way. He praises Indiancivilisation, denigrates theWest, and validates the struggles of SouthAsianmilitants as the travails of a people who had created a great civilisation laidlowbyBritish imperialism, apeoplewho through their ownefforts couldbegreat once again.90 There was nothing specifically Marxist about thisposition: itwas consistentwith theviewsof JamesMill andEdmundBurke,and was espoused by revolutionary nationalists in India. In BritishColumbia, Sikhmilitants brought their own understanding to this call for areturn to Indian greatness, looking to the Sikh heroes of the wars of the1840s against the British, not to the Sikh heroes of the Indian Mutiny whohad fought as allies of theBritish in suppressing the sepoy revolt. CanadianSikhs were influenced by socialist ideas, and did identify withrevolutionaries fighting to overthrow oppressive regimes in Ireland,

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Mexico and China, but those socialist ideas buttressed religious goals andcommitments that came out of the Sikh religious experience. Fitzgerald’splacing of responsibility for overthrowing the British Raj on the Sikh rankand file is, however, consistent with the Socialist Party’s Marxist-basedadvocacy of self-education and self-organisation. It is also instructive thatFitzgerald counsels overthrowing British rule and then engaging in theclass strugglewith India’s capitalists,when the class strugglewas first, last,and always the focus of SPC spokespersons when addressing whiteworkers. This shift in focus is significant, because critics of the SocialistParty have traditionally condemned its members for collapsing the racequestion into the class question. Here, Fitzgerald’s acceptance of the“politics of exclusion” notwithstanding, is an example of an SPCspokesperson placing race ahead of class.

Ironically, while H.M. Fitzgerald was on the public platform exhortingthe militants to return to India, J. Edward Bird was attempting to get thepassengers on board theKomagataMaru into the country. On June 29 and30, 1914, in the Court of Appeal at Victoria, Bird launched a defence in thecase ofMunshi Singh, one of the passengers from theKomagataMaru, in atest case concerning the legality of the exclusion order. Bird failed, but hefailed inpart becauseof theveryeffectivenessofhis argument, anargumentthat struck right to the heart of claims made by white racists andexclusionists. In the course of his defence, Bird contested contemporaryuses and understandings of the concept of “race” in order to expose theabsurdity of Canada’s immigration laws. Bird stated: “We are identicallyof the same race as theHindus, that is of theArian race and they are a branchof the Caucasian race and ethnologists state we are of just the same Asiaticrace as they are.” Bird quoted from theHindu International Encyclopediato demonstrate that “99 per cent of applicants for admission to Canada arebroadly speaking of Asiatic origin,” and followed this argument with theassertion that there “is no such thing as an Asiatic race,” and that the wordrace itself is “incapable of any understanding.”91

In the decision rendered on July 6, 1914, inwhich awrit of habeas corpuswas denied, the final argument advanced by the judges was to claim thatMunshi Singh was of Asiatic, not Aryan or Caucasian race. Judge J.A.McPhillips quoted several sources, including A.H. Sayce, an OxfordAssyriologist, and the 11th editionof theEncyclopediaBritannica, in orderto prove that the term Asiatic race was employed by reputed ethnologists,and was not just a popular usage. In doing so, McPhillips reversed theargument the judges hadmade during the appeal hearing,when they arguedthat the popular usage was of more importance than the ethnologicalterminology. It was ameaningful moment in the history of Canadian “racerelations.” Bird had exposed the fallacy of race-based exclusion laws, andput the agents of theCanadian state on thedefensive.McPhillipswas forcedto side-step Bird’s argument by appealing to cultural, rather than racial,differences as a legitimatebasis for excludingSouthAsians. Heargued that

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itwasevident that “theHindu race, aswell as theAsiatic race ingeneral, are,in their conception of life and ideas of society, fundamentally different tothe Anglo-Saxon and Celtic races, and European races in general.”92

The fact that BC socialists and SouthAsianmilitants were already in theprocess of giving the lie to McPhillips’s assertion of fundamentaldifferences in their ways of thinking — while of great significance —proved to be of little help to the passengers on board the Komagata Maru.Following an unsuccessful attempt by authorities to board the ship, theKomagataMaruwas forced to set sail on July 23, 1914, while thousands ofVancouver residents stood on the docks and cheered. On September 29,1914 the ship landed at Budge Budge, 14 miles south of Calcutta, afterbeing denied entry to Hong Kong, Kobe, Yokohama and Singapore. In theevening, an attempt to capture Gurdit Singh resulted in the deaths of 20Sikhs, two European officers, two Indian police, and two local residents.Gurdit Singh escaped, but gave himself up to authorities in 1921.93

TheKomagataMaru incidentwas the last straw formanySikhmilitants,their tolerance already stretched to the limit by the intrusive activities ofWilliamHopkinson and his Sikh informants. OnAugust 17, 1914HarnamSingh disappeared and was later found dead.94 Arjan Singh, another ofWilliam Hopkinson’s informants, was executed by Ran Singh, an elderlyreligious man. On September 5, following the cremation of Arjan Singh,Bela Singh shot Bhag Singh, Badan Singh and a number of otherworshippers inside theVancouver gurdwara. BhagSingh andBadanSinghdiedas a result of theirwounds. WilfredGribble, in anarticle in theWesternClarionwritten in themidstof theseevents, decried thekillingsand rejectedthe “methods of the assassin, the bravo and the swashbuckler.”95 Gribble’scriticism is, if anything, more directed at the militants than at Hopkinson’sinformants, and is the same kind of critique members of the Socialist Partydirected at white socialists and anarchists who engaged in essentiallyindividualist, rather than collectivist, modes of action. It is also instructivethat Gribble’s critique is carried out entirely without racial or religiousallusions. Wilfred Gribble in 1914 was espousing the same politics D.G.McKenzie had espoused in 1908: once again the socialists and SouthAsianmilitants found themselves divided, not by race, religion or ideas, but bytactics.96 They continued to share a commitment to the education andorganisation of the rank and file, and continued to be idealistic about thewillingness of the oppressed to overthrow their oppressors, but the SPCerswere not willing to join the South Asian militants in embracing armedstruggle.

As Bela Singh’s trial approached, Mewa Singh was either delegated, orvolunteered, to assassinate William Hopkinson. On October 21, 1914Singh calmly and deliberately shot Hopkinson to death in the corridors oftheVancouverCourtHouse. He then gave himself up.Hewas indicted twodays later, and the trial set for October 30, with Hussain Rahim, Sohan Lal,Balwant Singh, and Kartar Singh, all Ghadar supporters, named as

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co-conspirators.97 After a two-hour trial, and a jury deliberation of fiveminutes, MewaSinghwas condemned to be hanged on January 11, 1915.98Sohan Lal was brought to trial and acquitted, whereupon the chargesagainst Rahim and Balwant and Kartar Singh were dropped.

Hussain Rahim’s arrest had an immediate impact on the Socialist Party,which had taken a prominent role in aiding SouthAsian protest concerningtheKomagataMaru. Rahimappears tohaveattendedhis lastmeetingof theDominion Executive Committee of the SPC on October 23, 1914. OnNovember 21, theWestern Clarion reported that the Dominion ExecutiveCommittee had acquired new headquarters at 513 Hamilton Street.99Rahim did not return to take his position on the DEC after his arrest andrelease.Although thepagesof theWesternClarionholdnoclues, other thanWilfred Gribble’s article, to these events, there can be little doubt thatleading members of the Socialist Party came to the conclusion that theorganisation’s association with the militants now threatened its veryexistence. The Socialist Party was willing to support South Asian protestagainst Canada’s racist immigration policies, and also willing to condemnBritish imperialism in India, but itwasnotwilling to support, or appear tobesupporting, tactics with which it was in fundamental disagreement, andwhich could attract the unwanted attentions of the police and governmentauthorities.

Critics of Ghadar have been justified in pointing out that the movementwas poorly organised, not well armed, and so infiltrated by Britishintelligence that it had virtually no chance of success. That assessment isborne out by the fate of leading Ghadarites. Balwant Singh, tried as part ofthe Canadian group in the Second Supplementary Lahore Conspiracy trial,was executed. The death sentence of Kartar Singh Chand Nau was latercommuted to forfeiture of property and transportation for life. Hari Singh,another religious leader among the British Columbia Khalsa Sikhs, wastried as part of the Canadian group and sentenced to forfeiture of propertyand transportation for life. Harnam Singh Sahri and five other Ghadariteswere hung in 1916 in theMandalay Conspiracy Case.100 By 1917, HussainRahim was one of the few members of Ghadar still in Canada.101

The Shared Legacy of East and LeftThe fall of 1914 brought a parting of the ways for East and Left. TheSocialist Party’s attention was now fully drawn to the FirstWorldWar andthe effort to maintain socialist internationalism in a world given over tonationalism and imperialism. The SPC’s class politics found amore fittingadversary in the capitalist profiteers whomade fortunes from the labour ofthe working class and the Canadian state’s attempts to crush labourmilitancy and silence its socialist allies than in the faraway rulers of BritishIndia. The struggle for Indian independence faded into the background asthe struggle to unite workers in industrial unions and break down craft

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divisions in the labour force led to the formation of the One Big Union andtheWinnipegGeneral Strike in1919.102 Yet itmust not be forgotten that thecharacter of the industrial unionmovement inCanadawas shaped bySouthAsian militants like Hussain Rahim, whose valiant struggle to win SouthAsians the vote alerted white socialists to the marginalisation of Asianworkers in British Columbia, and laid the groundwork for the greaterwillingness of labour organisers to include South Asians in the industrialunion movement of the First World War period. The broadening anddeepening of worker solidarity in Canada in the First World War period isone of the legacies of Hussein Rahim and other South Asian militants.

The parting of the ways should not blind us to the quite remarkableconvergence of ideas that characterised this encounter of East and Left.Like theGhadarites,membersof theSPCspent little time thinkingabout the“alternative social and political order” they would create after therevolution, and in their thinking “little attention was given to a criticalanalysis of existing social formations.”103 Like members of the SPC,Ghadarites tended to assume that the “objective conditions” correspondedto their “subjective desires.”104 As Harish Puri points out, the members ofGhadar spent little time considering their revolutionary strategy, one of thestrongest and most widespread criticisms of the Socialist Party of Canadamembers who were directly involved in the Winnipeg General Strike of1919.105 This sharedweakness had a common source, an enduring belief inthe self-organisation and education of the working class that was the keyidea in Marx’s thought espoused by Har Dayal. Socialists like H.M.Fitzgerald encouraged South Asian militants to believe that they held theirfates in their own hands by arguing that it was only their own sectarianism,only divisions among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, which prevented theoverthrow ofBritish imperialism in India. Thiswas not a new idea to SouthAsian opponents of British imperialism, but one that went back at least asfar as the IndianMutiny of 1857-8,whichwas brought on by the realisationamong the rebel leaders that native troops in India greatly outnumberedEuropean troops, and that the time had seemingly come to destroy Britishpower in India. The role of theCanadian socialists was to validate and givenewmeaning to ideas that already existed in the thinkingof theSouthAsianmilitants.

The commitment to education and organisation of the masses lived oninto the 1920s and 1930s. Even as some Sikh Ghadarites joined theCommunist Party, read Lenin and Trotsky, and became advocates of thevanguard party, the concern with education and “liberating the workingclass from bourgeois ideology,” as J.S. Grewal puts it, continued to be animportant element in their thinking.106 The idea that the workers andpeasants had to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors bycommitting themselves to self-education and self-organisation remained.In thePunjab, in organisations likeKirtiKisan, the educational emphasis ofthe Socialist Party of Canada lived on. AsHarish Puri points out, therewas

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even “a certain anticipation of Ghandi in the thinking of these simple menthat if all Indianswithdrew their support to the government, theBritish rulein India would have no legs to stand on.”107

This common commitment to the education and organisation of theoppressed, and the idealistic belief that they had only to point the way andthe masses would follow, should not serve to disguise the fact that Sikhmilitants entered the struggle on their own terms, and that Sikh protest wasemerging from the Sikh religious and historical experience itself. Britishcolonial officials, Khalsa Sikhs loyal to the British raj, and historians whohonour Sikh Ghadarites as heroic contributors to the Indian independencemovement have all tended to downplay the role of religious motivations.The fact that it was a constant struggle to build andmaintain gurdwaras in ahostile environment, or that a small number of Sikhs turned to alcohol tonumb the loneliness of being separated from family and friends, or thatKhalsa Sikhs opposed proselytising within the Ghadar movement itself inno way negates the commitment of Sikh Ghadarites to remainingcommitted to the core values of their faith. If, as the leaders of the KhalsaDiwan claimed, they were “fallen Sikhs,” it was because they had becomethe enemies of British rule in India, not because they had ceased to bededicated Sikhs.108 In Canada they found a cause, and the support theyneeded, to return to the values upon which the Sikh religion was founded,and to the heroism of the Sikh battles against, not for, the British invaders.Theywerenot just appealing to religious sentiments for secular ends, as J.S.Grewal argues, an analysis that assumes that ending British imperialismwasa“secular,” not a religious, goal for theSikhmembersofGhadar.109 It istrue thatMewaSingh sawhimself as “the servant of all nations.”YetMewaSingh did what he did “in the name of one God,” not in the name ofsocialism, and he called for victory “to the army of the Guruji,” not to theinternational working class or the people of India.110 The co-operation thatexisted inGhadar in Canada among Sikhs, Hindus andMuslimswas not somuch based on the abandonment of religious principles as it was based ontheir affirmation.

Leading members of the Socialist Party of Canada, who belonged to aparty legendary for its vitriolic denunciations of anyone and everyonewhodisagreed with them, and who attacked Christians, trade union leaders,middle class women reformers and other socialists, took a leading role insupporting and defending South Asian militants in Canada, a support thatcamewithout overt attempts to change their beliefs. It wasmembers of theSocialist Party such as D.G. McKenzie, J. Edward Bird and H.M.Fitzgerald, orthodox Marxists who are now considered among the mostclose-minded and intolerant thinkers in Canadian history, who fought forand with South Asian militants in a political culture dominated by racistsand exclusionists. They were not able to jettison the politics of exclusion,but their ideaswere remarkably freeof the racist attitudes soprevalent in thepolitical cultureofBritishColumbia andCanada.ForSouthAsianmilitants

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already committed to returning to India to free an enslaved people, H.M.Fitzgerald’s exhortation to return to India and overthrow the British Rajwas experienced as a call to empowerment, not a racist attack. When Eastmet Left the historic result was a shared legacy of commitment todisciplined, dedicated and idealist struggle to educate, organise, and freethe oppressed.

Notes* I would like to express my appreciation to Kalina Grewal, Michael O’Brien,

Dolores Chew and Patricia Roy for comments, criticism and encouragement.Thanks as well to the reviewers, whose insights and suggestions have resulted in astronger argument and a more focused presentation. Last but not least, thanks toRobert Schwartzwald and everyone at the International Journal of CanadianStudies for the opportunity to put in print another contribution to Canada’s richand varied history of rebels and rebellion.

1. On Ghadar in the United States, see Joan M. Jensen, Passage from India: AsianIndian Immigrants in North America (New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress, 1988); Anil Baran Ganguly, Ghadar Revolution in America (New Delhi:Metropolitan, 1980); L.P. Mathur, Indian Revolutionary Movement in the UnitedStates of America (Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 1970). On Canada, see NormanBuchignani, Doreen M. Indra, with Ram Srivast[a]va, Continuous Journey: ASocial History of South Asians in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,1985); Hugh Johnston, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru (Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 1979); and Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, Volume 2:1839-1964 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966), 174-81.

2. For Lala Har Dayal (1884-1939), see Emily C. Brown, Har Dayal HinduRevolutionary and Rationalist (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1975).

3. Quoted in B.N. Pande, “Trends in Muslim Indian Politics, 1857-1918: The Roleof Aligarh and Deoband,” in Pande, ed., A Centenary History of the IndianNational Congress (1885-1985): Volume 1 (New Delhi: All India CongressCommittee(I)/Vikas Publishing House Private Ltd., 1985), 267.

4. Michael O’Brien, “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity in the BritishEmpire, 1902-1914,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the CanadianHistorical Association, St. John’s, Newfoundland, June 6, 1997.

5. Quoted in Harish K. Puri, Ghadar Movement: Ideology, Organisation & Strategy(Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University Press, 1983), 31.

6. Puri, Ghadar Movement, 51.7. When British colonial officials and writers on India used the term “anarchist”

they were not referring to the ideas of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy or Goldman.Rather, they meant any outspoken opponent of British rule in India who spokepositively of Indian — usually meaning Hindu — civilisation. James CampbellKer, Political Trouble in India, 1907-1917 (Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1917),xi-xii; J.N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India (New York: TheMacMillan Company, 1915), 363-4.

8. Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 52.9. Organised in Chicago in June 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World sought,

by means of the direct action of workers at the point of production, to create onebig union of workers capable of bringing down the capitalist system by means ofthe general strike. For the IWW in the United States see Melvyn Dubofsky, We

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Shall Be All (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969); Joseph Conlin, Bread andRoses Too (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1969);and Salvatore Salerno, Red November Black November: Culture and Communityin the Industrial Workers of the World (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1989). For the IWW in Canada see Mark Leier, Where the Fraser RiverFlows: The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver:New Star Books, 1990).

10. Brown, Har Dayal, 138-9.11. The quotations are taken from a reprinting of Har Dayal’s article in P.C. Joshi and

K. Damodaran, Marx Comes to India (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1975), 65,66. As Emily C. Brown points out, Har Dayal was as much or more impressed byMarx’s self-sacrifice than he was by his ideas. See her Har Dayal: HinduRevolutionary and Rationalist, 99-100.

12. On the Socialist Party of Canada, see A. Ross McCormack, Reformers, Rebels,and Revolutionaries: The Western Canadian Radical Movement, 1899-1919(Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977); Norman Penner, TheCanadian Left: A Critical Analysis (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall of Canada,1977); Martin Robin, Radical Politics and Canadian Labour, 1880-1930(Kingston: Queen’s University, 1968); Ian Angus, Canadian Bolsheviks(Montreal: Vanguard Publications, 1981); Bryan D. Palmer, Working-ClassExperience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991, secondedition (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992); Janice Newton, The FeministChallenge to the Canadian Left, 1900-1918 (Montreal & Kingston:McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995); Gerald Friesen, “‘Yours in Revolt’:The Socialist Party of Canada and the Western Canadian Labour Movement,”Labour/Le Travailleur, 1 (1976), 139-57; Linda Kealey, “Canadian Socialismand the Woman Question, 1900-1914,” Labour/Le Travail, 13 (Spring 1984),77-100; David Frank and Nolan Reilly, “The Emergence of the SocialistMovement in the Maritimes, 1899-1916,” Labour/Le Travailleur, 4 (1978),85-113; Ross A. Johnson, “No Compromise–No Political Trading: The MarxianSocialist Tradition in British Columbia,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University ofBritish Columbia, 1975).

13. See, for example, J.A. McDonald, “The Need of Leaders,” Western Clarion,March 1917.

14. Puri, Ghadar Movement, 132.15. Joshi and Damodaran, Marx Comes to India, 71.16. G.S. Deol argues that one of the reasons the Ghadar rebellion failed was the

“Indian habit of regarding the ideal as an accomplished fact.” See his The Role ofthe Ghadar Party in the National Movement (Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1969),182.

17. Khushwant Singh and Satindra Singh, Ghadar 1915: India’s First ArmedRevolution (New Delhi-1: R & K Publishing House, 1966), 57.

18. Richard G. Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1985), 117-18.

19. David Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men: The Rise and Fall of the One Big Union(Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978), 22.

20. McCormack, Reformers, Rebels, and Revolutionaries, 10.21. W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy

Toward Orientals in British Columbia (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UniversityPress, 1978), 82.

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22. While in agreement with Mark Leier that a number of prominent SPCspokespersons were petit bourgeois, not working class, I have found no evidenceto suggest that the class position of SPC members had an effect on how their ideaswere received by South Asian militants. Leading South Asian militants likeHussain Rahim were themselves petit bourgeois. See Mark Leier, “Workers andIntellectuals: The Theory of the New Class and Early Canadian Socialism,”Journal of History and Politics/Revue d’Histoire et de Politique, vol. 10 (1992),87-108.

23. Western Clarion, October 19, 1907.24. W.J. Curry, “The Asiatic Invasion: Its Cause and Outcome,” Western Clarion,

December 5, 1908.25. Gillian Crease notes the importance of distinguishing between trade unionists,

labour leaders and socialist spokespersons who favoured “the politics ofexclusion” from those who opposed Canada’s racist immigration laws. See her“Exclusion or Solidarity? Vancouver Workers Confront the ‘Oriental Problem,’”BC Studies, No. 8 (Winter 1988-89), 24-49, especially 37-8.

26. “The Hindu Invasion,” Western Clarion, October 27, 1906.27. Western Clarion, February 13, 1909.28. Western Clarion, June 26,1909.29. See, for example, Roscoe Fillmore, “The Awakening: World Fears Competition

of Industrious Chinamen,” Western Clarion, January 21, 1911.30. While the head taxes were imposed before the formation of the Socialist Party,

the $500 tax had been instituted as recently as January 1, 1904, and remained inforce during the period under study. See Patricia Roy, A White Man’s Province:British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants (Vancouver:University of British Columbia Press, 1989), 156.

31. See T.G. Fraser, “The Sikh Problem in Canada and its Political Consequences,1905-1921,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 7, No. 1(October 1978), 36; and Hugh Johnston, “Patterns of Sikh Migration to Canada,1900-1960,” in Joseph T. O’Connell et al, eds., Sikh History and Religion in theTwentieth Century (Toronto: Centre for South Asian Studies, 1988), 299.

32. Teja Singh, a native of Amritsar, was educated at Lahore, Cambridge and Oxford.In Vancouver, he helped organise relief for South Asian workers and founded theGuru Nanak Mining and Trust Company. Sundar Singh, also a native of Amritsar,was a ship’s surgeon who studied medicine at Glasgow College. In Vancouver, heworked as a real estate agent, and edited the Aryan, an English-language paperthat appeared for a short period in 1911. He also helped organise the Hindu FriendSociety of Victoria. Johnston, Voyage of the Komagata Maru, 12-13; NationalArchives of Canada (NAC) Reel B-2882, British Colonial Office Papers, CO42,Vol. 959, File 19140, Board of Special Enquiry Held 1 November 1910 by theUnited States Immigration Service, Vancouver BC.

33. NAC Reel B-3097, CO42, Vol. 981, File 35834, Major T.W.G. Bryan, DistrictIntelligence Office, Victoria BC, to W. Gwatkin, Chief of the General Staff,Ottawa Ontario, August 31, 1914.

34. Deputy Minister of Labour W.L. Mackenzie King, in his 1908 report on Asianimmigration to Canada, found that a total of 5,179 South Asians had come toCanada between June 30, 1904 and March 31, 1908. Many of these immigrantsdid not remain in Canada, and only 2,342 South Asians were enumerated in theCanadian census of 1911. W.L. Mackenzie King, Report of the RoyalCommission Appointed to Inquire into the Methods by Which Oriental Labourers

60


Have Been Induced to Come to Canada (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau,1908), 75.

35. Quoted in Brown, Har Dayal, 90.36. NAC, Reel B-3259, CO42, Vol. 1004, File 33672, Second Supplementary Lahore

Conspiracy Case: Evidence.37. Munsha Singh was the son of Nihal Singh, of Jandiala, Jullundur District. He

arrived in Vancouver in 1911, and worked in British Columbia as a sawmill andfarm labourer. He returned to India in September 1914 and was interned inJanuary 1915. He was sentenced to transportation for life on January 5, 1917.NAC, Reel B-3259, CO42, Vol. 1004, File 33672, Second Supplementary LahoreConspiracy Case: Judgment, 110; Evidence, 2, 208, 220-1.

38. Balwant Singh, secretary of the Khalsa Diwan and granthi of the Vancouvergurdwara in 1912-13, had been a Lance Naik in the 36th Sikhs. Bhag Singh,secretary of the Khalsa Diwan, had served in the Tenth Bengal Lancer Regimentfor more than five years. Hari Singh was granthi of the Vancouver gurdwara in1911, and of the Victoria gurdwara in 1914. NAC Reel B-3097, CO 42, Vol.1004, File 33672, Second Supplementary Lahore Conspiracy Case: Evidence,133, 140, 205, 218, 231. Ker, Political Trouble in India, 230.

39. N. Gerald Barrier, “Sikh Politics in British Punjab Prior to the Gurdwara ReformMovement,” in O’Connell et al, eds., Sikh History and Religion in the TwentiethCentury, 173-4, 179-80. The Granth Sahib is the Sikh holy book.

40. Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 21.41. Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 23; Howard Sugimoto, “The

Vancouver Riots of 1907: A Canadian Episode,” in Hilary Conroy, ed., EastAcross the Pacific (Santa Barbara, California: American Bibliographical Centre –Clio Press, 1972), 92-126. As Khushwant Singh points out, “Canadian andBritish government officials knew there was no direct steamship line from Indiato Canada, and that immigrants had to change ships, often at Hong Kong orShanghai. The regulation effectively slowed South Asian immigration to atrickle.” Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs, 171-2.

42. Ward, White Canada Forever, 76; Roy, A White Man’s Province, 212.43. Western Clarion, September 14, 1907.44. Western Clarion, September 21, 1907. See Roy, A White Man’s Province, 173-4

for the kind of anti-Japanese racism the author is satirizing.45. Niharranjan Ray, “From Cultural to Militant Nationalism: The Emergence of the

Anushilan Samiti,” in Buddhadeva Bhattacharyya, ed., Freedom Struggle andAnushilan Samiti (Calcutta: D.C. Ghatak, 1979), 23.

46. Pradyot Kumar Ghosh, “The Revolutionary Movement During World War I,” inBhattacharyya, ed., Freedom Struggle and Anushilan Samiti, 101.

47. McKenzie’s interest in British imperialism in India would appear to derive fromthe fact that he was born there, but there is no evidence on which to base evenspeculation about his relationship with Das. Western Clarion, February 1918.

48. Taraknath Das, “Hindu Fitness For Self-Rule,” Western Clarion, February 29,1908.

49. McKenzie, “The Brightest Jewel In England’s Crown,” Western Clarion, May 2,1908.

50. G.D. Kumar is one of those South Asian militants in Canada whose politics and“identity” are difficult to define. In November 1908, he described himself as aSikh. By 1911, however, he was carrying a card that read: “G.D. Kumar, PunjabiBuddhist Worker in the cause of Temperance and Vegetarianism and Member of

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Dev Samaj.” Ker, Political Trouble in India, 230. For Dev, or Deva, Samaj, seeFarquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, 173-82.

51. Puri, Ghadar Movement, 42. Puri takes the same position on the question asJames Campbell Ker, Political Trouble in India, 226 , who says that “few of theSikhs could read a word of English.”

52. Johnston, Voyage of the Komagata Maru, 8.53. There can be no doubt about the influence of G.D. Kumar’s paper, Swadesh

Sewak, a Punjabi-language paper written in the Gurmukhi script. Johnston,Voyage of the Komagata Maru, 7; Ker, Political Trouble in India, 230-1.

54. Quoted in Ker, Political Trouble in India, 122.55. For example, the following statement concerning British rule in India appeared in

the January 6, 1914 issue of Guddre: “It is our own fault if we are under the powerof the Government. If we try we can easily be free.” NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 204,File 332, Part 10, translation of Guddre, #10.

56. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, India As I Knew It, 1885-1925 (London: Constable &Company Ltd., 1925), 190.

57. Gharib Singh would be one of the Sikh militants involved in the formation of aSouth Asian local of the Socialist Party in 1912. In 1910 he was president of theKhalsa Diwan. NAC, Reel B-3259, CO42, Vol. 1004, File 33672, SecondSupplementary Lahore Conspiracy Case: Evidence, 205.

58. In the summer of 1910 Rahim stated that his “home” was in Delhi, where hisfather ran a dry goods business. It was the sale of this business that had given himthe money with which to travel. See NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 201, File 332 Part 4,W.D. Scott, Superintendent of Immigration, to the Department of the Interior,Ottawa, July 12, 1910.

59. For an in-depth analysis of the surveillance of South Asian militants in BritishColumbia in this period see Hugh Johnston, “The Surveillance of IndianNationalists in North America, 1908-1918,” BC Studies, no. 78 (Summer 1988).

60. NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 201, File 332 Part 4, J. H. MacGill to W.W. Cory, October28, 1910. W.C. Hopkinson was born in Delhi in 1880, the son of a British armyofficer whose mother was likely Indian. In 1903 or 1904, he became an inspectorof police in Calcutta. He came to Canada in late 1907 or early 1908. In February1909, he was hired as an immigration inspector and interpreter, and later becamechief assistant to the Canadian inspector of immigration. See Johnston, Voyage ofthe Komagata Maru, 1; and Ker, Political Trouble in India, 251.

61. Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC), British Columbia Reports: Vol. 16(Victoria: Colonist Printing and Publishing Company, 1912), 469-72.

62. NAC, Reel B-2881, MG11, Vol. 959, File 13153, W.C. Hopkinson to W.W.Cory, March 26, 1912.

63. NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 201, File 332, Part 5, W.C. Hopkinson to W.W. Cory, May9, 1911. South Asians involved in the Temperance Association were becomingconcerned about South Asian men who, separated from their wives and families forlong periods of time, were turning to alcohol as a way of coping with their situation.

64. Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 40.65. On the free speech fights, see Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows: The

Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver: New StarBooks, 1990), 74-85, and “Solidarity on Occasion: The Vancouver Free SpeechFights of 1909 and 1912,” Labour/Le Travail, 23 (Spring 1989), 39-66.

66. NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 202, File 332 Part 6, W.C. Hopkinson to W.W. Cory,February 22, 1912.

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67. NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 202, File 332 Part 6, W.C. Hopkinson to W.W. Cory, April1, 1912.



70. NAC, RG76, Vol. 384, File 536999, Part 5, W.C. Hopkinson to W.W. Cory, June11, 1912.

71. Hugh Johnston argues that the “orthodox” Sikhs were little inclined “to follow thelead of outsiders,” while at the same time pointing out that the Sikhs attempting toform a Socialist Party of Canada local were executive officers of the KhalsaDiwan. Johnston, Voyage of the Komagata Maru, 11. Johnston, one presumes, isusing “orthodox” as a synonym for loyalty to the British Crown, and not as areligious designation. Johnston, and Khushwant Singh as well, suggest that whatdefines an “orthodox” Sikh in this period — in effect, a “good” or “true” Sikh —is not adherence to the core religious values of Sikhism, but rather loyalty to theBritish Empire.

72. NAC Reel B-3097, CO 42, Vol. 1004, File 33672, Second Supplementary LahoreConspiracy Case: Evidence, 234.

73. NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 200, File 332, Part 3, W.C. Hopkinson to W.W. Cory,October 30, 1909.

74. Western Clarion, March 1, 1913.75. NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 201, File 332, Part 4, J.H. MacGill to W.W. Cory, October

28, 1910.76. Puri, Ghadar Movement, 8.77. NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 203, File 332, Part 7B, H. Gwyther to Immigration Agent,

Vancouver, February 24, 1913.78. In the American context, David Roediger has argued “that working class

formation and the systematic development of a sense of whiteness went hand inhand for the US white working class.” See his The Wages of Whiteness: Race andthe Making of the American Working Class (London and New York: Verso,1991), 8.

79. Lala Har Dayal, “Karl Marx: A Modern Rishi,” in Joshi and Damodaran, MarxComes to India, 50.

80. Ker, Political Trouble in India, 238-9.81. Johnston, Voyage of the Komagata Maru, 16-20.82. NAC, MG 27 III B9, Vol. 172, H.H. Stevens, File: Immigration: Correspondence

& Clippings (Hindu) 1914.83. NAC, MG 27 III B9, Vol. 171, H.H. Stevens, File: Hindu Immigration Incident

(1), copy of The Hindustanee, April 1, 1914.84. NAC, Reel B-2951, MG11, Vol. 971, File 1115, “P.C. 2642,” signed by

Rodolphe Boudreau, Clerk of the Privy Council, at the Government House atOttawa, December 8, 1913.

85. Johnston, Voyage of the Komagata Maru, 24-37; Ker, Political Trouble in India,239-41.

86. NAC Reel B-3096, CO42, Vol. 979, File 58, W.C. Hopkinson to W.W. Cory,June 1, 1914.

87. NAC Reel B-3096, CO42, Vol. 980, File 25955, “Minutes of a Hindu MassMeeting Held in Dominion Hall, Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sunday, June21st, 1914,” 1, 10-11.

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88. For defences of the Sikhs see NAC, RG7, G21, Vol. 201, File 332 Part 5, WalterW. Baer, “The Problems of Hindu Immigration into Canada, ” no date; NAC ReelB-2234, CO42, Vol. 912, File 6178, Colonel Falkland Warren to ColonelHanbury-Williams, January 8, 1907; and NAC Reel B-2954, CO42, Vol. 975,File 23958, “The Hindu Population in British Columbia,” June 2, 1913.

89. NAC Reel B-3096, CO42, Vol. 980, File 25955, “Hindu Mass Meeting,” 15-16,18, 20.

90. For this “saving hypothesis” of the course of Indian history, see M.P. Cowen andR.W. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London and New York: Routledge,1996), 42-4.

91. NAC Reel B-3097, CO42, Vol. 980, File 34012, “In the Matter of theImmigration Act and in the Matter of Munshi Singh,” 40, 51-2.

92. LSBC, British Columbia Reports, Vol. 20 (1915), 289-90.93. Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey, 60.94. This Harnam Singh should not be confused with Harnam Singh Sahri, the Ghadar

leader.95. Wilfred Gribble, “As To Morals,” Western Clarion, August 29, 1914.96. Wilfred Gribble was a British-born carpenter active in Toronto labour circles. In

1909, he conducted a major organising tour of the Maritimes for the SocialistParty of Canada. For Gribble see Wayne Roberts, “Artisans, Aristocrats andHandymen: Politics and Trade Unionism among Toronto Skilled Building TradesWorkers, 1896-1914,” Labour/Le Travailleur, 1 (1976), 97; and for his Maritimetour see Frank and Reilly, “The Emergence of the Socialist Movement in theMaritimes,” 92, 94-6, 101-02.

97. Kartar Singh was the son of Sunder Singh, Jat, of Chand Nau, FerozeporeDistrict. Michael O’Dwyer considered him “one of the most active leaders of theghadr movement in Canada.” His importance has been overlooked in theliterature on Ghadar because he has not been distinguished from Kartar SinghAkali, who published the Khalsa Herald, a Gurmukhi monthly begun inVancouver in 1911. Later he moved to Toronto, where he edited the TheosophicalNews. He should also not be confused with Kartar Singh Sarabha, son of MangalSingh, the American-based founder of the Ghadar movement who was executedat Lahore in 1916. NAC, Reel B-3259, C042, Vol. 1004, File 33672, “Order byLieutenant-Governor on Petitions from Persons Convicted in the Lahore SecondSupplementary Conspiracy Case,” 4; Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs,175n17; Brown, Har Dayal, 140; Fauja Singh, Eminent Freedom Fighters ofPunjab (Patiala 1972), 151-3.

98. Johnston, Voyage of the Komagata Maru, 125-8; Ker, Political Trouble in India, 247-8.99. Western Clarion, November 21, 1914.100. Deol, Role of the Ghadar Party in the National Movement, 211-13.101. On the fate of Ghadar supporters in India and Southeast Asia, see Khushwant

Singh, History of the Sikhs, 181-6; Buchignani and Indra, Continuous Journey,63-4; and Ganguly, Ghadar Revolution in America, 54-88. Rahim was one of theSocialist Party’s most knowledgeable members on the topic of Freudianpsychology and the impact of Freud’s ideas on working class thought. In the early1920s, he was still writing reviews of books on topics related to psychology forthe Western Clarion. In 1921, Rahim published a slender volume on psychology,a book intended to be the first of a series. Bill Pritchard, the only SPC memberfrom British Columbia imprisoned for his role in the Winnipeg General Strike,wrote the introduction.

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102. For the labour revolt of 1919, see Gregory S. Kealey, “1919: The CanadianLabour Revolt,” Labour/Le Travail, 13 (Spring 1984), 11-44. For the One BigUnion see Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men.

103. Ross Johnson is too categorical, but near the truth, when he states that theSocialist Party made “no attempt to develop Marxist ideology to suit theeconomic situation in British Columbia or Canada.” See his “NoCompromise-No Political Trading,” 17.

104. Puri, Ghadar Movement, 125.105. See, for example, Angus, Canadian Bolsheviks, 56.106. J.S. Grewal, The New Cambridge History of India: The Sikhs of the Punjab

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 166.107. Puri, Ghadar Movement, 124.108. Puri, Ghadar Movement, 85.109. Grewal, Sikhs of the Punjab, 166.110. NAC, MG27 III B9, H.H. Stevens, Vol. 177, File: Immigration: Correspondence

& Clippings (Hindu) 1915, translation of an address written by Mewa Singh andsent to the Stockton, California Khalsa Diwan; forwarded by Malcolm J.R. Reidto H.H. Stevens, February 23, 1915.

65


Émile J. Talbot

Literature and Ideology in the Thirties:Fictional Representations of Communism in

Quebec

AbstractThis essay explores the literary representation of communists in Francophonenovels and plays in Quebec during the 1930s. In the literary production of theperiod, the critiques of economic liberalism offered by the communists arenever engaged, probably because they had much in common with traditionalFrench-Canadian critiques of capitalism as well as with those recentlyformulated by Pius XI. Instead, novels and plays emphasise the anti-religiouscharacter of the movement and particularly its foreignness. The one hero whohappens to be both a communist and a Québécois de souche, Jean Dufresne inHenri Deyglun’s Les Amours d’un communiste, is depicted positivelythroughout because he is intended to be co-opted by the master narrativebefore the end of the novel. A poor orphan boy who had become a communistout of true compassion for the poor, he rediscovers his faith, marries aprominent young woman, and becomes successful, thereby validating thescript whereby individual qualities and a work ethic render statistintervention supererogatory. His colleagues in the movement, mostlyforeigners, are interned, not in jails where they might have contact with otherCanadians, but within a closed territory where their ideology will notcontaminate the traditional culture. In relegating heterogeneity to a confinedspace, this novel is emblematic of other works representing communists byrevealing itself unable to dialogically engage the other.

RésuméLe présent article porte sur la représentation littéraire de personnagescommunistes dans des romans et des pièces de théâtre francophones produitsau Québec pendant les années 1930. À l’intérieur de la production littérairede l’époque, on n’aborde jamais directement les critiques du libéralismeéconomique offertes par les communistes, sans doute parce qu’elles avaientplusieurs points communs avec les critiques du capitalisme qui avaienttraditionnellement cours dans la société canadienne-française, de mêmequ’avec celles que venait de formuler le pape Pie XI. Les romanciers etdramaturges préféraient souligner le caractère antireligieux du mouvementet, en particulier, son origine étrangère. Le seul héros qui soit à la fois uncommuniste et un Québécois de souche, Jean Dufresne, personnage du romand’Henri Deyglun, Les Amours d’un communiste, apparaît constamment sousun jour favorable, mais seulement parce que le narrateur a l’intention de leconvertir à sa propre cause avant la conclusion du roman. Un malheureuxorphelin qu’une compassion véritable pour les défavorisés a mené vers le


communisme, il retrouve la foi, épouse une jeune femme en vue et connaît laréussite, validant ainsi le scénario du roman qui veut que des qualitésindividuelles et une bonne éthique du travail suffiraient à rendre superfluetoute intervention étatique. Ses camarades à l’intérieur du mouvement, pourla plupart des étrangers d’origine, sont internés, non pas dans des prisons, oùils pourraient entrer en contact avec d’autres Canadiens, mais dans unterritoire fermé où leur idéologie ne risque pas de contaminer la culturetraditionnelle. En bannissant l’hétérogénéité dans un espace restreint, ceroman est caractéristique des autres œuvres qui dépeignent des personnagescommunistes en témoignant d’une certaine impuissance à engager undialogue avec l’autre.

The 1930s, which Fernand Dumont once called a “première révolutiontranquille,”1 represent a significant area of research for understandingQuebec’s hesitant march towards modernity in the pre-war period. Theprovince, a majority of whose citizens were urban dwellers since theprevious decade, along with the rest of the industrialised world, was miredin an economic depression that exposed the pernicious effects ofindustrialisation and the attendant urbanization. The considerableideological ferment resulting from this situation fell largely to the right ofthe political spectrum but spanned the gamut of socio-political thought,including the far-left. The purpose of this essay is to ascertain how theFrancophone novel and theater during this period, long instruments for thetransmission of values, depicted one grouping on the left perceived asparticularly threatening, namely, the communists, and to determine howthat depiction might (or might not) be inscribed within the prevailingideology.

The emergence of a strong anti-communist discourse in Quebec (as inotherwestern societies in the thirties) isnot surprising.Ahighlyclericalisedculture such as Quebec, which in the nineteenth century had reacted withalarm against the secularism of “les Rouges,”was not unexpectedly fearfulof an ideology perceived as radically anti-religious. Indeed, it would bedifficult to overemphasise the breadth and depth of the reaction in Quebecsociety (and Canadian society generally)2 against communism in thethirties. Not only Catholic bishops and conservative groups, but evenindependent thinkers, such as Olivar Asselin, openly worried about thecommunist threat.3The infamous“loi ducadenas” (1937), althoughusuallyblamedonDuplessis,was not imposed byhimon the legislature, but rather,was passed unanimously. The widespread indignation that greeted thearrival of French novelist and reputed communist André Malraux inMontreal earlier that year underlines the broad consensus on this issue.However, one peculiarity of anti-communism in Quebec distinguishes itfromother parts ofNorthAmerica.Like elsewhere, itwas a reaction againstthe threat that communism posed to religious practice. However, it did notinclude, as was frequently the case in other societies, a defence of the freeenterprise system, an economic model strongly criticized by virtually all

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segments of Francophone Quebec society. This singularity will bediscussed further on.

Theworld-wideDepression of this period had cast doubt on the ability ofeconomic liberalism to produce the good life. Yet, given how deeply theDepressionmarkedQuebec society and howwidely it was discussed in themedia, the little prominence given the economic crisis in Quebec literature(or, for that matter, in French-Canadian painting) of the thirties is striking.To be sure, two poets, Clément Marchand and Jean Narrache, did engagesocio-economic issues.Yet,whileMarchand’s versewhich fiercely attacksunbridled capitalism and prophesies revolution was written and partiallypublished in the 1930s, it was not published as a collection, Les Soirsrouges, until 1947.4 And, while Jean Narrache also adopts the cause of theurbanpoor, hispoetry, asPierrePopovichas shown, canbe inscribedwithina dominant discourse that sought to instill respect for order, history andtraditional values (87-88). Of the roughly 100 novels published in Quebecfrom1930 through1939, only twodealwith theDepression in a substantiveway and only three or four others mention it.5 Narrative literature inQuebec, ideologically constrained by the cultural focus on rural life,seemed uninterested in representing industrial society and, with fewexceptions (such asRinguet’sTrente Arpents, which takes into account theeconomy of rural life), fiction of the period seemed more concerned withlove triangles and the problems of mixed marriages than ambientsocio-economic realities. Echoing the discourse of the dominant elites,much of the fiction continued to transmit harshly anti-urban themes.Claude-Henri Grignon’s short story, “Le Déserteur” (1934), with itsemblematic title, is representativeof thenarrative inwhich leaving the farmfor the city is portrayed as a betrayal that yields to tragedy. Themost daringnovel of the decade, Jean-Charles Harvey’s Les Demi-Civilisés (1934), acourageousdefenceof individualmoral and intellectual freedom in the faceof social hypocrisy and thought control, makes no allusion to the economiccrisis seething at the time of its writing and publication. One of the twonovels that does dealwith theDepression, JehanMaria’sL’Autre ... Guerre(1931), perhaps the first thoroughly urban novel in Quebec, is an extensiverepresentation of theworld of stock brokers, share-holders and speculators,alongwith their sociolect, in the period leading to the crash.Themessage ofthis novel is clear: artificial and dishonest manipulation of themarkets by afew and insane speculation by many led to and caused the crisis. Thecapitalist system crashed because of its internal, inherent flaws. The novelproposes no alternative system, except perhaps a return to a pre-industrialeconomy based on personal savings and small property holdings.

Communists, of course, did propose solutions. However, when theyappear as characters in novels and plays, communists are consistentlyattributed specific characteristics which make for heavy baggage. Theseare readily discernible in Marie-Rose Turcot’s Un de Jasper (1933) inwhich communists play only an episodic andmarginal role. At one point in

69

Literature and Ideology in the Thirties:Fictional Representations of Communism in Quebec

the novel, for plot purposes Turcot needed to remove her character, PascalTrahan, from Ottawa where he was serving as MP from a western riding.What better way than to have him called back to his riding because of acommunist agitator’s attempt to assassinate the mayor of Edmonton. Thisincident, of little significance in the novel itself, introduces into Quebecfiction some tenacious, typological characteristics of communists: first,they are foreign (we are told that the perpetrator’s name is Olaf Varco, andthat he is “un émigré du Caucase” [117]); secondly, they take their ordersfromMoscow (Varco had been previously identified as “un prédicant desdoctrines soviétiques” (117); and, thirdly, they can be violent (they are notbeyond attempting to assassinate elected officials).6 These are the commoncoin of anti-communist discourse of the period, with a pinch ofanti-Semitism frequently added to the mix.7

Creative literature, however, rarely addressed the relevance — or eventhe irrelevance — of the economic proposals of communists to Quebec’seconomy.Not surprisingly, twoof the four plays of theperiod that dealwithcommunism, are situated abroad. The first, Antonio Poulin’s Le Messagede Lénine (1934), takes place in Moscow in 1922. While not free fromhistorical inaccuracies, this play, which its préfacier calls “un excellentchapitre d’apologétique populaire” (6), does attempt to understand itscharacters at the psychological level. It does not, however, address thesocio-economic issues raised by communists. Rather, it focuses on theanti-religious nature of the movement, emphasising the open hostility andeven violence of communists toward believers, and centers the plot ontrumped-up charges being leveled against the last remaining Catholicbishop in Russia. A passing reference to “l’Internationale juive” (23) andanother to Trotsky as “Bronstein” (23) hint at a Jewish conspiracy behindthe communist movement.

Louis-PhilippeHébert’s radio-play,LesMains rouges (1938), is situatedin Spain, mostly during that country’s civil war. Riding a wave ofheightened anti-Spanish Republican feeling in Quebec, it incorporates thecharacteristics of communists already evident in Turcot’s novel. They areforeign (communist activity in Spain is directed by Vladimir Lanowski,Joseph Alexandrovich and Olga Petroff); they take their orders directlyfromMoscow(the title of theplay,LesMains rouges, refers to the redhandsof Moscow controlling republican Spain); and they can be and areextremely violent, resorting to arson, assault, torture, murder and massexecution. The play strongly suggests that Spain, rural and Catholic likeQuebec, could have resolved its problems in a peaceful, evolutionary way,were it not for “des extrémistes qui nous viennent, pour la plupart, d’autrespays” (37). War and destruction have been imposed on Spain by anirreligious other, the most dangerous kind of alterity. The socio-economicprogram of communism is only vaguely alluded to, and the emphasis isplaced on its single-minded persecution of religious faith and systematicexecution of believers. One of the two plays situated in Quebec, Pierre

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Deschutes’s Le Signe de la Bête s’efface (1937) does feature a Québécoiscommunist, but here, too, communism is seen as primarily anti-religiousandpresentedas a speciesofmoral turpitude, on the level of alcoholism(thesubtitle of theplay is “Dramecanadien antialcoolique et anticommuniste”).This privately printed play, whose characters engage in stilted, preachydialogues, transmits the suspicion of a Jewish conspiracy behind thecommunist movement as Nil, the communist character, admits, “je croissavoir, en effet, que les Juifs sont les vraies maîtres du communisme” (22).Associating communists with Jews further reinforces the anti-Christiancharacter of the movement. René Bergeron’s Karl et Baptiste dansl’intimité (1937) was not intended for performance and is more of abrochuredialoguée thanaplay.Yet, it does feature twocharacters,Baptisteand his friend, Karl, a communist, who debate the merits of communism.Baptiste succeeds in convincingKarl,8 but hedoes not engage and thereforedoes not refute the socio-economic proposals of communism. Instead, hestresses the anti-religious, repressive nature of the Soviet regime. Focusinganti-communist discourse on the anti-religious dimension of communismwas, to be sure, an effective apologetic strategy in a society where religionwas a mobilising value. But why, in this period of depression, did theseplays not engage the communists’ anti-capitalist ideas as they had theiranti-religious ones?

While it can certainly be argued that religious and philosophical debatesaremore suited to theater andmake forbetter drama thaneconomicdebates,the unwillingness to confront these issues in these texts may reflect anambiguitywithinQuebec’s intellectual community. The intellectual elite’sown traditions, in spite of exhortations by Jean-Charles Harvey, EdouardMontpetit and a few others, were anti-capitalist,9 a position made possibleby the fact that capitalists, by and large, were not French- Canadians, butalso bolstered by the Church’s long-standing suspicion of an economicsystemmotivated byprofit.Moreover, recent social thought inQuebecwasinformed by Pius XI’s Quadragesimo anno (1931), an encyclical harshlycritical of the prevailing treatment of workers and the accumulation ofwealth by the few and dismissive as well of the notion that charity might“make amends for the open violation of justice” (Pius 4) or that “the properorder of economic affairs [could] be left to free competition alone” (28).Québécois opinion makers, then, were placed in the position of agreeingwith much of the Communist Party’s socio-economic critique. Theessential disagreement restedon theChurch’s insistenceon the right to ownprivate property, although, unlike apologists of liberal societies, Catholicsocial thought insisted that private ownership involved a specialresponsibility for the common good. To treat communism as aninterlocutor, however, to debate communist ideology on the level ofeconomic policy, where there would have been some common ground,would have blurred the sharpness of the anti-communist crusade. That TimBuck, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada,occasionally quoted Pius XI was embarrassment enough.

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Accordingly, in 1931, the Church in Quebec, through the École socialepopulaire, an institution under Jesuit direction, launched a vigorousanti-communist campaign that focused on communism’s anti-religiouspropensities. But particularly from 1933 (in response to the CooperativeCommonwealth Federation (CCF)’sReginaManifesto of the sameyear), italso developed its own serious critique of capitalism and its own proposalsfor a wide range of socio-economic reforms aimed at curtailing the abusesof economic liberalism.10 Many of these proposals would be incorporatedinto the platform of the only reformist political party with any chance ofsurvival in the province in the 1930s, namely the ill-fated Action LibéraleNationale (ALN). This double critique, ofMarx and capitalism,would alsostronglymark La Relève, which from 1934 served as the principal organ ofmoderately progressive discourse. The title of Abbé Côté’s pamphlet, LaMalfaisanceducapitalismeactuel (1937), captures a lineof thought upheldbymany opinionmakers.11 Despite the efforts of EsdrasMinville and somebishops to reduce the responsibility of economic liberalism for the crise,capitalists, as readers of Le Devoir for this period know, were generallyeasy targets.12Muchof this critique of economic liberalism is to be found inthe single Québécois novel of the period in which the hero is a nativeQuébécois communist, namely Henry Deyglun’s Les Amours d’uncommuniste (1933) and in the single play situated in Quebec in which thecommunist threat is a major issue,Mimi, la petite ouvrière (1937), also byHenry Deyglun.

To be sure, the prevailing typology still maintains: in Les Amours d’uncommuniste, the committee of six which provides the communistleadership for the city of Montreal, is half foreign, consisting of oneFrenchman, an Italian and aRussian, improbably namedDostoievsky,whois identified as the “délégué Russe des Soviets” (26). He has an associatenamed Potocki, who is also Russian. Another character, a woman namedRoucha, known to associates as “la vierge rouge,” is Russian as well. InMimi, la petite ouvrière, the communist villain is a Russian, SoniaMoganoff, whose accomplice (who does not appear on stage) is namedBoris Kalaminoff. Her sole Québécois acolyte is named Rousseau, acommon enough name in Quebec, but also the surname of the lateeighteenth-century writer whom many conservative thinkers blamed forinitiating dangerous political thinking. Moreover, in both the novel and theplay, the actions of local communists are directed from Moscow. At ameeting on rue Berri, in Les Amours d’un communiste, Dostoievskyannounces, “J’ai reçu de toutes récentes instructions de Moscou” (72). Intheplay,Sonia is identifiedas“ladéléguéeduKomintern” (60).Thepoint ismade rather strongly in both Deyglun’s novel and play that communism isanalienmovement, foistedby foreigners.And, tobe sure, the third element,the capacity for violence, is present also. In the novel, a day of revolution isplanned during which fires will be set in every area of the city, bridgesblown up, and major public buildings seized, and in the play, Soniainstigates assaults on two people and is planning riots.

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What makes Les Amours d’un communiste interesting in the Québécoiscontext of the 1930s is not, however, its transmission of the expectedtypology, but the absolute sincerity granted to the Québécois communist,Jean Dufresne, and the non-judgmental representation of hissocio-economic critique. Orphaned while still quite young, the strikinglyhandsome Dufresne has, through dint of hard work and voracious reading,developed into an intelligent, reliable adult who is revolted by socialinequities and particularly by the conditions in urban Quebec during theDepression. The omniscient narrator says of him that “[i]l était sincère et deconscience pure” (87) in his conviction that only a social revolution couldsavehumanity.M.Prud’hon, theprovincial governmentminister forwhomJean worked, devastated at learning that Jean is a communist, concludesthat “[u]n tropgrand amour des hommes l’a poussé vers cet extrême” (163).This picture ofDufresne contradicts the prevailingparaliterary depictionofcommunists as sinister and malevolent.

Moreover, Dufresne’s ideology is consonant with the socio-economicdiscourse then current among the Francophone elite. In fact, his critique ofeconomic liberalism is curiously close to that of Pius XI and the Jesuits inthe bulletins of the École sociale populaire. At a cell meeting early in thenovel, one of the Québécois communists in attendance makes the point, inreference to recent papal encyclicals, that “[l]e programme du Saint-Pèreest sensiblement le même que celui de Karl Marx et de Lénine” (24), thedifferences existing at the level ofmetaphysics (belief inGod) and strategy(the recourse to prayer and penance). Dufresne’s analysis, based on theseverity of the Depression, is that capitalism, fractured by its internalcontradictions, is in a state of crisis fromwhich it cannot recover or survive(21), an appraisal not far removed from that of the editorialist of L’Actioncatholiquewho in 1931wrote that “le régime économique dans lequel nousvivons nous paraît d’un illogisme tel qu’il est en train de se suicider, etrapidement” (qtd. in Dumont 79). Dufresne notes an abundance ofcommodities, to the extent that wheat is being burned, coffee dumped intothe sea, and meat thrown away (an observation, chiffres à l’appui, alsomade at the time by the League of Nations) while malnutrition andstarvation grip theworld.Massive unemployment existswhile tremendouswork needs to be done the world over in infrastructure, health care andeducation.Thebrutal selfishnessof economic liberalismdoesnot allow it toemerge sensibly from these contradictions. Guy Frégault, writing in LaRelève in 1938, would proffer a similar analysis: “Il faut que soit brisée lastructure inhumaine d’une civilisation qui, pour le primat de l’argent surl’humain, l’institution du salariat et la prolétarisation généralisée, séparel’homme de son œuvre” (qtd. in Bélanger 18). The solution, in Dufresne’sjudgment, is to view the situation in an international perspective and torecognise that all humans are part of the same family: “La famille deshommes doit désormais s’unir et vivre” (38). This means surpassing theindividualismandegoismthatmarkeconomic liberalism inorder to rise toanew level of personal sacrifice: “Sacrifions notre égoisme personnel à la

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collectivité humaine” (39). The attack against unrestrained individualismechoes the discussions of La Relève, and none of Dufresne’s thoughtsconflict with the thinking of the École sociale populaire or of the majorsocial encyclicals.

Mimi, la petite ouvrière goes a step further to cast a severely harsh lighton the capitalist Gérard Valclair, the owner of the only factory, a textilemill, in a small town that bears his name, and which he controls totally.Valclair is a stereotypical, mean-spirited capitalist: tyrannical, cruellydemanding of his workers and unforgiving of the slightest peccadillo, hewill resort to anymeans to advance the interests of his business and his ownwealth. Moreover, his son uses his position in the firm to extract retributionon femaleworkers who resist his sexual advances. Valclair’s sister and thelocal priest plead with him to have more consideration for his workers —the priest telling him at one point that “le meilleur propagandiste deMoscou, c’est vous-même” (12) — all to no avail. Yet, the Church’s roledoes not escape criticism, for the heroine’s father, clearly agitated, tells thepriest, “[s]i l’Égliseneveutpasquenousnous révoltions, qu’Elleprenne lesdevants, qu’elle nous défende ...” (21). Economic liberalism is presented inthis play as inhumane and perhaps inherently evil. In this instance, thecapitalist is apure laine, but, having internalized themind-set of the system,he has lost his moral bearings. He never repents and is assassinated in thelast moments of the play.

The deep-seated anti-capitalist sentiments and the communitarianproclivities of Quebec culture should have made it susceptible to the typesof solutions proposed by the left. But while Deyglun could place in themouthof thecommunistDufresneacritique similar to that of theChurch,hecannot and does not allow Dufresne to make specific, concrete proposals.The debate could not be engaged at this level because, as suggested earlier,the left’s perceived hostility to religion (emphasized in Poulin’s LeMessage de Lénine and Hébert’s Les Mains rouges) made anyaccommodation impossible.Anotherno less important reasonmayperhapslie in the first of the typological characteristics discernible in Turcot’snovel: the communist as other. We recognise this society’s need forprotection from alterity in the curious diegetic manœuver used in LesAmours d’un communiste to bring closure to the communist conspiracydeveloping inQuebec.Betrayedby their associate,Roucha (nowconvertedto Catholicism), the conspirators are arrested. But then, something oddhappens. Instead of being turned over to a judiciary system that wouldsurely have imprisoned them for violating Canadian law, the conspiratorsare interned in a kind of reservation in Belœil, where they may live as theywish, enjoying their own self-government: “un petit État dans l’État ... avecses frontières” (152). This is nothing less than a self-governing,mini-communist statewithinQuebec. The government’s expectations are,of course, borne out: communal life degenerates into jealousy, cliques andgeneral chaos. The authorities appear to have seized upon a bold strategy

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(actually suggested to them by Roucha) to demonstrate that socialismcannot work in reality. But there is another perspective on this“reservation-for-communists” model that links it to the characteristicconsistent in representations of communists, namely, that they are other,almost invariably foreigners (in the texts under consideration, there are nocharacters of foreign origin who are not communists). Heterogeneity mustbe relegated to a confined space.

In none of these texts are there any references to Anglophones. Theinternal, dominating Anglophone other, against whom Savard’s Menaudrebels in the same decade, is erased from this discourse in order tomaintainthe focus on the threatening external other. Missing as well is the questionof language. In Deyglun’s texts, the foreigners, mainly Russians, all speakFrench fluently and no trace of a foreign accent is ever noted. Otherness isnot primarily linguistic, but ideological.Communists are representednot asforeigners who want to be Canadians, but rather as persons who want tochangeCanada’s culture. This is the ultimate offense: to come to a countrywhose culture you do not accept. Placing communists in Canadian jailswhere their foreign ideasmight contaminate fellowinmates is lessdesirablethan settling them in a defined, isolated, territorial space, for a kind ofideological cleansing. The discursive strategy is to represent communistsas an alterity that seeks to destroy the political and religious traditions thatare integral to the endogamous group. The threatened society maintainsitself by exclusion. Enclosing the communists at Belœil ensures that thelarger society will remain ideologically closed.

By the standards of Catholic social thought, Jean Dufresne’s critique iscorrect, buthe iswrongnonetheless, byassociation. Hemustbemade to seethat he is wrong and reintegrated into the mainstream of society.Remarkably, however, the novel chooses not to reveal the intellectual ormoral arguments thatmight have led Jean to abandon communism. Insteadof an insight into the philosophical mechanics of his conversion, we have agap, a silence that has a significance of its own. It is instructive in thisrespect to compare Jean Dufresne with Jean Monnerot, the protagonist ofFrenchnovelist PaulBourget’sL’Étape (1902), a novel brilliantly analysedby Susan Rubin Suleiman as an example of a type of authoritarian fiction.Both Jean Dufresne and Jean Monnerot undergo what Suleiman calls a“negative exemplary apprenticeship.” Under the mentoring of hisanti-clerical father, Jean Monnerot becomes a secular republican withstrong socialist leanings. Jean Dufresne is also educated negatively,through his own readings and by communist agents. Both protagonistseventually reject their negative formations, however, through the influenceof a positive mentor: a Catholic lycée professor for Jean Monnerot; aprovincial minister for Jean Dufresne. Both characters are rewarded bygaining the hand of their positive mentor’s beautiful daughter. But that istheextentof theanalogy. InBourget’snovel, every stepof JeanMonnerot’sintellectual itinerary is meticulously noted and represented within the

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context of a vigorous debate between the opposing sides. In Deyglun’snovel,we are not privy to the thoughts thatwould have led JeanDufresne toabandon his deep-seated communist beliefs. Nor are we provided withcounter-arguments to communist positions. Early in the novel, a secondarycharacter, M. Péloquin, believing that major changes are alwayscounter-productive, expresses a mildly reformist alternative, but Dufresneis not present to hear it. The fact that he is in love with the daughter of hispositive mentor and that the latter is an honest, decent person seems tosuffice. Whilewemay be relieved that Deyglun has not adoptedBourget’sheavy-handed didacticism and lengthy moralistic discourse, the text’ssilence on any intellectual bases for Jean Dufresne’s switching sidesremains unsatisfying. Yet, its meaning is clear: Jean Dufresne, unlike JeanMonnerot, does not have to change his mind. He does not need to beconvinced thathis analysisof society iswrong,because it isnot.Heneednotchange his ideas, only his allegiance, which he does easily and without theinternal debate of Jean Monnerot.

Not only does he return to the faith of his youth, he marries the daughterof the provincial minister, becomes the editor of a major Montrealnewspaper and settles in Westmount. His is the success story of the poororphan boy. But success has led him to abandon his ideals. Jean Dufresnedoes not use his wealth, status and position to stand up for the poor and theoppressed. Having rejected communism, he seems to have forgotten thesocial analyses that led him to embrace the party in the first place. “Il avaitrenoncé,” the text tells us, “à toutes ses idées politiques. C’était un modéréen tout, presqu’un sage” (181). The novel ends by quoting an item from thesociety pages that he and his wife have just given a gala reception attendedby “le tout-Montréal” (181). Jean Dufresne’s story validates the script inwhich individualqualities, suchasnative intelligenceandaworkethic, leadto success, thereby rendering statist intervention supererogatory. Thenovel, which had openedwith a scene in a noisy luncheon in eastMontreal,closes in Jean Dufresne’s classy home in Westmount. The narrative’sperspective on this displacement from East to West is neither ironic norcondemnatory, but congratulatory. A positive characterisation of acommunist was possible because he had been destined all along forrepossession by a master narrative whose ideological motifs wouldoverwhelmhis sincerebut foreign ideology. In the end, his story legitimisesthe current order and the novel takes its place within a cohesive socialdiscourse.

Les Amours d’un communiste can be seen as emblematic of the aporia ofFrench-Canadian social thought of the 1930s. Accepting papal socialteachings that should have led it to some solutions proposed by the left, itremained incapable of entertaining a dialogue with the left because it wasunable to dissociate their economic analysis from the prevailing discoursewhich saw Communists and, by association, all leftist formations,including the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF),13 as

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anti-religious andpolitically radical. Thediscourse of the period articulatesnot the rivalry between capitalism and communism, between Wall Streetand Moscow, but rather the clash between religious and materialisticoutlooks. René Bergeron’s pamphlet, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (1936),expresses sharply this widely held view:

Les deux systèmes [i.e. communism and capitalism] ne sont doncennemis qu’en apparence: lorsque le communisme condamne lecapitalisme, il combat le principe de sa propre vie, puisque noussavons maintenant que tous deux sont nés du même père, lematérialisme.Cela revient à dire que la révolution bolchévique n’est quel’explosion d’une erreur inventée par le frère aîné, le capitalisme.(11)

The choice, presented starkly and unambiguously, was between Rome andMoscow.

Hence, the search for solutions that were neither capitalist nor socialist.For some, includingMinville andmost of the hierarchy, part of the solutionlay in the continued expansion of the amount of land under cultivation.However, from 1936 onwards, many, such as the editors of La Nation,L’Action nationale, and Actualité économique, writers associated with theÉcole sociale populaire, labour leaders such as Alfred Charpentier,prominent ecclesiastical leaders such asCardinalVilleneuve, andMinvillehimself, believed the only effective “third way” between an economicliberalism that was clearly not working and a socialism that was perceivedas anti-religious and excessively statist, was corporatism of the Italian andespecially Portuguese varieties (later, in 1943 and 1950, l’École socialepopulaire would publish two essays on corporatism by Salazar himself).Thismodelwas seen as away togiveworkers a voice, establish cooperationbetween the classes, control profit-making, and reduce the need for stateintervention. Unable to conceptualise a marriage between economicliberalism and an état providence that would maintain democraticstructures (the Montpetit Commission in 1932 recommended againstuniversal allocations familiales, labeling such a program as dangerous),14they opted for a pre-capitalist model heretofore untested in democraticsocieties.15 Not even the influence of French philosopher EmmanuelMounier’s personalism, important in the intellectual milieu close to LaRelève, was able to produce a coherent, socio-economic discourse relevantto the actual conditions of twentieth-century Quebec. While Mounier’spublication,L’Esprit, engaged inadialogueoneconomic issues,LaRelève,on the other hand, concentrated on spiritual, intellectual and estheticrenewal and published no articles dealing directly with the specifics of theeconomic crisis andmade no concrete proposals for economic reform. TheALN did have specific proposals that would have curbed the power ofcorporate capital, but its rapid demise at the hands of Duplessis onlyillustrates the lack of interest in economic reform.

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In their representation of communists, the novel and the theater reflectthe asynchrony of the culture’s socio-economic discourse, for they, too,attempt to respond to new economic conditions with assumptions thatderive from a waning humanist, elitist, nostalgic and centripetal culture.They are thereby also representing the culture’s own inability, throughoutthis troubleddecade, to transcend itsmonological discourse to engage itselfdialogically with the other.

Notes1. See Dumont’s opening essay in Dumont 1-20.2. Communists in Ontario in the late 20s and 30s were severely harassed by the

authorities and sometimes arrested and/or deported. At the federal level, Ottawahad broken off diplomatic relations with Moscow in 1927 and, in 1935, RichardBedford Bennet based his reelection campaign on the pledge to maintain section98 of the Criminal Code, which declared communist activities illegal and whichLiberals were pledging to rescind (and did rescind in 1936).

3. See Paul Laroque in Dumont 190; Hullinger 209-20.4. For a discussion of the revolutionary tenor of this poetry, see Talbot.5. It would, of course, play a major role in the most important piece of fiction of the

following decade, namely, Gabrielle Roy’s Bonheur d’occasion (1945).6. There is basis in fact for some of these characteristics: by 1929, 95% of the

membership of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was of East Europeanorigin (see Avakunomic 35), although the percentage of East European membersfell progressively after 1930; and, the CPC was clearly Soviet sponsored,remaining a section of the Comintern until 1940. Among the FrancophoneQuébécois who went to the Soviet Union for ideological training in the thirtieswere Paul Delisle, Philippe Richer, Emery Simard and Willie Fortin (for detailson Francophone participation in the Communist Party, see Fournier). However,except for an unplanned riot in Estevan, Saskatchewan in September 1931 and theviolence in Regina in 1935 when the police halted the trekkers, there is littleactual violence that can be directly attributed to the communists, even thoughtheir rhetoric was frequently violent.

7. If it is to be expected that publications such as Le Fasciste canadien andanti-communist pamphlets such as Joseph-Léopold Gagner’s virulent J’ai vu lescommunistes à Montréal would emphasise the Jewish connection, we note that asimilar perspective was widely disseminated by establishment publications suchas the Conservative Party’s Le Journal, (see Richard Jones in Dumont 165-75),parish publications such as La Bonne Nouvelle (Dumont 252), as well as by theleadership of Jeune-Canada (see Pomeyrols 268-70) and by writers such as themysterious Lambert Closse, whose pseudonym has not been pierced to this day(on Closse, see Delisle, passim).

8. As contrived as this ending might seem, it may be inspired by a historicalincident, the debate between Archange Godbout, a Franciscan priest, and GastonPilon, one of the leaders of the leftist Université ouvrière, which lead to Pilon’sconversion to militant anti-communism three months later. On the Godbout-Pilonencounter, see Hamelin and Gagnon 380.

9. François-Albert Angers’s attempt to demonstrate a strong, pro-industrialistideology among French-Canadian thinkers in the 20s and 30s remainsunconvincing.

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10. An extensive discussion of l’École sociale populaire’s positions can be found inBélanger 307-27; Frigon; and Routhier.

11. For a discussion of Côté’s pamphlet, see Frigon 59. See also René Bergeron’spamphlet, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (1936) in which he speaks of “la détressedes masses ouvrières exaspérées par les abus d’un capitalisme exploitateur etsans-cœur” (5).

12. For a discussion of Le Devoir’s positions in the thirties, see Pierre Dandurand,“Crise économique et idéologie nationaliste: le cas du journal « Le Devoir »” inDumont 41-59. The French-Canadian Church’s positions on this issue arediscussed by Frigon 58 ff.

13. The (mis)fortunes of the CCF in Quebec are discussed in Young 210-15;Lévesque 71-95; Baum 97-134 (Baum 99-118 offers a searching critique, from aprogressive Catholic perspective, of the report by Father Georges-HenriLévesque that led to a firm stand by Quebec bishops against the CCF).

14. John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money(1936) seems not to have had any effect on socio-economic thought in Quebecduring this decade.

15. Paul-André Linteau has argued that the 1940 reform of the municipal council ofMontreal, which seemed inspired by the corporatism of the thirties, actuallyreduced the importance of electoral democracy in the city (413-14).

Works CitedAngers, François-Albert. “L’industrialisation et la pensée nationaliste traditionnelle.”

In Robert Comeau, ed. Économie québécoise. Montréal: Presses de l’Universitédu Québec, 1969. 417-32.

Avakumovic, Ivan. TheCommunist Party inCanada: AHistory. Toronto:McClelland& Stewart, 1976.

Baum, Gregory. Catholics and Canadian Socialism: Political Thought in the Thirtiesand Forties. Ramsey, NJ: Paulist, 1980.

Bélanger, André-J. L’Apolitisme des idéologies québécoises: Le grand tournant 1934-1936. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1974.

Bergeron, René. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. (L’Apostolat populaire, 13.) Montréal,1936.

-----. Karl et Baptiste dans l’intimité. (L’Apostolat populaire, 14.) Montréal, 1937Bourget, Paul. L’Étape. Paris: Plon, 1902.Delisle, Esther. Le Traître et le Juif: Lionel Groulx, le Devoir, et le délire du

nationalisme d’extrême droite dans la province de Québec, 1929-1939.Outremont: L’Étincelle, 1992.

Deschutes, Pierre [pseudonym for Hervé Trudel]. Le Signe de la Bête s’efface.Shawinigan: L’Imprimerie de Shawinigan Falls, 1937.

Deyglun, Henri. Les Amours d’un communiste. Montréal: Éditions Albert Lévesque,1933.

-----. Mimi, la petite ouvrière. Montréal: ÉditionsThéâtre Populaire Français, 1937.Dumont, Fernand, JeanHamelin, and Jean-PaulMontminy, eds. Idéologies auCanada

français 1930-1939. (Histoire et sociologie de la culture, 11.) Québec: LesPresses de l’Université Laval, 1978.

Fournier, Marcel. Communisme et anti-communisme au Québec (1920-1950). Laval:Éditions Albert Saint-Martin, 1979.

Frigon, F. J. “Catholicism in Crisis: L’École sociale populaire and the Depression inQuébec, 1930-1940.” Revue de l’Université d’Ottawa 45, no. 1 (1975): 54-70.

Gagner, Joseph-Léopold. J’ai vu les communistes à Montréal. (“Nos Problèmes”.)Montréal: n.p., 1938.

Grignon, Claude-Henri. Le Déserteur et autres récits de la terre. Montréal: Éditionsdu Vieux Chêne, 1934.

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Hamelin, Jean et Nicole Gagnon. Histoire du catholicisme québécois. Le XXe siècle.Tome I: 1898-1940. Montréal: Boréal, 1984.

Harvey, Jean-Charles. Les Demi-civilisés. Montréal: Éditions du Totem, 1934.Hébert, Louis-Philippe. Les Mains rouges. Montréal: Lamirande, 1938.Hulliger, Jean. L’Enseignement social des évêques canadiens de 1891 à 1950.

Montréal: Fides, 1958.Lévesque, Andrée. Virage à gauche interdit: Les communistes, les socialistes et leurs

ennemis au Québec, 1929-1939. Montréal: Boréal, 1984.Linteau, Paul-André. Histoire deMontréal depuis la confédération. Montréal: Boréal,

1992.Maria, Jehan. L’Autre ... Guerre. Québec: L’Agence Royale, 1931.Marchand, Jean. Les Soirs rouges. Trois-Rivières: Éditions du Bien Public, 1947.Narrache, Jean. Quand j’parle tout seul. Montréal: Éditions Albert Lévesque, 1932.-----. J’parl’ pour parler. Montréal: Éditions A.C.F., 1939.Pius XI. Forty Years After: Reconstructing the Social Order. Washington: National

Catholic Welfare Conference, 1940.Pomeyrols, Catherine. Les Intellectuels québécois: formation et engagements,

1991-1939. Paris/Montréal: L’Harmattan, 1996.Popovic, Pierre. “Jehan Rictus et Jean Narrache: au nom des fils de Caïn.” Montréal

1642-1992: le grand passage. Eds. Benoît Melançon and Pierre Popovic.Montréal: XYZ, 1994. 75-88.

Poulin, Antonio. Le Message de Lénine. Montréal: Éditions Albert Lévesque, 1934.Ringuet. Trente Arpents. Paris: Flammarion, 1938.Routhier, Gilles. “L’ordre du monde: capitalisme et communisme dans la doctrine de

l’École sociale populaire.” Recherches sociographiques 23 (1981): 7-47.Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary

Genre. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.Talbot, Émile J. “Proletarian Poetics in the 1930s: Clément Marchand’s Les Soirs

rouges” American Review of Canadian Studies 26 (1996): 101-14.Turcot, Marie-Rose. Un de Jasper. Montréal: Éditions Albert Lévesque, 1933.Young, Walter D. The Anatomy of a Party: The National CCF, 1932-66. Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 1969.

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Guy Chiasson et Joseph Yvon Thériault

La construction d’un sujet acadien :résistance et marginalité

RésuméQue ce soit à travers les études historiques ou sociologiques, l’actualitésociopolitique, la réflexion militante ou intellectuelle, la « survivance » desAcadiens est tantôt représentée comme l’exemple même de la résistanced’une minorité face à la domination de la majorité, tantôt comme le prototyped’une enclave qui doit le maintien de sa spécificité à sa marginalitéhistorique. Nous commencerons par rappeler ce paradoxe qui présente lasociété acadienne, soit comme l’histoire d’une résistante, soit encore commecollectivité incapable de sortir de sa marginalité. C’est en concevant lesidentités collectives comme des volontés de construction d’un sujet historiqueque nous nous proposons de dépasser cet apparent paradoxe. Autant àtravers sa figure traditionnelle (1860-1960) que sa figure contemporaine(1960 à aujourd’hui) la référence collective acadienne s’affirme alors bel etbien comme le lieu d’une modalité particulière d’articulation entre résistanceet marginalité.

AbstractWhether it be through historical or sociological studies, the way in whichsocio-political developments are reported, or through militant or intellectualreflection, the “survival” of the Acadians is at times portrayed as the primeexample of the resistance of a minority against domination by a majority, andat other times as the prototype of an enclave that owes the preservation of itsuniqueness to its historical marginalization. We will begin by reviewing thisparadox which presents Acadian society either as a resistance story or that ofa collectivity incapable of escaping from its own marginality. We aim toovercome this apparent paradox by treating such collective identities asefforts to construct a historical subject. Through its traditional (1860-1960)as much as its contemporary (1960 to the present) figures, the collectiveAcadian reference thus posits itself as the locus of a peculiar model of anarticulation between resistance and marginality.

Acadie résistante et Acadie marginaleEn réponse à l’historiographie traditionnelle qui présentait l’histoire desAcadiens des provincesMaritimes1 comme la longue odyssée d’un peuplemartyr, ballotté par l’histoire, soumis à un cruel destin, les jeunesnationalistesdes années1960ontvouluprésenter, aucontraire, l’histoiredel’Acadie comme celle d’une histoire de la résistance.


Cette résistance aurait débuté dès l’époque française, entre 1713 et 1755,aumoment où, par leTraité d’Utrecht, l’Acadie est définitivement devenuecolonie anglaise. LesAcadiens auraient alors développé une forme passivede résistance (French neutral) en ne se soumettant pas au pouvoir colonialanglais, sans pour autant opter pour une attitude de fidélité enversl’anciennepuissancecoloniale (laFrance)ou le restede laNouvelle-France(le Québec). Cette résistance passive, signe déjà, dit-on, de la présenced’une identité particulière, aurait d’ailleurs été à la sourcede lavolontéde lanouvelle puissance coloniale de les expulser du territoire.2 Ce qui futeffectivement fait en 1755.

Mais lesAcadiens seraient revenus, pousséspar leur désir de reconquérirleur « pays » etmêmede résister à l’acte « illégitime » qui les avait expulsésde la Nova Scotia. L’héroïne d’Antonine Maillet, Pélagie-la-Charette,roman qui synthétise bien la lecture contemporaine d’une Acadiehistorique résistante, rencontre dans son voyage de retour en Acadie lecapitaine Beausoleil-Broussard. Pendant que Pélagie rapaille les restesd’un peuple pour les ramener en Acadie, Beausoleil-Broussard pourfendsurmer l’ennemi anglais responsable de la déportation.3 La référence à uneœuvre littéraire pour appuyer la genèse de la résistance acadienne n’est nifortuite, ni banale. Elle rappelle au départ qu’une grande partie de l’identitéhistorique des Acadiens est redevable à une autre œuvre littéraire(poétique), Évangéline, de l’Américain Longfellow, écrite en 1847, récitqui présente l’histoire de la déportation comme celle d’une soumissionromantique au destin. D’où, dès le départ, une ambiguïté au sujet ducaractère réel ou fictif de la résistance acadienne entourant les événementsde ladéportationde1755.Peu imported’ailleurs la vérité historique4, cequinous importe ici (en tant que sociologues et non en tant qu’historiens) c’estque de telles interprétations furent et sont significatives dans l’élaborationd’une conscience collective constituant les Acadiens en sujet historique,elles eurent des effets qui eux sont bel et bien réels.

Poursuivons toutefois notre lecture de l’Acadie « résistante ». Cetterésistance aurait continué après la déportation. Trois grandes périodespourraient la définir. La première, que Léon Thériault (1982) a nommé« l’enracinement dans le silence » (1755-1860), en continuité avecl’attitude de neutralité de la période précédente, se caractériserait commeune résistance privée, les Acadiens reconquièrent leur territoire par desstratégies individuelles d’appropriation des terres, de reconstruction devillages, etc. La deuxième serait celle de l’affirmation nationaliste quis’impose sur près d’un siècle (1880-1960) où l’Acadie s’affirmepubliquement et viseparune stratégiedirigéevers la société civile à sedoterd’une infrastructure religieuse, paroissiale, scolaire, nationale, etc. Enfin,la troisième période (1960 à aujourd’hui) affirmerait une résistance pluspolitique où les Acadiens réussissent à s’intégrer dans les institutionspolitiques formelles (le gouvernement Robichaud 1960), créent même unparti politique acadien revendicateur d’une autonomie territoriale, mais

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surtout déploient un véritable tintamarre de revendications politiques (del’autonomie politique à la dualité communautaire, de la syndicalisation despetits producteurs à la défense des écoles rurales, du développementrégional à la lutte contre la réforme d’assurance-chômage)5. L’Acadiecontemporaine serait donc toujours résistante.

L’histoire d’une Acadie rebelle, résistante, ne fait toutefois pasl’unanimité. Au départ, nous l’avons souligné, la lecture d’une Acadierésistante, visait à répondre, pour les nouvelles générations d’intellectuels,à une historiographie qui avait érigé en vertu l’abdication (la marginalité)historique desAcadiens face au destin tragique que la Providence leur avaitréservé. C’est d’ailleurs, s’il faut en croire Fernand Ouellet (1999),l’historiographie traditionnelle elle-même qui serait en grande partieresponsable de lamarginalisation du peuple acadien. Cette historiographiecléricale et conservatrice se serait imposéeà la finduXIXe siècle, enAcadiecomme dans le reste du Canada français, participant par son idéologieréactionnaire àmarginaliser les Acadiens des grands courants politiques etéconomiques du continent. Toujours selon Fernand Ouellet, lesnéo-nationalistes des années 1960, tout en se révoltant contre une lectureconservatrice de leur histoire, rééditeraient néanmoins une telle lecture enexaltant la marginalité acadienne à travers le « repli communautaire ».

L’idée que l’acadianité soit plutôt associée à la marginalité qu’à larésistance est amplement présente dans des travaux sociohistoriquescontemporains. On pense notamment à l’historien Michel Roy (1978,p. 122), dans L’Acadie perdue, qui affirme carrément que les Acadiensdoivent leur survie à lamarginalité dans laquelle l’histoire les amaintenus :« ce qu’il y a de plus authentiquement acadien chez nous ne subsiste que parla vertu de l’isolement »; ou encore, à l’hypothèse du sociologue Jean-PaulHautecœur (1975) dansL’Acadie du discours pour qui, au-delà du discourstonitruant des élites traditionnelles sur la « survivance », l’Acadie auraitdifficilement dépassé, dans le cadre de son histoire, l’affirmationsymbolique du verbe.

La non résistance acadienne est aussi, en quelque sorte, l’objet del’analyse comparée des conflits interethniques — Nouveau-Brunswick;Irlande du Nord — effectuée par Edmund Aunger (1981). Ce dernier, eneffet, cherche à comprendrepourquoi les différences ethniquesont, dansuncas, l’Irlande du Nord, dégénéré en luttes violentes et, dans l’autre cas, leNouveau-Brunswick, évolué en coexistence pacifique. Pour lui, ladifférence réside dans le fait qu’en Irlande du Nord, l’identité ethniquerecoupait un conflit de classes, alors que la dualité ethniquenéo-brunswickoise s’est continuellement intercroisée, particulièrementd’ailleurs pour ce qui est des élites, empêchant par le fait même que cettedualité se polarise, se transformeen résistance. Sans affirmer lamarginalitéde la société acadienne l’analyse de Aunger démontre néanmoins que lesAcadiens n’ont jamais établi un rapport conflictuel avec la majoritédominante (malgré l’affirmation par les élites de l’existence d’un peuple

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séparédecelui de lamajorité).Selonune telle analyse l’acadianité aurait, enquelque sorte, occupé une place marginale dans l’histoire politiquenéo-brunswickoise.

Ces discussions sociohistoriques, à nature théorique ne sont d’ailleurspas sans résonances dans les débats de société au sein de la sociéténéo-brunswickoise contemporaine. Ainsi, le discours officiel des leaderspolitiques, tant Acadiens qu’Anglophones, perçoit « l’harmonie » entre lesdeux groupes linguistiques comme la confirmation d’une intégrationréussie (le bon-ententisme néo-brunswickois). Il ne saurait dans un teltableau être question de résistance. À l’opposé, l’analyse militanteacadienne persiste à voir dans l’expérience acadienne le lieu d’uneprotestation non résolue ou encore d’une situation socio-économiqueintenable qui exige une certaine forme de résistance (Nadeau 1992). Pourappuyer un tel constat l’on dira que c’est effectivement de la sociétéacadienne qu’ont surgi, au Nouveau-Brunswick au cours des vingtdernières années, les cris de protestations les plus bruyants : organisationsyndicale de la petite production; manifestations contre les fermeturesd’usines dans l’industrie de la pêche; mobilisation contre la réforme del’assurance-chômage; protestations contre la fermeture des écoles devillage. La société acadienne, de toute évidence, est en crise.

Cette effervescence au sein de la société acadienne contemporainea-t-elle, pour autant, un lien avec le débat plus théorique sur l’Acadiecomme résistance ou marginalité? Encore là, à écouter la sociéténéo-brunswickoise parler on pourrait penser que oui. Par exemple, pourdéfendre l’utilisation jugée abusive de la force contre les parents de petitescommunautés rurales défendant leur école, le premier ministre duNouveau-Brunswick de l’époque (Frank McKenna) affirmait que lesAcadiens de la Péninsule acadienne avaient une longue traditiond’interventions bruyantes pour exprimer leur mécontentement politique.Ces propos étaient repris en écho par la solliciteure générale duNouveau-Brunswick (Jane Barry) qui établissait une relation entreviolence et culture politique acadienne. Lesmilieux acadiens ontmal réagià ces propos6 voyant dans ceux-ci non pas le signe de la reconnaissance deleur tradition de résistance mais le regard condescendant de celui qui voitdans le minoritaire unmarginal incapable d’utiliser correctement les outilsde la société moderne. Résistance et marginalité ont toutefois été encoreplus confondues dans les propos récents d’une juge (elle-même acadiennepar ailleurs)7 qui expliqua un acte criminel en associant banditisme etidentité acadienne.

L’identité comme principe articulatoireQuels liens existent entre résistance et marginalité? Les analyses que nousvenons de rappeler ne sont contradictoires qu’en apparence. Pour nous eneffet, marginalité et résistance forment les deux pôles d’un même

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continuum que l’identité peut nous aider à relier. Afin de préciser cettequestion nous nous arrêterons à quelques éléments définitionnels del’identité avant de revenir à l’Acadie entre marginalité et résistance.

Qu’est-ce que l’identité en effet? Dans sa dimension tant individuelleque collective, l’identité apparaît comme la construction d’unMoi ou d’unNous, en fait d’un Sujet qui se pose comme porteur d’une historicité qui luiest particulière. J’ai une identité quand j’affirme faire ma propre histoire.C’est pourquoi d’ailleurs, à proprement parler, l’identité individuelle estune création moderne propre aux sociétés (individualistes) quireconnaissent l’individu comme Sujet, c’est-à-dire l’acteur de sa proprehistoire et même celle de l’ensemble social auquel il appartient.8 Dans lessociétés dites traditionnelles l’identité est conçue comme émanant d’unextérieur que l’on ne contrôle pas (Dieu, la nature, la tradition) et inscritedans un groupe (la famille, le clan, la patrie) qui seul est véritablementporteur de l’identité.Dans les sociétésmodernes, au contraire, l’identité estréflexive, c’est-à-dire que la construction de son Moi ou de son Nous estl’objet d’un travail conscient et explicite sur soi.

S’il va de soi dans le monde moderne que tout individu doit être dotéd’une identité, doit aspirer à être autonome, à être un sujet historique, laconstruction des identités collectives — ce qui est notre préoccupationici — est plus problématique. Le rationalisme moderne (individualiste) alongtemps cru que les entités collectives propres à la modernité pourraientse passer, à proprement parler, d’identités.Ces entités, tels l’État, lemarchéou le système juridique, seraient des systèmes directement issus de laconscience ou de l’action rationnelle (utilitaire) des individus. Cessystèmes froids, rationnels, devaient être, par ailleurs, les seuls porteursd’historicité dans les sociétés modernes, tout en étant conçus comme desmachines reproduisant de manière automatique à l’échelle collective lavolonté des sujets individuels9. Dans de telles analyses, il va de soi, lespersonnalités historiquesouculturellesminoritaires—comme l’Acadie—étaient appelées à disparaître ou à se folkloriser, c’est-à-dire à devenir desimples attributs de l’identité individuelle.

Onsait aujourd’hui quecette visionétait partielle et trompeuse.Partielle,parce que la réalité historique a amplement contredit cette vision; lesidentités collectives qu’elles soient celles fondées sur la nation, la classe,l’histoire, l’origine ethnique, le sexe, etc., se sont affirmées comme sujetshistoriques par excellence dans la modernité. Trompeuse, car une tellevision reposait en fait sur une conception erronée de la construction dusujet.On sait aujourd’hui, grâce engrandepartie à la sociologie, que le sujetn’est pas pure volonté rationnelle mais s’appuie en grande partie sur sacapacité à puiser dans ses relations sociales les éléments le constituantcomme être substantif.10 Ceci est aussi vrai d’ailleurs dans la constructiondu sujet individuel que dans la construction d’un sujet collectif. Comme leditAlainTouraine (1992), le sujet n’est pas pure conscience rationnelle, il aaussi une âme, un sexe, une histoire. C’est d’ailleurs, croit Touraine, dans

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l’effort pour faire cohabiter volonté d’être libre et ancrages sociologiques,rationalité et subjectivité, que se construit le sujet moderne.

L’identité comme construction d’un sujet repose ultimement sur deuxchoses : refus de tout obstacle quim’empêche ou empêche le groupe auquelj’appartiens de réaliser mon autonomie (c’est le principe que nousassocions à l’idée de résistance); définition d’un Moi ou d’un Nous surlequel se construit cette résistance et qui aspire à partir de sonparticularisme à la reconnaissance (c’est le principe que nous associons à lamarginalité). Ces deux principes rejoignent ce queCharles Taylor (1994) aidentifié comme éléments à la source de la constitution de l’identitémoderne : 1) l’égale dignité, la recherche de reconnaissance universalistede l’égalité et de la liberté et; 2) l’authenticité, le désir d’être reconnu pource que je suis. Alain Touraine (1992) a défini deux figures emblématiquesde l’acteur social dans le monde contemporain qui recoupent aussi cettedualité inhérente à l’identité moderne : 1) la figure du dissident (celui quis’oppose à tout pouvoir extérieur au nom de sa liberté de sujet); 2) la figuredu militant (celui qui propose une conception de la vie bonne en fonctiond’une inscriptionsocialeparticulière—declasse,d’ethnie, de sexe, etc.).

On peut comprendre la prolifération d’identités collectives particulièresdans le monde moderne comme le résultat d’un processus par lequel desindividus se constituent et s’organisent en acteurs historiques de façon à sefaire reconnaître comme sujets égaux et différents. Par exemple, face à unappareil d’État, un marché ou encore un espace public moderne qui neréussissent pas à intégrer égalitairement l’ensemble des sujets sensés lesconstituer, des identités se constitueront pour protester contre leurnon-intégration (résistance), tout en puisant dans leurs relations socialesspécifiques une définition de la nature de cette protestation (marginalité).C’est ainsi d’ailleurs que Nancy Fraser (1997) explique la multiplicationdans les sociétés démocratiques d’« espaces publics particuliers ». Lasphère publique moderne, telle que décrite par Habermas par exemple,construite sur une conception rationnelle et abstraite des citoyens, estcontinuellement interpellée, pense-t-elle, par des groupes (femmes, classessociales, groupes ethno-culturels) qui recréent des « espaces publicsparticuliers » visant à la fois à se faire reconnaître (dans leur spécificité) et àdénoncer leur non-intégration (résistance). Pour Fraser l’espace publicmoderne est mieux compris lorsqu’on le conçoit à travers une multiplicitédepublics particuliers que commeun large espace rationnel homogène (à lamanière de Habermas).

Ce sera notre propos, dans les pages qui suivent, de démontrer commentl’identité acadienne peut justement être comprise comme le processus deconstruction d’un sujet historique qui s’érige aumilieu duXIXesiècle dansla foulée du déploiement des grands systèmes rationnels modernes.Comme nous le verrons, elle se crée, à la fois comme un discours sur lamarginalité historique des Acadiens face à la société dominante et, commeune exigence de participation à cette même société. L’identité acadienne,

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c’est alors la résistance d’une collectivité d’individus qui s’appuient surleurs marginalités pour forcer leur reconnaissance collective par la sociétédominante.

S’il apparaîtra relativement facile de voir comment historiquementl’identité acadienne a articulémarginalité et résistance, il sera plus difficilede voir ce même processus au sein de la période contemporaine (1960 àaujourd’hui). En effet, l’identité acadienne qui définissait largementl’Acadie comme marginalité en insistant tout particulièrement sur leparcours singulier des Acadiens (comme peuple porteur d’une tradition etd’une domination spécifiques) sera fortement ébranlée autour des années1960. Tout en restant structurellement une société marquée par unsous-développement régional et par une sous-représentation politique, lasociété acadienne s’est largement ouverte au cours des quarante dernièresannées et nombre d’individus acadiens ont intégré « harmonieusement »l’environnement économico-politique de la société dominante.11 Quesignifie sous de telles conditions la permanence d’une référence à un sujethistorique acadien? Les protestations qui surgissent de l’espacegéographique acadien sont-elles toujours le fait d’une articulationspécifique entre marginalité et résistance? La référence acadiennedorénavant fragmentée demeure-t-elle un lieu d’une résistance collective,ce genre d’« espaces publics particuliers » dont parleNancyFraser, qui visel’intégration par la résistance?

Nous nous proposons de poursuivre cette discussion, premièrement, parune réflexion sur la formation de l’identité traditionnelle acadienne(1860-1960), où nous tenterons de démontrer en quoi elle fut un processusarticulant résistance etmarginalité, et, deuxièmement, par une analyse de lafigure contemporaine de l’identité (1960 à aujourd’hui), où nousaffirmerons que malgré sa référence éclatée l’acadianité demeure toujoursune manière d’articuler marginalité et résistance.

L’identité traditionnelle : de la marginalité à l’historicité (1860-1960)Les années 1860 sont un moment charnière dans l’histoire acadienne.Jusque-là, les Acadiens semblent avoir peine à se reconstituer encollectivité à la suite de la Déportation de 1755. À proprement parler, s’ilexiste avant 1860 desAcadiens, c’est-à-dire des descendants de l’anciennecolonie acadienne, il n’existe pas d’Acadie, c’est-à-dire une volontécollective qui structure la vie des Acadiens pour en faire un sujethistorique.12 Léon Thériault, même s’il croit déceler dans la période de1786 à 1864 une conscience collective, dira justement :

Quant aux Acadiens et Acadiennes, leurs institutions ontrelativement peu d’envergure et elles sont souvent régies par leséléments extérieurs à la société acadienne de souche : prêtresd’origine québécoise, française, écossaise ou irlandaise; repré-sentants politiques anglo-protestants. (Thériault, L. 1993, p. 50)

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Les années 1860 vont profondément transformer cette réalité. D’unepart, pour ce qui est de la conscience collective, les Acadiens développentune conscience nationale et se dotent d’attributs symboliques (drapeaux,hymne national, etc.) qui les distinguent des autres populations desprovinces Maritimes et des Canadiens français du reste du Canada. Ils sedoteront aussi, dans la société civile, d’institutions qui leur sont propres :maisons d’enseignement (couvents, collèges); journaux (le MoniteurAcadien et ensuite l’Évangéline); paroisses, à travers l’acadianisation duclergé (qui sera chose réalisée au début duXIXesiècle); et, un peu plus tard,institutions économiques (réseaux de coopératives et de caissespopulaires).

Cette conscience collective et ces institutions seront porteuses d’unprojet de société, un projet de bâtir une Acadie traditionnelle, c’est-à-direun projet qui affirme s’inscrire en rapport de filiation avec le passé, lesancêtres, l’héritage. On trouvera chez le Français Rameau de Saint-Père,Une colonie féodale en Amérique : l’Acadie (1877), la première et la plusclaire formulation de ce projet. Rameau de Saint-Père exhorte lesAcadiensà renouer avec leur filiation française d’ancien régime et à (re)créer en terred’Amérique, en marge de la société dominante, une société catholique,française, rurale et paysanne. Il proposera aux Acadiens de revenir à lavérité première de leur réalité soit celle d’avant 1755.13

Unedoubleprécision s’impose ici.Dansunpremier temps, la référence àla tradition ne doit pas être comprise comme la confirmation de l’existenced’une société traditionnelle en Acadie. La tradition dont il est question estune tradition réflexive, c’est-à-dire moderne, qui repose justement sur uneconstruction savante, historique — Rameau de Saint-Père est historien.Elle n’est donc pas à proprement parler une légitimité traditionnelle quis’appuierait sur un principe inaccessible aux sociétés humaines. Certes, ileut du providentialisme dans l’interprétation du destin historique desAcadiens. Nous croyons néanmoins pouvoir dégager de cette premièreformulation du sujet historique acadien un principe qui croit en lapossibilité d’agir sur son histoire (historicité). Dans un second temps, nousparlons d’une identité collective acadienne et non de l’identité desAcadiens. Bien que, comme nous l’avons rappelé, l’identité individuelle etl’identité collective se réfèrent largement à un même processus — laconstructiond’un sujet—il ne faut pas confondre l’identité des individus etl’identité collective, dans le cas qui nous préoccupe ici, l’identité desAcadiens et l’identité acadienne. Pour paraphraser l’un des fondateurs de lasociologie, Émile Durkheim, les faits collectifs doivent recevoir desexplications d’ordre collectif. L’identité collective n’est pas la somme desidentités personnelles — ce que plusieurs historiens et sociologuesconfondent en cherchant dans l’individu empirique le dépôt de laconscience collective.L’identité collective est une autre chosequi se situe àun étage supérieur de la réalité sociale, une solidarité de second niveau,comme le rappelait Fernand Dumont (1993) au sujet de la référence

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nationale, une solidarité qui se construit entre des individus qui ne sont pasdans des rapports quotidiens, concrets, de socialité. C’est pourquoil’identité collective est un discours nécessairement médiatisé par desintellectuels (prêtres, historiens, politiciens — en Acadie le groupeclérico-professionnel). Son efficacité n’est pas à rechercher dans les têtesdechaque individumaisdans la capacitéqu’un tel discours aàmobiliserdesénergies, à modifier la réalité, bref, à transformer des consciences éparsesen un sujet collectif.

Revenons toutefois à la formulation du discours qui visera à fonder, etqui fondera effectivement, l’Acadie comme sujet historique. C’est donccomme société marginale, communauté pré-moderne tenue à l’écart desforces corruptrices de l’urbanisation, de l’industrialisation14 et de lalaïcisationque l’Acadie affirmedansunpremier tempset pendant prèsd’unsiècle son identité. Non seulement la référence à la tradition est-elle,comme nous l’avons précisé plus haut, une référence dorénavantmédiatisée par les outils de la modernité — notamment l’histoire—mais,l’appel à la tradition, bien que le discours des élites dominantes nereconnaisse pas ce fait pendant plus d’un siècle, est largement déterminépar une participation différenciée à la modernité. Déjà au milieu du XIXesiècle, rappelons le, la réalité des Acadiens est travaillée par le capitalismemarchand, que ce soit par exemple les grandes compagnies forestières oules compagnies jersiaises de pêche. Plus généralement, l’émergence d’uneconscience nationale « traditionnelle » est contemporaine du déploiementen Acadie des grands systèmes associés à la modernité : intégrationéconomique des provinces Maritimes à l’économie continentale — lemarché; développement d’un véritable appareil politique provincial —l’État; intégration des Acadiens à un espace public de type moderne par ledéveloppement de la presse, le droit de votes et l’élection de premiersdéputés acadiens, etc. (Mailhot, 1973, Thériault, J. Y. 1981a; 1995). Lacrise des écoles qui opposera la minorité catholique et française à lamajorité anglophone et protestante du Nouveau-Brunswick (1875) estaussi contemporaine de cette période.

Le projet de reconstituer la tradition est donc inextricablement lié àl’intégration des Acadiens à une logique dominante que le groupe necontrôle pas. C’est justement en mettant en rapport l’élaboration d’uneidentité collective qui place l’Acadie en marge de l’histoire (dans latradition) avec cet autre fait collectif, l’intégration différenciée desAcadiens à la société dominante que l’on peut dire que le projet d’uneAcadie traditionnelle, bien qu’il se réclame largement du poids de latradition et de la « Providence », s’avère une volonté de faire l’histoire, del’orienter en fonction d’une vision autre que celle imposée par la majoritéanglophone.

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Une Acadie limitée au discours?Si l’identité collective n’est pas réductible à la somme des identitésindividuelles, se pose néanmoins la question de son efficacité. L’identitéacadienne de 1860 à 1960 entretient le projet de constituer les Acadiens enune société autonome, de les constituer en sujet historique. Mais, l’Acadietraditionnelle a-t-elle eu cette capacité de se constituer en une identitécapable d’orienter le devenir des Acadiens? Les sociologues et leshistoriens qui se sont penchés sur la question dans les années 1960 ont pourla plupart conclu à l’échec du projet identitaire articulant tradition ethistoricité, marginalité et résistance. Somme toute, diront-ils, l’Acadietraditionnelle est restée en marge de l’histoire, sa résistance, un vain cri dedésespoir, incapabled’aller au-delàde l’appel incantatoirede la tradition.

C’est ainsi par exemple que Jean-Paul Hautecœur s’interrogera surl’existence réelle de l’Acadie.

Une question se pose : est-il objectivement possible à l’Acadie dese créer comme société globale? Quelles sont ses « chancesobjectives » de conquérir le fait? [...] l’Acadie est-elle condamnéeà n’être que dans la valeur, fait désespérément idéologique, « paysde partance », seulement dans les structures de l’imaginaire.(Hautecœur, 1975, p. 319)

Pour Hautecœur, l’existence objective de l’Acadie est problématique.C’est le discours qui affirme l’Acadie et cette réalité reste aupoint devuedudiscours. L’affirmation d’une identité acadienne ne réussit pas, selon lui, às’inscrire dans la réalité, elle ne réussit pas à prendre emprise sur le faitacadien.L’Acadie du discours c’est le constat que la réalité desAcadiens sefait indépendamment de leur identité; c’est l’impossibilité de l’Acadie à sedonner lesmoyensd’orienter l’histoire, de lamodelerplutôtquede la subir.

L’historien Michel Roy (1978) dans l’Acadie perdue reprend ce mêmethème, le discours traditionnel n’a pas su donner aux Acadiens les moyensde contrôler leur devenir.

Que signifient au juste nos revendications dans le temps long del’histoire, si elles ne s’appuient sur la notion fondamentale del’« aire géographique », qui ne semble pas travailler sérieusementnotre conscience collective? Une impression troublante deprofanation, de sacrilège nous vient encore à l’idée que nouspourrions être un jour en juste propriété d’un espaceoù étaler notredevenir. Cette notion est pourtant la condition même de toutematurité nationale. Autrement, il ne reste plus qu’à aiguiller nosparticularismes sur la voie issue du folklore. (Roy, 1978, p. 61)

Dans la mesure où l’identité traditionnelle n’a pas su instituer un espaceterritorial contrôlé par les Acadiens, c’est-à-dire un espace où ils pourront«étaler leurdevenir », ceprojet était, selonMichelRoy, condamnéà tomberdans le folklore. Hautecœur dirait que l’impossibilité de l’Acadie de se

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constituer en une société globale confine sa présence au discours, à être enmarge de l’histoire vraie.

Certes, Michel Roy (1978) reconnaît que les Acadiens sont intégrés ausystème capitaliste et à l’État. Leur identité est en grande partie une réponseà l’exploitation qu’ils subissent d’un capitalisme étranger et à leurquasi-exclusion de la sphère publique néo-brunswickoise. Le discoursidentitaire traditionnel, essentiellement élitiste selon Roy, n’auraittoutefois rien fait pour briser cette situation de marginalité, il aurait mêmeparticipé à l’accentuer.15 La position de marginalité des Acadiens et leurdépendance face à une société globale qu’ils ne contrôlent pas annulent lapossibilité que l’Acadie puisse orienter son destin.

Une telle lecture critique de l’Acadie traditionnelle a le mérite de nousrappelerqueceprojet émergedans le cadrede lamodernité.Nonseulement,soulignent ces auteurs, les Acadiens sont intégrés au capitalisme et à lasociété globale anglophone, mais ils sont mal intégrés : exploités par lecapitalisme étranger et en position de faiblesse dans la société globale.Toutefois, pour les tenants de la marginalité acadienne le projet derésistanceà la sociétéglobale anglophone fut futile. Il n’a fait queconfirmerla mauvaise intégration des Acadiens et même l’approfondir. RelisonsMichel Roy lorsqu’il dit :

Comme dans toute bonne société sous-développée nous avonsinvesti dans les temples, nous continuons à le faire. Beaucoupd’argent, des énergiesquenous sommesallés chercher jene saisoù[...] Mais n’est-ce pas là un trait fondamental du peuple colonisé,cette disposition à faire dériver à l’excès des pulsions collectivesvers des objectifs d’un ordre soi-disant plus élevé? À défaut depouvoir nous réaliser dans un agir, lequel fut usurpé avant mêmequ’édifié, nous nous sommes enfermés dans la prière (Roy, 1978,p. 60).

L’identité traditionnelle acadienne serait un repli des Acadiens sur leurpropre marginalité, une source de blocages au développement pourreprendre l’expression d’Alain Even (1970).

La marginalité comme source d’historicitéTout est dit comme si résistance et marginalité ne se rencontraient jamais.Pourtant, comme nous l’avons rappelé, c’est bien le propre de l’identitédans la modernité d’être un projet articulatoire d’éléments paradoxaux.C’est en puisant dans leur spécificité, toujours à quelque part marginale enregard du principe de l’égale dignité universelle, que des exclus trouvent lacapacité de résister et de s’affirmer comme sujet historique. Tel est à notreavis le sens véritable de l’identité acadienne.

Raymond Mailhot (1973) dans l’analyse historique qu’il effectue de lapériode émergente de l’identité acadienne (1860-1880) suggère une tellelecture : l’Acadie traditionnelle comme résistance et volonté d’autonomie

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face au déterminisme du capitalisme et de l’État (les deux étant sous lecontrôle de la majorité anglophone). Les Acadiens mobilisent leurmarginalité, leur tradition, pour répondre à des transformations socialesqu’ils considèrent nepas contrôler.La référence« traditionnelle»estmoinsune continuité avec le passé qu’une réponse à des transformationsexogènes.Loin d’être unevoie d’évitement de lamodernité capitaliste et dela sphère publique, elle fut une critique de la mauvaise intégration à cesentités, tout en étant un projet d’intégration différenciée. Autrement dit, ils’est agit d’interroger, de réorienter la participation acadienne auxappareils de la modernité. Mais, plus qu’un projet, l’identité acadienne futaussi une pratique sociétale réussissant à mobiliser les ressourcesmarginalisées de la tradition pour négocier une participation différenciée àla société dominante. Dans ce sens l’identité acadienne fut bel et bien laconstruction d’un de ces « publics particuliers » dont parle Nancy Fraser,publics particuliers qui articulent toujours le repli sur soi et la volontéd’intégration à l’espace public dit universel.

Ce projet identitaire, malgré ses vicissitudes, fut une réussite. L’identitéacadienne réussit à faire des Acadiens qui étaient au milieu du XIXe siècle,selon l’expression de Rameau de Saint Père, des « débris épars » del’ancienne Acadie française, une société, avec ses paroisses, sescommunautés religieuses et ses institutions d’éducation. L’efficace del’identité acadienne n’est nulle part plus éloquente que dans le déploiementdémographique de l’Acadie. La population acadienne, qui comptait moinsde 17 p. 100 de la population de l’ensemble du Nouveau-Brunswick en1867, au moment de la Confédération canadienne, sera plus du tiers (35,2p. 100) en 1961. Cette croissance démographique, rappelons-le, est moinsle fait d’un taux de natalité élevé que de la rétention de la population par lasociété acadienne envoiede constitution—phénomènenettement plus fortdans la population acadienne qu’au sein des autres groupes limitrophes :irlandais, écossais, anglo-protestants. Le projet acadien articulantmarginalité et résistance réussit effectivement à construire et à consoliderl’Acadie comme sujet historique.

Illustrons par quelques exemples comment l’identité, en s’appuyant à lafois sur la résistance et la marginalité a réussi à transformer des individus« épars » en acteurs historiques. L’identité est un outil d’intégrationdifférenciée à l’ensemble dominant. C’est un tel processus que nous avionstenté de révéler (Thériault, J.-Y. 1981a) par l’étude du développement descoopératives vers les années quarante en Acadie (particulièrement lescoopératives de pêche). Celles-ci, en effet, se sont développées commemécanismes de défense (conservation) des communautés villageoises faceaux effets destructeurs opérés par le capitalisme continental, tout enparticipant d’une volonté d’intégration à la généralisation de ce mêmecapitalisme. Qui plus est, ce sont les communautés les plus marginaliséespar le développement de l’économie moderne qui furent le terrain le pluspropice à l’éclosion des expériences coopératives. Si les coopératives de

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pêche n’ont pas réussi à sauvegarder la structure villageoise traditionnelle,elles ont néanmoins évité la totale prolétarisation des pêcheries acadienneset ont participé à la sauvegarde, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, d’une pêche côtièreface à une industrie dominée par les grands chalutiers, tout en agissant, parailleurs, comme modalité d’intégration à l’économie marchande.

On pourrait aussi citer en exemple la question historique de l’éducation.En 1870, le gouvernement néo-brunswickois tenta d’imposer un systèmed’éducation laïque. Les Acadiens, dans ce qui est bien connu comme lacrise des écoles du Nouveau-Brunswick, vont résister à cette politique delaïcisation de l’éducation : refus de payer les taxes scolaires, recours auxtribunaux et même un affrontement armé entre les Acadiens et la milice(Stanley, 1972, Basque 1994, Pilote 1999). Il serait facile de conclure quecette crise a signifié un refus de participer à la sphère publiquenéo-brunswickoise, unevolontéd’assumer sadifférenceaupoint de refuserla gestion étatique.Pourtant, lesAcadiensne résistaient pas tant à la prise encharge de l’éducation par l’État qu’à une orientation laïque qui avaitcomme conséquence de les évacuer de la gestion publique de l’école enexcluant de celle-ci les élites religieuses (seules élites acadiennes àl’époque).

Comme le rappelle Léon Thériault (1993, p.62), au tournant des années1860, au moment de la tentative par les élites anglophones duNouveau-Brunswick de construire un système scolaire public « lesAcadiens commencent aussi à faire valoir leur doléances. Ils exigent uneplus grande utilisation du français, une meilleure formation des maîtres ettiennent au caractère catholique de leurs écoles. » Leur résistance est certesune défense de leur spécificité qui est marginalisée par le projet du groupedominant, mais elle est aussi la constitution d’un acteur historique, d’unsujet qui vise à participer et qui réussira effectivement à participer à lasociété qui s’élabore.

Enfin, un même processus de mobilisation articulant défense de saspécificité et intégration est présent, au cours de la première partie du XXesiècle, dans le développement en Acadie de communautés religieuses defemmesetd’institutionsd’éducationpostsecondairepour femmes.C’est ens’appuyant sur leur double marginalité (d’Acadiennes et de femmes) quedes femmes acadiennes, comme l’a bien démontré IsabelleMcKee (1995),se construisirent comme sujet historique et dotèrent l’Acadie d’uneéducation moderne pour femmes. Encore ici, résistance et marginalités’articulent pour négocier en quelque sorte une intégration différenciée àl’ensemble dominant.

L’identité acadienne est bel et bien jusqu’à 1960 un projet qui articule lamarginalité, par le biais d’une référence à l’identité comme tradition, et larésistance, par sa volonté de se voir reconnaître comme sujet autonome.C’est cette combinaisonqui a permis la création d’un sujet collectif acadiencapable d’historicité.

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L’identité contemporaine : une acadianité fragmentéeAu cours de la période qui va de 1860 à 1960, l’identité traditionnelle avaitune prétention hégémonique. Les élites (clergé et notables) porteurs dudiscours sur la tradition étaient les interprètes principaux de l’Acadie16. Enplus, l’acadianité avait réussi à faire société, c’est-à-dire à être un lieu oùl’identité collective était un fait social global organisant de larges pans de lavie réelle des Acadiens. Les années 1960 vont marquer la crise de cediscours ou dumoins sa crise comme discours exclusif. Les institutions quiparlaient jadis le langage de la tradition semblent demoins enmoins aptes àarticuler un discours capable de jouer le rôle de référent central. Le clergén’a plus l’ombre de l’influence qu’il a pu avoir; les pratiques descoopératives et des caisses populaires ne se distinguent pas de façonévidente de celles des entreprises capitalistes. L’individualisme et sareprésentation d’une identité délocalisée se substituent lentement à lareprésentation collective d’antan (Thériault 1995)17. Sur quoi se fondeencore l’Acadie si samarginalité commetraditionest largementobsolète?

Pourtant, comme nous l’avons indiqué au départ, l’Acadiecontemporaine semble toujours, plus qu’ailleurs, plus que dans d’autresespaces tout autantmarquéspar des exclusions régionales ouéconomiques,traversée par des mouvements de protestation et de résistance. Que cesoient, avons-nous rappelé, les réactions aux modifications des politiques« d’assurance-chômage », les protestations face aux fermetures d’écoles,les manifestations dans la crise des pêcheries de l’Atlantique, etc., laréférence acadienne est toujours évoquée et l’Acadie continue de faire dubruit.

Comment comprendre l’effervescence particulière des régionsacadiennes lorsque le référent central d’une Acadie traditionnelle sembles’épuiser? Que peut vouloir dire une référence à l’identité acadienne dansun monde où l’homogénéité d’antan est brisée et où, tous en conviennent,les identités sont fragmentées et bien souvent ramenées à l’individu? Nousl’avons souligné, c’est le référent identitaire qui dans l’histoire acadiennefut l’élément intégrateur et amplificateur de la résistance. L’Acadied’aujourd’hui fait difficilement société et les résistances qui s’y fontentendre viennent d’une pluralité de lieux. Le discours acadien devient undiscours fragmenté parce qu’il émane d’une multiplicité d’origines :discours féministe, discours juridique, discours entrepreneurial, discoursdes pêcheurs, discours des chômeurs, etc. (Richard, 1996, p. 206, Allain etal. 1993, p. 364-375). Aucun de ces discours ne peut prendre la placecentrale qu’occupait le discours sur la tradition.

La fragmentation du discours acadien soulève la pertinence de parler derésistanceacadienne. Est-ce que la fragmentation des pratiques acadiennesn’est pas le signe que l’Acadie (l’identité acadienne) n’arrive plus à jouer lerôle de référent? Autrement dit, est-ce que les Acadiens parlent et résistenttoujours à titre d’Acadiens ou est-ce que c’est tout simplement à titre de

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chômeurs, de pêcheurs, etc.? L’acuité des protestations qui émanent de celieu (l’Acadie) n’aurait-elle plus rien à voir avec l’identité, mais émaneraitsimplement de l’acuité des problèmes régionaux qui assaillent les lieux oùhabitent lesAcadiens? Selon une telle hypothèse la référence à l’acadianité(car elle persiste, malgré la perte de sa centralité) serait, comme le pensaitMichel Roy, une simple réminiscence folklorique?

Notre conviction est qu’au contraire,malgré sa dilution, sa fragmentation,l’acadianité (comme les identités minoritaires contemporaines en générald’ailleurs) reste une articulation entre résistance etmarginalité, c’estmêmed’une certaine façon, sa fonction principale, maintenant que l’Acadie faitdifficilement société. L’identité acadienne sert toujours de soutien, decaisse de résonance, pour une remise en question de la marginalité. Il esttoutefois dorénavant impossible de décrire l’enjeu précis de cettearticulation, car si la référence à l’Acadie permet toujours de dénoncer leslieux de la marginalisation acadienne et de suggérer des formes departicipation différenciée, le pluralisme inhérent à l’identité acadiennecontemporaine nous interdit d’y voir toujours l’expression dumêmepublicparticulier.

L’acadianité comme lieu de résonances de protestationsIllustrons, avant de tenter de l’expliquer, cette permanence et cettefragmentation de la référence acadienne à partir de deux analysessociologiques récentes.

Marc Johnson (1991) a étudié la crise desmédias acadiens et son rapportà l’identité contemporaine. Il s’est particulièrement penché sur la créationde L’AcadieNouvelleaudébutdesannées1980, à la suitede la fermetureduvieux quotidien nationaliste l’Évangéline. Ce journal qui émerge dans lesannées 1980 va tenir un discours entrepreneurial en réaction ouverte àl’attitude dite traditionaliste de son prédécesseur et des élitesinstitutionnelles de l’Acadie. Selon ses promoteurs, dit Johnson, « lecaractère privé du journal, […] était une garantie de sa rentabilité, maisaussi de son autonomie et de sa liberté de presse. La loi du marché serait laplus forte motivation présidant aux activités du journal et un importantfacteur de sa qualité. » (1991, p. 331-332) En fait ce projet était celui d’uneclasse montante d’entrepreneurs régionaux, ceux du Nord-est duNouveau-Brunswick, à maints égards en lutte avec les vieilles élites« acadiennes » du Sud-est dont le pouvoir était étroitement associé auxinstitutions et à la référence acadienne. Pourtant ce discoursentrepreneurial, en apparente dissidence avec la tradition institutionnelleacadienne, sent le besoin de s’identifier à la référence acadienne (neserait-cequepar lenomdu journal,L’AcadieNouvelle), deparler aunomdela collectivité acadienne.

Annie Pilote (1999) a pour sa part étudié les manifestations de parentsdans deux communautés rurales du Nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick face

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aux fermetures d’écoles de villages. L’analyse démontre que la survie despetites communautés rurales et la démocratie locale étaient les véritablesenjeux de ces luttes scolaires. La question linguistique ou identitaire nesemblait à prime abord n’avoir aucune incidence sur les événements. Larégion concernée étant largement acadienne, le transfert des enfants seferait vers une autre école francophone, dans une communauté tout aussiacadienne que la communauté d’origine. D’autre part, la fermeture desécoles rurales ne remettait pas en question le contenu identitaire de l’école.Enfin, des écoles rurales anglophones étaient aussi visées par l’annonce defermeture et rien n’indiquait une discrimination particulière contre lesécoles rurales acadiennes. Pourtant c’est du milieu acadien que lesmanifestations contre ces fermetures d’écoles surgirent et c’est au nom del’Acadie, des lutteshistoriquesde sapopulationpour créer« ses»écoles, dudroit à la gestion scolaire des minorités, etc., qu’une parole de protestationse fit entendre. Tout est comme si le détour par l’acadianité rendait plusfacile la mise en scène de résistances qui ne recoupent pourtant plusl’Acadie comme fait social global. Comment comprendre ce fait?

ConclusionDans, Jeux interdits à la frontière, Louis Quéré (1978) affirmait que pourbien comprendre les mouvements « régionaux-nationalitaires » françaisqui se développaient, étonnamment, en même temps que l’effondrementdes cultures régionales desquelles ces protestations disaient émaner, qu’ilfallait saisir leur rapport avec laNation française. LaNation s’institue pourlui commeun«Texte», c’est-à-direunedéfinitionqui seveut cohérentedesrapports sociaux, du lien social. Ce Texte a prétention à une certaineplénitude, il vise à clôturer l’ensemble social. Les références« nationalitaires » par le rappel qu’elles opèrent à une ancienne cohérencesociale (la nation bretonne, la nation occitane, etc.) créent des fissures dansle Texte national, fissures qui révèlent, ce que le Texte tend à cacher,c’est-à-dire, l’exclusion (la marginalité), de certains groupes ou catégoriessociales. L’identité « nationalitaire », poursuivait-il, est dorénavant moinsune manière d’être qu’une épreuve, « l’épreuve de la frontière », sorte decage résonnante de la marginalité et tentative par la référence« nationalitaire » de réinsertion des catégories exclues dans une nouvellecohérence.

S’il faut suivre la lecture de Quéré, ce que nous faisons ici, l’identitéacadienne, comme référence quasi nostalgique à la tradition, apparaîtraittoujours commeun révélateur d’exclusions grâce aux fissures opérées dansleTexte (de la sociétéglobalenéo-brunswickoiseoumêmecanadienne).Larésistance révélée par la fissuration du Texte n’est pas homogène, c’estmême en grande partie l’une des raisons de son efficacité. Dans les espacessoumis à l’épreuve de la frontière, rappelait Quéré, les lieux d’expressionde l’exclusion sont multiformes : luttes ouvrières, mouvementsconservateurs de sauvegarde des langues régionales, syndicalisation des

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petits producteurs, etc. L’identité néanmoins tente toujours d’articuler enun tout cohérent ces exclusions diverses et c’est dans cette tentative quesurgit la possibilité d’une pratique autre, d’une pratique de résistance quis’appuie sur les marginalités, tout en les dévoilant.

C’est l’identité donc qui facilite la prolifération des protestations. C’estpourquoimalgré la fragmentation des pratiques sociales contemporaines etla multiplication des lieux de résistance, la référence identitaire demeureune constante chez les acteurs sociaux acadiens. Cette référence estprésente, par exemple, dans la protestation des chômeurs et desmilieux liésà la crise des pêcheries, dans la lutte pour la création d’outils modernes dediffusion, dans le développement d’une culture entrepreneuriale locale,dans la défense des écoles rurales et de la démocratie locale, dansl’effervescence d’unmouvement féministe, dans la pratique dissidente desmilieux artistiques, etc. Ces pratiques de résistances ne sont pas, àproprement parler, acadiennes. L’acadianité apparaît avant tout comme unmédium qui tente de transformer des marginalités en sujet historique.

Notes1. Notre travail porte principalement sur l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick où les

Acadiens représentent plus du tiers de la population totale. Des éléments del’analyse, particulièrement de nature historique, s’appliquent toutefois àl’ensemble des populations acadiennes des provinces Maritimes.

2. On se référera aux travaux de Noami Griffiths, notamment The Acadian:Creation of a People (1969) pour l’analyse contemporaine la plus exhaustive del’attitude des Acadiens face au pouvoir anglais entre 1713 et 1755.

3. Voir sur ce lien entre Pélagie-la-Charette et la nouvelle histoire acadienne,Robert Viau (1998), Les visages d’Évangéline, du poème au mythe.Beausoleil-Broussard fut une figure importante du renouveau nationalitaire desannées 70 en Acadie, il fut notamment le nom d’un groupe très connu de musiquepopulaire.

4. Pour notre part, nous ne pensons pas que l’historiographie contemporaine aitréellement tranché le débat sur l’existence d’un « peuple » doté d’une consciencecollective et d’une volonté de résistance avant les années 1860 : l’identité comme« peuple » des Acadiens nous apparaît anachronique parce qu’une telle idée estune création du romantisme européen du début du 19e siècle et, autant la« volonté » de retour des Acadiens, que le nombre de ceux qui sont effectivementrevenus, nous semblent habituellement largement exagérés dans les travauxportant sur cette période.

5. Voir sur l’histoire et l’analyse d’une Acadie résistante, Thériault, L. (1982)Godin (1972) et Nadeau (1992.). Nous avons déjà proposé une premièreinterprétation de l’Acadie et de ses formes de résistance (Thériault J. Y. 1981a;1981b).

6. Ces propos ont été tenus lors de la crise qui toucha le projet de fermeture d’écolesrurales acadiennes au printemps et à l’été 1997. Nous reviendrons sur cette criseplus tard dans ce texte en référence à l’analyse qu’en a faite Annie Pilote (1999).

7. Il s’agit de la juge Jocelyne Moreau-Bérubé dont le statut de juge en rapport auxpropos mentionnés est actuellement sous révision (voir Acadie Nouvelle, le 30juillet 1999).

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8. Dans Les sources du moi, Charles Taylor (1998) a reconstruit la genèse del’identité du Moi propre à la culture occidentale.

9. On reconnaîtra ici, sans avoir besoin de longues explications les métaphoresmodernes du marché, « la main invisible » d’Adam Smith, ou le « contrat social »de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, deux métaphores qui réduisent la société à unautomatisme issu des volontés des sujets individuels. Seuls ces deniers sontultimement des sujets historiques.

10. On se référera aux travaux de George Herbert Mead (1963) sur la construction dusoi, de l’identité et de leur rapport à l’autrui généralisé.

11. Pour une analyse récente des « rattrapages » et des « écarts » de la sociétéacadienne contemporaine, voir Cyr et al. (1996).

12. Voir sur la non-existence d’une société acadienne avant les années 1860, J. Y.Thériault (1995), p. 219 et s.

13. Le discours traditionaliste utilisera de façon très significative le termerenaissance pour désigner la période de grande effervescence nationaliste qui irades années 1860 jusqu’à la première moitié du XXe siècle.

14. Mgr Marcel-François Richard, qui fut longtemps un des principaux porte-paroledu discours traditionaliste, dira « La charrue, voilà ce qu’il faut à un Acadien,aujourd’hui comme autrefois » (cité dans Arseneault 1994, p. 98).

15. C’est la conclusion aussi, comme nous l’avons noté en introduction, de la récenteanalyse sur l’historiographie acadienne réalisée par F. Ouellet (1999).

16. Le discours traditionnel a longtemps prétendu être le seul discours sur l’Acadie,comme si l’Acadie était un bloc idéologique. Les jeunes historiens des années1960 (Michel Roy 1978, Raymond Mailhot 1973, Régis Brun 1982) ont voulumontrer que ce discours était celui des élites et qu’il ne rejoignait pas la réalitépopulaire. De nouveaux travaux historiques, notamment ceux de Maurice Basquesur la crise des écoles du Nouveau-Brunswick (Basque, 1994) voudront montrerque le pluralisme existait dans les communautés acadiennes déjà à la fin du XIXe

siècle. Ce pluralisme dans le domaine des interprétations ne doit cependant pas, ànotre avis, faire oublier la capacité du discours traditionnel à s’installer pour unsiècle comme discours dominant sur l’Acadie.

17. Anthony Giddens (1994) définit la « délocalisation » des relations socialescomme l’une des caractéristiques centrales de la modernité.

BibliographieAllain, Greg, Isabelle McKee-Allain et J. Yvon Thériault (1993), « La société

acadienne : lectures et conjonctures », dans Jean Daigle (dir.), L’Acadie desMaritimes, Moncton, Chaire d’études acadiennes, p. 341-384.

Arseneault, Samuel (1994), « La charrue, voilà ce qu’il faut à un Acadien : géographiehistorique de la Péninsule acadienne »,Revue de l’Université deMoncton, vol. 27,no 1, p. 97-125.

Aunger, Edmund (1981), In Search of Political Stability : A Comparative Study of NewBrunswick and Northern Ireland, Montréal, McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Basque, Maurice (1994), « Les partisans acadiens et francophones de la loi King et lacrise scolaire des années 1870 au Nouveau-Brunswick », Égalité, no 35,printemps, p. 113-120.

Brun, Régis (1982),De Grand-Pré à Kouchibouguac. L’histoire d’un peuple exploité,Moncton, Éditions d’Acadie.

Cyr, Hubert, Denis Duval et André Leclerc (1996), L’Acadie à l’heure des choix,l’avenir politique et économique de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick, Moncton,Éditions d’Acadie.

Dumont, Fernand (1993), Genèse de la société québécoise, Québec, Boréal.

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Even, Alain (1970), Le territoire pilote du Nouveau-Brunswick ou les blocagesculturels au développement socio-économique, thèse de doctorat, faculté de droitet de sciences économiques, Université de Rennes.

Fraser, Nancy (1997), Justice Interruptus : Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist”Condition, New York, Routledge.

Giddens, Anthony (1994), Les conséquences de la modernité, Paris, l’Harmattan.Godin, Pierre (1972), Les révoltés d’Acadie,Montréal, Éditions québécoises.Griffiths, Noami (1969), The Acadian Deportation : Deliberate Perfidy of Cruel

Necessity?, Toronto, Copp Clark Publishing.Hautecœur, Jean-Paul (1975), L’Acadie du discours, Québec, Les Presses de

l’Université Laval.Johnson,Marc (1991), Les stratégies de l’acadianité. Analyse socio-historique du rôle

de la presse dans la formation de l’identité acadienne, thèse de doctorat,sociologie, Université de Bordeaux II.

Mead, George Hebert (1963), L’Esprit, le soi et la société, Paris : PUF.Mailhot, Raymond (1973), Prise de conscience collective au Nouveau-Brunswick

(1860-1891) et comportement de la majorité anglophone, thèse de doctorat,histoire, Université de Montréal.

McKee, Isabelle (1995), Rapports ethniques et rapports de sexes en Acadie : lescommunautés religieuses de femmes et leurs collèges classiques, thèse dedoctorat, département de sociologie, Université de Montréal.

Nadeau, Jean-Marie (1992), Que le tintamarre commence, Moncton, Éditionsd’Acadie.

Ouellet, Fernand (1999), « L’historiographie francophone traditionnelle au Canada »,dans J.Y. Thériault, dir.,Francophoniesminoritaires auCanada : l’état des lieux,Éditions d’Acadie, Moncton, p. 99-130.

Pilote, Annie (1999), École, démocratie et identité : le cas de l’école francophone auNouveau-Brunswick, thèse de maîtrise, sociologie, Université d’Ottawa

Quéré, Louis (1978), Jeux interdits à la frontière : essai sur les mouvements régionaux,Paris, Éditions Anthropos.

Rameau de Saint-Père, François-Edme (1877), Une colonie féodale en Amérique :l’Acadie (2e édition, 1889), Paris, Plon.

Richard, Ricky (1996), « Le déploiement de l’acadianitémoderne : unemorphologie del’identité culturelle minoritaire », Égalité, printemps-automne, p. 185-210.

Roy, Michel (1978), L’Acadie perdue, Montréal, Québec/Amérique.Stanley G. (1972), «The Caraquet Riots of 1875», Acadiensis, vol. 2, no 1, p. 21-38.Taylor, Charles (1994),Multiculturalisme : différence et démocratie, Paris, Aubier.Taylor, Charles (1998), Les sources du moi, Paris, Éditions du Seuil.Thériault, Léon (1993a), « L’Acadie de 1763 à 1990, synthèse historique », dans

J. Daigle dir., L’Acadie des Maritimes, Moncton, Chaire d’études acadiennes, p.45-91.

Thériault, Léon (1993b), « L’acadianisation des structures ecclésiastiques auxMaritimes, 1758-1953 », dans J. Daigle dir., L’Acadie des Maritimes, Moncton,Chaire d’études acadiennes, p. 431-468.

Thériault, Léon (1982), La question du pouvoir en Acadie, Moncton, Éditionsd’Acadie.

Thériault, Joseph Yvon (1995), L’identité à l’épreuve de la modernité, Moncton,Éditions d’Acadie.

Thériault, Joseph Yvon (1981a), Acadie coopérative et développement acadien :contribution à une sociologie d’un développement périphérique et à ses formes derésistances, thèse de doctorat, Paris, EHESS.

Thériault, Joseph Yvon (1981b), « Domination et protestation : le sens del’acadianité », Anthropologica, vol. 23, no 1, p. 39-71.

Touraine, Alain (1992), Critique de la modernité, Paris, Fayard.Viau,Robert (1998),Les visages d’Évangéline : du poèmeaumythe,Montréal,MNH.

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Martin Papillon

Mouvements de protestation et représentationidentitaire : l’émergence politique de la nation crie

entre 1971 et 1995*

RésuméLe présent article analyse l’émergence du mouvement d’affirmation des Crisde la Baie James et de la lutte contre les premiers barrages hydro-électriquesà partir des années 1970 jusqu’au référendum sur la souveraineté du Québecen 1995. Il s’agit de retracer l’évolution de la représentation identitaire dumouvement sur la scène québécoise puis internationale afin d’en soulignerl’impact, à la fois pour comprendre le succès des représentants cris et lanature du conflit actuel sur la définition territoriale et politique du Québec.L’exemple des Cris permet de souligner le rôle structurant que peut avoir ladéfinition stratégique d’une identité collective dans le cadre d’unemobilisation politique.

AbstractThis paper analyzes the political mobilisation and assertion of the James BayCree, beginning with their fight against hydroelectric dams in the 1970s up tothe Quebec Sovereignty Referendum of 1995. The strategic representation ofthe movement, first on the Quebec scene and then on the international stage,is examined in an effort to explain the success enjoyed by Cree representativesand more importantly to assess its impact on the current conflict on thedefinition of the political community in Quebec. This case illustrates how thestrategic definition of a collective identity can have a profound structuringimpact for a social movement.

Le 25 octobre 1995, le Grand conseil des Cris tenait, en parallèle avec leréférendum québécois sur la souveraineté-partenariat, sa propreconsultation sur l’avenir d’Eeyou Istchee1, le territoire qu’il revendique aunomdes 12000Cris qui vivent dans leNordduQuébec.Quatre-vingt-seizepour cent des participants se sont prononcés en faveur d’un maintien duterritoire cri au sein du Canada. Interprétant ces résultats, le chef du Grandconseil des Cris, Matthew Coon Come, déclarait, dans un communiquérepris à la une de nombreux médias canadiens, que :

Les Cris respectent le droit des Québécois de tenir leur propreréférendum et de déterminer leur avenir [...] mais cela ne se ferapas aux dépens de nos droits et de ceux des autres peuples duCanada. Nous, Cris, avons le même droit de déterminer notreavenir en fonction de nos aspirations.2


Les représentants cris de laBaie James occupent, en particulier depuis leréférendum de 1995, une place importante dans le débat sur l’accession duQuébec au statut d’État indépendant. Ils s’opposent à une « inclusionforcée » du peuple et du territoire cris au sein d’un nouvel État souverain.3Leur stratégie consiste à remettre en question la légitimité démocratique duprocessus référendaire sur la base du droit à l’autodétermination despeuples. Ils combattent ainsi le projet souverainiste sur son propre terrain,celui du droit des « nations » de déterminer collectivement leur avenir.

Dans le contexte canadien où les références nationalistes occupent uneplace importante dans les débats politiques, cet épisode du débat surl’avenir du Québec ne surprend guère.4 Pourtant, les Cris de la Baie James,comme l’ensemble des Autochtones du Canada, n’ont pas toujoursprésenté leurs revendications en termes nationalistes.5 Bien que la naturedes revendications et la définition des Cris en tant que communautépolitique nationale soient aujourd’hui tenues pour acquis par plusieurs,rappelonsque l’objectif initial de lapremièremobilisationdesCris audébutdes années 1970 était de s’opposer à la construction des barragesd’Hydro-Québec sur les territoires traditionnels de chasse et de pêche descommunautés. Cette lutte s’est peu à peu transformée en mouvementd’affirmation qui utilise un discours identitaire fondé sur l’appartenancenationale pour justifier sa légitimité et qui entraîne par le fait même uneconfrontation directe avec le mouvement nationaliste québécois sur lecontrôle du territoire et sur la définition de la communauté politique vivantsur ce territoire.

L’histoire de l’affirmation politique des Cris de la Baie James et duconflit actuel sur la question de la souveraineté territoriale dansl’éventualité d’un vote référendaire favorable à l’indépendance duQuébecest un excellent exemple de la force et du rôle structurant que peut avoir ladéfinition stratégique d’une identité collective dans le cadre d’unemobilisation. En fait, les théoriciens des mouvements sociaux, enparticulier les mouvements d’affirmation ethnique ou culturelle,s’intéressent de plus en plus au rôle fondamental que joue l’identitécollective dans le processus de mobilisation.6

Peu d’études s’attardent cependant au processus qui entoure laformation, puis la transformation de l’identité collective dans le cadre de lamobilisation. Souvent prise pour acquise, l’identité collective est présentéecomme une donnée préalable, invariable, que des entrepreneurs utilisentafin de favoriser lamobilisation d’un groupe oud’une communauté.7Notreobjectif est de souligner, par l’utilisation de l’exemple des Cris de la BaieJames, la nature souvent stratégique de la définition identitaire d’unmouvement de protestation et l’importance de cette stratégie, à la fois pourcomprendre le succès politique d’un mouvement, les rapports que celui-cientretient avec lesautresacteurspolitiqueset sonévolutiondans le temps.

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Le conflit entre les Cris de la Baie James et le Parti québécois dans lecontexte de l’accession du Québec à la souveraineté s’avère également unexcellent cas d’espèce qui nous permet d’étudier les rapports complexesque peuvent entretenir deux mouvements d’affirmation nationale. Laforme que prend la mobilisation crie et la représentation identitaire de lacommunauté en des termes nationalistes qui la motive sont un produit del’histoire et donc d’un rapport constant entre les choix stratégiques et lecontexte qui entoure les débats politiques au Canada et, plusparticulièrement, au Québec.

Après avoir situé notre analyse dans le cadre conceptuel de l’étude desmouvements sociaux, nous verrons comment les représentants des Cris dela Baie James utilisèrent une stratégie de représentation identitaire pourfaire d’importants gains dans l’espace public québécois et éventuellementse faire reconnaître commeacteur dans un débat duquel ils étaient au départexclus.Notre analyse de l’évolution du discours de représentation desCris,des premières étapes de la mobilisation contre le complexehydro-électrique de la Baie James en 1971 jusqu’au référendum sur lasouveraineté du Québec en 1995, nous permettra également de soulignercomment la présence du nationalisme québécois aura influencé les choixstratégiques des leaders autochtones et, par le fait même, marqué leprocessus d’affirmation politique de la nation crie.

La stratégie de représentation des mouvements sociaux et leprocessus de formation de l’identité collectiveAlberto Melucci souligne que l’action collective peut être à la foisconsidérée comme une action de revendication d’intérêts spécifiques maisaussi comme un processus d’affirmation d’une identité commune, traçantles frontières entre le « nous » et les autres au sein des groupes sociaux.8L’identité collective demeure cependant une construction sociale. Commel’a soulignéBenedictAnderson dans un ouvrage désormais classique sur lenationalisme, toute communauté dépassant le cadre des relations directesentre individus demeure une « communauté imaginée », fondée sur destraits culturels, des symboles, des mythes et une représentation communede l’histoire.9 Suivant les tracesd’Anderson, unnombre croissant d’auteursqui s’intéressent aux mouvements sociaux soulignent que l’identité d’unacteur collectif ne doit pas être prise pour acquis. La formation de l’identitécollective n’est pas préalable à la mobilisation mais partie intégrante decelle-ci. Imaginer la nation ou la collectivité devient en ce sens un travaildont le résultat dépend de l’action sociale et politique.10

Afin de faire valoir leurs revendications, les acteurs sociaux sepositionnent et s’identifient dans ledébatpolitiqueà traversune stratégiedereprésentation particulière.11 L’adoption d’un schéma interprétatif, quidonne un sens à la mobilisation pour les acteurs en présence, auralogiquement des conséquences sur la définition du mouvement et de ses

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Mouvements de protestation et représentation identitaire : l’émergencepolitique de la nation crie entre 1971 et 1995

revendications. En effet, afin de se représenter, un groupe doit se définir,tracer ses frontières et créer un imaginaire collectif qui unit les membresautour des caractéristiques communes et d’une histoire commune. Il nes’agit pas simplement d’être représenté mais aussi de se représenter àtravers une symbolique qui unifie et légitime la communauté au nom delaquelle parlent les représentants. Le défi consiste à faire accepter lalégitimité de cette représentation dans les débats publics, site de productiondes normes sociales et de reconnaissance des acteurs sociaux. En ce sens, lalutte des organisations de représentation à la tête des mouvements est engrande partie une lutte sur la représentation des enjeux et une activité deproduction de sens.

Lesmouvements sociaux sont également des acteurs politiques agissantau sein d’un environnement caractérisé par des relations de pouvoir quilimitent ou facilitent leur capacité d’action. Faire abstraction de l’inégalitéfondamentale des rapports sociaux et surtout de la force contraignante desstructures qui encadrent ces rapports équivaudrait à oublier que lesmouvements émergent d’un contexte où l’idée, l’identité ou l’intérêt qu’ilsvalorisent est marginalisé par les institutions liées au pouvoir.12

En se représentant et en projetant leur définition des enjeux et leuridentité dans le discours public, les acteurs se positionnent et forcent lesautres à réagir. Cette prise de position stratégique aura des conséquences àla fois sur la perception du mouvement par les autres acteurs et sur lespossibilités d’actions de ses représentants. En effet, les alliés et lesopposants se définissent à partir de ce positionnement. L’accès auxinstitutions politiques peut aussi varier selon le discours adopté. Si lemouvement remet en question la légitimité de ces institutions, il prend lerisque d’en être exclu. Le choix d’une stratégie de représentation modifiedonc la position des mouvements et, conséquemment, transforme sa« structure d’opportunité ».

Notre analyse nous porte donc à conclure que, pour comprendrel’émergence, la forme et l’éventuel succès d’un mouvement, il fautchercher à comprendre comment ces acteurs construisent leur action nonseulement en fonction des contraintes et opportunités liées au contexte,mais aussi en vuede transformer celles-ci.Unepart importante de ce travails’effectue dans le discours public à partir de la stratégie de représentationidentitaire. Notre analyse de l’évolution, entre 1971 et 1995, de la stratégiede représentation des Cris de la Baie James, et en particulier de latransformation progressive de la définition identitaire dumouvement dansles discours publics s’inspire de cette conclusion. L’importance ducontexte immédiat entourant la mobilisation, en particulier la présence dunationalisme québécois, pour comprendre cette représentation seraégalement soulignée tout au long de l’analyse.

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Une première définition politique : la mobilisation contre lecomplexe hydro-électrique de la Baie James entre 1971 et 1975Lapremièremobilisation contre le projet hydro-électrique de laBaie Jamesentre 1971 et 1975 permettra aux Cris de mettre en place les frontièresidentitaires de leur communauté et de transformer cette identité en un outilpolitique qui leur permettra de faire des gains significatifs au cours desannées. Avant 1971, les Cris vivant au Nord du Québec n’ont aucunestructure politique commune. Ils vivent dans huit communautésrelativement isolées l’une de l’autre, chacune ayant sa propre structureadministrative et politique.13 Au lendemain de la signature de laConvention de la Baie James et du Nord québécois qui met un terme à lapremière bataille des Cris, ceux-ci auront acquis non seulement unenotoriété importante en devenant les signataires du premier traité del’histoire récente du Canada, mais la structure politique héritée de lamobilisation, enparticulier leGrandconseil desCris, transformera à jamaisles huit communautés. Celles-ci sont désormais réunies autour d’uneappartenance commune à la nation crie de la Baie James.

Il est important de souligner que la première mobilisation des Cris de laBaie James contre le projet hydro-électrique du gouvernement québécoiss’inscrit dans un contexte particulier où les relations entre les peuplesautochtones et les gouvernements sont en pleine mutation au Canada.14L’émergence d’un mouvement autochtone moderne au Canada peut êtreassociée à un mouvement similaire, le « Red Power » aux États-Unis à lamême époque. Au Canada, le « réveil » autochtone correspond plus oumoins avec le dépôt du livre blanc sur la politique autochtone dugouvernement Libéral en 1969.15 Le livre blanc proposait l’abolition dustatut d’Indien et des réserves et le transfert aux provinces de laresponsabilité eu égard aux Autochtones pour « faire des Indiens descitoyens à part entière ».

En réponse au discours de négation et d’assimilation de l’époque, telqu’il est illustré par le livre blanc, les groupes autochtones commencèrent àdévelopper un discours fondé sur la revendication de garanties concernantleur statut particulier.L’« indianité», une référenceàune identité collectivedes Autochtones au-delà des groupes particuliers, commence à prendreforme. L’enjeu principal à partir des années 1970 devint donc lareconnaissance juridique de ce statut particulier et des droits collectifs quien découlent. Les premières organisations de représentation quiapparaissent également à l’époque,16 en particulier la Fraternité des Indiensdu Canada qui deviendra plus tard l’Assemblée des Premières Nations,articulent donc leurs revendications en ce sens.

La représentation des enjeux en terme de reconnaissance de droitscollectifs permet au mouvement d’acquérir une certaine visibilité, enparticulier dans un contexte de profonde modification du rapport entre lesgouvernements et les minorités qui vivent au Canada. Le livre blanc, ne

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l’oublions pas, sera publié l’année même de la mise en œuvre de la Loi surles langues officielles et deux ans seulement avant le premier énoncé de lapolitique de multiculturalisme. Cette dynamique entre le statut desminorités linguistiques, et du Québec plus particulièrement, versus celuides Autochtones, demeurera au centre des débats constitutionnels pour lesdécennies à venir et, comme nous le verrons, les représentants cris sauronten tirer profit.

Une première définition des enjeuxLorsque le Premier ministre Robert Bourassa annonce en 1971 la créationde la Société de développement de la Baie James (SDBJ) et la volonté dugouvernement du Québec de développer le potentiel hydro-électrique duNord québécois, aucune consultation n’est prévue avec les communautésautochtones vivant sur le territoire affecté par ce vaste projet. Sur lesconseils de l’Association des Indiens duQuébec (AIQ), les leaders des huitbandes se réunissent, en juin 1971, pour discuter du projet et de sesconséquences sur les communautés. Les représentants cris choisissent des’opposer au projet qui menace les territoires de chasse et de pêche descommunautés et décident d’envoyer une lettre au ministre des Affairesindiennes du Canada lui demandant d’intervenir au nom de laresponsabilité fiduciaire qu’exerce ce dernier auprès des Autochtones duCanada. Voici un extrait :

We, the representatives of the Cree bands that will be affected bythe James Bay hydro project, oppose such a project because webelieve that only the beavers have the right to build dams in ourterritories and we request the Minister [...] to use his legaljurisdiction to stop any attempt of intrusion of the bandstraditional territories by the government of the Province ofQuebec.17

Dans leur première déclaration commune sur le projet, les chefs debandes ne se représentent pas comme un peuple. L’utilisation du plurielpour désigner les communautés et le territoire d’appartenance des Crisrévèle une faible intégration des communautés. Au début de lamobilisation, le « nous » en tant qu’unité politique et sociale est presquecomplètement absent du discours.

Les Cris furent donc confrontés à une transformation profonde de leursrapports avec la société dominante avec l’arrivée des barrages.18L’« autre », jusqu’alors distant, devient une présence incontournable, uneprésence à la fois humaine et matérielle, politique et économique. Cettenouvelle proximité amène les Cris à prendre conscience des liens collectifsqui unissent les communautés, à se définir et à réfléchir sur leurs intérêtscommunsafindeprésenterune imagecohérente faceà l’extérieur.D’autantplus que les Cris font face à un défi de taille. La société d’étatHydro-Québec est au cœur du processus de modernisation du Québecdepuis les tout premiers pas de la révolution tranquille. Le développement

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de la Baie James est perçu, par le nouveau pouvoir francophone, commeune prise de contrôle de son territoire. Robert Bourassa affirmait d’ailleurs,dans une entrevue réalisée en 1986, que « le développementhydro-électrique, c’est la conquête du Nord ».19 C’est donc à un projet àhaute teneur symbolique que s’attaquent les Cris.

À l’époque pourtant, les Cris sont virtuellement inconnus dans lessphères du pouvoir du Sud. À l’exception de l’Association des Indiens duQuébec (AIQ)20 et de quelques groupes environnementalistes, ils nebénéficient d’aucun allié important. Isolés des grands centres urbains, ilssont peu accessibles par les médias. De plus, les ressources dont disposentles chefs de bandes et l’AIQ étant fort limitées, une campagne deprotestation ou une mobilisation de masse est presque impossible.

La revendication de droits collectifsDans un contexte politique aux opportunités limitées, les Cris suivirent lesconseils des avocats de l’AIQ et choisirent d’attaquer sur le front juridiqueafin de créer les conditions favorables à une ouverture des acteurspolitiques à leurs revendications. S’inspirant des expériences des groupesautochtones ailleurs au Canada et aux États-Unis, les Cris visèrent à fairereconnaître leurs droits collectifs sur le territoire de la Baie James. Ils selancèrent donc dans une action juridique afin de forcer l’arrêt des travauxsur la rivière La Grande.22 Ce choix stratégique aura plusieursconséquences sur la place des Cris dans le discours public mais aussi sur lamanièredont serontdorénavant représentés la collectivité et les enjeuxde lamobilisation dans la stratégie des leaders dumouvement. La revendicationdes droits territoriaux s’articulera autour d’une image des Cris en tant quepeuple ayant une longue tradition historique et culturelle sur le territoire dela Baie James.

Une analyse des discours et des témoignages devant le jugeMalouf de laCour supérieure du Québec fait ressortir l’importance des références à lalangue, au mode de vie ou aux traditions communes des Cris de la BaieJames dans l’argumentaire développé.23 En réaction à cette stratégie visantà légitimer la revendication de droits collectifs, les avocats dugouvernement et de la SDBJ tentèrent de convaincre le juge que les Crisétaient à toutes fins pratiques assimilés à la culture du Sud et qu’il n’y avaitdonc aucun motif à leur reconnaître des droits collectifs fondés sur unhéritage culturel particulier. Confrontés à la négation de leur existencecollective, les Cris réagirent en soulignant davantage les liens qui lesunissaient. L’identité collective construite autour de l’appartenance aupeuple cri, un concept inexistant quelques années auparavant, devient unearme juridique, puis politique pour les représentants cris.

Intimement liée à ce changement dans la représentation identitaire, laconception des enjeux de la mobilisation se transforme également dans letemps. Au départ, l’enjeu articulé par les représentants cris était

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d’empêcher à tout prix la construction des barrages. Peu à peu cependant,les discours firent une place grandissante aux droits territoriaux et à lanotion d’autonomie politique. Les barrages devinrent en quelque sorte unemonnaie d’échange afin d’obtenir des gouvernements une reconnaissancede la légitimité politique des Cris. Ainsi, le discours sur l’autonomiegouvernementale, jusqu’alors complètement absent dudébat, commença àprendre forme.

La décision d’accorder l’injonction interlocutoire aux Cris le 15novembre 1973 fait aujourd’hui partie de l’histoire des relations entre leQuébec et les Autochtones. Le juge Malouf déclara qu’il existe un droitprima faciedesAutochtones sur le territoire qu’ils occupent.24Ce jugementforça le gouvernement et Hydro-Québec à reconnaître la légitimité desAutochtones et de leurs revendications. Bien que cette décision futrenversée rapidement en appel,25 des négociations intenses commencèrententre les représentants des gouvernements, d’Hydro-Québec, des Cris etdes Inuits. Pour les représentants cris, la négociation d’un accord quireconnaissait leurs droits devenait l’enjeu principal :

We feel, as Cree People, that by coming to an Agreement inPrinciple, that it is the best way to see that our rights and that ourland are protected asmuchas possible fromwhiteman’s intrusionand white man’s use.26

C’est à cette époque que fut créé le Grand conseil des Cris autour del’équipe de travail de l’AIQ jusqu’alors en charge de représenter lescommunautés autochtones affectées par le projet. Le Grand conseil reçutcomme mandat de veiller à la défense des intérêts des Cris dans lesnégociations qui s’amorçaient. Un accord de principe fut signé ennovembre 1974 puis un accord final un an plus tard.27

Bien qu’elle soit amèrement critiquée par les leaders cris d’aujourd’hui,28la signature de la Convention était à l’époque une importante et imposantevictoire. Les représentants cris n’ont pas réussi à empêcher la constructiondes barrages. Cependant, ces derniers forcèrent, en quelques moisseulement, les gouvernements à reconnaître leur présence et la légitimité deleurs revendications. Il s’agit d’un revirement important compte tenu que,sept ans auparavant, le gouvernement fédéral proposait l’abolition du statutd’Indien et l’assimilation à la fois économique et culturelle de cesderniers àla majorité canadienne.29 La Convention de la Baie James est en soi lerésultat de cette nouvelle reconnaissance.

La stratégie choisie dans le cadre de cette premièremobilisation, fondéesur une représentation identitaire qui associe l’unité du peuple cri àl’exercice de droits collectifs, a également permis de raffermir la cohésiondes communautés. Les frontières, jusqu’alors floues, de la nation crieprennent une tournure plus explicitement politique. Les Cris formentdorénavant un peuple uni revendiquant des droits collectifs et uneautonomie politique à la fois face à l’État canadien, son interlocuteur

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historique, et à un État provincial en expansion, véhicule d’un autremouvementd’affirmation identitaire, celuides francophonesduQuébec.

La rencontre des nationalismes sur la scène internationale : deGrande-Baleine au référendum de 1995Plusdedouze années se sont écoulées entre la signaturede laConventiondelaBaie James et la décision d’Hydro-Québec et du gouvernement demettreen chantier la deuxième phase du projet hydro-électrique de la Baie James,le complexe de Grande-Baleine. Pendant ces douze années, le paysagepolitique canadien et québécois s’est radicalement transformé. Depuis lerapatriement de la constitution en 1982, les revendications dereconnaissance constitutionnelle des minorités au sein de la fédérationdominent les débats.30 La redéfinition du Canada à partir d’une conceptionmultiple des « sociétés » ou des « nations », une idée soutenue par l’élitenationaliste québécoise tentée par la voie du renouvellement, serarapidement récupéréepar lesorganisationsautochtones.31Cesdernières, enparticulier l’Assemblée des Premières Nations, adoptent un discoursrésolument nationaliste revendiquant pour les nations autochtones lemêmestatut que les « deux peuples fondateurs ». L’échec de l’Accord du LacMeech, en partie due à l’opposition autochtone, contribue cependant àmettre en concurrence les deux mouvements nationalistes.32 Le début desannées 1990 sera donc marqué par un certain antagonisme des rapportsentre Autochtones et Québécois, principalement francophones.

Sur le plan international, les luttes autochtones occupent également uneplace grandissante. À l’aube du 500e anniversaire de l’arrivée deChristopheColombenAmérique, les organisationsdedéfensedesdroits dela personne s’interrogent sur place des peuples autochtones dans le concertdes nations. Que ce soit en Amérique Centrale ou au Brésil, les groupesautochtones utilisent également de plus en plus les outils juridiquesinternationaux pour faire valoir leurs droits territoriaux. Un projet deConvention internationale sur les droits des Autochtones est en discussionau sein du Conseil économique et social de l’ONU. Des représentants crisparticipent à ces discussions qui permettent à ces derniers de développer unimportant réseau d’alliances internationales.

La campagne internationale contre le projet Grande-BaleineC’est donc dans un contexte de polarisation des débats entre nationalismessur le plan local et d’émergence d’un débat international sur la place desAutochtones que les représentants du Grand conseil des Cris apprennentl’imminence de la mise en chantier du projet Grande-Baleine en mars1989.33 Le projet est beaucoup moins imposant que la première phase ducomplexe de laBaie James, dont la construction venait tout juste de prendrefin. Selon les chiffresd’Hydro-Québec,Grande-Baleine est unprojet de3.6milliards de dollars qui aurait ajouté 3160 mégawatts à la puissance du

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réseau hydro-électrique québécois. La quantité de terres inondées(1786 km2) et le nombre de barrages et digues projetés sont trois foismoinsimportants que dans le cadre du complexe La Grande.34 La lecture desenjeux chez les Cris n’autorisait cependant pas ce type de comparaison.

En réponse à l’annonce de lamise en chantier du projet, le Grand conseildes Cris adopte une motion s’opposant « à [cette] nouvelle invasion duterritoire cri. »35Les représentants des huit communautés donnent auGrandconseil lemandat d’empêcher la construction des barrages et,malgré le faitqu’une seule communauté soit affectée par le projet, c’est aunomdupeuplecri de la Baie James que se fera la lutte :36

Nous avons le devoir de nous opposer à ce projet, au nom de nosancêtres et au nom des générations futures à qui nous trans-mettrons cet héritage. Cette fois, nous n’échangerons pas nos lacs,nos rivières, nos forêts pour des pourcentages de revenusd’Hydro-Québec.37

La campagne contre Grande-Baleine comporte deux volets. Suivantl’expérience acquise par le passé, les représentants cris utilisent les outilsjuridiques à leur disposition, en particulier la Convention de la Baie James,pour forcer les gouvernements à reconnaître leur droit d’être consultés surle projet. Le Grand conseil des Cris souhaite négocier de gouvernement àgouvernement et de « nation à nation » avec les autorités fédérales etprovinciales. Les demandes en Cour supérieure, puis en Cour fédérale,forceront éventuellement l’interventiondugouvernement fédéral et lamiseen place d’un processus d’évaluation environnementale tripartite avec desreprésentants des gouvernements fédéral, provincial et autochtone.38

Le second volet consiste en une campagne de sensibilisation à grandeéchelle sur les conséquences du projet. Face à une opinion publiquequébécoise plutôt défavorable aux revendications autochtones, lesreprésentants cris choisirent la voie internationale. L’action du Grandconseil des Cris, dirigée en grande partie par des firmes de relationspubliques renommées, fut essentiellement orientée sur la scène américaine.La stratégie est simple : l’intérêt et le potentiel de rentabilité du projetGrande-Baleine reposent en grande partie sur les contrats de vented’électricité aux États de la Nouvelle-Angleterre.39 En attirant l’attentionmondiale, en particulier américaine, sur le projet hydro-électriquequébécois et ses effets désastreux sur l’environnement et lemodede vie descommunautés autochtones voisines, la campagne force les « acheteurs »potentiels du projet à prendre position sur ces questions.

Les Cris reçurent l’appui de groupes américains majeurs tels queGreenpeace, Audubon Society, le Sierra Club et le National ResourcesDefence Council (NDRC) qui firent de Grande-Baleine leur cibleprincipale lors de leurs campagnes annuelles de 1990 et 1991.40 Ce derniergroupe, lié à Robert Kennedy Jr., permit à la campagne d’atteindre unniveau de crédibilité inespéré. L’attention médiatique et les débats que

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souleva cette campagne auQuébec et ailleurs témoignent de son efficacité.L’entrée spectaculaire dans le port de NewYork en canoë le 19 avril 1990,jour de la terre, et les fameuses annonces du New York Times sur lesconséquencesdramatiquesde l’inondationdes terresne sontque les aspectsles plusmédiatisés d’une campagne quimena les Cris dans les couloirs desassemblées législatives de plusieurs États de la Nouvelle-Angleterre.41 Àcoup d’experts et de firmes de relations publiques, les Cris arrivèrent àchanger radicalement la représentation deGrande-Baleine dans le discourspublic américain et canadien. D’un projet « propre et rentable », lecomplexe hydro-électrique s’est transformé en une « catastropheécologique comparable à la destruction de l’Amazonie ».42

En ouvrant le débat politique sur l’opportunisme d’encourager un telprojet sur la scène internationale, lesCris s’attaquaient en fait à la crédibilitéde l’État québécois en tant quepromoteur duprojet.43 La campagne soulevales passions dans les médias québécois. L’image du gouvernement etd’Hydro-Québec, le « navire amiral » du développement économique duQuébec, était malmenée sur la scène internationale, et cette attaque futperçue comme une « provocation gratuite et inutile ».44 Le ton agressifenvers le Québec adopté par les représentants cris force les groupesenvironnementaux québécois à prendre leurs distances.45

La campagne eut cependant d’importantes conséquences sur la place desCris sur la scène internationale et ce, dans un débat qui deviendra plusimportant encore aux yeux des acteurs en présence.

De la protection de l’environnement à la souveraineté territorialeLe Grand conseil des Cris représentait les enjeux de Grande-Baleine entermes essentiellement environnementaux lors de la campagne américaine.Pour Matthew Coon Come, récemment élu à la tête de l’organisation, lesenjeux étaient pourtant très clairs :

Wemust gain recognition for our governmental authority over thewhole of our traditional land. We must find ways to take thisauthority and to force the governments into recognizing that wehave an internationally recognized right to exert this authority.[...] We are the Cree people. We are the first inhabitants of thisland, and we are the proper owner of this land.46

Dans l’imaginaire cri, l’opposition àGrande-Baleine est une question deprotection de leur mode de vie et de leur habitat mais aussi un conflit desouveraineté sur le territoire. Cette dernière représentation prendra de plusenplusd’importance àpartir de1991.La stratégie environnementaledonnaaux Cris un accès sans précédent à la scène internationale, conduisant lesCris en Europe, à l’ONU, au Tribunal de l’eau et au Parlement européen.Face à ces instances, le conflit territorial et la question des droitsautochtones prennent logiquement plus d’importance. D’autant plus quel’année du 500e anniversaire de l’arrivée de Christophe Colomb en

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Amérique donne aux représentants cris une raison inespérée pour dénoncerla « conquête du Nord » dont ils se disent victimes :

We, the Cree of James Bay, are fighting for the right to our ownwater, the right to our own trees, the universally recognized andinternationally protected right to enjoy our own resources.Wearefighting to be treated fairly, to live as long and as well as otherpeoples. We are fighting for the right to self-determination of allindigenous peoples.47

À cette époque est également apparue dans le discours du Grand conseilune nouvelle représentation identitaire. Les représentants cris commencentà utiliser leur propre langue afin de se nommer. Les discours de MatthewCoonCome et des autres leaders duGrand conseil débutent dorénavant parune formule qui insiste sur la continuité historique du peuple cri :

Nous sommes Eeyou, le peuple cri, et nous sommes les gardiensd’Eeyou Astchee [ou Istchee], la terre crie. [...] Nous vivons surnos terres depuis au moins 500 ans. Nous avons toujours vécu enpaix avec ceux qui nous entourent et nous n’avons jamais exigéquoi que ce soit d’eux.48

Se réappropriant ainsi leur identité, les représentants cris réaffirment lalégitimité de leurs revendications et ouvrent la voie à une reconnaissanceinternationale du droit à l’autodétermination du « peuple Eeyou, opprimépar le colonialisme environnemental des blancs ».49

Le succès de la campagne contre Grande-Baleine sur la scèneinternationale donne aux Cris une nouvelle perspective sur leur situationpolitique. L’intégration des communautés autour d’une conceptioncommunede la nation, amorcée lors de la premièremobilisation des années1970, est dorénavant soutenue par un discours sur l’autodétermination et lasouveraineté territoriale. Les succès duGrand conseil se traduisent par unenouvelle volonté d’affirmation et d’autonomie au niveau local.

Ce changement dans la représentation identitaire qui accompagne letransfert du débat sur la scène internationale de l’environnement vers lasouveraineté territoriale du peuple cri comporte un risque importantcompte tenu de la réception négative qu’un tel discours pouvait avoirauprès des nationalistes québécois. Un nouvel antagonisme dans ce débatne risquait-il pas de réduire d’autant la place des Cris dans les débats surGrande-Baleine au Québec?

Ce choix s’explique cependant dans un contexte qui dépasse le cadre del’opposition au projet Grande-Baleine. Au lendemain de l’échec del’Accord du lac Meech, le Canada entre dans une période de profondeincertitude qui force les Autochtones à réfléchir à leur position dansl’éventualité d’un vote en faveur de l’indépendance de la province. Lesenjeux sont en effet importants pour les Cris, tout comme pour l’ensembledes Autochtones vivant au Québec. La constitution canadienne garantitl’obligation fiduciaire du gouvernement fédéral envers les peuples

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autochtones issue de la Proclamation royale de 1763. C’est donc avec legouvernement fédéral que les Autochtones ont l’habitude de traiter. Ilscraignent donc de perdre cet important régimede protection que leur assurele cadre fédéral advenant la création d’un nouvel État. Par ailleurs, lesconflits récents entre Autochtones et le gouvernement du Québec,notammentGrande-Baleine et la crise d’Oka, contribuent à développer uneméfiance plutôt qu’une ouverture envers les autorités québécoises. Lechangement de perspective des représentants cris sur la scèneinternationale peut en ce sens être interprété comme une réaction à la forcedu mouvement nationaliste québécois dont les prétentions souverainistesmenacent l’autorité territoriale des Cris. Dans ce contexte, la campagnecontre Grande-Baleine prend une signification radicalement différente.

Parallèlement à la campagne contre Grande-Baleine, le Grand conseilprend donc part activement au débat sur l’avenir politique du Québec. Dèsavril 1991, le Grand conseil consulte la population et adopte en assembléeune résolution qui vise à établir une législature crie afin de jeter les basesd’un véritable gouvernement autonome dans l’éventualité d’une sécessionde la province de Québec.50 Devant la Commission sur les questionsafférentes à la souveraineté de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec (laCommission Bélanger-Campeau), Matthew Coon Come est sanséquivoque :

Nous souhaitons être clairs, nous sommes une nation, un peuplequi détient un droit inhérent à l’autodétermination, ce quicomprend le droit à l’autonomie gouvernementale. Le territoireque vous appelez parfois la Baie James se nomme Eeyou Astchee[Istchee] dans notre langue. C’est le territoire cri. Nous, le peuplecri, avons toujours occupénos terres. [...]Dans leNordduQuébec,l’histoire, c’est l’histoire du peuple cri.Nous ne nous opposons pas aux revendications et aux aspirationsdu Québec. Nous ne sommes pas opposés à l’indépendance duQuébec.Toutefois, aucunchangementnepourra être fait sans tenircomptedenosdroits et aspirations légitimes.Aucunchangement ànotre territoire ne pourra être fait sans notre consentement.51

Rarement les Autochtones au Canada ne posèrent les enjeux demanièreaussi directe. Le conflit entre les deux nationalismes pour le contrôle duterritoire, né dans un contexte associé aux barrages hydro-électriques et aucontrôle des ressources naturelles, s’articule dorénavant en termes deconflit sur la légitimité démocratique du droit à l’autodétermination despeuples. Ce discours prend toute sa signification lorsque Matthew CoonComeest invité àdiscuterdesdroitsdesAutochtonesdans le contexted’uneéventuelle sécession du Québec à Washington en septembre 1994 puis àHarvard le mois suivant :

Long before there was a Canada or a United States, our territorywas given a name—Eeyou Astchee [Istchee]—the people’s land.We have always been the majority inhabitants of our territory, we

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haveourown language, culture, history.Weconceiveourselves asone people, tied together by the land we share and care for. [...]Now, the government of Québec proclaims theQuebecois—that isanyone who may presently reside in the province—a people. TheParti québécois claims for that people the right ofself-determination, while in the same breath denying the Cree thissame right.52

Profitant de l’accès aux tribunes internationales gagnédans le cadre de lamobilisation contre Grande-Baleine, le Grand conseil des Cris attaque lalégitimité du projet souverainiste et souligne ainsi la contradictioninhérente du discours nationaliste québécois sur la définition des frontièresde la communauté politique. L’image « civique et territoriale » dunationalisme québécois est alors malmenée sur la scène internationale, augrand dam du Parti québécois.53

Quelques heures après le discours de Washington, le nouveau Premierministre du Québec, Jacques Parizeau, qui a été élu avec le mandatd’organiser un référendum sur la souveraineté, annonce lamise sur la glacedu projet Grande-Baleine.54 Les représentants cris ont donc doublementgagné leur pari. Non seulement Grande-Baleine disparaît de l’horizonpolitique immédiat mais en plus la campagne internationale semble avoirréussi à mettre les souverainistes québécois sur la défensive. Lareconnaissance desCris sur la scène internationale devient enquelque sorteune garantie quant à la place qu’ils occupent dans le débat sur lasouveraineté.

Après l’annonce de lamise sur la glace deGrande-Baleine, les analystess’attendaient à une démobilisation rapide des Cris.55 Pourtant, la suite desévénements leur donne tort. Plutôt que de se démobiliser, les Crisintensifièrent leur campagne internationale. Ils bénéficiaient toujours d’unlarge capital de sympathie et de nombreuses tribunes aux États-Unis et enEurope malgré l’évacuation de la dimension environnementale de leurcampagne. Entre novembre 1994 et octobre 1995, les représentants duGrand conseil des Cris prononcèrent près de 30 discours un peu partoutdans le monde. DeMelbourne à Harvard, du Conseil économique et socialde l’ONU à la Chambre de Commerce de Toronto, le message, fort simple,demeure le même : les Cris ont le droit de décider de leur avenir et si leQuébec se sépare sans leur consentement, il agira en violation du droitinternational. Une inclusion forcée du territoire cri et du peuple cri dans unQuébec souverain serait contraire aux principesmêmes sur lesquels se basela légitimité de la démarche nationaliste québécoise.56

ConclusionLorsque à quelques jours du référendum de 1995 Matthew Coon Comedemande au Premier ministre du Québec de respecter la volonté du peuplecri de demeurer auCanada advenant un vote en faveur de la souveraineté, il

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ne fait que traduire le résultat d’un longprocessusqui remonte auxpremierspas de la mobilisation contre les barrages hydro-électriques.

L’articulation d’une identité collective fondée sur l’appartenance aupeuple cri a tout d’abord permis aux Cris de revendiquer des droitscollectifs sur le territoire. Une pratique aujourd’hui commune à la plupartdes nations autochtones du Canada et d’ailleurs dans le monde. Cettestratégie a favorisé l’émergence politique des Cris, en particulier suite à lacréation du Grand conseil des Cris. Elle a également assuré lareconnaissance des Cris dans l’espace public québécois et canadien. Cettereprésentation identitaire fondée sur la notion d’appartenance territorialejoua par la suite un rôle déterminant afin d’assurer la légitimité desrevendications du Grand conseil.

Dans un deuxième temps, nous avons vu qu’en choisissant de porter ledébat sur Grande-Baleine à la scène internationale, les représentants crisformèrent de nouvelles alliances et gagnèrent l’accès à des tribunesnettement favorables à leur cause. Ils parvinrent à cet effet à construire unestratégie de représentation associant la protection environnementale audroit à l’autodétermination de la nation eeyou. La mobilisation contre lesbarrages devint une campagne d’affirmation nationale et d’opposition auprojet souverainiste. Les ouvertures dans le cadre de la campagne contreGrande-Baleine sur la scène internationale sont autant d’occasions que leGrand conseil sut saisir et transformer afin de définir l’identité nationale dupeuple d’Eeyou Istchee et ainsi assurer sa place dans le débat sur l’avenir duQuébec.

La transformationouplutôt la formationd’une identité collective fondéesuruneappartenanceculturelle et territorialen’a riend’exceptionnellepourun mouvement social. L’exemple des Cris démontre cependant que ceprocessus évolue constamment selon le contexte, les ouvertures politiqueset les choix de représentation des leaders. Autrement dit, la construction del’acteur et l’articulation de sa stratégie de représentation sont des processusà la fois simultanés et interdépendants qu’il faut analyser en tenant comptede la structure d’opportunité et de ses variations.

Notre lecture de l’action des Cris démontre également à quel point leprocessus d’identification collective peut avoir un impact sur la perceptiondes enjeux et des intérêts ainsi que sur la position des acteurs dans lediscourspublic.Ladéfinitionde la collectivité politique, de ses frontières etde ses racines historiques permet d’articuler un discours fondé sur unelecture stratégique des enjeux. Dans le cas des Cris, l’articulation d’uneidentité fondée sur l’appartenance au peuple cri déboucha sur unerevendication d’autonomie politique et une nouvelle notiond’appartenance territoriale qui entre en conflit direct avec les aspirations dumouvement nationaliste québécois. Le discours sur le droit des peuples àl’autodétermination assura par la suite aux Cris l’accès aux tribunesinternationales où les enjeux se définissent en terme de souveraineté

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nationale et de protection des minorités, une représentation dont ils surentprofiter par la suite.

La lecture du conflit est désormais celle d’une rencontre entre deuxnationalismes qui revendiquent une autorité sur un même territoire. Suiteau résultat serré du vote référendaire au Québec, la campagne du Grandconseil, loin de perdre en intensité, prit une toute nouvelle signification. Lediscours sur la souveraineté territoriale fut en effet récupéré par denombreux opposants à la séparation duQuébec qui brandirent la possibilitéd’une partition du Québec advenant un vote majoritaire en faveur de lasouveraineté lors d’un prochain référendum. L’appropriation par le Grandconseil du discours, autrefois réservé aux nationalistes québécois, sur lasouveraineté territoriale du peuple cri se révèle une fois de plus une armeredoutable. Les Cris, avec leur identité nationale et leurs revendicationsterritoriales bien implantées dans le discours public, continuent donc dejouer un rôle important dans les débats sur l’avenir du Québec.

Notes* J’aimerais remercier Jane Jenson pour ses nombreux commentaires et son

encadrement lors des recherches qui menèrent à cet article, ainsi que lesnombreux commentateurs qui ont eu l’occasion de lire des versions préliminairesdans le cadre de mes études au département de Science politique de l’Universitéde Montréal. J’aimerais également remercier le Fonds FCAR pour son soutienfinancier.

1. Le terme Eeyou Istchee signifie en cri « la terre des gens » (peoples’ land ou apeople’s land, selon le cas). L’orthographe du nom varie cependant selon lescommunautés. Eeyou Astchee ou Estchee sont également utilisés dans lesdocuments du Grand conseil des Cris. Eeyou ou Eeyouch désigne les gens ou « lepeuple » et remplace de plus en plus le terme « Cris » pour désigner la collectivité.Ce dernier terme désigne en effet un groupe linguistique autochtone plus large,qui s’étend de l’Alberta au Labrador. Voir à ce sujet le site internet du Grandconseil, http://www.gcc.ca.

2. La Presse, 26 octobre 1995, A1; Le Devoir, 26 octobre 1995, A1.3. Pour une revue des arguments juridiques du Grand conseil des Cris, voir

Sovereign Injustice: Forcible Inclusion of the James Bay Cree and Cree Territoryinto a Sovereign Quebec (Grand conseil des Cris du Québec, 1995).

4. L’utilisation du concept de « nation » est répandue chez les Autochtones tant auCanada qu’ailleurs dans le monde depuis le début des années 1970. Pour uneanalyse de l’évolution des nationalismes autochtone et québécois dans le discourspublic canadien, voir Jenson (1995).

5. Nous pourrions ajouter que c’est également le cas de la communauté francophonedu Québec. Voir par exemple l’ouvrage de Fernand Dumont (1993), Génèse de lasociété québécoise.

6. Voir par exemple à ce sujet les textes de Johnson, 1991; Melucci, 1989 et 1995;Obershall et Kim, 1996.

7. C’est le cas des auteurs de la tradition américaine qui s’intéressent à lamobilisation des ressources. Voir par exemple Tarrow (1998).

8. Cette thèse est développée en détail dans son ouvrage de 1989, Nomads of thePresents.

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9. Imagined Communities, B. Anderson (1991, p. 7).10. À ce sujet, voir en particulier l’analyse de Jane Jenson (1995).11. Les théoriciens des mouvements sociaux utilisent à cet effet la notion de framing,

un concept popularisé par Snow, Bendford et al. (1986). Voir aussi Tarrow (1998,p. 89) pour une revue détaillée du concept.

12. Le concept de « structure des opportunités » politiques est généralement utiliséafin de rendre compte de ce contexte à la fois institutionnel et politique qui faciliteou limite l’action collective (Tarrow, 1998, p. 6; McAdam, McCarthy et Zald,1996, p. 1-20; Kitschelt, 1986, p. 59). Le mouvement ou l’acteur social s’inscritdans une structure d’opportunité particulière qui englobe à la fois l’accès auxmodes de représentation institutionnels, la division relative des élites face auxrevendications, les possibilités d’alliances stratégiques avec d’autres acteurs et lapropension de l’État à tolérer la contestation ou à la réprimer.

13. Il ne faut cependant pas conclure que les Cris n’ont pas de structure politiqueavant 1971. Au sein des communautés cohabitent depuis plusieurs années déjà lesystème traditionnel centré sur les familles et le modèle des conseils de bandesimposé par le gouvernement fédéral. Pour une analyse de l’organisation politiqueet administrative des communautés cries avant 1971, voir Salisbury (1983) et Feit(1981).

14. Pour une analyse des relations entre Autochtones et les différents gouvernementsau début des années 1970, voir Vincent (1992); Jhappan (1993); Weaver (1981).

15. Ministère des Affaires indiennes et du Nord canadien, La politique indienne dugouvernement du Canada, 1969, Ottawa, Imprimerie de la Reine.

16. De telles organisations sont créées dans les années 1960 avec le soutien dugouvernement fédéral qui souhaite ainsi développer une relation privilégiée avecun nombre limité de représentants autochtones.

17. Extrait de Richardson (1975, p. 84).18. La présence des « Blancs » au sein des communautés était déjà relativement

importante bien avant 1971. Les missionnaires ou encore les représentants de laCompagnie de la Baie d’Hudson, puis plus tard les fonctionnaires fédérauxchargés de l’administration des fonds gouvernementaux assuraient une présenceau sein des communautés. Cependant, l’arrivée d’un gigantesque chantier deconstruction à proximité de certaines communautés représente un changementconsidérable qui fut perçu comme une menace au mode de vie traditionnel desCris.

19. Pour une revue de la signification économique et symbolique du projet pour lePremier ministre, voir L’énergie du Nord, la force du Québec (Bourassa, 1985).

20. Trois représentants cris siègent à l’AIQ, qui créa à l’époque un comité afin decoordonner l’opposition au projet hydro-électrique.

21. Les Nisga’a de la Colombie-Britannique articulèrent très tôt leurs revendicationsen ces termes.

22. Une demande d’injonction interlocutoire fut déposée à cet effet par l’AIQ enCour supérieure du Québec en avril 1973.

23. Voir à ce sujet les extraits des témoignages en Cour dans Richardson (1975, p.247-249).

24. Gros-Louis et al. c. Société de développement de la Baie James et al. [1973] R.P.38, 76.

25. Société de développement de la Baie James c. Kanetewatt [1975] C.A. 166.26. Réaction de Billy Diamond, négociateur principal des Cris. Extrait de Richardson

(1975, p. 255).

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27. Convention de la Baie James et du Nord québécois (Gouvernement du Québec,1991). Pour une revue détaillée de l’accord de principe et de l’accord final, voirBowers et Vincent (1988, p. 222-223) et La Rusic (1979, p. 26-29).

28. Voir à ce sujet les actes du colloque faisant le bilan des 10 ans de la Conventiondans Bowers et Vincent (1988), en particulier les commentaires de Ted Moses, p.189.

29. Le livre blanc du gouvernement fédéral déposé en 1969 (La politique indienne dugouvernement du Canada, ministère des Affaires indiennes et du Nord canadien,Ottawa, 1969) fut particulièrement mal reçu par les organisations autochtones quiy voyaient une négation de leur existence. Pour une analyse de la politiqueautochtone canadienne de l’époque, Weaver (1981).

30. Voir à ce sujet la thèse défendue par Alan C. Cairns (1995) sur l’effet structurantde la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés sur les revendications de lareconnaissance identitaire.

31. Sur le rapport entre le discours des deux mouvements, voir Jenson (1995, p.96-106 ); Salée (1995).

32. Perçu au Québec comme un rejet de la spécificité québécoise, l’échec de l’accordsera célébré par les Autochtones comme une conséquence de l’attitude desgouvernements qui les avaient exclus des négociations. Voir à ce sujet Jhappan(1993, p. 256).

33. « La Baie James II : c’est parti , annonce Bourassa », La Presse, 9 mars 1989, A1.34. Aménagements hydroélectriques et communautés autochtones du Québec

nordique, Direction des services de l’environnement, Hydro-Québec, Montréal,1991.

35. Cahier de résolutions du Grand conseil des Cris (du Québec), le 16 mars 1989,Archives du Grand conseil des Cris, Ottawa.

36. Selon certains analystes, il s’agit aussi d’un refus stratégique face à une menaceencore plus importante pour les communautés du Sud de la Baie James où viventla majorité des Cris. Le projet Grande-Baleine est perçu comme un test en vue dela lutte contre l’éventuelle mise en chantier du complexeNottaway-Broadbak-Rupert (NBR) dont les dimensions et les impacts seraientbeaucoup plus importants pour la population locale. Voir à ce sujet Holland(1997) et Wollock (1993).

37. Extrait de la déclaration d’opposition au projet Grande-Baleine, tiré de « Les Crisdisent non à Grande-Baleine », La Presse, 17 mars 1989, B1.

38. Une entente intervient en octobre 1991 suite à un premier jugement de la Courfédérale qui ordonne au gouvernement fédéral d’effectuer une étude d’impact envertu de la Convention. « Les Cris s’entendent avec les gouvernements », LaPresse, 21 octobre 1991, A12.

39. Au total, des contrats d’une valeur de près de 25 milliards de dollars furent signésavec les États du Vermont, du Massachusetts, du Maine et de New York. Les Crisvisaient en particulier un contrat d’une valeur de 12 milliards en vue de fournir1000 megawatts à la New York Power Authority qui assurait à lui seul larentabilité du projet Grande-Baleine. Voir à ce sujet Williams (1993, p. 32).

40. Pour une description des alliances des Cris, voir Wollock (1993, p. 31).41. En janvier 1990, le Sénateur Bill Hoyt pilote un projet de loi à l’Assemblée de

l’État de New York afin de forcer la tenue d’une évaluation environnementale duprojet. Voir Wollock (1993, p. 33).

42. La campagne des Cris est ainsi présentée dans l’annonce publiée dans le NewYork Times et reprise dans « Power Struggle », New York Times Magazine, 12janvier 1992.

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43. Voir à ce sujet le reportage de Christian Rioux, « Comment les Cris ont plantéHydro », l’Actualité, 15 décembre 1991.

44. La ministre des Ressources naturelles du Québec répliquait ainsi aux déclarationsde Matthew Coon Come devant un comité sénatorial de l’État de New York.« Lise Bacon réplique à Matthew Coon Come : les Cris devraient cesser d’allerdire n’importe quoi chez nos voisins », Le Soleil, 1er avril 1992. Voir aussi« Grande-Baleine ou le barrage de mauvaise foi », La Presse, 20 juillet 1992.

45. L’association de Greenpeace à la campagne publicitaire des Cris entraîna unecrise importante au sein de la division québécoise de l’organisme qui choisit deprendre ses distances face à la section canadienne. Greenpeace-Québec perditplus de la moitié de ses membres suite à cette campagne. Voir aussi « Au Couranttourne le dos aux Cris. Le groupe énergétique accuse Matthew Coon Come dedénigrer le Québec aux États-Unis », Le Devoir, 8 octobre 1994.

46. A Word from the Grand Chief: Remarks to the General Assembly of the GrandCouncil of the Cree (of Québec), 29 juillet 1991. Archives du Grand conseil desCris, Ottawa.

47. Matthew Coon Come, « Self-Determination and Jurisdictional Relations withNation States », présentation à la conférence Strengthening the Spirit: Beyond500 years, novembre 1992. Archives du Grand conseil des Cris, Ottawa.

48. Présentation à la Conférence sur la culture et l’État, Montréal 1993, Archives duGrand conseil des Cris, Ottawa.

49. Discours de Ted Moses, ambassadeur du Grand conseil, à la Conférence deVienne sur les droits de la personne en 1993, Remarks to the World Conferenceon Human Rights, Archives du Grand conseil des Cris, Ottawa.

50. Voir les résolutions adoptées lors de l’Assemblée générale du Grand conseil desCris, Nemiscau, 16 avril 1991. Archives du Grand conseil des Cris, Ottawa.

51. Présentation du Grand conseil des Cris du Québec soumis à la Commission surles questions afférentes à la souveraineté du Québec, Assemblée nationale,Québec, février 1992.

52. M. Coon Come, The Status and Rights of the James Bay Cree in the Context ofQuébec Secession from Canada, Center for International Studies, Washington,septembre 1994. Archives du Grand conseil des Cris, Ottawa.

53. On comprendra que l’image démocratique et libérale du mouvement estparticulièrement importante. La viabilité d’un nouvel État dépend en grandepartie de la reconnaissance internationale dont il jouit.

54. « Parizeau gèle le projet Grande-Baleine », Le Devoir, 19 novembre 1994.55. « Le grand rêve est terminé », Le Devoir, 22 novembre 1994, A6.56. Les arguments juridiques et politiques des Cris sont exposés dans Sovereign

Injustice: Forcible Inclusion of the James Bay Cree and Cree Territory into aSovereign Quebec (Grand conseil des Cris, 1995).

BibliographieAnderson, Benedict (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and

Spread of Nationalism, Londres : Verso.Bourassa, Robert (1985). L’énergie du Nord, la force du Québec, Montréal :

Québec/Amérique.Bowers, Gary et S. Vincent (1988). Baie James et Nord québécois, 10 ans après, actes

du colloque, Montréal : Recherches amérindiennes au Québec.Cairns, Alan C. (1995). Reconfigurations: Canadian Citizenship and Constitutional

Change, Toronto : McClelland and Stewart.Dumont, Fernand (1993). Génèse de la société québécoise,Montréal : Boréal.

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Feit, Harvey (1981). « Negotiating Recognition of Aboriginal Rights: History,Strategies and Reactions to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement »,Canadian Review of Anthropology, vol. 1, no 2, p. 159-172.

Gamson, William et Magrit Meyer (1996). « Framing Political Opportunity » dansMcAdam et al. (éds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: PoliticalOpportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Cultural Framings, Cambridge :Cambridge University Press, p. 275-290.

Gourdeau, Éric (1994). « LeQuébec et la question autochtone » dans Gagnon, Alain G.(éd.), Québec : État et société, Montréal : Québec/Amérique.

Gouvernement du Québec (1991).Convention de la Baie James et du Nord québécois,Québec : Éditeur officiel du Québec.

Grand conseil des Cris (1995). Sovereign Injustice: Forcible Inclusion of the JamesBay Cree and Cree Territory into a Sovereign Quebec, publication du Grandconseil des Cris : Montréal.

Holland, Kenneth (1997). « Changes in Quebec Politics: The Political and LegalStrategy Employed by the Cree People to Block the Great Whale Project », nonpublié, présenté à la Conférence économie et société, Université de Montréal,juillet 1997.

Hydro-Québec (1991). Aménagements hydroélectriques et communautés autochtonesdu Québec nordique, Direction des services de l’environnement, Hydro-Québec :Montréal.

Jenson, Jane (1995). « What’s in a Name? Nationalist Movements and PublicDiscourse », dans Klandermans Bert et H. Johnson, Social Movements andCulture, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, p. 96-106.

Jhappan, Radha (1993). « Inherency, Three Nations and the Collective Rights: TheEvolution of Aboriginal Constitutional Discourse from 1982 to the CharlottetownAccord », International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationaled’études canadiennes, 7/8, p. 225-260.

Johnson,Hank (1991).Tales ofNationalism,Catalonia 1939-1979, RutgersUniversityPress.

Kitschelt H. (1986). « Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest:Anti-nuclear Movements in Four Democraties », British Journal of PoliticalScience, vol. 16, p. 57-85.

La Rusic, I. (1979). Negotiating a Way of Life, Ottawa : Ministère des Affairesindiennes et du Nord.

Mainville, Bernard (1993). « Visions divergentes sur la Convention de la Baie James »,Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, vol. XVIII, no 1, p. 69-79.

McAdam, Doug, J. McCarthy et M. Zald (1996). « Introduction: Opportunities,Mobilizing Structures and Framing Processes », dans Comparative Prespectiveson Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures andCultural Framings, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, p. 1-20.

Melucci, Alberto (1989). Nomads of the Present, Philadelphie : Temple UniversityPress.

Obershall, Anthony et H. Kim (1996). « Identity and Action », Mobilization: AnInternational Journal, vol. 1(1), p. 63-85.

Richardson,Boyce (1975). StrangersDevour the Land, Toronto :MacMillanCanada.Snow, David, Robert Benford et al. (1986). « Frame Alignment Processes, Micro-

mobilisation, andMovement Participation », American Sociological Review, vol.51, p. 464-481.

Salée, Daniel (1995). « Identities in Conflict: The Aboriginal Question and the PoliticsofRecognition inQuébec »,Ethnic andRacial Studies, vol. 18, no 2, p. 277-314.

Salisbury, Richard (1983). « Formulating the Common Interest: The Role of Structuresin Cree Development », Studies in Third World Societies, no 24, p. 135-150.

Tarrow, Sidney (1998).Power inMovement: SocialMovements, Collective Action andPolitics, 2e édition, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Vincent, Sylvie (1992). « La révélation d’une force politique » dans Daigle (éd.) LeQuébec en jeu, Montréal : PUM, p. 749-790.

Weaver, Sally (1981). Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda1968-1970, Toronto : University of Toronto Press.

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Williams, Suzan (1993). Hydro-Quebec and the Great Whale Project: HydroelectricDevelopment in Northern Quebec, Washington : Investor ResponsibilityResearch Center.

Wollock, James (1993). « James Bay: A Review of the Strategies », Akwekon Journal,automne 1993, p. 30-41.

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Annis May Timpson

Royal Commissions as Sites of Resistance:Women’s Challenges on Child Care in the Royal

Commission on the Status of Women*

AbstractThis article argues that royal commissions can become sites of civicresistance. Analysing women’s written briefs to the 1967 Royal Commissionon the Status of Women (RCSW), it shows howwomen used the Commission toarticulate the link between the public and domestic dimensions of theirworking lives. The article argues that by linking issues of paid employmentwith those of child care, women challenged the male-defined concept ofworker-citizenship that underscored the inquiry and resisted the narrownessof the Commission’s jurisdictionally-driven mandate. It also shows howwomen used the RCSW to debate how mothers might reconcile paid andcaring work. As a result, the Commission became a site of contest in whichwomen promoted and questioned the tenets of liberal feminism.

RésuméLe présent article soutient que les commissions royales d’enquête peuventdevenir des lieux de résistance civile. L’analyse des communications écritesprésentées en 1967 par des femmes à la Commission royale d’enquête sur lasituation de la femme au Canada (CRESFC) témoigne de la façon dont cesfemmes se sont servi de la Commission pour articuler les liens qui existententre les dimensions publique et familiale de leur vie de travailleuses.L’article soutient qu’en établissant des liens entre les questions de l’emploirémunéré et des soins aux enfants, les femmes ont remis en cause le conceptmasculin de travailleur-citoyenneté qui sous-tendait les travaux de laCommission et se sont opposées à l’étroitesse du mandat de la Commissiondéterminé en fonction de son champ de compétence. Il démontre aussicomment les femmes se sont servi de la Commission pour débattre la façondont les mères pourraient réconcilier le travail rémunéré et les soins auxenfants. Par conséquent, la Commission est devenu un lieu compétition où lesfemmes ont promu et remis en question les articles de foi du féminisme libéral.

Royal commissions have often been characterised as sites of resistance.Although their advocates argue that these inquiries enable governments torespond to political crises, build public consensus and pave the way forfundamental shifts in public policy, their critics claim that the routineestablishment of royal commissions in Canada encourages governments todelay policy development and divert controversial issues away from theirlegislative agendas.1 The problemwith this debate is that it has been framed


by questions about why governments establish royal commissions andfailed to includeanassessment of howcitizens engage in these inquiries.Asa result, the degree to which royal commissions can serve as sites of civicresistance has not been fully explored.

This article argues that we need to shift attention away from the questionofwhether governments use royal commissions to resist legislative changeand think more fully about how citizens use these bodies to challengedominant ideologies and contest each other’s ideas about the appropriatecourse of policy development. The 1967 Royal Commission on the Statusof Women (RCSW) lends itself particularly well to this exploration.Although Prime Minister Pearson was reluctant to establish theCommission, scholars have argued that he hoped it might at least containescalating feminist demandswithin a liberal reform framework.2However,while some radical and socialist feminists have criticised the liberalfeminist assumptions that underscore the Report of the RCSW, it is wellrecognised that the Commissioners’ decision to engage asmanywomen aspossible in their inquiries kindled the secondwave of feminism inCanada.3Nonetheless, while the mobilisation of women during and immediatelyafter the Commission has been widely noted, very little attention has beenpaid to the nature of the evidence they presented.4 Yet women used theRCSW to challenge prevailing ideas about the promotion of equalopportunities formenandwomen inCanadaand, in somecases, to resist thedominant thrust of liberal feminism.

These challenges were particularly evident in the way womenapproached the questions about women’s employment opportunities thatdominated the RCSW’s terms of reference. Although this mandateinstructed the Commissioners to “inquire into and report upon the status ofwomen in Canada, and to recommend what steps may be taken by theFederal Government to ensure for women equal opportunities with men inall aspects ofCanadian society,” four of the nine areas thatwere singled outfor particular attention focused onwomen’s participation in the paid labourforce.5 The Commissioners were required to report on “the present andpotential role ofwomen in theCanadianLabour force, including the specialproblems of married women in employment and measures that might betaken under federal jurisdiction to help in meeting them.”6 They were alsorequired toconsidermeasures the federal governmentmight take“topermitthe better use of the skills and education of women, including the specialre-training requirements of married women who wish to re-enterprofessionalor skilledemployment.”7 Inaddition, theCommissionerswereasked to analyse how “federal labour laws and regulations” applied towomen, and recommend changes in the “laws, practices and policiesconcerning the employment and promotion ofwomen in the Federal PublicService, Federal Crown Corporations and Federal Agencies.”8

The emphasis on promoting women’s employment opportunities in theRCSW’s mandate reflects the federal government’s concern to ensure that

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the increasing numbers of women who were entering the labour forcereceived the necessary training to take up skilled employment.9 While thelabour force participation rate of women increased in the early 1960s —from 30.1 percent in 1960 to 35.4 percent in 1966— labour force surveysindicate that women were being subject to vertical and horizontalsegregation as they clustered in low status clerical, sales and secretarialpositions and, as a result, earned significantly less than men.10 In an erawhen the concept ofworker-citizenship had taken root inwelfare states likeCanada, with the rights and duties of citizens increasingly linked to theircapacity to underwrite the provisions of this new state form throughparticipation in the labour force, it was not in the federal government’sinterest to have one of the most rapidly expanding groups of workersconcentrated in badly paid jobs.11 As Naomi Black has argued, “from theperspective of the government, women’s lesser rewards and lesseropportunities to participate in the expanding economy translated into alesser contribution to national growth.”12 Moreover, the focus onpromoting women’s employment opportunities reflected the fact that theCanadiangovernmentwasunderbothnational and internationalpressure tooutlaw employment discrimination in the federal sphere.13

This economic and political climate also explains why the RCSW’smandate called on the Commissioners to investigate the particularproblems facedbymarriedwomen returning to paid employment.After all,marriedwomenwere the growth point in the female labour force.While thelabour force participation rate of single women hovered around 55 percentfor most of the 1960s, the proportion of married women entering paidemployment rose dramatically from 20.8 percent in 1961 to 33 percent in1971.14 However, even though the RCSW’s mandate acknowledged theparticular problems facing married women returning to work, theCommissioners were not asked to consider how women’s employmentopportunities might be restricted by their primary responsibilities for thecare of young children. At some level this was surprising, particularly asincreasing numbers ofwomenwith young childrenwere going out towork.When the Royal Commission was established in 1967, just under a fifth(19%) of working mothers had children under six. This proportion hadincreased to 27 percent by 1971 and continued to rise after that.15 However,although femocrats within the Women’s Bureau at the Department ofLabour had begun to recognise how child care responsibilitiesmight affectthe careers of working mothers, discussion of federal involvement in thefield of child care was limited to provisions made for welfare-related childcare through the 1966 Canada Assistance Plan.16

Jurisdictional constraints clearly affected the design of the RCSW’sterms of reference. The RCSW was established shortly after thefederal-provincial conferences in the fall of 1966, at which the federalgovernment “marked the end of co-operative federalism” by informing theprovinces of its intention to terminate the long era of shared-cost

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Royal Commissions as Sites of Resistance: Women’s Challenges on ChildCare in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women

programs.17 It was perhaps inevitable, therefore, that social policyquestions like child care, which would engage federal and provincialgovernments in cost-sharing arrangements, were not specified in the termsof reference.18 Moreover, although the RCSW was established at a timewhen “nearly every aspect of Canadian life was in ferment,” its mandateavoided questions about child care which could lead the Commissionersinto heated debates about the extent to which women’s full assumption ofworker-citizenship would negate their more established roles asmother-citizens.19 As Monique Bégin reflected many years later, “thepublic discourse in the years immediately preceding the royal commissionwasdone inmoral termsand itwas aboutwhether itwasgoodor bador rightorwrong to havemothersworking in paid employment. Itwas only done inmoral terms, focusing on the alleged consequences for their children, and itwas highly controversial.”20

The women who participated in the public inquiries of the RCSWwere,however, quite happy to engage in this area of controversy. Even thoughwomen used the RCSW as a forum in which to re-assert longer-standingdemands for equal employment opportunities with men, the vast majorityof those who made formal written submissions to the Commission wentbeyond the issues specified in its terms of reference by raising concernsabout the problems women faced in reconciling paid work with child care.Over three-quarters (78%) of the 350 formalwritten briefs submitted to theCommission by individual and organised women raised concerns aboutwomen’s employment or child care.21 Closer reading of these 273documents reveals that while just over a fifth (21.6%) kept within theconfines of the Commission’s mandate and focused solely on questions ofwomen’s employment, nearly three-quarters (74%) raised concerns aboutwomen’s employment and the care of young children (Table 1).

Table 1: Briefs Submitted to the RCSW from Individualand Organised Women who Raised Issues aboutWomen’s Employment and Child Care

Position advocated in briefs n %

1. Briefs focusing solely on women’s employment withoutraising issues of child care.

59 21.6

2. Briefs raising issues about women’s employment andprovision for child care.

202 74.0

3. Briefs expressing clear opposition to mothers of youngchildren working outside the home.

12 4.4

273

Women did not, however, advance a uniform set of demands about thebest way for “young mothers” (as they were then called) to reconcile the

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demands of paid and caring work. Just over half (52.9%) of the 202submissions that raised issues about working women and child care calledfor policies to facilitate non-maternal care. By contrast, just under half(47%) of these submissions revealed that their authors were ambivalentabout young mothers entering the paid labour force full-time (Table 2).While the authors of briefs in the latter group recognised the link betweenwomen’s employment opportunities and the care of young children, theydid not systematically call for non-maternal child care. Included in theirbriefs were suggestions that the government should not only considermeasures to make it easier for the mothers of young children to workpart-time, but take cultural and fiscal initiatives to encourage mothers ofyoung children to spend more time at home.

Table 2: Positions Taken in Briefs Submitted to the RCSWby Individual and Organised Women who RaisedIssues about Women’s Employment and ChildCare

Position advocated in briefs n % Combined %

Briefs favouring non-maternal child care forworking women:

a. Advocate policies to provide child carefor working women.

26 12.8} 52.9

b. Advocate policies to promote women’semployment and non-maternal childcare.

81 40.1

Briefs linking calls to promote women’semployment and/or non-maternal childcare with calls for:

a. Employers to allowwomen with youngchildren to work flexible hours or part-time.

40 19.8} 47.0

b. Cultural/fiscal measures to encouragewomen with young children to stayhome.

55 27.2

202

Thesedata show the twodifferentways inwhichwomenused theRCSWto resist the idea that the status of women in Canadian society could beimproved without addressing questions of child care. On the one hand,women used the RCSW to challenge prevailing assumptions in federalcircles that equal employment opportunities were best promoted byimplementing policies to ensure the similar, non-discriminatory treatmentof worker-citizens in the public sphere.22 These women argued that equal

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employment opportunities for men and women could not be achievedthrough the development of gender-neutral policies that failed to recognisehow women’s caring work might impact on their participation in the paidlabour force. AsRuthLister noted subsequently, “ifwomenare to enter fullcitizenship, it is going to require radical changes in both the ‘private’...and... public spheres as well as a challenge to the rigid separation betweenthe two.”23

On the other hand, the arguments advanced by women who were moreambivalent aboutmothersworking full-timeoutside thehome indicatehowsome women used the Commission to resist the emphasis in liberalfeminism on women’s status being improved by their attainment of fullcitizenship in the public sphere.24 The renaissance of feminism in the 1970swas, in many respects, “an antinatalist, antimaternalist moment” in which,asAnnaSnitowhas argued, “the emotional throwingoff of themother’s lifefelt like the only way to begin.”25 Nonetheless, the arguments advanced bywomenwriting this second group of briefs suggest that some of thewomenwho heralded the revival of feminism in Canada were more prepared thantheir daughters to confront the complex relationship between motherhoodand liberal feminism.

The next two sections of this article examine how women resisted theassumption that equality of employment opportunity for men and womencould be achieved simply by providing them with the same opportunitiesfor training and employment. It looks first at thosewho argued that womencould not become full worker-citizens unless the federal governmentaddressed child care as an issue of public policy. It then considers thearguments advanced by women who were concerned that the federalgovernment develop provisions to enable women to combine their roles asmother-citizens and worker-citizens.

Arguments Developed in Briefs Calling for Public Policies onChild Care to Support Working WomenWomen calling for non-maternal child care to support working womenframed their arguments directly in relation to the government’s objectivesof using theRCSWto ascertain howbest to root out sex-discrimination andensure that women could make a full contribution to the Canadianeconomy. They resisted the narrowness of the Commission’s mandate byarguing that women’s increased contribution to the Canadian economycould only come about with the provision of child care. They alsodevelopedamoreexpansiveconceptofwomen’s rights than that embeddedin the ideology of equal treatment which underscored the Commission’sterms of reference. While they were determined to assume the status ofworker-citizens, these women also emphasised that this would not bepossible unless the different contexts in which men and women assumed

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employment were built into discussions about the promotion of genderequality in the workplace.

Economic Arguments for Child CareWomen approached the link between child care provision and women’seconomic activity by arguing that affordable child care was not only apre-requisite for women to enter the labour force, but essential given theirown economic need to work for pay. In making these arguments, womenwere concerned to dispel the myth that married women worked for pinmoney and encourage the federal government to consider how women’seconomic contribution to societywas constrained by the high costs of childcare. The brief submitted by the Canadian Federation of Business andProfessionalWomenofBritishColumbia and theYukon tookup the first ofthese two points:

Many women need to work, thus creating a desperate need for DayCare Centres... Many are concerned that an increase in Day Careservices only serves to encourage women to abandon their parentalresponsibilities and seek employment just to purchase unnecessaryfrills and extras such as a second car or a colour television for therumpus room. This is largely amyth.Department of Labour reportsindicate that most mothers work out of economic necessity.26

Women were deeply concerned about the costs of day care, not leastbecause they invariably assumed that they should contribute to the costs ofsubstitute care. As the brief submitted by the Canadian Federation ofBusiness and Professional Women in Ottawa noted:

It is only reasonable that the workingmother should contribute tothecostof thedaycare in relation toher economicpotential... thosewho benefit directly should be required to contribute to the costwhile society, which benefits indirectly from happy, wellcared-for children, shouldbeprepared tocontribute to thecost.27

Nonetheless, as Vera Alback argued, “the cost of individual baby-sitters[was] beyond the reachof the averageyoungwoman trying to raise childrenon a small income.”28Worries about the cost of child carewere particularlyapparent in briefs that rejected the implication in the RCSW’s terms ofreference that itwasonlymarriedwomenwhohad to juggle thedemandsofemployment and child care. The Junior Leagues of Toronto noted that “theperson who can afford full-time, live-in help must be in a high incomebracket, which eliminates the single working mother who would haveneither the income nor the space to accommodate such a person.”29Similarly, SherieTutt—a singlemother,with three children, living in ruralSaskatchewan — noted how “the costs of day care, when available, arecurrently prohibitive to one-income families.”30

While many briefs asserted that affordable child care was necessarybecause women had to work for financial reasons, others turned this

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argument on its head and noted how the provision of adequate child carecould enhance the Canadian economy. Some women argued that theprovision of child care would increase the productivity of mothers whowere already employed outside the home and encourage women withneeded skills back into the labour force.31 As Betty Cooper — a CBCbroadcaster fromCalgary—noted, “if all married women [stayed home tolook after their children] the country would come to a standstill and therewould be a scarcity of teachers, factory workers, bank clerks and so on.”32Drawing on a personal survey of the limited child care available in Regina,ZennyBurtonwarned that “legislators at all levelsofgovernmenthadbettertake heed of the requests of working mothers with children in regards tochild care services... aswereall thesewomen to remainhome tomorrowdueto child-care difficulties, the wheels of society would be slowed downconsiderably.”33

Other women argued that in addition to encouraging mothers back intothe labour force, the provision of child care would stimulate the economybycreating jobs for child careworkers. SuzelPerron—aQuébécoise livinginWestmount—noted how the provision of child care enhancedwomen’semployment opportunities, not least because it boosted the local economy,“créant ainsi des postes pour d’autres mères de la région, compétentes ouaptes à s’occuper des enfants.”34 Similarly, Bonita Bridge — a Winnipegwoman in her late twenties — argued that “we need all the trained andprofessional people we have, and it is a waste for them to be at homewashing diapers when others need jobs and could be doing the houseworkfor professional women. Thus we could create jobs and stimulate theeconomy.”35

Clearly thesewomenwerearguing that itwas futile for thegovernment toconsider strategies to enhance the labour force participation of women inorder to boost theCanadian economywithout addressing questions of childcare. While they were not seeking to challenge the idea that women’sincreased participation in the labour force could enhance the Canadianeconomy, they were resisting the narrowness of the federal government’sview that this objective could be achieved simply by ensuring that womenwere given the same training and employment opportunities as men.36Moreover, these women were challenging the notion that the Canadianeconomy could be wholly located in the public sphere and overlook thelabour and expenses involved in caring for children.37

Human Rights Arguments for Promoting Child CareWomen expanded the federal government’s concerns to promote equalemployment opportunities for men and women and reducesex-discrimination in the sphere of employment. However, they did so notjust by focusing on the workplace but by broadening the remit of thisquestion to include issues of child care.While somewomen argued that theprovision of child care in the community was a pre-requisite for women to

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enjoy their rights as worker-citizens, others approached the question offederal support for child care from the vantage point of taxation.

Many submissions framed their claims about child care provision byreferring to women’s right to fulfil their destinies “economically andbiologically.”38 For example, Bonita Bridge noted “the fact that womenmust bear children does not presuppose that they must take most of theresponsibility of rearing children.”39 The brief from the Victoria Day CareServices argued that while women’s “decision about this choice is theirown, to bemadewith regard to the over-allwell being of their families... thecommunity’s concern for children must be expressed from a base whichacknowledges the rights of mothers to free choice in this matter.”40

Womenwho called for public policies to promote child care forworkingwomen were clearly concerned that without this provision, the combinedresponsibilities of motherhood and paid work led to different forms ofsex-discrimination. For example, Eleanor Dunn— an Ottawa newspapereditor andmother of five—wrote that “many employers tend to realize thatthe working woman with small children has worries and often cannotperformher function as anemployee toher fullest capacity. It ismyopinionthat this tends to lead towards discrimination against women in hiringpractices, salaries and promotion.”41 Similarly, The Toronto branch of theYoungWomen’sChristianAssociation argued that the federal governmentshould adhere to its international obligations to support working womenand children by facilitating “the development of policies and serviceswhich would enable women with family responsibilities who need orchoose to work outside their homes to do so without fear ofdiscrimination.”42

However, women’s strongest sense that limited public policies on childcare caused sex-discriminationemerged in their pleas for tax-relief tooffsetthe costs of substitute care. As the brief frommature women students at theUniversity of British Columbia (UBC) emphasised, “the working motherwho must pay her housekeeper out of her wages, yet pay income tax onthose wages without deducting that expense, is in effect paying tax onmoney she is unable to use.”43 While this grievance arose, in part, becausethe RCSW’s mandate required the Commissioners to report on federaltaxationpertaining towomen, it seems tohavebeen fuelledby theReport ofthe Royal Commission on Taxation which was made public just threeweeksafter theRCSWwasestablished.44ThisReport hadargued that “suchthings as commuting expenses, the costs of child care, and recreational clubmemberships should be explicitly denied as deductions from income,”thereby reinforcing the idea that the federal state should not assumeresponsibility for the costs of caring for young children whose motherschose to go out to work.45

Women addressed the issue of tax-discrimination from twoperspectives. First, they argued that the existing tax system denied the

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extent of their caringwork and signalled that “theworkof amarriedwomanis peripheral and not in the same category as work of other members ofsociety.”46 Women also saw the absence of tax relief as a form of financialdiscrimination. Although this was clearly a class-based grievance, womenwho hired in-home child care were incensed that while the federalgovernment refused to grant them tax relief to offset the costs of employingsuch help, they typically required women “to pay Canada Pension Plancontributions in respect of [their] housekeeper or babysitter.”47 AliceJames, describingherself as “anordinaryhousewife”who felt very stronglyabout the restrictions that had been placed on her because of her gender,detailed this double layer of discrimination and identified the confusedassumptions about child care as work that were built into it:

I am a university graduate, who, in spite of not having worked forseventeen years could probably make $400 a month. I believe Icould obtain a good housekeeper for $300 a month. The prospectof using my training and having a $100 a month profit is veryappealing untilwe look at the income tax picture. Instead of taxingme onmyprofit as theywould in any other business, they say thatI am not a regular employer and tax all $400. The Federalgovernment is rather inconsistent because under the CanadaPension Act I would be an employer and would have to pay theemployer’s portion into the Canada Pension Fund. Of course theywould still taxmyhousekeeperonher$300. This looks likedoubletaxation to me. The net result of this situation would be that myhusband and I would pay $98.66 of my $100 profit to the federalgovernment, at 1966 rates. My net profit would be $1.34... At thenew 1967 rates of tax I expect there would be a net loss.”48

Women’s submissions to the RCSWchallenged the federal governmenton this form of discrimination and highlighted its broader social andeconomic implications. To Alice James “the most tragic result” of thesepolicies was “that many women make no arrangement for the care of theirchildren andwe all pay the costs in increased health, welfare and educationcosts.”49Otherwomenargued that the introductionof tax reliefwouldboostthe economy of child care provision, be it inside or outside the home. TheCommittee of Mature Students at UBC noted, “were their employers, theworking mothers, able to pay a higher, tax deductible wage, the domesticworkers would benefit, the economy of many lower income groups wouldimprove, and domestic work would achieve a badly needed boost instatus.”50 Similarly, the Junior Leagues of Toronto noted, “tax relief for theworking mother would allow her to contribute more for day-nursery careand so help to make it possible for day-nurseries to improve their care,provide more day-nurseries and some after-school care.”51

Althoughwomen’s strongest grievancewas that the absence of tax reliefdisregarded the caring work they had always carried out at home, theirbriefs also expressed grievances about the sex-discrimination involved. Ina number of submissions women argued that just as the taxable income of

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businessmen is arrived at after expenses have been claimed, “so should thewomanwhoworks a 40 hour week (minimumswould have to be set up) beable to show receipts or proof in some way that she is... paying for childcare.”52 The briefs also conveyed awidespread sense of injustice that while“single, divorced, separated, or widowed men” could claim tax relief forchild care, women could not.53 As the Women’s Section of the UnitedNations Association of Canada commented:

An obvious case of discrimination for your Commission is theprovision in the Income Tax Act which provides for a deductionfor child care in the case of a male single parent but none for afemale single parent...We urge that the Income Tax provisions bechanged to allow both men and women a realistic figure fordeductions when they have to leave their children in day care toseek employment.54

These submissions indicate how women who supported the liberalfeminist project of increasing women’s opportunities in the public spherepaid heed to the government’s concerns about reducing sex discriminationand enhancing women’s opportunities to contribute to the Canadianeconomy. In so doing they reinforced the standard liberal feminist claimthat “sex discrimination is unjust primarily because it deprives women ofequal rights to pursue their own self-interest.”55At the same time, however,they called on the government to recognise that women’s economicactivities spanned the public and private spheres and acknowledge, asRoberta Hamilton has noted, that “whatever else bearing and rearingchildrenmight be, in this society, the activities constitutedwork.”56 Indeed,theyemphasised thatwomen’s full assumptionofworker-citizenship couldnot be achieved unless the state acknowledged and made provision toreplace women’s existing, unpaid work in caring for young children.

Policies Advocated by Women Who Called for Non-MaternalChild CareWomen who favoured non-maternal child care made three principalrecommendations about the development of public policies to supportworking women. First they demanded a rapid expansion in child careservices, including the availability of trained carers. Second, they arguedthat the federal government should develop a system to ensure that womenwere adequately subsidised for the child care services they needed in orderto participate in the labour force. Finally, they called on the federalgovernment toworkwith theprovinces across the jurisdictional boundariesthat constrained the development of a national system of child care.

Increase the Provision of Child CareThere were repeated calls on the federal government to investigate theshortage of child care spaces in both urban and rural areas.57 Many briefsexpressed the need for more pre-school and after-school care that was

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properly regulated and staffed by trained child care workers.58 Somebemoaned the inadequate supply of household help arguing, as in the caseof l’Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale, that while “lebudget de la femme mariée qui doit travailler lui permet rarement des’assurer les services d’aides-familiales compétentes... il existeactuellement une pénurie de ces personnes parce que leur rôle dans lasociété est dévalorisé.”59Others called for thepublic education system tobeexpanded to include kindergarten for 3-5 year old children.60 However,even though radical feminists were, at the time, calling for round-the-clockchild care, very few briefs called for a 24-hour nursery system.61

Financing of Child CareWhile many of the briefs, particularly those from individual women,criticised the current cost of nursery provision, very few asserted thedemandfor free, universaldaycare thatwouldbecome thehallmarkofchildcare campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s.62 The Voice of Women inEdmonton called on all levels of government to ensure that “properlysupervised day care for the children of workingmothers be established as apublic service.”63However,most briefs called either for child care places tobe subsidised with the mother paying according to her income, or for themotherherself tobe subsidised through taxdeductions that offset the cost ofchild care.64 Indeed, calls for tax relief for child care outstripped all otherpolicy demands. As the Junior Leagues of Toronto claimed, in a statementthat criticised the federal government’s limited, welfare-based involvementin the field of child care, “although special consideration seems indicatedfor the single parent, the two parent workingmother also should be eligiblefor some financial relief in regards to child care during her workinghours.”65

Nonetheless, there was a strong sense in a number of the briefs that free,state child care should be available for the children of low-income parents.Louyse Ouelet-Savoie argued that “chaque municipalité devrait compterun nombre suffisant de garderies pour subvenir aux besoins desdéshérités.”66 Similarly, Eleanor Dunn stated that she was “not sure aboutsubsidization by any level of government unless it was in the form ofassistance to mothers who were needy and the sole support of theirfamilies.”67 A few argued that child care should be financed by parents,employers and the state. For example, SuzannePelletier looked forward tothe day when “les garderies de jour soient intégrées aux services déjàfournis par le ministère de la Famille et du Bien-Être,” and envisaged thatlike health insurance “ces services seraient payés au tiers, par les parents, legouvernment et l’employeur.”68

A National System of Child CareAlthoughmany briefs called for the provision of more day care services, itwas the submissions from women heading up day care organisations that

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most directly criticised the jurisdictional constraints imposed on theinquiry. The Day Care Section of the Ottawa Citizens’ Committee onChildren acknowledged that “day care for young children is primarily amatter pertaining to provincial jurisdiction and therefore of questionablerelevance within the framework of reference of a Federal RoyalCommission.”69 However, its members then argued that “as with manyother areas of development, we feel strongly that the division of powers setout in theBritishNorthAmericaAct shouldnotbeallowed to inhibit seriousconsideration of our problem and effective progress towards our goals.”70Indeed, the Committee proposed that federal, provincial and municipalgovernments should work together on child care, recognising that it is“multidimensional and does not readily fit into the traditional frameworksof education, welfare or health.”71 Moreover, it urged the Commissionersto address “the practical and jurisdictional difficulties that occur at variouslevels of implementation.”72

TheVictoriaDayCareServices inTorontocalledon“theGovernmentofCanada to direct theMinister of National Health andWelfare to explore indetail the development of day care programmes for children of workingmothers across Canada and... explore with the provinces the enacting oflegislation governing the establishment and operation of such services andfacilities.”73 In addition, they argued that a special federal departmentshould be established for this purpose.74Moreover, they felt that unless the“efforts of Federal Departments concerned with family, employment,economic and national productivity, and other related issues [were]coordinated in action programmes aimed at Provincial Governments” thechances of developing an effective national strategy on child carewould belimited.75

Although these women all called for non-maternal child care to supportworking women, they were by no means unified in their specific policydemands. Some called for an expansion of the Canadian welfare state,arguing that federal and provincial governments should work togetheracross jurisdictional divides to increase the provision of care for childrenwhose mothers went out to work. Others, by contrast, argued that the stateshould support child care through tax redistribution by directly subsidizingmothers who paid for child care while they were out at work. Althoughwomen in the first group had a greater sense that child care should be acommunity-based rather than an individual responsibility, there was astrongundertone in all these briefs that even though thesewomenwanted toassume the status of worker-citizens, they felt that they remained primarilyresponsible for ensuring their children received proper care. However, asthe next section shows, the desire to maintain this responsibility was evenstronger amongst women who were ambivalent about young mothersworking full-time outside the home.

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Arguments Developed by Women Who Were Ambivalent AboutMothers Working Outside the HomeWhile the majority of women’s submissions to the RCSW called forpolicies to promote women’s employment and develop child care, asignificant proportion argued that the Commissioners should pay heed tothe importance of the caring work mothers undertake at home (Table 2).This section examines the concerns raised bywomenwho called for publicpolicies to support andpromotewomen’s employment, but alsomanifestedambivalence about the mothers of young children working full-timeoutside the home.

While the women writing these briefs clearly recognised the economicnecessity of women working for pay, they also called on theCommissioners to acknowledge women’s caring work at home. The brieffrom the women of St Andrew’s United Church in Beloeil acknowledgedthat “it is desirable and necessary for women to work outside the homewhere a woman, divorced, separated or widowed, must support herchildren, where the family needs added income, where the woman hasspecial skills and education needed in the labour force, or where she istemperamentallyunsuited tobeingahomemaker.”76Nonetheless, althoughthis group claimed that it “would endorse every effort made to assist [thesewomen] to train [and]make satisfactory arrangements for the care of [their]children,” it clearly regretted the broader societal tendency to downgradethe role of women as citizen-carer:

We feel there is a growing tendency today to downgrade the role ofthe woman in the home, to overlook the value of her contribution,both financial and social to the home and the community, and tocreate an atmosphere where young women feel that it is only bygetting out of the home into a paid job that they can fulfilthemselves or make a contribution to society.77

While the women writing in this way were clearly ambivalent about therole of women as workers and carers, they were willing to contemplate theparticipation of mothers in the paid labour force. Others, however, took amore contradictory position, arguing that the federal government shouldpromote women’s employment and child care, but at the same timediscouragemothers of young children fromworking outside the home. Forexample, the brief from the Ontario Jaycettes called both for improvedtraining and employment opportunities for women and tax relief for childcare. At the same time, however, it claimed that a membership survey hadshown “one hundred per cent agreeing that women with small childrenshould not work unless it is essential” and suggested that “re-educatingwomen to their role as wife andmother”would encourage suchwomen notto go out to work.78

The general concern of women who expressed ambivalence aboutmothers of young children working full-time was that although policies to

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achieve this objective might enhance women’s economic standing inCanadian society, they could well downgrade the significance of women’scaringworkwithin the home.The brief fromL’Ordre desDamesHélène deChamplain argued that the RCSW might not in fact provide acomprehensive analysis of women in Canadian society because it wasmeasuring their status against male-defined concepts of work:

Dans l’énumération des items suggérés par la Commission, oninsiste beaucoup sur l’acquisition de droits supplémentaires pourla femme mariée ou la célibataire au travail. Il est juste etraisonnable de demander certainesmesures nécessaires pour aiderà résoudre les problèmes des femmes qui travaillent à l’extérieur.À notre avis, il est nécessaire d’attacher une importance prépon-dérante au rôle de la femme mariée, gardienne du foyer et desvaleurs familiales... Au cours des études que l’on fera, il est àsouhaiter que l’on aborde le problème de la dévalorisation de lafemme au foyer, au profit de celle qui a décidé de retourner sur lemarché du travail.79

Clearly, these women were trying to ensure that liberal feminism did notignore the concerns of maternal feminists who wanted to ensure thatwomen had the opportunity, if circumstances permitted, to balance theirroles asworkers and carers. Interestingly, theywere developing argumentsthat would later be taken up by feminist theorists whowere concernedwiththe ethics of care. As Joan Tronto notes, because “notions of citizenship inthe twentieth century [have] embodied ‘the work ethic’ as a public good...[the] image of what constitutes responsible human action misses entirelythe carework that is necessary to keephuman society functioning, except inso far as it is also paid work.”80 Indeed, it was the value of the care workattached to women’s role as mother-citizens that informed the argumentsdeveloped by women in this set of briefs.

Policies Advocated by Women Who Were Ambivalent AboutMothers Working Outside the HomeThe briefs submitted by women who were concerned that theCommissioners make recommendations to allow women to balance theirworking and caring lives contained two principal suggestions. First theyargued in favour of part-time work. Second, they called for financialmeasures to enable women, who chose to do so, to spread their timebetween their paid and caring work.

Flexible or Part-time EmploymentWomen who called for an increase in flexible or part-time work wereconcerned that whatever the limitations of this form of employment, theCommissioners assess its potential to allow women to combine paid workwith the care of their children. While the Imperial Order Daughters of theEmpire in Toronto acknowledged that “such labour... should receive due

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recognition and compensation,” it also lauded the “Housewife Shift”because it “adjusted to the needs of housewives and mothers,” provided“additional income to families,” and ensured that “the skills of womenwilling to participate in part-time work... [were] not lost to the Canadianeconomy.”81 Similarly, the National Council of Women of Canada arguedthat “efforts must be made by government and industry to adjust workinghours for women with family responsibilities to permit them to make theirmaximum contribution to the economywith the minimum disadvantage totheir families.”82 In addition, the Alberta Association of RegisteredNursesargued that “the availability of part-time work, with appropriate personnelpolicies, could effect a reasonable compromise by providing time for awoman to bewith her familywhile permitting her to use her skills andmeetthe needs of society.”83 In short, these submissions emphasised howpart-time employment enabledwomen to contribute to their household andnational economies without completely curtailing their caringresponsibilities.

Measures to Encourage Mothers of Young Children to Stay HomeBriefs advocating measures to promote women’s employmentopportunities and encourage mothers to stay home argued first that greatercultural value should be placed on thematernal care of young children and,second, that the federal government shouldback this upwith fiscal rewards.While l’Ordre des Dames Hélène de Champlain called for equal pay forequal work and state subsidies to private day care centres, it also suggestedthat increased family allowances would enhance the status of motherscaring for their childrenat home.84 Similarly,while theMontrealCouncil ofWomen acknowledged that somewomenmay have towork for financial orprofessional reasons, theyexpresseda firmbelief that “theplaceofamotherof pre-school children is in the home.”85 Its members called for a study into“the advisability of granting a mother’s allowance to mothers of childrenunder the age of five in order to encourage them to stay home and watchover the psychological and physical development of their children.”86

Appeals for greater financial support to low-income women were alsoapparent in briefs submitted by individuals and organisations that weremore ambivalent about mothers working full-time outside the home. Forexample, the brief from the Salvation Army’s Women’s Organizationexpressed opposition to the federal government’s cost-sharing moves toencourage welfare mothers into the workforce. Its authors argued that “itwould be ideal if mothers of low income families could be provided withadequatemeansof supporting their familieswhile they remainedat home totrain and care for them.”87 Similarly, Margaret Gardeau called for“stay-home wives of low-income workers [to] receive an allowanceaccording to income and members of family,” arguing that only if thisscheme proved too costly should governments establish “a nation-widesystem of federally and/or provincially supported day-nurseries, solely for

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thebenefit ofmotherswhocanprove that throughcircumstancesof life theyhave to go to work.”88

Aswith the briefs that called for non-maternal child care, those preparedby women who were more ambivalent about mothers of young childrenworking outside the home were by no means unified in their policyproposals. While they all called for some measures to promote women’semployment, those advocating greater recognition of part-time workseemed more at ease with this objective than those calling for fiscal andeducational measures to make it easier for women with young children,who so wished, to spend more time caring for them at home. Despite thesevariations, the women who submitted the briefs discussed in this sectionwere all concerned that the RCSW’s emphasis on developing publicpolicies to promote women’s paid employment could lead to a devaluationofmotherhood. In this respect theywere resisting theanti-maternalist thrustof the early stages of second-wave liberal feminism.

Lookingbackover all these argumentswecan seehowwomenpresentedthe Commissioners with a range of proposals that would enable workingmothers to choose how tomanage their offspring’s care.Nonetheless, therewas a clear difference in the policies proposed by those who favoured andquestioned the value of non-maternal child care. The submissions fromwomen who called for non-maternal child care, in order that women couldfully assume the rights and duties of worker-citizenship, argued that thefederal government had to include child care within the remit of publicpolicy and, if necessary, work across jurisdictional boundaries to achievethis goal. By contrast, the submissions from women who were ambivalentabout mothers working outside the home asked the Commissioners to bemore cautious in the policies they recommended. Indeed, these womenargued that anymeasures to promote women’s employment opportunities,in the public sphere, should not undermine the legitimacy of womencontinuing their caring work at home. How then did the Commissionersrespond to these different concerns in writing their report?

How the Commissioners Responded to Women’s ConcernsTwoof the four keyprinciples that guided theCommissioners inwriting theReport of the RCSW recognised how women’s responsibilities forchild-rearingmeant theywere differently situated frommenwith respect toenjoying the rights andassuming the responsibilities ofworker-citizenship.The first principle — “women should be free to choose whether or not totake employment outside their homes” — not only played to argumentsabout maternal self-fulfilment, but briefly addressed the reservations ofthose who were more ambivalent about mothers working full-time outsidetheir homes.89 The second principle — “the care of children is to be aresponsibility shared by themother, the father and society”—was a radicalmove on the Commissioners’ part not only because it went beyond the

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maternalist assumptions inmost of the briefs, but also because it signalled,at the outset, that the Report would recommend federal involvement in thefield of child care.90Although the call for national child care legislationwasopposed by the two male commissioners, Jacques Henripin and JohnHumphrey, the Commissioners agreed that questions about child care tosupport working women required urgent attention.91

The Report of the RCSWemphasised that “the time is past when societycan refuse to provide community child care services in the hope ofdissuadingmothers from leaving their children and going out to work.”92 Itargued not only that “change is needed in the most central function of thefamily – the care of children,” but that “women cannot be accorded trueequality” until the joint parental-societal responsibility for the care ofchildren is fully acknowledged.93 Nonetheless, although the bias of theReport favoured the public provision of child care as a way of promotingwomen’s entry into the workforce, it also acknowledged the concerns ofwomen who wanted to balance their paid work with care of their ownchildren. The Report pointed to the fact that part-time work “helps womenachieve equality of opportunity in employment” bymaintaining their skillswhile raising a family.94 It also recommended that “a federal annual taxablecash allowance in the order of $500 be provided for each child under 16 tobe paid in instalments to the mother under the present Family Allowancesystem.”95 Indeed, the Report argued strongly in favour of a child tax creditrather than a tax exemption for child care expenses, claiming that “taxcredits [were] preferable to tax exemptions [because they were]independentof the sizeof incomeanddonotbenefit the rich...more than thepoor.”96 In so doing, the Commissioners appeared to be giving mothers ofyoungchildrenmaximumchoiceaboutworking insideoroutside thehome.

While the Report’s recommendations on family allowances fell withinthe federal domain, thedecision to link this recommendationwith calls for anational child care systemchallenged the jurisdictional constraints that hadshaped the RCSW’s terms of reference. This was by no means the onlyexample of the way in which the recommendations of the Report movedbeyond jurisdictional constraints in the terms of reference, though thesubsequent efforts of child care activists to get national child carelegislation introduced means that this example is frequently noted.97 TheReport asserted that “for the federal government to fail to proceed with aspecific child care programme, removed fromwelfare legislation of amoregeneral nature,wouldbe todeny theclaim thatCanadianwomenhavemadefor concrete assistance in the burdenof responsibilitywhich theyhave beencompelled to carry.”98 As a result, they called on the federal government to“immediately take steps to enter into an agreement with the provincesleading to the adoption of a national Day-Care Act under which federalfunds would be made available on a cost sharing basis for the building andrunning of day-care centres meeting specified national standards.”99Moreover, byacknowledging that child caredidnot simplyconcernparents

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with pre-school children but was an issue affecting working parents withchild dependents, it linked the question of school-age child care witheducational provision.100

The Report clearly acknowledged the demands of women who definedchild care as the ramp to worker-citizenship and those who wanted tobalance their roles as worker-carer-citizens. Nonetheless, while theCommissioners sought to forge a middle ground between these twopositions, they ultimately moved beyond them by emphasising society’sresponsibility for child care. In part, this reflects the predispositions of theCommission’s staff who, Bégin claims, were “biased in favour of daycare.”101 Nonetheless, it shows how the Commissioners who signed themain report also engaged in an act of resistance. The Report contested thenarrowness of the ideological and jurisdictional framework in whichquestions about women’s employment opportunities had been framed.Moreover, although its authors insisted that women should be under noobligation to enter paid employment, they effectively argued that ifwomenwere to assume more responsibility as worker-citizens, the welfare statetheywould help to underwrite should include extensive provision for childcare.

ConclusionsWomen used the RCSW not simply as a forum in which to challengedominant paradigms and jurisdictional constraints on policy development,but as a means to en-gender policy discourse. They did so by drawingdirectly on their own experiences and inserting their varied concerns aboutwomen’s employment and child care into public debate. In the process,women not only brought to public attention questions about care that werebeing overlooked in the pursuit of equal employment opportunities formenandwomen, but highlighted both the potential and the limitations of liberalfeminism. Nonetheless, it is a sign of the era in which this inquiry wasconducted that the Commissioners writing the main report found it easierthanmost women submitting briefs to question cultural assumptions aboutmaternal responsibility for children, and emphasise the need for societalengagement with child care.

The Report of the RCSW developed a contextual approach to women’semployment that linked together issues of women’s paid and caring work.Sadly, this approach was not fully reflected in subsequent federal policydevelopment. The Trudeau government that received the Report didimplement equal employment opportunity policies in the federal sphere.However, while these measures sought to improve women’s employmentopportunitieswithin amale-dominated bureaucracy, they paid no attentionto questions of child care.102 Moreover, although the federal governmentintroduced tax relief for child care in 1971, and a child tax credit in 1978,

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these fiscal subsidies — aimed at individual parents — negated theRCSW’s calls for an integrated national child care policy.103

While the RCSW brought women’s concerns about employment andchild care together, the federal government chose to treat these two issues asdistinct areas of public policy. Subsequent federal engagement in thesepolicy fields has been repeatedly constrained by the ideological forces andjurisdictional imperatives that shaped the RCSW’s terms of reference.104Nonetheless, this article has shown the importance of examining royalcommissions as junctures in the course of policy development that enhanceour understandingof civic resistance and, in the case of theRCSW, indicatethe complex shape a truly engendered set of employment opportunitypolicies might take.

Notes* I would like to thank Alexandra Dobrowolski, Lise Gotell and the Journal’s

anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. I alsowish to thank Jane Arscott for sharing some of her work on the RCSW. Finally, Iwish to acknowledge research funding provided by the Department of ForeignAffairs and International Trade Canada and the Foundation for Canadian Studiesin the UK.

1. For arguments in favour of royal commissions in Canada, see Aucoin, 1990;Courtney, 1969; Christie and Pross, 1990; Fox, 1998; and Jenson, 1994.Criticisms of royal commissions can be found in Doern, 1967 and Walls, 1969.For an analysis of the way royal commissions can encourage controversy ratherthan diffuse it, see Salter, 1999.

2. Black, 1993:159; Dumont, 1986:17. For a discussion of the way those lobbyingfor the Commission framed their demands within this human rights framework,see Morris, 1980:11.

3. For radical and socialist feminist critiques of the Report, see Kowaluk, 1972:220;Marchak, 1972. For comment on the way the RCSW’s inquiries mobilisedwomen, see Bégin, 1992:33 and 1997:14, Black, 1993:160; Newman, C., 1969.

4. The RCSW’s strategy for collecting evidence in both oral and written testimonyis discussed by Morris, 1982:199-200. The kinds of issues raised at the hearingsare also discussed by Newman, C., 1969; Bird, 1974:273-286 and 1997:188-196;and Freeman, 1995. However, the written submissions have not yet been subjectto the kind of systematic analysis offered here.

5. Canada, Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada 1970:vii.6. Ibid.7. Ibid.8. Ibid:viii.9. Bégin, 1997:13.10. Canada, Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, 1984:61; Armstrong

and Armstrong, 1994:23-85.11. For discussions of the term worker-citizenship, see Hernes, 1987:76; Pateman,

1889:184; Lister, 1997:176-179. For discussions of the application of thisconcept in Canada, see Brodie, 1996:128-30; Timpson, 1997:50-53.

12. Black, 1993:159.

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13. Burt, 1993:220-221; Kaplansky, 1967; Manzer, 1985:145; Timpson, 1997:59-62.In 1964, the federal government had ratified the International LabourOrganisation’s Convention 111 on Discrimination (Employment and Occupation),thereby agreeing to promote equality of opportunity and treatment for allemployees with a view to eliminating employment discrimination in Canada.

14. Armstrong and Armstrong, 1994:191; Canada, Royal Commission on Equality inEmployment, 1984:59-60.

15. Ibid.:183; McDaniel 1993:428.16. Mahon, 1997:15-16; Burt, 1993:220.17. Newman, P., 1969:324.18. For a discussion of the historical precedent for this claim, namely the 1942

Dominion-Provincial War Time Agreement on Child Care, see Friendly,1994:129-130.

19. For a fuller discussion of questions about women’s roles as worker-citizens andcarer-citizens, see Hernes, 1987; Lister, 1997:177.

20. Author’s interview with Hon. Monique Bégin, former Executive Secretary to theRoyal Commission on the Status of Women, Ottawa, December 9, 1998.

21. A total of 454 non-confidential briefs can be identified in the records of theCommission. Of these, a total of 177 were submitted by individual women,sixty-eight percent (120) of which addressed issues of women’s employment andchild care. A total of 173 briefs were received from established groups of women,eighty-eight percent (153) of which raised questions about women’s employmentand child care. The briefs from organisations included 29 from female-dominatedprofessional and trade associations; 28 from women’s religious organisations; 21from national, provincial and community women’s organisations; 19 fromwomen’s institutes and home economics associations; 17 from family service andsingle parent associations; 16 from university women’s clubs; 10 from businessand professional women’s clubs; 9 from young women’s secular associations; 8from women’s peace organisations; 7 from women’s associations within politicalparties; 5 from day care organisations and 4 from farm women’s organisations.

22. Timpson, 1997:53-66.23. Lister, 1993:13.24. Code, 1993:37.25. Both quotes are to be found in Snitow, 1990:31-32. The first is in Snitow’s

citation from Rosenfelt and Stacey, 1987:350-351.26. Canada, Royal Commission on the Status of Women, Canadian Federation of

Business and Professional Women’s Clubs of British Columbia and the Yukon,Vancouver, Brief number 261:2-3 (National Archives of Canada, RG 33/89,Microfilm Reel C-4880). Hereafter, all briefs to the RCSW will be referencedsimply by author, location, brief number and page (with National Archive findingaid reference and microfilm reel number in parentheses).

27. Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women Clubs, Ottawa, BriefNo. 147:23 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).

28. Vera G. Alback, Ottawa, Brief No. 193:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).29. Junior League of Toronto, Toronto, Brief No. 98:2 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).30. Sherrie E. Tutt, Rouleau, Saskatchewan, Brief No. 157:3 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).31. Women’s Ad Hoc Committee of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour,

Regina, Brief No. 296:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).32. Betty Cooper, Calgary, Brief No. 399:3 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4882).33. Zenny Burton, Regina, Brief No. 211:10 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).34. Suzel T. Perron, Westmount, Brief No. 336:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4881).

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35. Bonita Bridge, Winnipeg, Brief No. 279:3 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).36. Bégin, 1997:13.37. Interestingly, Lister notes that “the 1995 UN Platform for Action agreed at

Beijing for women’s unpaid caring work to be treated as part of the gross nationalproduct.” (Lister, 1997:235).

38. Soroptomist Club of Halifax, Brief No. 86:5 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).39. Bonita M. Bridge, Winnipeg, Brief No. 279:3 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).40. Victoria Day Care Services, Toronto, Brief No. 168:2 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).41. Eleanor Dunn, Ottawa, Brief No. 55:3 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).42. Young Women’s Christian Association of Canada, Toronto, Brief No. 160:3 (RG

33/89, Reel C-4879).43. University of British Columbia, Committee of Mature Women Students,

Vancouver, Brief No. 217:1 (RG 33/89, C-4880).44. Coincidence recorded in Newman, P., 1969:534.45. Canada, Royal Commission on Taxation, 1966:290. For reactions to this

Commission’s recommendations, see Pioneer Women’s Organization of Canada,Montreal, Brief No. 65:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).

46. Ibid.47. The Dawson Creek Business and Professional Women’s Club, Dawson Creek,

British Columbia, Brief No. 219:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).48. Alice James, Vancouver, Brief No. 92:10 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).49. Ibid.50. University of British Columbia, Committee of Mature Women Students,

Vancouver, Brief No. 217:2 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).51. The Junior League of Toronto, Toronto, Brief No. 98:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).52. Mrs. W.D. Hall, Weston, Ontario, Brief No. 345:5 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4881).53. Dawson Creek Business and Professional Women’s Club, Dawson Creek, British

Columbia, Brief No. 219:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).54. United Nations Association, Women’s Section, Toronto, Brief No. 58:3 (RG

33/89, Reel C-4878).55. Code, 1993:37.56. Hamilton, 1996:169.57. See, for example, Parents Without Partners, Ottawa Chapter, Brief No. 319:2 (RG

33/89, Reel C-4881).58. See, for example, Sherill Jackson’s call for free nursery and after school care:

Sherill Jackson, Montreal, Brief No. 28:2 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878), and AliceJames’ call for pre-school and after school care: Alice James, Vancouver, BriefNo. 92:3 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).

59. L’Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale, Montreal, Brief No.393:3 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).

60. See, for example, University of British Columbia, Committee of Mature WomenStudents, Vancouver, Brief No. 217:9 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880); Young Men’sand Young Women’s Hebrew Association and Neighbourhood House Service,Montreal, Brief No. 314:11 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4881); and Thelma Cartwright,Ottawa, Brief No. 407:1 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4882).

61. For examples of briefs that did call for 24-hour child care, see Fédération desservices sociaux à la famille du Québec, St Jean, Brief No. 256:6 (RG 33/89, ReelC-4880); Alberta Association of Registered Nurses, Edmonton, Brief No. 26:5(RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).

62. For discussion of Canadian campaigns for free universal child care, see Friendly,1994:142-149.

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63. Voice of Women, Edmonton, Brief No. 159:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).64. Briefs calling for subsidised child care places included Marianne Lafon,

Montreal, Brief No. 40:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878) and Margaret Smith,Whitehorse, Brief No. 414:2 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4882). A good example of a briefcalling for subsidised child care spaces and tax relief was that submitted bySherrie Tutt, Rouleau, Saskatchewan, Brief No. 157:4 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).

65. Junior Leagues of Toronto, Brief No. 98:1 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).66. Louyse Ouelet-Savoie, Montreal, Brief No. 144:8 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).67. Eleanor S. Dunn, Ottawa, Brief No. 55:3 (RG 33/89, C-4878).68. Suzanne Pelletier, Quebec, Brief No. 210:5 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4880).69. Committee of the Day Care Section of the Citizens’ Committee on Children,

Ottawa, Brief No. 324:1 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4881).70. Ibid.:22.71. Ibid.:7.72. Ibid.:1.73. Victoria Day Care Services, Toronto, Brief No. 168:2 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).74. Ibid.75. Ibid.76. A Group of Women, St Andrew’s United Church, Beloeil, Quebec, Brief No.

166:1. (RG 33/89, Reel C-4879).77. Ibid.:2.78. Ontario Jaycettes, Chatham, Brief No. 89:2 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).79. L’Ordre des Dames Hélène de Champlain Inc., Ste Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec,

Brief No. 129:1 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).80. Tronto, 1993:165-166.81. Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, Toronto, Brief No. 311:23 (RG 33/89,

Reel C-4880).82. National Council of Women of Canada, Ottawa, Brief No. 131:6 (RG 33/89, Reel

C-4878).83. Alberta Association of Registered Nurses, Edmonton, Brief No. 26:19 (RG 33/89,

Reel C-4878).84. L’Ordre des Dames Hélène de Champlain Inc., Ste Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec,

Brief No. 129:15 (RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).85. Montreal Council of Women, Montreal, Brief No. 183:9 (RG 33/89, Reel

C-4879).86. Ibid.87. The Salvation Army, Canada, Women’s Organization, Toronto, Brief No. 110:1

(RG 33/89, Reel C-4878).88. Margaret M. Gaudreau, Ste. Thérèse, Quebec, Brief No. 337:2 (RG 33/89, Reel

C-4881).89. Canada, Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1970:xii.90. Ibid.91. John Humphrey’s opposition was evident in the Minority Report. While

Humphrey argued that without day care centres “there can be no question ofmothers of young children having equality of opportunity in the labour market,”he stressed that “the provision and operation of day-care centres obviously comesunder provincial jurisdiction and that is where I think it should remain” (Canada,Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1970:444). Although JacquesHenripin did not submit a minority report, his reservations about national daycare legislation were reflected in his concern that the Commission not “discountthe value of the stay-at-home wife and mother” (Arscott, 1995:51), and

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emphasise the value of boosting part-time work for the mothers of young children(Morris, 1982:270).

92. Canada, Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1970:263.93. Ibid.:230, xii.94. Ibid.:104.95. Ibid.:303.96. Ibid.:302. This recommendation was opposed by Humphrey on the grounds that it

would absorb money that could be spent on old age pensions, encourage largefamilies, increase the burden on tax payers and detract from the creation of a morecomprehensive approach to a guaranteed annual income (Ibid:443).

97. See, for example, Phillips, 1989:166; Friendly, 1994:33-34; Hamilton, 1996:172;and Mahon, 1997:19.

98. Canada, Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1970:270.99. Ibid.:271. Humphrey opposed this recommendation, arguing that the federal

government should not become more involved in the field of day-care “even on acost sharing basis” (Ibid.:446).

100. Ibid.:271.101. Author’s interview with Hon. Monique Bégin, December 9, 1999.102. Morgan, 1988:23-48; Timpson, 1997:124-134.103. For discussion of the 1971 Child Care Expense Deduction, see Friendly, 1994:76;

and the 1978 Child Tax Credit, see Haddow, 1993:152.104. For a fuller discussion of this point see Timpson, forthcoming.

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Open Topic Section

Articles hors-thèmes

Bernhard Kitous

Un réveil de la foi publique au Canada?L’épisode des mégafusions de banques (1998) et le paradigme

de l’intérêt public dans le secteur des services financiers1

RésuméDepuis 1987, la structure du secteur financier au Canada évolue vers ladéréglementation financière, sous la forme d’une banalisation progressivequi fait passer les « quatre piliers » traditionnels (la banque, l’assurance, lesfiducies et le courtage) à un univers financier sans frontières, dans lequel toutintervenant se voit reconnaître le droit d’offrir tous les services possibles.Alors que cette évolution profonde se poursuivait sans grands heurts, l’année1998 marquait un point de retournement : deux projets de fusions, auxquelsparticipaient quatre des grandes banques à charte, soulevaient brutalementdes questions de fond de la part d’associations de consommateurs, dedirigeants d’entreprises, d’économistes et aussi des gouvernementsprovinciaux. De façon singulière, au regard du relatif silence politique quientourait les opérations de fusions financières dans les autres pays d’Europe,d’Asie et d’Amérique, les divers acteurs canadiens se trouvèrent réunis dansun kairos, moment décisif où émerge une vision originale de ce que doit êtreun développement des activités financières compatible avec l’intérêt public.Inspiré par la circonstance des mégafusions, objet d’un très gros travailcollectif, le rapport final du Groupe de travail dirigé par H. MacKay a eupour conséquences instrumentales, d’une part, le refus des deux mégafusionspar le gouvernement fédéral et, d’autre part, le lancement d’une réforme defond de la législation bancaire. C’est pourquoi le rapport MacKay n’est passeulement une résistance circonstancielle aux mégafusions, mais un véritableparadigme d’économie politique qui sonne le réveil de la foi publique,l’antique notion de fides publica. En somme, le dogme financier, selon lequella taille va de pair avec l’efficacité, est replacé dans le contexte global del’intérêt public canadien, eu égard aux exigences de la mondialisation; lataille des banques devient alors un aspect parmi d’autres des stratégiesnationale et internationale à mettre en place.

AbstractSince 1987, the NAFTA agreement and globalization trends have changedgreatly Canada’s financial structure. Known as the “four pillars” traditionand based upon the Banking Act of 1871, the Canadian model emphasizes astrict separation between banking services, insurance, securities andinvestment trading, and trust management. Starting in 1987, a policy ofderegulation has been established, allowing for inter-relations between thefour pillars and for banks to enter the other three aspects of financial services,up to a point where more than 50 percent of the Canadian financial assets are


under control of the “Big Six” chartered banks. At the beginning of 1998, twomergers were announced, one between the Bank of Montreal and the RoyalBank, and the other between the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce andthe Toronto-Dominion Bank. These two megabanks’ projects provoked ahuge movement of protest: various actors from different parts of Canadiansociety, from consumers’ protection associations to business managers, andfrom the federal government to rival bankers, were criticizing mergers asbeing a threat to Canada’s values. This paper addresses the question of howthe megamergers, instead of being approved as is usual in other countriesunder similar bank-merger circumstances, led to a kairos (decisive moment)which is unique to Canada: under the chairmanship of H. MacKay, the TaskForce on the Future of the Canadian Financial Services was able to present anew “vision” of the financial sector, occuring at a decisive moment andleading in the short-run to the federal decision not to allow the twomegamergers. Most importantly, the MacKay report has long-termconsequences since its 124 propositions rest upon the notion of publicinterest, which is reminiscent of the antiquated notion of fides publica, orpublic faith. The financial dogma, according to which size is associated withefficiency, is substituted with a global vision of the public interest of theCanadian people; in turn, this vision of the public good leads to areformulation of the financial sector’s strategies: Canada should foster thequality of its financial services rather than the concentration of its banks;public policy should favor the aptitude of Canadian financial institutions toadapt and to grow in the globalization trend, rather than their mere survivalin a protective concentration on their home bases.

Le présent article porte sur l’événement créé en 1998 par deux projets demégafusions auxquels participaient dans chacun de ces projets deux desplus grandes banques canadiennes et qui remettaient en cause lastructuration du secteur financier autour des « Big Six » (les six banques àcharte dominantes). La stratégie des banques a provoqué un vaste débatnational qui, au lieu de s’enliser, a produit, par une sorte de conjoncturehistorique (nommée kairos en langage philosophique), une réflexionféconde qui s’articulait autour de la notion d’intérêt public. Prenant appuisur le modèle de Scherer (1996), nous développons une analyse desinteractions entre les stratégies des banques, la structure du secteurfinancier et l’émergence d’une nouvelle politique publique à l’occasion del’épisodedesmégafusions.Unrappelhistoriqueestpar contrenécessaire.

Si la crise de 1929 a eu pour effet d’instituer laBanque duCanada (1935)comme banque centrale, il faut souligner que, selon Taylor et Baskerville(1994), c’est depuis la Bank Act de 1871 que s’est construit un véritableestablishment bancaire au Canada. Le tableau 1 en illustre la stabilitépuisqu’il montre que, pour les années 1901, 1929 et 1997, ce sontpratiquement lesmêmes banques ou compagnies d’assurances qui tiennentles dix premières places. Mieux encore, on découvre que neuf institutionsclassées en 1901 se sont combinées pour former les cinq premièresinstitutions au classement de 1997. Si la Canada Life Insurance Companydomine de sa présence le secteur des assurances depuis plus d’un siècle, lessix banques à charte majeures fournissent aussi un idéal-type de la

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continuité financière canadienne. Nous avons indiqué leurs sigles sur letableau 1 (colonne année 1997) et les désignerons dans le texte par leuracronyme : BRC, CIBC, BM, BS, TD et BN.

Tableau 1. Les dix premières institutions financières selonleurs actifs financiers

Année 1901 Année 1929 Année1997

1 Banque de Montréal Banque Royale duCanada

Banque Royale /Royal TrustCo : BRC

2 Canadian Bank ofCommerce

Banque de Montréal Imperial Bank ofCommerce : CIBC

3 Merchants’ Bank ofMontreal

Canadian Bank ofCommerce

Banque de Montréal :BM

4 Dominion Bank Royal Trust Co Banque Scotia : BS5 Canada LifeInsurance Co

Public UtilityInvestment Co

Toronto-Dominion :TD

6 Bank of Nova Scotia Bank of Nova Scotia Sun Life7 Imperial bank National Trust Co Manulife Financial8 Bank of Toronto Toronto General

Trust CoDesjardins-Laurentienne

9 Molson’s Bank Canada LifeAssurance Co

Banque Nationale :BN

10 Banque Royale duCanada

Dominion Bank Canada LifeAssurance Co

Source : Taylor et Baskerville (1994), 1901 et 1929; Annual Reports & IFIC, 1997.

Ona longtempsdécrit le système financier canadien comme reposant surles quatre piliers que constituent lesmétiers de la banque, de l’assurance, ducourtage de titres et de la gestion fiduciaire par les fiducies. La nettedistinction qui interdisait aux acteurs de chacun des quatre piliers de jouerun rôle en dehors de leur métier strictement défini s’est estompée depuis ladéréglementation des années 1980, et ce, selon trois étapes.

1) Àpartir de 1987 tout d’abord, les banques ayant été autorisées à exercerle métier de courtier en valeurs mobilières, il s’est produit le rachat degrandes sociétés de courtage par les banques qui se sont constituées ainsiune force de courtage (le vocable pm signifie la part de chacune de cesentités sur le marché du courtage) :

• BRCa rachetéDominionSecurities (1998) etRichardson (1996) pourformer BRC-Dominion-Securities (pm : 16 p. 100);

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Un réveil de la foi publique au Canada?

• CIBC a formé CIBC-World Markets à partir de rachats effectués en1988 et 1990 (Wood Gundy) (pm : 14,5 p. 100);

• BS a rachetéMcLeod pour former Scotia-McLeod en 1988 (pm : 14,8p. 100);

• BM a racheté Nesbitt Thomson en 1987, transformée par un autrerachat externe en Nesbitt-Burns en 1994, et qui va de pair avec BMInvestor Services et BM Investment Management (pm : 15 p. 100);

• TD a intégré First Marathon Securities (1988) puis WaterhouseCanada (1996) pour former TD-Securities (pm : 7 p. 100);

• BN a acquis 67 p. 100 du capital de la maison de courtageLévesque-Beaubien-Geoffr ion Inc. , puis a intégréLévesque-Beaubien avec sa filiale National Bank Securities (gestionde fonds mutuels et de fonds de pension) (pm : 4 p. 100).

2) Plus tard, en 1992, les banques ont reçu le droit d’exercer le métierd’assureur, et la distinction classique entre banque et assureur a disparusous le vocable de « bancassurance »; en 1993, la Caisse Desjardins aintégré la Laurentienne et, la même année, CIBC a créé quatre compagniesd’assurances, respectivement, CIBC Life Insurance, CIBC GeneralInsurance, CIBC General Group Insurance et CIBC InsuranceManagement. En janvier 1994, CIBC poursuit son avancée dansl’assurance en rachetant une partie de la compagnie d’assurancequébécoise MFQ Inc. Sur ce même marché des assurances, on peut citertrois rachats effectués en 1996 : la compagnie Westbury par BRC; LaPrudentielle par TD; et la Métropolitaine-Vie par BN. Ces entréesbancaires sur le marché des assurances se poursuivent aujourd’hui.

3) La troisième déréglementation a autorisé les banques à prendre lecontrôle des fiducies qui exercent au Canada, comme on le sait, desfonctions de gestion de fortunes et de notariat élargies. C’est ainsi quepresque toutes les fiducies ont été acquises et totalement intégrées auxbanques; dans un premier temps, la General Trust of Canada a été acquisepar laBN(21/07/1993), laRoyalTrust a été acquisepar laBRC(1/09/1993)et laMontreal TrustCo a été acquise par la BS (11/04/1994). Puis la CIBC aacquis la First LineTrust (1995), laBNa acquis la FamilyTrust (1996) et leMunicipal Trust (1997), et la BS a acquis la National Trust (1997). Iciencore la restructurationpar rachat externeetpar intégrationsepoursuit.

Que résulte-t-il de ces évolutions?Principalement, le raffermissement du poids et l’élargissement du rôle desonze banques à charte qui retrouvent en 1999 le poids qu’elles avaient audébut du siècle, soit une influence directe ou indirecte sur les deux tiers desactifs financiers duCanada; cette évolution vers la taille absolue était telle à

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la finde1997que lesBigSixcontrôlaient33p.100desassurances, 68p.100des maisons de courtage de titres et 93 p. 100 des trusts (fiducies).

Outre cette augmentation considérable de présence sur le marchécanadien des assurances, des fiducies et du courtage, les banques ontrenforcé leurs activités internationales, de façon à être présentes dans leglobal banking financier. Les chiffres de The Banker2 permettentd’observer deux éléments d’importance. D’une part, les banquescanadiennes exercent environ 36 p. 100 des leurs activités à l’international,ce qui est assez remarquable même si par ailleurs leur profitabilité globalene représentequ’àpeine2,5p. 100desprofits financiersmondiaux.D’autrepart, quatre banques parmi les Big Six canadiennes sont classées aupalmarès mondial des 50 global bankers :

• la BM, avec 58 p. 100 de son C.A. (chiffre d’affaires) provenantd’activités internationales, est très présente aux États-Unis (parl’acquisitiondeHarrisBankCorpetdeU.S.Bancorp)et auMexique;

• la BS effectue 49 p. 100 de sonC.A. dans les Caraïbes et enAmériquedu Sud;

• la CIBC effectue 30 p. 100 de son C.A. dans des activitésinternationales, principalement avec les États-Unis;

• et la BRC, avec 28 p. 100 de son C.A. en activités internationales,progresse grâce au rachat de la Mellon Bank (Chicago);

• de plus, TDconduit une stratégie d’implantation enAustralie grâce aurachat de la Westpac Banking Corp.

Il existait doncen1998une stabilitéde la taillenationale et internationaledes banques canadiennes lorsque s’est déroulé l’événement des deuxprojets de mégafusions, visant à réunir les quatre plus grandes banquescanadiennes en deux énormes groupes financiers : il s’agissait de formerdeux big dogs3 avec, d’une part, l’ensemble BM-BRC « une fusion entreégaux»; et, d ’autre part, l’ensembleCIBC-TDoù la préséance serait allée àCIBC. Or les deux fusions projetées vont échouer, contrairement auxattentes habituelles en la matière. En effet, les actuelles banques à charteétant le fruit de fusions antérieures, tout permettait d’espérer que lesmégafusions se dérouleraient à l’amiable.

La Toronto-Dominion résulte d’une fusion réalisée en 1955 entre laBankofToronto (fondéeen1855) et laDominionBank (fondéeen1871); laCIBC résulte d’une fusion réalisée en 1961 entre la Canadian Bank ofCommerce (fondée en 1867) et la Imperial Bank of Canada (fondée en1875). Et remontant dans le temps, on observe que la Imperial Bank aabsorbé la Weyburn Security Bank en 1930 et que la Canadian Bank ofCommerce est néede fusionsmultiples entre laBankofHamilton (1923), laSterling Bank of Canada (1924) et la Standard Bank of Canada (1928).Quant à la Banque Royale du Canada (BRC), elle a été constituée

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principalement par l’agrégation de la Quebec Bank (1917), la NorthernCrownBank (1918) et laUnionBankofCanada (1925). Enfin laBanque deMontréal a absorbé laMolson’sBanken1925.Ainsi onpouvait s’attendre àune répétition du processus récurrent par lequel les banques grossissent parfusions successives.

Il n’en a pas été ainsi, puisque les projets de mégafusions ont dû êtreabandonnés après plus de neuf mois de débats : l’événement des fusionsbancaires s’est donc transformé en une épisode qui prenait une dimensionpolitique inhabituelle et qui donnait au Canada, au sein des pays del’OCDE,uneoriginalité foncièrequant à la façond’aborder la régulationdusecteur financier. Cet article présente l’hypothèse selon laquelle unnouveau paradigme de la régulation publique des stratégies financières estné auCanada à travers l’épisode des projets avortés demégafusions. Aprèsavoir rappelé les faits, nous montrerons comment la notion de kairos, miseen évidence par le philosophe belge Jean Ladrière4, permet d’interpréter lerôle exceptionnel jouépar leGroupede travailMacKay.Puis, encomparantl’épisode canadien avec l’actualité des fusions bancaires dans d’autresrégions du monde (Europe, Asie), nous tenterons de montrer en quoi ilexiste justement une singularité dans le paradigme né à l’occasion del’échec des mégafusions bancaires de 1998 au Canada.

Mégafusions bancaires : pour ou contre? Le débat public commeévénement singulier en 1998 au CanadaLes deux annonces de mégafusions ont été faites sur le même thème :devenir des global players. La fusion de la Banque deMontréal (BM) avecla Banque Royale du Canada (BRC) a été annoncée par les deux présidentsrespectifs Matthew Barrett et John Cleghorn, le 23 janvier 1998, par lemessage : « nous n’avons pas l’intention d’attendre comme le détaillant aucoin de la rue qu’un Wal-Mart nous casse les reins. Nous voulons devenirsuffisamment forts pour donner aux hypermarchés de la finance laconcurrence la plus terrible qu’ils aient jamais rencontré »5 [traduction del’auteur]. La seconde fusion, annoncée le 17 avril 1998, entre la CanadianImperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) et la Toronto-Dominion (TD) apermis aux présidents respectifs Al Flood et Charles Baillie, de déclarer :« une fois notre intégration achevée, il nous faudra sérieusement penser àacquérir une banque américaine »6 [traduction de l’auteur].Mais en réalité,les deux mégabanques à venir étaient d’abord et avant tout des Canadianplayers; comme on peut le voir au tableau 2, le ratio de concentration del’industrie bancaire, CR4, mesuré comme la part des quatre plus grandesbanques dans les activités bancaires au Canada, serait passé de 57 p. 100 à75 p. 100 au terme des deux mégafusions, faisant du secteur financier unoligopole dont les trois quarts du marché seraient contrôlés par les quatreacteurs subsistants (à condition d’ailleurs que la Banque Nationale puissesurvivre dans un tel contexte).

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Tableau 2. Concentration dans le secteur bancaire

Big Sixavant fusion

Pourcentage desactifs bancaires

Pourcentage desprêts bancaires

Pourcentage desdépôts bancaires

Banque Royale 15,50 16,40 17,40

Banque deMontréal

13,10 12,40 14,60

CIBC 17,00 17,10 15,30

Toronto-Dominion

10,70 11,20 11,40

Banque Scotia 12,70 13,40 14,40

Banque Nationale 4,10 4,80 4,40

Ratio deconcentration CR4

56,30 57,10 58,70

Big Fouraprès la fusion

Pourcentage desactifs bancaires

Pourcentage desprêts bancaires

Pourcentage desdépôts bancaires

Banque Royale /Banque deMontréal 26,60 28,90 32,00

CIBC/TD 27,70 28,30 26,70

Banque Scotia 12,70 13,40 14,40

Banque Nationale 4,10 4,80 4,40

Nouveau CR4 73,10 75,30 77,50

Source : Financial Post, 23/08/1998 (RBC Dominion Securities).

Dès l’annonce des deux fusions, leurs conséquences sur l’ensemble dusecteur financierduCanadasont apparuesconsidérablesen termesde taille;pour le seul ensemble BM-BRC, le rapprochement de leurs activités degestion de titres (respectivement à travers Nesbitt-Burns et DominionSecurities) permettait le contrôle 20 p. 100 des échanges de titres financiersau Canada et l’émission annuelle de 20 milliards de dollars canadiens denouveaux titres7. Plus généralement, les deuxmégabanques contrôleraientplus de 65 p. 100 desmarchés canadiens de l’argent, dépassant ainsi le seuilde 65 p. 100 « au-delà duquel la trop grande concentration affecte lesconditions de la concurrence »8 [traduction de l’auteur]. En réalité,l’inquiétude, révélée dès l’annonce des fusions en 1998, prend sa sourcel’année 1994, quand est constitué, sous le nom de Democracy Watch, ungroupe de pression sur le gouvernement fédéral, sur les provinces et sur lesélus et leurs électeurs. Une double idée se fait jour, à la fois forcer les

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banques à réinvestir leurs dépôts au niveau local et demander que desmécanismes publics soient mis en place pour vérifier comment lesstratégies commerciales des banques affectent la population locale; lanotion d’accountability exprime le fait que le citoyen canadien demande depouvoir compter sur sa banque et que celle-ci ne le délaisse pas pourquelque profit facile obtenu au loin. La crainte est de voir l’argent canadienquitter le pays au lieu de s’y investir ou abandonner une province qui ait desbesoins de financement productif pour s’envoler vers des produitsfinanciers sans aucun effet réel sur la production locale de biens et services.La notion d’économie-casino développée par Keynes pour qualifier unesituation où les acteurs dotés de liquidités préfèrent les placer sur des jeuxboursiers plutôt que sur des projets industriels revient à l’ordre du jour, aucontact des États-Unis où le rendement annuel des fonds mutuels attire lesplacements canadiens. En 1995, à l’effet de limiter ces risques de fuite del’argent canadien, leCommunityReinvestmentActest voté; il comporteuneobligation d’information (disclosure) sur le réinvestissement local desfonds collectés. Puis le 19 décembre 1996, après que le gouvernementfédéral canadien ait signalé par un Livre blanc son intention dedéréglementer définitivement l’industrie bancaire, le Parlement obtientqu’il soit créé un groupe de travail sur l’avenir des services financierscanadiens que Pierre Ducros anime jusqu’en juillet 1997. Pourtant cesefforts civiques ne semblent pas beaucoup faire évoluer les choses jusqu’àl’annonce de la fusion géante entre la BM et la BRC.

Dès la première annonce de mégafusion entre la BM et la BRC, leministre des finances du Canada, Paul Martin, exprime sa propre surprised’avoir été prévenunonpas par les protagonistes,mais plutôt par la radio aumatin du 23 janvier. Il exprime immédiatement des réserves, car « la fusiondevra attendre d’être approuvée par le gouvernement avant d’êtreréalisée »9 [traduction de l’auteur]. La seconde annonce, concernant lafusionCIBC-TD, intervenue troismois plus tard alors que les observateursse demandaient « who will dance with whom? »10, est également unesurprise. En effet le président de la Toronto-Dominion, Charles Baillie,avait déclaré en janvier 1998 lors de la fusion BM-BRC que la TD nefusionnerait jamais avec personne.

Nous sommes numéro un dans la syndication internationale etdans les services auxclients : pasmalpourunepetite banque!Danscemétier on réussit en étant lemeilleur et non en étant le plus gros.La taille n’est pas une stratégie; c’est une statistique! Donc pournous, pas de fusion. [Traduction de l’auteur]Trois mois plus tard, en annonçant la fusion de sa banque TD avec la

CIBC, le même Baillie reconnaissait que :Quelque chose a changé avec la fusion BM-BRC. Certes, lespetites banques peuvent exceller mais on ne peut plus être sûr derien pour l’avenir; aussi se condamner à rester isolé devenait unestratégie à haut risque11. [Traduction de l’auteur]

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L’opinion publique canadienne, face à de tels retournements d’idées,accroît dès lors sa pression sur le gouvernement fédéral pour que les projetsde mégafusions soient évalués dans toutes leurs dimensionséconomico-politiques. Placé devant cette délicate question, legouvernement fédéral amplifie le dispositif habituel : non seulement ilconfie les deux dossiers au Bureau de la concurrence du ministère del’Industrie, chargé d’appliquer la législation antitrust canadienne, mais ilredéfinit uneméthodologie selon laquelle il existe trois barrières à franchiravant qu’une mégafusion puisse être approuvée :

• leBureaude la concurrencepeut refuser d’approuver une fusion si elleest reconnue comme anticoncurrentielle; ce qui est mesuré par une oudes réponses positives aux deux questions :

a) est-ce que l’une des mégabanques créées par une fusionpossède plus de 35 p. 100 du marché bancaire?

b) est-ce que, une fois les fusions accomplies, les quatre plusgrandes banques (les deux mégas et les deux suivantes auclassement) détiennent plus de 65 p. 100 du marchébancaire?;

• de son côté le Parlement peut constituer uneCommission d’enquête etdiligenter des auditions;

• en dernier ressort, le Ministre des finances décidera si oui ou non ildonne son accord aux fusions envisagées.

Aussitôt reçue lamission d’évaluer les fusions projetées, le Bureau de laconcurrence place 22 analystes à temps plein pour rassembler et examinerles pièces des dossiers; un bilan établi en août 1998 et appuyé d’unevérification rigoureuse des termes de laLoi canadienne sur la concurrence(1985) fait état de 500 000 pages dépouillées et 25 bases de donnéesreconstituées. De plus, pour la première fois parmi les 1200 cas de fusionsétudiésdepuis 1994, leBureaude la concurrence émetdes subpoenadans lafusion BM-BRC; l’expression latine subpoena signifie « sous peine » etdésigne un écrit enjoignant à la personne (un cadre dirigeant le plussouvent) de se présenter pour témoigner sous peine de sanctions pénales.Ces mandats sont utilisés lorsque la coopération franche, ouverte etvolontaire entre les parties et leBureaun’est pasobtenue; ils ouvrent la voieà une procédure auprès du Tribunal de la concurrence, pouvant remonterjusqu’à la Cour suprême du Canada. Des subpoena ont donc été lancés àtrois reprises, respectivement le 14 mai (contre la Investment DealersAssociation), le 19mai (envers l’Associationdes banquiers canadiens) et le17 juillet (contre la Direction de la Banque de Montréal). L’un desdirecteurs a résumé la recherche en disant : « qu’ils soient localisés àVancouver ou à Halifax, tous les cadres supérieurs des banques sontsommésdenous donner tout ce qu’ils ont dans leurs tiroirs ».Concrètementle Bureau a cherché à découvrir les documents internes ou externes aux

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banques qui montreraient une stratégie de domination dumarché financierdans les domaines suivants : impositionde tarifs plus élevésou réductiondela qualité des services à la clientèle afin de diminuer les coûts de revient;domination des marchés des cartes bancaires par la fusion de la Banque deMontréal (MasterCard) et la BanqueRoyale (Visa); domination dumarchédes PME par la Banque Royale.

Le Bureau cherche précisément à évaluer dans chaque cas si lanouvelle entité résultante est capable d’augmenter les tarifs desservices financiers ou de diminuer la qualité et/ou la quantité desservices offerts.12 [Traduction de l’auteur]Le tableau3 reprend lesdonnéesdebaseconcernant lesBigSixet laplace

des banques fusionnées dans le secteur financier canadien, et montrel’ampleur des préoccupations du Bureau de la concurrence : actifs desbanques; chiffre d’affaires; nombre d’emplois concernés par les fusions;nombre de succursales ou agences bancaires locales; et nombre de guichetsautomatiques.

Il est apparu assez clairement pendant cette enquête que la fusionCIBC-TD soulevait moins de problèmes au Bureau de la concurrence quecelle BM-BRC, probablement parce que le dossier était mieux préparé etque la logique de la fusion était celle d’une absorption avec cession externede certaines activités. Par contre, le cas de fusion BM-BRC estpolitiquement plus complexe. En effet, la puissance financière et le relatifsecret entretenu par laBanqueRoyale sur ses activités, doublé de la volontéde choisir un nouveau nomoriginal pour lamégabanque à venir, posaient laquestion du rapport des pouvoirs entre la sphère politique et la sphèrefinancière au plus haut niveau canadien.

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Tableau 3. La dimension des Big Six et des deuxmégafusions (1997)

Actifs en$ US

(milliards)

Revenusbancaires$ US

(millions)

Nombred’employés

Nombre desuccursales

Nombre deguichetsauto-matique

s

Big SixBanqueRoyale

170 4 700 51 000 1 550 4 250

Banque deMontréal

140 6 100 39 000 1 250 2 050

CIBC 165 6 000 44 000 1 350 3 000

Toronto-Dominion

115 4 400 30 000 950 2 200

BanqueScotia

120 4 500 39 000 1 650 2 500

BanqueNationale

50 2 100 12 500 650 700

Total 760 27 800 215 500 7 400 14 700

FusionsBanque deMontréal/BanqueRoyale 310 10 800 90 000 2 800 6 300

CIBC/TD 280 10 400 74 000 2 300 5 200

TotalFusions 590 21 200 164 000 5 100 11 500

Poids :Fusions /Big Six 78 p. 100 76 p. 100 76 p. 100 69 p. 100 78 p. 100

Source : Rapports Annuels 1995/1997.

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Les arguments « pour » : la faveur des mégafusions et lesoppositions internes à l’establishment financier« Cela revient simplement à faire un peu de chimie de base » ont déclaré

lesprésidents JohnCleghornetMathewBarrett, car« la fusionde laBanqueRoyale et de laBanque deMontréal permet des synergies importantes ». Leconcept de synergie est en effet au cœur de l’argumentation favorable auxfusions, car la synergie permet d’atteindre une meilleure efficience sousl’angle de la productivité des facteurs travail et capital; le point de vue selonlequel la fusion de deux banques peut procurer, par les synergies qu’ellepermet, une meilleure efficience et, par conséquent, des gains pour leconsommateur, a d’ailleurs été appliqué aux fusionsBM-RBCetCIBC-TDpar les deux économistes Mathewson et Quigley13; ils estiment à 20 p. 100des charges l’économie globale qu’une fusiondevrait permettre de réaliser.De son côté laBanque deMontréal a diffusé, auprès de sa clientèle et de sonpersonnel, une brochure signée par son directeur général, TonyComper, etqui est un plaidoyer pour la fusion. Le résumé de cette brochure, présentéecomme une série de cinq questions/réponses fait apparaître sa logique.

1) Pourquoi fusionner? Pour être plus compétitif etmieux servirnotre client. Les Big Six ne pèsent que 46 p. 100 des actifsfinanciers et il y a de nouveaux entrants étrangers : cettefusion nous permettra, en tant que banque pleinementcanadienne, de nous battre pour vos affaires bancaires et degagner. Ce qui signifie que vous aussi vous gagnerez. [Cepoint est d’ailleurs développé dans la lettre ouverte, adresséepar leprésidentMathewBarrett14 auFinancialPostMagazine].

2) Est-ce que cette fusion entraînera des pertes d’emploi? Non,car au cours des dernières années, nous avons créé plus de4000 emplois/année et nous allons continuer vers des emploismeilleurs et plus qualifiés, remplis par nos propres employés,que nous voulons conserver.

3) La fusion amènera-t-elle à fermer des agences ou dessuccursales? Non, car nous nous sommes engagés à fairecroître notre réseau jusqu’à 3000 agences dans les cinqannées à venir, mais selon un concept qui va évoluer; nousallons placer des points financiers dans votre super-marché etau bureau de poste du coin de la rue.

4) Comment cette fusion va-t-elle toucher les petitessuccursales rurales? Nous sommes sensibles aux petitescommunautés, en particulier dans les 175 petites villes oùnous sommes la seule banque présente; nous nous sommesengagés à ce qu’aucune communauté rurale ne perde sasuccursale.

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5) Comment cette fusion affectera-t-elle les PME? Nous noustiendrons aux côtés des PME, en leur offrant, comme par lepassé, des conditions privilégiées de crédit (par exemple untaux d’intérêt spécial pour des emprunts inférieurs à 100 000dollars canadiens).

Face à cette argumentation pourtant solide, PeterGodsoe, le président delaBanqueScotia, s’est élevéavecvigueur15. Il aparlédecentresdepouvoirsexcessifs des mégabanques, de fusions complètement anticoncurrentielleset de disparitions probables de succursales et d’emplois bancaires.

Je me dois de lutter contre ces fusions en tant que Canadien, maisaussi parce que je suis par mes fonctions l’un des rares à avoirréfléchi auxméfaits de ce type d’opération. Placer le tiers de notresystème financier dans des mégabanques n’est pas une simpleaffaire de rien du tout. C’est littéralement placer de la dynamitedans le système financier canadien. [Traduction de l’auteur]

Très gênés par cette charge venue d’un collègue de l’establishmentfinancier canadien, brillant patron d’un des Big Six, les quatre présidentsdes banques en cours de fusion ont tiré argument de « la peur de notrecollègue ». Mais sur le fond, la question posée par P. Godsoe est celle desavoir si la synergie annoncée par les dirigeants apportera une efficacitéréelle des fusions, du point de vue des services offerts à la nationcanadienne; or les travaux d’étude précis montrent qu’il existe des doutesentre les experts en finances et en stratégie. Prenons un exemple : la fusionde la BMet de la BRC devrait, selon le principe de synergie, amener à faireun seul ensemble avec leurs activités de courtage de titres, ce qui signifiefusionner Nesbitt-Burns (côté BM) avec Dominion Securities (côté BRC).OrMichael Porter (1986) souligne que la recherche de synergie se heurte àl’inertie des hommes et des structures et qu’elle s’est souvent révéléeinfaisable, car très élevée en coûts de coordination et de restructuration.

La synergie a trop souvent servi d’alibi. Mal comprise, elle aconduit à des acquisitions malheureuses. Même dans les cas oùexiste une réelle possibilité de synergie, les entreprises peuventéchouer parce qu’elles ne parviennent pas à surmonter lesdifficultés de mise en œuvre.16

On ne peut donc pas affirmer d’emblée que la synergie recherchéeprocurera à coup sûr les économies annoncées; la question est donc desavoir si, dans le domaine bancaire, les fusions produisent les effetsescomptés. Il existe dans ce domaine un travail patiemment réalisé parStephen Rhoades17, un économiste américain de la banque centrale (U.S.Federal Reserve), qui démontre qu’il ne faut pas confondre les économiesréalisées (moindres coûts) avec un gain d’efficacité dans les servicesbancaires; en effet, une banque peut réduire ses dépenses après une fusion,supprimer des services, fermer des agences et faire des économies, sanspour autant améliorer son service. Au lieu de devenir plus efficace, elle« rétrécit » de toutes parts (Rhoades parle de shrinkage). Pour qu’il y ait

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véritablement gain en efficacité, il faut que les économies réalisées soienten rapport avec une augmentation des services, en nombre et/ou en qualité.Dans son étude de neuf cas de fusions bancaires aux États-Unis, Rhoadesdémontre que si les neuf fusions amènent des économies, seulement quatrefusions sur les neuf améliorent l’efficacité globale, et ceci dans un contextebeaucoup plus concurrentiel (donc plus tourné vers l’efficacité) que leCanada. Dès lors il n’est pas évident que les fusions anoncées gagnent enefficacité bancaire, donc en efficacité économique et financière.

Le marché financier a d’ailleurs sanctionné assez négativement lesprojets de fusions, puisque les cours des actions des banques concernées asubi une baisse sensible, plus forte que celle dumarché, au cours de l’année1998. Sous réserve d’études plus approfondies, le cours des actionsbancaires aurait baissé de 25 à 30 p. 100 entre le 1er avril et le 15 août 1998,tandis que l’indice TS-300 de la bourse de Toronto aurait baissé18 de 14 p.100, ce qui atteste de la volatilité relative des banques pour les investisseursfinanciers. Un aspect sous-jacent est l’exposition au risque, telle qu’elle estperçue par les analystes financiers pour ce qui concerne les banquescanadiennes. Selon une estimation récente19, la crise financière qui frappele Brésil, l’Asie et la Russie fait porter sur les Big Six du Canada un risqueglobal évalué à 700 milliards de dollars américains. Comme ce risque estpratiquement équivalent au total de leurs actifs, onabien ici uneexplicationdu comportement des marchés boursiers canadiens, qui prennent du reculpar rapport à la valeur sous-jacente des actifs bancaires. De ce point de vue,les projets desmégafusions ne sont rassurants que si les banques fusionnéesprésentent des tableaux de risques complémentaires (ou qui s’annulent lesuns les autres), ce qui ne semble pas être le cas ni pour la fusionBM-BRCnipour la fusion CIBC-TD. Il faut attendre l’évolution des notationsconférées par Moody’s ou Standars & Poor’s, pour savoir comment lesfusions pourraient retentir ultérieurement en termes d’évaluation desrisques.

En outre, le débat déclenché par les fusions bancaires ne semble pasavoir, pour le moment, suscité une réaction unanime des actionnaires, quisemblent, au Canada, en position d’attente. Cependant, comme l’on voitapparaître ailleurs de violents conflits entre des actionnairesminoritaires etla direction, on peut faire l’hypothèse qu’il pourrait se produire au Canadade semblables mouvements20 dans le cas où les banques forceraient leurpassage à la fusion ou si les fusions réalisées conduisaient à de mauvaisesperformances financières. Un aspect complémentaire concernel’accusation lancée contre les dirigeants qui décident les fusions, au motifqu’ils seraient guidés par leur orgueil et leur désir de grandeur. Professeurde gestion à la York University (Toronto), Philip Pham affirme que« l’hubris managérial est probablement une force dominante dans lesintentions de fusions, une raison matérielle pour les présidents d’étendreleur empire »21 [traduction de l’auteur]. Ce point rejoint également lereproche fait aux dirigeants qui cherchent à maximiser leur rémunération,

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plutôt que le service aux clients ou la rentabilité des capitaux apportés parles actionnaires. S’il est vrai qu’au Canada il existe une relation presquedirecte entre la taille de la banque et la rémunération de son président22,néanmoins cet aspect de la réalité n’a pas donné lieu à une contestation lorsdes projets de fusions.

Les arguments « contre » et la défaveur des mégafusions dans lepublicSi la force des arguments en faveur des fusions a bien été entendue, unecontestation face aux mégafusions s’est exprimée de l’intérieur même del’establishment financier, dont le principal porte-parole a été P. Godsoe, leprésident de la Banque Scotia, connu pour son franc-parler et son bon sens.Selon lui, les mégafusions présentent un risque global pour le Canada,plutôt pour des raisons externes, qui tiennent au marché financier (risquesystémique et baisse des cours), que pour des raisons de gestion interne(impossibilité de savoir si des synergies attendues se produironteffectivement). La prudence de ce banquier s’appuie sur l’observationselon laquelle certaines fusions bancaires déséquilibrent la relation entreles banques fusionnées et leur environnement. Ainsi aux États-Unis lafusion-absorption de Crocker Bank par Wells Fargo en 1996 a mené à uneréaction de rejet à la fois par les employés et les clients; en l’espace de 90jours, non seulement 350 parmi les 500 chefs d’agence de Crocker ontquitté leur poste, mais 20 p. 100 de la clientèle deWells Fargo a changé debanque. En Europe, la United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) a reconnu enOctobre 1998 qu’à la suite de sa fusion de décembre 1997, une fuite de130 000 clients s’était produite, représentant 2,7 p. 100 des cinqmillions decomptes ouverts chez elle. « Nous avions tablé sur une perte de 3 à 4 p. 100de clientèle lors de la fusion » a alors indiqué sonporte-parole23. Pour ce quiconcerne leCanada, une enquête réalisée à la demandede l’Associationdescourtiers d’assurances du Canada pendant l’été 1998montre que 56 p. 100des personnes interrogées pensent que les fusions BM-BRC et CIBC-TDn’auront pas d’effets positifs pour les consommateurs et que 68 p. 100 sontconvaincus qu’elles auront pour conséquence la fermeture de succursales(enquête réalisée sur 1013 personnes, résultats à 95 p. 100 de confianceavec une marge de +/- 3 p. 100). Ces chiffres illustrent en effet les deuxgrands sujets d’inquiétude : quelle protection pour le consommateur en cequi a trait aux services bancaires et quel impact sur l’emploi?

a) Pour le consommateur, les risques perçus sont la baisse du service etl’augmentation des frais.

• La restructuration des banques peut mener à des réductions sensiblesde services (heures d’ouverturemoins étendues, réduction du nombred’employés pour le service, substitution de guichets automatiques« sans parole », fermeture de certaines succursales qui amènerait descoûts de déplacement).

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• La fusion entre banques peut aussi produire une augmentation desfrais; actuellement on estime qu’en moyenne chaque compte coûteentre 3 et 10 dollars de frais par mois à son titulaire et que ces agios(dont le détail des tarifs varie selon les banques) rapportent 4 à 5p. 100du revenu des banques au Canada; face aux fusions annoncées, unerevendication reprise par 40 p. 100 des clients a été de demander ladiminution de ces charges jugées excessives.

• Un autre motif de plainte est la tarification des cartes de crédit,notamment en ce qui concerne le taux d’intérêt pris par la banque surles découverts de carte. On a constaté en effet que le taux appliqué est,en moyenne, de 10 p. 100 au-dessus du taux de base du marchéfinancier, ce qui représente un confortable surplus à une époque dedéflation.

• Par ailleurs, l’usage de systèmes informatiques sophistiqués, danslesquels se trouvent des informations personnelles sensibles, pose degraves questions éthiques quant à la protection de la vie privée, ainsiqu’on l’a vu en France avec les fichiers « confidentiels clients » duCrédit Mutuel de Bretagne24. En 1997, l’Association des banquierscanadiens a publié un manuel de bonne conduite que les banques sesont toutes engagées à appliquer; mais ni l’Association desconsommateurs duCanada ni le Sénat duCanada (dans sonComité dela banque et du commerce) n’acceptent l’idée d’une simpleautorégulation des banques par les banques « qui n’offre pas lesgaranties suffisantes pour la vie privée des canadiens ».

• La pratique des ventes liées (services bancaires, financementimmobilier, assurances, pensions et produits financiers, etc.) serépand de plus en plus et conduit à des abus de pouvoirs au détrimentdu libre choix du consommateur.

• Même le système des médiateurs mis en place par les banques estcritiqué. L’invitation « on peut joindre l’ombudsmande laCIBC,MiltMacLean, au téléphone ou par télécopieur »25 a été contestée par lesassociationsdeconsommateurs aumotif que labanquenepeut être à lafois juge et partie. La proposition de l’Association des banquierscanadiens de mettre en place un ombudsman a été combattue par laCoalition canadienne pour le réinvestissement communautaire(CCRC) : « [cet ombudsman] est incapable de réguler les situationsqui résultent de la confusion des quatre piliers traditionnels; nousdemandons qu’un véritable médiateur ayant force de justice soitdésigné par le gouvernement, avec tout pouvoir pour enquêter sur lespratiques ». On voit donc que les fusions BM-BRC et CIBC-TD ontprovoqué la cristallisation des revendications face aux évolutionsbancaires réalisées depuis 10 ans. Marnie McCall, directrice del’Association canadienne des consommateurs, a déclaré que « leconsommateur en a assez des agios mensuels, des charges d’intérêt

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appliquées aux cartes bancaires, des niveaux excessifs de profits, etdes salaires délirants versés aux dirigeants des banques. Le Ministredes finances doit rétablir une vraie concurrence en autorisant desbanques étrangères à entrer, avant d’autoriser la fusion. »

• Enfin, le jour même de l’annonce de la fusion BM-BRC26, le mondecanadien des petits entrepreneurs, des PME et des agriculteurs s’estému. Ed Segsworth, président de la Fédération des agriculteurs del’Ontario, a déclaré que « ces fusions sont une façon d’éviter laconcurrence et de nous faire porter plus de coûts alors que nous, nousaffrontons la compétition ». Jayson Myers, économiste en chef del’Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters, pense que « comme cettenouvelle mégabanque sera loin de ses clients, une questiondramatique va se poser aux PME : comment la mégabanque lesécoutera-t-elle? ». Quant à Catherine Swift, présidente de laFédération canadienne de l’entreprise indépendante, elle a indiquéque lesdeux tiersdesPMEsonthostiles à l’idéede fusionbancaire.

b) En ce qui concerne l’emploi, les gouvernements des provinces ont faitréaliser par des économistes des étudesd’impact sur la population active. Sil’on en croit l’étude réalisée par S. McBride27 pour le Minister of SmallBusiness de laColombie-Britannique, le secteur bancaire génère dans cetteprovince 22 800 emplois directs et 23 400 emplois induits. Les évaluationsde l’impact des fusions BM-BRC et CIBC-TD se situent dans la fourchettede pertes d’emplois suivante : 2300 à 3400 emplois directs perdus et 2400 à3400emplois induits (par le secteurbancaire) perdus, soit 10à15 p. 100desemplois actuellement existants. Ce taux de suppression d’emploisreprésente 50 000 disparitions à l’échelle du Canada, dont 25 000 emploisbancaires directs, avec, pour les trois quarts, un impact en emploisféminins. Dès lors on comprend un autre volet de l’inquiétude dugouvernement, avec une composante sociale potentiellement explosive. Ilfaut souligner que ces estimations sont cohérentes avec l’observation dessuppressions de postes intervenues dans de grandes fusions comparables,par exemple chez UBS (7000 postes et 200 succursales en cours desuppression depuis 12 mois en Suisse). Si pour les syndicats lesmégafusions sont une « folie complète », les dirigeants donnent une autreinterprétation des faits. Comment concilier la réalité des diminutionsd’emplois, avec lediscourspubliépar lesdirigeantsdesbanques fusionnéesqui indiquent qu’il y aura du travail pour tout le monde? Une réponse a étédonnée par JohnCleghorn, le président de la BanqueRoyale, lorsqu’il a ditque le mécanisme principal de redéploiement serait l’attrition, c’est-à-direles départs naturels par démission, retraite anticipée et congés d’invalidité àlong terme. Ainsi la pyramide de l’emploi dans les banques diminueraitnaturellement par le non-remplacement des partants, ce qui permet à lahaute direction de nier avoir des projets de licenciement des employés.

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L’issue « normale » aurait dû être un accord sur les mégafusions,assorti de conditions aisément réalisablesSi l’annonce des mégafusions a déclenché un vaste débat, on s’attendaitpourtant à une solution balancée entre les arguments du pour et du contre,qui amènerait un accord sur le principe des mégafusions, assorti deconditions limitant leur impact immédiat sur l’emploi et sur lesconsommateurs. En effet, sur le plan mondial, le mouvement des fusionsentre banques amenant les spécialistes à parler de restructuring frenzy28progresse comme un rouleau compresseur, avec quelques modalitésannexes qui permettent de limiter les effets les plus brutaux. On l’a vu enFrance avec la fusion entre Crédit Agricole et Indosuez (1997), qui s’esttraduite par une restructuration drastique interne. On l’a également vu enSuisse avec la fusion SBS-UBS menée par un banquier hors pair, MarcelOspel29. Dans tous les cas, le principal argument utilisé pour justifier lesfusions est celui de devenir un global player et de dégager ainsi unerentabilité plus forte; cette expression visant à la fois l’acquisition d’unetaille mondiale et la couverture d’une gamme complète de métiersfinanciers. En ce qui concerne la taille, elle permet des économies d’échelle(ainsi UBS a annoncé un programme d’économies par la suppression de13000postes sur un total de 56000 salariés30) et un gain dans les opérationsfinancières menées dans un cadre mondial, perçu comme plus stable, carplus diversifié et plus volumineux. Pour ce qui est de la gammedesmétiers,les fusions permettent de proposer dans le monde entier cinq types deservices financiers : banque de détail, banque d’affaires, gestion d’actifs,services d’assurances et spécialisation de type immobilier ou patrimonial.À cet égard, ce qui se passe aux États-Unis est le plus révélateur : comptetenu de leur proximité géographique avec leCanada, l’exemple des fusionsde banques américaines est particulièrement impressionnant; en voici deuxexemples :

• BankAmerica : sous la présidence de HughMacColl, la NationsBankest devenue la troisième banque américaine, après avoir acquis etfusionné en août 1996 la Boatmen’s Bancshares, en juin 1997 labanque d’investissementMontgomery Securities puis en août 1997 laBarnett Banks. Sur les neuf premiers mois de 1997, la NationsBank aréalisé un bénéfice de 2,3 milliards de dollars, soit 30 p. 100 de plusqu’en 1996. Sur cette lancée, NationsBank a annoncé le 12 avril 1998sa fusion avec BankAmerica pour constituer, avec 180 000 employéset un total de bilan de 570 milliards de dollars, « la banque del’Amérique, à la maison et dans le monde entier »31.

• Citigroup : le 7 avril 1998, la banque Citicorp et le groupe financierTravelers annonçaient une fusion dans Citigroup, un groupecorporatif donnant accès« àplusde100millionsde clients disséminésdans plus de 100 pays »32. La déclaration commune des deuxprésidents JohnReed (Citicorp) et SandyWeill (Travelers), « thiswasa deal that you simply had to do», est typique des fins poursuivies : par

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la vente croisée d’assurancesTravelers, de produits SmithBarneys’ etde cartes bancaires Citicorp, la mégabanque Citigroup pense obtenirune économie d’échelle qui produise un effet d’appel vers la clientèlemondiale (l’objectif d’avoir un milliard de clients en 2010, soitenviron 10 p. 100 de la population mondiale, a été annoncé); à courtterme Citigroup estime que le surcroit de bénéfice à obtenir de lafusion se situe entre deux et trois milliards de dollars par an.

En résumé la doctrine admise couramment est qu’enmatière de servicesfinanciers, la taille engendre la rentabilité, laquelle engendre à son tour laviabilité de la banque. L’épisode canadien s’inscrit en contrepoint eténonce une logique selon laquelle il n’est pas sûr que la taille d’une banqueaille de pair avec son efficacité. Comment et pourquoi l’événement desmégafusions s’est-il transformé en avènement d’un nouveau paradigme?

Le kairos du Groupe de travail MacKay : la taille d’une banqueva-t-elle de pair avec son efficacité?Établi en décembre 1996, le Groupe de travail sur l’avenir du secteur desservices financiers au Canada n’avait pas la vocation précise d’étudier laquestion des fusions bancaires, mais se trouvant confrontée directementaux deux annonces successives de mégafusions, il a choisi d’aborder lesujet de front, sans se dérober. On doit probablement à son président,Harold. H. MacKay, la résolution d’analyser à fond les implications desfusions, dans une évaluation coûts-bénéfices approfondie pour ce quiconcerne spécifiquement la taille des établissements financiers. Pourquoice paramètre de la taille a-t-il autant remué le Groupe, le poussant àapprofondir son recueil d’informations et sa consultation d’experts?Comment le Groupe MacKay a-t-il abouti à une vision originale de cettequestion? En quoi parler d’un effet de kairos, au sens de ce mot grec quisignifie le moment décisif où l’homme rencontre l’histoire?

Avant de répondre à ces questions, un rapide rappel de la situation desacteurs financiers s’impose; en effet le Canada est un pays relativementriche, où les opérations financières se sont trouvées concentrées sur « lesquatre piliers » présentés au tableau 4 et élaboré par le GroupeMacKay. Lapart des actifs financiers détenus par les banques est estimée à 63 p. 100,pourcentage auquel il faut ajouter les courtiers qui sont filiales des banqueset une partie des actifs détenus par les compagnies d’assurances filialiséespar les banques. La situation américaine est bien différente de la situationcanadienne : en effet, malgré le mouvement de concentration bancaire auxÉtats-Unis qui a fait baisser le nombre des banques de 14 500 en 1983 à9700 en 1996, le ratio de concentration bancaire est beaucoup plus faible.Face aux 9700 banques américaines relativement éparpillées (quiprésentent un ratio moyen d’une banque pour 30 000 habitants), le Canadaaligne 90 banques beaucoup plus concentrées (représentant un ratio d’unebanque pour 300 000 habitants). Contrairement aux apparences le Canada,

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dix fois plus petit que les États-Unis en population et PIB, a une forcebancaire 10 fois plus concentrée.Ainsi les banques canadiennes détiennentau moins 70 p. 100 des actifs financiers du pays, et les mégafusionsplaceraient la moitié de cette richesse « dans les mains » de deux banquesseulement.

Tableau 4. Les acteurs du secteur financier au Canada

Chiffre d’affaires Actifs financiers Total emplois

Acteurs Milliards $ p. 100 Milliards $ p. 100 Nombred’employés

p. 100

Banques etCredit Unions 92 47 1 429 63 256 400 47

Compagniesd’assurances 80 41 337 15 198 900 36

Courtiers etfonds mutuels 20 10 438 19 67 900 12

Fiducies 5,4 3 54 2 22 900 4

Total : SecteurFinancier 197,4 100 2 258 100 546 100 100

Source : McKinsey in MacKay Task Force Report, 1998

On observe une sorte de paradoxe dans la situation canadienne, trèsconcentréevuede l’intérieur,mais relativementpetitevuede l’extérieur33 :

1) Les banques canadiennes sont « grosses » en termes de partdumarché national; en effet, avec 57 p. 100 de part demarchépour les quatre premières banques, le Canada se situe loindevant la France (où ses quatre premières banques prennent45 p. 100 de part de marché), le Royaume-Uni (37 p. 100 depart demarché) et l’Allemagne (20 p. 100 de part demarché).

2) Les actifs financiers canadiens représentaient, à la fin de1997, environ 2200 milliards de dollars dont 65 p. 100détenus par les banques et 15 p. 100 par les compagniesd’assurances, mais avec une très forte concentration. Les sixpremières banques détenaient 72 p. 100 des actifs bancaires etles six premières compagnies d’assurances détenaient 91 p.100 des actifs d’assurances. Le seul secteur où la concen-tration restait relativement faible au Canada était celui ducourtage de titres (et gestion de fortune) où les six premierscourtiers pesaient 2 p. 100 des actifs financiers.

3) Pourtant la place mondiale du secteur financier canadienreste relativement modeste. Au classement mondial des

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banques exprimé par le montant des actifs financiers, ontrouvait en 1997 dans les vingt premières places sept banquesjaponaises, trois banques américaines, trois banquesfrançaises, deux banques allemandes, deux banquesbritanniques, deux banques suisses et une banquenéerlandaise. Les trois principales banques à chartecanadiennes se situaient respectivement à la 50e place(Banque Royale du Canada), la 55e place (CIBC) et la 72eplace (Banque de Montréal). En ce qui concerne les activitésfinancières spécifiques de gestion d’actifs financiers(placements et fortunes), on trouvait, parmi les dix premiersmondiaux, quatre groupes américains, deux groupesjaponais, deux groupes suisses, un groupe britannique et ungroupe français. Le premier groupe canadien, SunLifen’arrivait que 52e; le suivant, Desjardins-Laurentienne était71e; et ensuite, très proches, la CDP du Québec (151e rang) etla Banque Royale (157e rang).

4) Si la concentration bancaire est bien supérieure au Canadapar rapport aux États-Unis, la capitalisation boursière desbanques américaines est par contre bien supérieure à celle desbanques canadiennes. Deux effets jouent en ce sens : d’unepart, la croissance de la valeur boursière des six premièresbanques américaines s’est faite au rythme de plus de 32 p. 100par an de 1987 à 1997 (contre seulement 17 p. 100 par an pourles six premières canadiennes), d’autre part, le multipleexprimant la valeur de marché des cinq premières banquesaméricaines était supérieur à trois fois la valeur aux livrescontre seulement unmultiple de deux pour les cinq premièresbanques canadiennes en 1997.

5) Enfin, on note que le profit réalisé en 1997 par l’ensemble desbanques canadiennes ne représente que 2,9 p. 100 des profitsbancaires mondiaux, tandis que le profit des banquesaméricaines pèse 33 p. 100, celui des banques européennes 28p. 100 et celui des banques japonaises 16 p. 100 des profitsmondiaux.

Pour résoudre le dilemme canadien (paradoxe entre concentration àl’intérieur du pays et petite taille à l’extérieur) les mégafusions voulaientmaximiser la taille de deux poids lourds sur le marché canadien, pourdisposer face au monde d’une force de résistance, selon une logique demasse :

• plusunebanqueestgrande,pluselle est àmêmedesaisir desoccasionsdans les marchés en croissance;

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• plus une banque a de clients, plus elle peut économiser par effetd’échelle sur ses produits;

• la taille permet de recruter des spécialistes hyper-pointus et de se doterde compétences propres plus nombreuses.

Tout l’argumentaire justifiait les mégafusions comme étant un choixinévitable étant donnée la relative petite taille mondiale des banquescanadiennes. D’ailleurs l’année 1997 était une année record enfusions-acquisitions dans le secteur des banques et des assurances, avec unnombre de transactions atteignant 4000 opérations d’une valeur de 500milliards de dollars dans le monde34. Dans l’Union Européenne seule, lemontant de transactions atteignait 100 milliards de dollars pour ce secteurcontre 50 milliards de dollars pour tous les autres secteurs économiquesréunis35.

On était dans une logique de globalisation des activités financières, quipoussait à fusionner rapidement; il est donc assez surprenant que leGroupede travail MacKay ait réussi à renverser la pensée commune.

Pour interpréter ce qui s’est passé en 1998 auCanada, il faut faire appel àunegrille de lecturedemanagement où intervient unenotionphilosophiqueparticulière. Selon le philosophe belge Jean Ladrière36, il se produit àcertains moments dans l’histoire des institutions des virages décisifs quisont des ruptures novatrices, dues à la conjoncture d’événementsparticuliers avec des hommes de décision, chargés d’un projet et d’unevision de l’avenir.Ces décideurs donnent consistance à une nouvelle visiondes choses par un passage à l’acte innovant : « l’acte, s’il est efficace—et ilne mérite son nom que dans la mesure où il est efficace — doit changerquelque chose au donné, faire venir dans le visible ce qui était dansl’invisible du projet » (p. 51). Or l’émergence d’une vision originalecomporte une dimension unique d’authenticité humaine, que Ladrièrenomme le kairos, c’est-à-dire s’agissant des dirigeants, la mission qui leurest dévolue « de dire la parole de vérité et de faire surgir un monde enarticulant dans notre action historique un système de sens » (p.65). Pour cequi concerne le Groupe de travailMacKay, le caractère unique d’un kairosest frappant parce que les travaux intermédiaires comme le rapport final ontfait émerger une conception originale de la question de la taille des banqueset établissements financiers.Cette conceptionn’aurait probablementpaseulieu avec un autre président de groupe; à ce sujet il est intéressant deconstater que la nomination de H. MacKay n’a eu lieu qu’en juillet 1997,soit sept mois après la création officielle du Groupe de travail sur l’avenirdes services financiers, qu’il a transformé en une institution créative,dynamique et productive sur la période de quatorze mois allant jusqu’à laremise de son rapport final le 15 septembre 1998. Ancien dirigeant de laBanque fédérale de développement du Canada de 1975 à 1985, spécialistedu financement des PME et expert en matière de fusions industrielles, H.MacKay était depuis 1996 administrateur de laBanque duCanada lorsqu’il

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fut désigné pour présider le Groupe. Sa note biographique37 souligne qu’ilest juriste et homme d’affaires, un Canadien de l’Ouest originaire desPrairies (Saskatchewan et Alberta) et administrateur de WeyerhauserCanada (Colombie-Britannique). Or dans sa définition du kairos, JeanLadrière insiste sur trois facteurs significatifs concernant un dirigeant qui,par son action, modifie le cours de l’histoire :

• « il faut parler d’un appel car ce n’est plus nous qui avons à noussoumettre à une loi extérieure dont le secret nous échappe, c’est ànous-mêmes maintenant que le cours des choses demande sa loi »;

• l’acte neuf « survient comme le résultat d’une secrètematuration » dela part des dirigeants concernés;

• « la volonténepeut être quevolontépoursuivie; pour celui qui a choiside répondre à la proposition du destin, il n’y a plus de retour en arrièrepossible » (p. 57).

Ces trois facteurs ont été à l’œuvre dans la remise en question du dogmeselon lequel l’efficacité d’une banquevadepair avec sa taille. En effet, faceaux mégafusions projetées, un point fort des travaux du Groupe de travailMacKay a été de démontrer, envers et contre tout, que la taille étaitseulement gage d’efficacité partielle,mais que d’autres facteurs, plutôt quela taille, expliquaient la véritable efficacité d’une institution financière. Deplus le Groupe, en prenant du recul à l’égard des idées reçues et enfournissant une cohérence par rapport à l’opacité des opérations defusions-acquisitions des banques, a montré qu’il existait une façon depérenniser les banques canadiennes autre que le dogmedemaximisation deleur taille en termes de valeur boursière. On le voit nettement au tableau 5,qui présente pour cinq pays la capitalisation boursière des trois premièresbanques au 31 décembre 1997. On peut remarquer que la valeur boursièredes six premières banques canadiennes est sensiblement inférieure à lavaleur boursière des trois premières banques américaines, britanniques,japonaises et suisses. Et si l’on observe la situation deux ans plus tard, en1999, on constate que dans chacun de ces pays, il s’est produit une fusionmajeure : Citygroup aux États-Unis (capitalisation : 148 milliards dedollars); HSBC Holdings en Grande-Bretagne (98 milliards de dollars);Sumitomo-Sakura au Japon (50 milliards de dollars); UBS-SBS en Suisse(58 milliards de dollars); et même en France, la fusion BNP-Paribas (35milliards de dollars).

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Tableau 5. Capitalisation boursière en milliards dollars US

Chiffres des trois plus fortes capitalisationsbancaires pour chaque pays

États-Unis Royaume-Uni Japon Suisse France Canada

CityCorp

57,9 Lloyd’sTSB

69,9 Tokyo-Mitsubishi

64,7 UBS 31 SociétéGénérale

14 BRC 15

BankAmerica

50,6 HSBCHoldings

44,4 Sumitomo 36 CréditSuisse

30 BNP 11 CIBC 12

ChaseManha.

46,2 Barclay’s 40,5 Sanwa 29,5 SBS 24 Paribas 9,3 BS 11

Total 155 Total 155 Total 130 Total 85 Total 34 Total 38

BM 11

TD 10

BN 3

Total 62

Source : The Banker, cité parMcKinsey inMacKay Task Force Report, 1998

Le travail duGroupe constitue donc unpoint de retournement, un kairos,en ce sens qu’il y a eu pénétration d’un vouloir différent dans une logiquefinancière fermée sur la seule logique de la taille massive. Le kairosconsiste dans la décision du Président MacKay d’assumer sesresponsabilités en situant la question de la taille comme l’une parmi lesnombreuses voies d’accès pour l’avenir du système financier du Canada,dans un contexte de globalisation, car :

• les économies nationales s’ouvrent, au sens que, de 1960 à 1997, lePIBmondial réalisé par des pays qui n’ont pas de barrière idéologiqueaux échanges est passé de 40 p. 100 à 80 p. 100;

• un marché obligataire mondial prend forme, sur lequel les émissionscanadiennes sont bien présentes;

• les barrières envers les services financiers personnels (SFP)diminuent, tant en ce qui concerne les législations que l’accès àl’information et aux opérations de détail pour les ménages dans lespays ouverts aux échanges financiers;

• sur le plan mondial, les banques canadiennes ne sont pas les seules àavoir une valeur boursière relativement faible; des banquesperformantes, ou significatives d’efficacité, sont égalementsous-valorisées, par exemple Wachovia (Pologne); Bankers’ Trust(É.-U.); Banco de Santander (Espagne).

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Alors que la tendance des marchés financiers est de se focaliser sur lecritère de la capitalisation boursière, le Groupe a élargi la vision au-delà dece seul critère pour considérer comment s’effectuait la relation entre lesbanques canadiennes et l’environnement mondial; elle a constaté unesituation de déséquilibre tant à l’intérieur du Canada (entre le poidsdominant des banques à charte et le poids plume des autres établissementsfinanciers) qu’à l’extérieur (entre les ambitions des banques canadiennes etles moyens limités pour conquérir une part des marchés étrangers). Lalogique duGroupe a été de connecter le dedans et le dehors, c’est-à-dire deraisonner globalement sur la base des observations suivantes :

• l’industrie bancaire canadienne et les compagnies d’assurances sonttrès concentrées à l’intérieur du pays;

• peu de place est laissée aux coopératives de crédit canadiennes,comme aux banques étrangères (12 p. 100 des actifs financierscanadiens), alors que ces acteurs, en stimulant la compétition locale,donnerait du tonus au secteur;

• les banques canadiennes s’efforcent d’établir une véritable présenceinternationale;

• mais il existe des disparités énormes dans les stratégies àl’international, tant en moyens placés qu’en espace géographiqueabordé; cettevariabilité estdueàun focus international trèsdisparate.

Ceci a mené le Groupe de travail MacKay à proposer une visionnouvelle, selon laquelle le secteur bancaire doit moderniser sa façon depenser les stratégies, endépassant unconcept étroit de la taille pour arriver àla différenciation de la qualité des services financiers et à lamondialisationde l’offre canadienne de services financiers.

Avec le recul, on se rend compte que leGroupe de travailMacKay a bienanalysé la tendance de déréglementation bancaire aux États-Unis entre1995 et 1999, consciente que « le Canada, signataire de l’ALÉNA et del’Accord mondial de libéralisation des services financiers (OMC, Genève,12/12/1997), se doit d’ouvrir ses frontières à la concurrence entre lesservices financiers. »Cet accord, qui est entré envigueur enavril 1999,posele principe de l’ouverture mondiale à la banque universelle; il permet à laconcurrence de s’exercer dans 65 pays représentant 95 p. 100 des marchésdéveloppés dans les secteurs bancaire, des assurances, de la gestiond’actifset du courtage des titres financiers38. Cette ouverture est lisible dans lesnouveaux banquiers entrant au Canada, principalement des banquesaméricaines qui proposent du global banking aux consommateurscanadiens. Alors que le Glass-Seagall Act (1933) séparait strictement lesbanques de dépôt (commercial banking) et les banques d’affaires(investment banks), la nouvelle économie politique américaine aboutit endécembre 1999 auFinancial ServicesModernization Act, qui supprime lesdispositions du Glass-Seagall : dernier acte d’une évolution qui a

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commencé en 1990 avec l’autorisation de J.P. Morgan à placer desémissions d’actions et qui s’est poursuivie en 1998 avec l’autorisation de lafusion entre le groupe Travelers (courtage et assurances) et la Citicorpformant le Citigroup, qui a recruté Robert Rubin, secrétaire d’Étataméricain au Budget, pour être son pdg39. Mark Roe montre commentl’édifice du Glass-Seagall a été construit puis démantelé :

Une raison majeure du Glass-Seagall Act a été de préserver lesparticuliers de la déconfiture bancaire, résultant du mélange entrel’épargne collectée, le prêt aux entreprises et l’émission demauvais papier pour couvrir les défauts de crédit... une seconderaison majeure était de stabiliser les banques en raison de laperception d’abus et de fraudes réalisés à travers leurs filiales decourtage ou d’investissement financier...Mais si leGlass-SeagallAct a permis de préserver la fragmentation des banques locales, iln’apas empêchédepuisdix ans la formationdepuissantesbanquesaméricaines, dont certaines ont reconquis aujourd’hui lesmarchésd’actions.40 [Traduction de l’auteur]Un exemple significatif de la constitution de « banques universelles »

aux États-Unis est donné par l’achat en avril 1997 du plus ancien courtieraméricain, Alexander Brown (fondé en 1800), par la banque Bankers’Trust. On notera que cette banque, dont les actifs s’élèvent à 120 milliardsde dollars, emploie 15 000 personnes et a déjà racheté en 1996 la firmeWolfensohn & Co, conseil en fusions (Mergers & Acquisitions). Lors durachat d’AlexanderBrown, le président deBankers’Trust, FrankNewman,un ancien secrétaire d’État adjoint aux finances des États-Unis, a déclaréque : « [d]ans une seule firme intégrée, les clients pourront avoir le bénéficede l’expertise de Bankers’ Trust pour les prêts bancaires syndiqués et lesobligations à haut rendement, et la force d’AlexanderBrowndans l’analysefinancière et les émissions d’actions ».41 Le tableau 6 résume cetteévolution vers la banque universelle. La comparaison des classements desdix premiers établissements financiers américains, à deux ans de distance,permet d’identifier deux phénomènes : le grossissement de six banques(Citigroup; Chase Manhattan; BankAmerica; First Union; Wells Fargo;BankofNewYork) et l’apparition de quatre nouveaux acteurs qui s’érigenten banques universelles : American Express, Morgan Stanley DW,Goldman Sachs et Merrill Lynch.

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Tableau 6. Capitalisation des banques américaines :évolution 1997 - 1999

Rang1997

Banques Capitalisation$US

(milliards)

Rang1999

Banques Capitalisation$US

(milliards)

1 CityCorp 57,9 1 Citigroup 147,9

2 Bank ofAmerica

50,6 2 AmericanExpress

65,7

3 ChaseManhattan

46,2 3 ChaseManhattan

65,2

4 Nations Bank 43,2 4 Morg StanleyDW

54,1

5 First Union 32,2 5 Bank ofAmerica

50

6 BancOne 31,9 6 First Union 36,7

7 Wells Fargo 29,4 7 Wells Fargo 30,8

8 Norwest 29,3 8 GoldmanSachs

29,2

9 First Chicago 24,3 9 Bank of NewYork

27,6

10 Bank of NewYork

21,8 10 Merrill Lynch 25,6

Total 366,8 Total 532,8

Source : McKinsey inMacKay Task Force Report, 1998 (au 31/12/1997) et ThomsonFinancial First Call, Les Échos (hors AIG) (au 5/11/1999).

Une des sources du kairos vécu par le Groupe de travail MacKay est lapensée du ministre des Finances, Paul Martin, pour qui le système desbanques à charte, qui est sécurisé depuis plus d’un siècle auCanada et qui aprouvé sa solidité aucoursde la crisede1929, estmenacé si l’onne s’adaptepas à la banque universelle. Plusieurs risques sont à craindre : tout d’abordun risque demarché, au sens de voir la population canadienne tentée par lesplacements américains et perdant ainsi ses attaches financières envers lesbanques canadiennes. Puis un risque d’épargne, les Canadiens placeraientleur épargne préférentiellement en dollar américain et dans des banquesaméricaines. Il s’agit d’une situation que les gouvernements duCanada onttoujours voulu éviter, pour cause de domination rapide (économique etfinancière) par le puissant voisin, si des garde-fous sérieux ne sont pas misen place. Par ailleurs, la création de deux mégabanques dont les actifs etl’activité seraient essentiellement canadiens (et non véritablement

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mondial) présente deux autres risques : elle est une menace d’oligopoleintérieur, avec tout ce qu’il entraîne (tarifs, pouvoirs, etc.) et elle est unefragilité externe, au sens où « tous les œufs étant dans le même panier », lerisque systémiquepeut emporter à toutmomentde telles entités«géantes aupied d’argile ». Prenant acte du fait que la banque « grossiste » (wholesalebanking) est déjà tenue par quelques groupes mondiaux, le Groupe detravail MacKay s’appuie sur la relative performance des cinq premièresbanques«dedétail » (ratiod’efficience : chargeshors tauxd’intérêt / chiffred’affaires égal à 62,9 p. 100 au Canada contre 63,5 p. 100 aux É.-U.) pourencourager la qualité, la flexibilité et la diversité des services financiers àoffrir aux particuliers et aux entreprises.

Dans son discours du 28 septembre 1998,H.MacKay souligne que si lesfusions peuvent être une stratégie valable, elles ne sont pourtant qu’unestratégie particulière parmi d’autres possibles dans un monde où la forcefinancière du Canada provient de sa capacité d’adaptation :

Notre rapport donne un cadre dans lequel un point clef se trouvedans la flexibilité; dans un univers turbulent, où la boule de crystalest unmoyen amusantmais peu fiable, ce serait une erreur de nousenfermer dans une régulation rassurante mais qui nous ôte lacapacité d’ajustement.La grande force du rapport MacKay semble en effet se trouver dans les

propositions générales suivantes :

• encourager la flexibilité organisationnelle, par un cadre qui favorise lamise en concurrence des acteurs financiers;

• faciliter la rencontre des attentes des consommateurs avec les choixstratégiques des firmes;

• améliorer la régulation du secteur financier par des politiquespubliques appropriées.

En résumé, le Groupe de travail MacKay n’a pas cédé à la facilité, quiaurait été d’approuver les mégafusions comme constituant une ligne dedéfense du Canada contre la concurrence américaine. La notion de placeouverte et de compétitivité mondiale vise à encourager les nouveauxentrants sur le marché canadien, à soutenir les formes différentes(coopératives de crédit) et à faire en sorte que les services financiers soientde la meilleure qualité possible au meilleur prix, afin de les rendreexportables. Stimulé par lesmégafusions, le travail décisif de kairos réalisépar MacKay comporte 124 propositions pour développer un secteurfinancier canadien qui soit de classe mondiale. Ces propositions sontarticulées autour de quatre thèmes : le renforcement de la concurrence et dela compétitivité; l’accroissement des pouvoirs reconnus aux clients etconsommateurs; la modification du comportement stratégique etcommercial des institutions financières; et l’amélioration de laréglementation et du contrôle.

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De l’événement des mégafusions à l’avénement de la foipublique, un nouveau paradigme de la régulationLa déclaration faite par H. MacKay au Comité sénatorial permanent desbanquesmontre que le Groupe de travail a fait un choix de valeurs éthiquesplutôt qu’un choix purement technique.

Nous voulons un marché financier à la fois plus réactif et plusresponsable, sur lequel les consommateurs sont porteurs d’uneexigence de qualité, qui engendre la discipline, et les meilleursservices aumeilleur coût. Il existe de nouveaux enjeux : le respectde la vie privée; l’évaluation (accountability) des performancesdes organismes financiers envers la collectivité; le rôle croissantdes technologies de l’information et de la communication.(28/09/1998) [Traduction de l’auteur]

On sait que les propositionsMacKay ont reçu le meilleur accueil de la partdes associations de consommateurs et des Credit Unions (caissespopulaires) comme le montre la déclaration de Bill Knight, président deCredit Unions Central of Canada : « je suis heureux de voir l’importanceaccordée à lamise en place d’une véritable concurrence, ainsi que la valeuraccordée aux institutions financières de plus petite taille » (16/09/1998).Par contre, l’Association des banquiers canadiens a exprimé une opinionmitigée.

Il existe desopinions réservées, au seindenotre fédération, quant àl’opportunité de certaines mesures activistes proposées par leGroupe de travail... par conséquent nous n’avons pas considéréchacune des 124 propositions, et notre absence de commentairesne signifie pas que nosmembres approuvent les recommandationsdu rapport final du Groupe de travail (ABC, 24/09/1998).[Traduction de l’auteur]On peut comprendre la relative déception des banquiers canadiens au

regard des importantes fusions bancaires réalisées dans d’autres pays. AuJapon par exemple, les années 1997-1999 ont vu cinq mégafusionsbancaires, dans une atmosphère de crise financière durable : fusions de laBank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (1997), de la Softbank-Nippon Credit (1998),de la DKB-Fuji-IBJ (1999), de la Asahi-Tokaï (1999) et de laSumitomo-Sakura (1999). On observe que toutes ces fusions se sontréalisées exclusivement entre entités japonaises. De même, on a observédans certains pays européens une frénésie de fusions nationales, comme enItalie où le ratioCR3de concentrationdes trois premières banques est passéde17p. 100dumarché en1988à48p. 100dumarché en1998 (rejoignant letaux de concentration canadien). On sait également qu’en France, ont eulieu cinq fusions importantes durant la période 1995-1999 : CréditAgricole-Indosuez; Société générale-Crédit du Nord; Crédit Mutuel-CIC;Banques Populaires-Natexis; et BNP-Paribas. Aussi, pour les banquierscanadiens, les mégafusions étaient une façon de rejoindre le mouvementgénéral et auraient permis de constituer des groupes bancaires de taille

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américaine. Le tableau 7montre qu’une place de dixième rang serait échueauGroupeBM-BRCsi leur fusion avait été réalisée.Dans ce cas, laBanquede Montréal-Banque Royale viendrait juste après Wells Fargo etUS-Bancorp, ce qui représenterait une belle promotion pour le Canada àl’échelle du continent nord-américain. Plus encore, comparé à lacapitalisation (plus modeste) des banques européennes, l’ensembleBM-BRC se placerait au même niveau que Crédit Suisse, juste aprèsABN-Amro, mais avant la Nat-West et la Dresdner Bank.

Renoncer à ce tableau n’a pas été de gaité de cœur pourH.MacKay,maisil l’a fait en fonction d’un principe de gouvernement qu’il a nommé intérêtpublic.

Il nous faut reconnaître que notre monde vit dans le changementpermanent, ce qui nous a amenés sans cesse à nous demander où setrouve l’intérêt public? Sans relâche nous nous sommes efforcésd’augmenter les choix, d’améliorer les services et de protéger lesdroits des clients. Les thèmes techniques ont été abordés par nousni comme un privilège de professionnel de la banque ni comme unchoix dans un conflit à savoir qui perd ou qui gagne,mais toujoursen gardant en tête les Canadiens qui utilisent des servicesfinanciers et en se posant la question : tel changement précis va-t-ilaméliorer leur sort? (Speaking Notes, 1998 : 1; traduction del’auteur)L’accent placé sur l’intérêt public financier du client individuel, du chef

d’entreprise et du citoyen consommateur constitue un nouveau paradigmeau sens d’un modèle de régulation publique (public policy) qui vient sesubstituer en partie au modèle des techniciens de la finance : « notre visioncommence et finit avec le client. Il s’agit d’augmenter son choix,d’améliorer les services qui lui sont rendus et de protéger ses droits »(Speaking Notes, 1998 : 1; traduction de l’auteur). En effet la principalenovation introduitepar leGroupede travailMacKaysemble se trouverdansle fait d’avoir placé sur la place publique les enjeux de la souverainetécanadienne dans le secteur de la finance. Le caractère national des banquesreflète un facteur traditionnel de leur identité; ce facteur est remis enquestiondans l’UnionEuropéenneà l’occasiondescroisementsdebanquesappartenant à des pays différents. Par exemple, leCCF (CréditCommercialde France) se trouve pris en 2000-2001 dans une polémique qui oppose sestrois principaux actionnaires (la banque belge KBC possède 18,5 p. 100 ducapital; la banque néerlandaise ING en possède 19 p. 100; et la compagnied’assurances Swiss Life dispose de 14,6 p. 100 du capital et ne veut pas setrouver exclue).Laquestionde lanationalité desbanques est liée égalementà la réglementation nationale qui leur est appliquée; en France par exempleon nomme « règle du ni-ni » l’équilibre établi du fait qu’il n’y a nirémunération des comptes bancaires, ni frais pour les chèques émis; orl’Union Européenne exige une disparition de cette règle, mais lesconsommateurs français résistent à la suppression de celle-ci42. On voitdonc que les problèmes soulevés et le paradigme apporté par le rapport

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MacKay à l’occasion des mégafusions au Canada ont une valeuruniverselle. Il s’agit de trouver l’articulation juste entre la concurrence surles marchés, la protection des clients et la souveraineté nationale. C’est àcette articulation que l’on trouve la notion de foi publique.

Tableau 7. Classement des dix premières banques en Europeet en Amérique (1997)

Rang Europe Capitalisation enmilliards de $US

1 HSBC (Royaume-Uni) 90

2 Lloyds’ TSB (Royaume-Uni) 60

3 UBS/SBS (Suisse) 59

4 Barclay’s (Royaume-Uni) 35

5 ING (Pays-Bas) 33

6 Deutsche Bank (Allemagne) 32

7 ABN-Amro (Pays-Bas) 30

8 Crédit Suisse (Suisse) 26

9 Nat West (Royaume-Uni) 24

10 Dresdner Bank (Allemagne) 21

Rang Amérique Capitalisation enmilliards de $US

1 Nations Bank 58

2 Citicorp 55

3 Bank of America 47

4 Chase Manhattan 45

5 First Union 44

6 Banc One 32

7 Norwest 29

8 Wells Fargo 28

9 US Bancorp 27

10 Fusion BM-BRC si réalisée 26

Source : Financial Times 28/07/1997 et Les Échos, 4/12/1997.

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Finance et confiance sont en effet liées de manière indissociable, ainsique leveut le termeantiquede fidespublicaqui était inscrit sur lesmonnaiesromaines : la foi publique invoquée sur la monnaie atteste que le lien deconfiance entre le peuple et son gouvernement est la seule garantie possibled’une politique financière saine. L’épargne, l’investissement, lesemprunts, etc. sont des opérations qui se déroulent dans le temps; ellesexigent une continuité et une stabilité que seule la confiance peut garantir.Comme le signalait Robert Lion, alors directeur de la Caisse des dépôts :

La confiance devient un instrument essentiel de gouvernement...la foi publique atteste la confiance dans ses deux acceptions,confiance que le peuple inspire, confiance dont il exige la garantiedes autres et de l’État. La foi publique est ainsi la sacralisation dulien social, le signe tabou de l’engagement collectif, la marqued’une nation solidaire.43

Ainsi le principal changement de paradigmequi s’est produit auCanada estle passage de l’événement des fusions à l’avènement d’un réveil de la foipublique; si la clef du système de souveraineté financière est le pouvoir dedire non, alors le fait que le gouvernement fédéral ait été capable dedire nonaux mégafusions annoncées est un signe positif pour la foi publique auCanada.

Un trait caractéristique de la démarche MacKay tient à l’usage desondages pour recueillir l’opinion publique quant aux enjeux des servicesfinanciers. Dans un premier sondage auprès de 1080 personnesreprésentatives de la population, 82 p. 100 des personnes interrogées ontexpriméqu’il fallaitmaintenir uncontrôlepublic sur les activités bancaires,et 79 p. 100 ont convenu voir d’un mauvais oeil la venue des grandesbanques américaines auCanada. Dans un second sondage réalisé auprès de37 directeurs financiers d’entreprises, il est apparu que 70 p. 100 d’entreeux étaient hostiles aux fusions entre banques canadiennes,mais seulement45p. 100étaient opposés aux fusions entre banques canadiennes et banquesétrangères. Il apparaît donc que la clientèle est favorable au contrôlebancaire et réservée à l’égard de toute « aventure de fusion bancaire »;cependant elle peut tolérer un certain degré d’accords croisés quipermettraient de renforcer l’ouverture internationale des banquescanadiennes. Le tableau 8 confirme, avec plus de détail, ces résultats.

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Tableau 8. Sondages d’opinions à propos des fusionsbancaires au Canada

1. Sondage de l’opinion publique (1080 personnes)

Arguments contre lesfusions

Accorden p. 100

Arguments pour lesfusions

Accorden p. 100

Il y aura des pertesd’emploi.

68 Les banques serontmieux en mesure deconcurrencermondialement.

63

Il y aura des fermetures desuccursales.

66 On s’assure que lesbanques sont souscontrôle canadien.

49

La fusion mènera à trop depouvoirs.

65 Le secteur bancaire ensortira renforcé.

47

Les PME auront plus dedifficulté à obtenir desprêts.

51 Les entreprises serontmieux servies.

45

Les Canadiens auront unservice moins personnaliséde leur banque.

47 Les prix baisseront carla fusion conduit à plusd’efficacité.

29

2. Sondage de 37 directeurs financiers d’entreprises canadiennes(pas favorables aux fusions, mais exprimant deux opinions dominantes).

Opinion dominante (B) Accorden p. 100

Opinion dominante(C)

Accorden p. 100

Peu importe la taille de la banque,c’est l’existence d’une masse critiquerelativement aux produits qui influe leplus sur la compétitivité des produitsofferts aux entreprises.

Ce sont les compétencesspécialisées sans égard à la taille,ni à la masse critique, qui influentle plus sur la compétitivité desproduits fournis aux entreprises.

Services de trésorerie 57 Conseils de gestionfinancière

87

Comptes, paiements,virements

54 Appui sur marchésétrangers

83

Financementcommerce international

73

Gestion des risquesfinanciers

59

Source : MacKay Task Force Report, 1998 (libellés légèrement modifiés).

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Sur le fond, leGroupe de travailMacKay a proposé de donner aumarchébancaire canadien une ouverture en le rendant « contestable » par denouveaux entrants, tout en évitant une « invasion indirecte » par desbanques étrangères intéressées à acheter des institutions financièrescanadiennes. Il est possible d’interpréter de façon globale lesrecommandations du Groupe de travail comme une ouverture prudente dusystème des « annexes ». On sait que les banques à charte sont des banquesde l’annexe I, selon lequel aucun actionnaire ne peut détenir plus de 10 p.100 du capital et des droits de vote, de sorte que l’actionnariat soit dispersé.On sait également que le nombre de banques à charte, qui était de 41 en1890, est descendu et s’est stabilisé à 10. Ces banques reçoiventpratiquement 99 p. 100 des dépôts financiers des Canadiens, et les Big Sixen représentent l’essentiel. Par ailleurs, les banques dites de l’annexe II,autoriséesàêtre contrôléesparunactionnairemajoritaire, jouentun rôleà lamarge du système, intervenant en appui dans des fonctions de banquescommerciales et d’échanges; la norme édictée leur interdit de disposerd’actifs dont le poids dépasserait 10 p. 100 des actifs de l’industrie bancaireauCanada.Le rapportMacKayaproposédemonter ce tauxà20 p.100dansles années à venir.Actuellement, il existe 45 banques de l’annexe II, dont lamajorité sont des filiales de banques étrangères, leur pénétration s’étantcantonnée au secteur des affaires. On trouve cependant quelques tentativesde banques de l’annexe II qui interviennent comme banque de dépôts, soitparce qu’elles disposent de relations de proximité (la banque américaineWells Fargo présente en Ontario) soit parce qu’elles ont une clientèleethnique attachée (la banque chinoise Ilong Hong-Kong). Il est probableque l’effet de lanouvellepolitique seramoins l’entréedenouvellesbanquesétrangères que la croissance de celles déjà installées.

Le rapportMacKayproposeque, par un élargissement de leurs services àla banqueuniverselle, les institutions financières duCanadadeviennent desglobal players:

Nos recommandations permettront d’accroitre la concurrence etde diversifier les choix pour les Canadiens. Elles permettrontégalement de garantir que le marché fonctionne de façon pluséquitable et responsable.45

Il s’agirait de développer sur les plans interne et externe (international) des« créneaux de services » performants tels que la gestion de patrimoine, lesfonds communs de placement, les fonds de pension et le risk management.Le « paysage financier » devrait donc semuer en une offre de qualité et uneintégration de services selon deux grandes catégories.

1. Les services financiers personnels (SFP) intégrant pour leclient de base des services de crédit à la consommation; decrédit immobilier et d’hypothèque; de paiement du type cartebancaire, chèques, etc.; d’assurance-vie et d’assurance-santé;et d’épargne et de placement, particulièrement sur la placemondiale et en matière de retraite individuelle.

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2. Le business banking (BB) incluant les services de paiement(facturation, recouvrement, cartes, etc.); les services decrédits (court terme, long terme, trésorerie); le conseil enfinances d’entreprise; les services d’investissement financier(placements, prises de participation); le risk management, ycompris l’usage de titres dérivés, le financement del’innovation, etc.; le courtage de titres; la constitution et lagestion de fonds de pensions et de retraites; et tous lesservices d’assistance requis par les PME qui opèrent sur lesmarchés internationaux.

Malgré le caractère intégratif de ces catégories, le Groupe de travailMacKay a veillé à proposer un cadre juridique qui visait à interdire toutepression indue sur la clientèle, notamment à travers les pratiques de ventesliées. En ce sens, elle a réussi à intégrer dans sa réflexion toute l’étenduedesoppositions aux mégafusions. Le tableau 9 élabore une typologie desthèmes et des acteurs; la diagonale en exprimequ’il existe bienpour chaqueacteur une dominante à ses revendications. On peut interpréter ce tableaucomme l’expression d’une résistance profonde à la toute-puissance de lafinance, avec la place tenue par quatre acteurs comme épine dorsale de larésistance : le gouvernement fédéral, les associations de consommateurs,les gouvernements des provinces et les représentants des PME.

ConclusionL’épisodedesmégafusionsbancaires s’étant terminépar un refus, onpeut yvoir la confirmation de ce que :

Le marché des services financiers ne devrait pas être considérécomme n’importe quel marché, déterminé seulement par le jeu dedécisionsdes entreprises et de leurs clients; l’économieabesoindecrédit, et les banques disposent du pouvoir considérable d’allouerl’argent et le crédit... Lorsque les décisions bancaires se fondentseulement sur le seul critère de la rentabilité, on aboutit à dessituations aberrantes : la banque accorde du crédit à tel client sansse soucier de l’utilité sociale de son projet et elle refuse de soutenirdes projets qui seraient justement utiles à la collectivité.46

Ainsi leCanada se trouve confronté à une double exigence, d’autant plusdélicate à tenir que les troubles financiers affectent maintenant l’ensembledu système mondial des échanges. D’un premier point de vue, laproblématique du Canada est celle d’un pays qui se veut mondialiste et quiexporte plus de 40 p. 100 de sa production intérieure brute. Mais d’unsecond point de vue, ce pays souhaite garder le contrôle sur son systèmefinancier— un aspect jugé vital de sa souveraineté— face à la pression deplus en plus aigüe que le dollar américain exerce sur le dollar canadien.Comment résoudre les contradictions internes qui découlent de cettesituation de compromis? Comment gérer un dossier comme celui des

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fusions bancaires qui porte, dans sa trame, toutes les ambiguïtés de cettecontradiction?

Tableau 9. Intensité des résistances aux mégafusions entrebanques*

Acteurs Thèmes

Risquemalassuré

Compéti-tion

diminuée

Perted’effica-cit

é

Fermetured’agences

Pouvoirsoligopoles

Dangervie privée

Menacesaux

emplois

Investisseurs ¤¤¤¤¤Actionnaires ¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤Mondialistes ¤¤ ¤¤¤¤ ¤¤Gouverne-ment fédéral

¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤ ¤

Consom-mateurs

¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤

Provinces ¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤ ¤¤ ¤¤¤PME & professionnels ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤

Autresbanques

¤¤ ¤¤¤¤

Syndicats ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤Réponses apportées

Ouvrir lesfrontières/Concur-rents

Protégerles PMEBenchMark

Informa-tique etlibertés

AccentuerrèglesPrudencebancaire

Médiateurexterneavecgaranties

RéinvestirlocalementContrôleprovinces

Garantirformationetemplois

* L’intensité de la résistance est figurée par un nombre de « soleils » allant de 1 à 5.

L’attitude choisie par le gouvernement canadien a été de confirmer leGroupe de travail MacKay dans ses travaux, de diligenter une enquêteapprofondie par leBureaude la concurrence et de donner la parole à tous lespoints de vue, allant dudiscours « financièrement correct » (la synergie et larentabilité attendues des groupes fusionnés) jusqu’au radicalisme le plusfranc. Si l’enjeu était grave, il a permis un kairos, conjugaisondécisive dont

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l’histoire a le secret; il en résulte un nouveau paradigmede la régulation desactivités financières dans lequel la foi publique joue un rôle majeur. Leparadigme ainsi découvert va bien au-delà du seul cas des mégafusions; ilmontre que le politique ne peut plus désormais se désintéresser de la sphèrefinancière, ni la laisser à des « spécialistes » qui mènent seuls le bal deschangements de système. Entre 1971 (décision deRichardNixon demettrefin à l’accord de Bretton-Wods) et 1998, le monde a vécu une grandepoussée d’échanges, vecteur de progrès et source de richesses; mais lesexcèsdesmarchés financiers amènent aujourd’hui des refus face aumodèle« tout-financier » et à pousser les gouvernements à prendre l’initiative defreiner certaines stratégies financières aventureuses.On l’avu récemment àl’OCDE lors du rejet de l’AMI (accordmultilatéral sur les investissementsdirects).

Le système proposé est totalement déséquilibré : d’un côté lesinvestisseurs qui se voient offrir une protection totale; de l’autreles États qui risquent d’y perdre le droit à exercer leursouveraineté.47

L’épisode desmégafusions souligne qu’en 1998 une limite a été atteinteet une borne fixée à l’étendue des pouvoirs des chefs de direction desbanques; clairement, il devient sociologiquement nécessaire de faire unepause pour redonner confiance au public. Comme l’indique le mot de« crédit » et sa racine credere « croire », la denrée qui manque le plus est laconfiance, ou plutôt pour reprendre l’ancienne expression « la foipublique » (la fides publica était représentée sur la monnaie de l’empereurHadrien comme une femme, symbole de la prospérité). Alors que lesfaillites de places financières se multiplient, en plein milieu d’unedéréglementation qui élargit les missions des banques à toute la panopliedes services financiers, il apparaît une question fondamentale :

Quelle foi publique accorder au secteur financier désormaismondialisé, qui offre des services bancaires, d’assurances, decourtage et de hedging de manière universelle? Quel degré deconfiance publique les autorités nationales peuvent-elles régulerface aux institutions financières dont les actifs pèsent descentaines de milliards de dollars? En quoi les classes moyennespeuvent-elles être entenduesà la foisde leursgouvernants etde telspouvoirs financiers?

L’année1998 restera dans les annales de la vie financière celle où leCanadas’est distingué en portant le débat financier sur la place publique, donnantainsi aux autres nations un modèle de protestation, de résistance et delucidité envers la précipitation et le totalitarisme financiers. La question deméthode visant à rétablir un certain degré de foi publique dans le secteur dela finance est désormais posée à tous les gouvernements démocratiques, sil’on veut bien accepter l’équation finance = confiance. Rejeter les fusionsne signifie pas nier la finance, mais refuser ses excès.

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Notes1. L’auteur est reconnaissant envers les animateurs et participants du Séminaire

international d’études canadiennes, qui s’est tenu à Ottawa en août 1998, et plusparticulièrement envers M. Alain Guimont qui a encouragé ses travaux enéconomie et gestion, et M. Pierre Savard.

2. Cités par McKinsey, « Research Report n° 1 », Tableau 5.23, MacKay TaskForce, 1998.

3. « Barking with the big dogs : Global competition seems to be driving bankmergers... », Financial Post, 24/01/1998.

4. Jean Ladrière, « Le volontaire et l’histoire », in Qu’est-ce que vouloir?, colloquedirigé par le Professeur Henri Ey, Le Cerf, Paris, 1958.

5. « Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal propose $39 billion merger », The FinancialPost, 24-26/01/1998.

6. « CIBC-TD looks to get even bigger », Financial Post, 18/04/1998.7. « Merging brokerages », Financial Post, 24/01/1998.8. « Showing banks who’s the boss », Financial Post, 22/08/1998.9. « Martin says merger will have to wait for approval », Financial Post,

24/01/1998.10. « Who will dance with whom », article par Sandra Rubin, Financial Post,

24/04/1998.11. Deux articles parus à trois mois d’intervalle dans le Financial Post sous le titre

« Merger » (le 24/01/1998 et le 18/04/1998).12. « Showing banks who’s the boss », Financial Post, 22/08/1998.13. Mathewson, G.F. et N. Quigley (1998), Canadian bank mergers: efficiency and

consumer gain versus market power, C.D. Howe Institute, Commentary n° 108,juin.

14. « Lower prices for Canadian consumers », lettre de M. Barret, Financial PostMagazine, septembre 1998.

15. Deux séries d’articles : Financial Post Magazine, juillet 1998; et Globe & Mail,« Report on Business », septembre 1998.

16. M. Porter, L’avantage concurrentiel, Inter-Éditions 1986, p. 382.17. S. Rhoades (1995), « Efficiency effects of horizontal bank mergers », Journal of

Banking & Finance, 17, p. 411-422; and S. Rhoades (1998), « The efficiencyeffect of bank mergers: An overview of case studies of 9 mergers », Journal ofBanking & Finance, 22,3, p. 273-291.

18. Alexandra Eadie, « Report on business », The Globe & Mail, 17/08/1998.19. Les Échos, 20/10/1998, qui cite la source Merrill-Lynch.20. En Belgique l’action judiciaire pour « procédure illégale et frauduleuse avec

violation des droits patrimoniaux » conduite par 150 coopérateurs de la Banquecoopérative CERA contre la fusion avec le holding flamand Almanij-KredietBank. (Les Échos des 30/1/1998, 2/6/1998 et 19/10/1998). Voir également auxÉtats-Unis comment l’OPA lancée par la Bank of New York sur la Mellon Bankse heurte à la vive opposition d’un noyau d’actionnaires de la Mellon Bank pour« spoliation ». (Les Échos, 28/04/1998).

21. The Financial Post, 17/12/1994, p. 6-7. Aspect décrit comme du managerialism.22. « Banks launch second salary show-and-tell », Financial Post, 10/12/1994. La

rémunération se décompose en une partie fixe (salaire proprement dit) et uneprime variable (selon le résultat net bancaire de chaque année). Les salaires desprésidents des Big Six étaient en proportion directe avec les chiffres d’affaires de

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chaque banque, allant de 488 000 dollars canadiens pour la plus petite (BanqueNationale) à 942 000 dollars canadiens pour la plus grande (Banque Royale).

23. « L’UBS a perdu 130 000 clients depuis l’annonce de sa naissance », Les Échos,20/10/1998.

24. Un cadre du Crédit Mutuel avait constitué une base de données nominativescontenant des jugements sur les clients tels que : « M. Untel ment; MadameDurand a quitté son travail car elle s’entendait mal avec ses collègues. »Condamné par le Tribunal, le Crédit Mutuel a fait amende honorable, mais l’onsait que de tels systèmes existent.

25. Rapport annuel 1997, Banque CIBC, p.126.26. Financial Post, 24/01/1998 pour l’ensemble des réactions citées.27. S. McBride (1998), « The employment impact of proposed bank mergers », BC

Task Force on the bank mergers.28. « Europe set to remain overbanked », Financial Times, 28/07/1997.29. La Société de Banque Suisse (SBS) a successivement racheté à Londres la banque

SG Warburg (1995) puis à New York la banque Dillon Read (1996), avantd’annoncer en décembre 1997 sa fusion avec l’Union des Banques Suisses(UBS), son rival de toujours, dans une banque géante la United Bank ofSwitzerland, faisant état de prévisions de croissance de +12 p. 100 par an duchiffre d’affaires, pour un bénéfice de plus de 12 milliards de francs suisses en2002.

30. « Une fusion qui va accélérer la reconfiguration des établissements britanniques »,Les Échos, 9/12/1997.

31. Selon les propos de Hugh MacColl repris dans « BankAmerica, nouveau géant dela banque commerciale aux États-Unis », Les Échos, 14/04/1998.

32. « Citicorp & Travelers agree to $155 billions merger », Financial Times,7/04/1998.

33. Les chiffres cités dans le paragraphe qui suit proviennent essentiellement duMcKinsey Report, MacKay Task-Force, « Research Report n° 1 », publié enannexe du Rapport MacKay, Ottawa, 1998.

34. McKinsey, Pièce 4-4 au dossier MacKay; source : Securities Data Company.35. Les Échos, 19/05/1998, « Fusions-acquisitions : la finance en vedette en 97 »

(source : Merrill Lynch).36. J. Ladrière, « Le volontaire et l’histoire » in Henri Ey, Qu’est-ce que le vouloir,

Colloque de 1958, Le Cerf, Paris.37. Publiée sur le site Internet du ministère des Finances du Canada :

www.fin.gc.ca/newse1997.38. « Accord à l’OMC sur l’ouverture des services financiers à la concurrence », Les

Échos, 15/12/1997.39. « Citigroup, le précurseur des supermarchés financiers », Les Échos, 5/11/1999,

p. 25.40. Mark Roe, Strong Managers, Weak Owners, Princeton University Press, 1996, p.

206 ss.41. « Bankers’ Trust achète le courtier d’affaires Alexander Brown pour 1,7 milliards

de dollars », Les Échos, 8/04/1997.42. Les Échos, 16/10/1999, « Une majorité des Français favorable au maintien du

Ni-Ni ».43. R. Lion, « Finance et confiance », Revue d’Économie Financière, novembre

1991, p. 575-585.44. « Policy Paper », Juin 1999, en vue de la préparation d’une nouvelle Loi bancaire

au Canada.

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45. Les Échos, 20/10/1998, « Rapport Mackay : 124 recommandations sur l’avenir dusecteur ».

46. Scott Sinclair, « Bank mergers and consumer protection in British Columbia »,1er septembre 1998, Rapport final, site internet du gouvernement de laColombie-Britannique, p. 14.

47. Déclaration de C. Lalumière in « Les pays membres de l’OCDE regrettent ladéfection de la France sur l’AMI », Les Échos, 16/10/1998.

BibliographieCanadian Bankers Association, Preliminary Response to the MacKay Task-Force

Report, 24 septembre 1998.MacKay, H. (1998), Speaking notes for the Senate Banking Committee, Ottawa, 28

septembre 1998.MacKay Tak-Force Report (1998), On the Future of the Canadian Financial Services

Sector : Change, Challenge &Opportunities, Ottawa, Department of Finance, 15septembre 1998.

Scherer, F. (1996), Industry Structure, Strategy and Public Policy, Harper-Collins,New York.

Taylor, G. D. et P.A. Baskerville (1994), A Concise History of Business in Canada,Oxford University Press, Toronto.

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Donna Palmateer Pennee

Culture as Security: Canadian Foreign Policy andInternational Relations from the Cold War to the

Market Wars

AbstractThis paper offers an analytical catalogue of the use of “culture” as value andmeans in selected federal foreign policy documents. Shifts in rhetoric, fromthe ideological enemy of the ColdWar to the ideology of capital in the onset ofthe Market Wars, are traced with particular attention to how “culture”figures as a form of “security,” despite the absence of identification of globaleconomic competition as threat. Such shifts in policy rhetoric may function asa barometer of historical changes to the nation-culture-polity-economynexus. This paper is framed by a proposal for comparative research on therole of Canadian Literature in Canadian Studies programs in Canada andabroad, as a field for investigating changes to the nineteenth-century model ofthe nation-state, and for articulating a strategic nationalism or at least astrategic particularity in a so-called borderless world.

RésuméCet article présente un catalogue analytique de l’usage de la culture à titre devaleur et de moyen à l’intérieur d’un corpus de documents de politiqueétrangère émanant du gouvernement fédéral canadien. On y accorde uneattention particulière aux déplacements de rhétorique qui ont permis depasser de la dénonciation de l’ennemi idéologique pendant la Guerre froide àla promotion de l’idéologie du capital au début des Guerres de marché : ils’agit alors de montrer comment la culture apparaît comme une forme desécurité, en dépit de l’absence de l’identification de la concurrenceéconomique mondiale comme d’une menace. De tels déplacements au niveaude la rhétorique des politiques peuvent jouer un rôle de baromètre deschangements historiques subis par le complexe nation-culture-corpspolitique-économie. L’article est encadré par un projet de recherchecomparative sur le rôle de la littérature canadienne à l’intérieur desprogrammes d’Études canadiennes au Canada et à l’étranger, à titre dechamp d’étude des changements subis par le modèle de l’État-nation dudix-neuvième siècle et pour articuler un nationalisme stratégique ou, à tout lemoins, une particularité stratégique à l’intérieur d’un monde soi-disantmonde sans frontières.


Weare all familiarwith courses on“French civilization” or“Russian culture,” in which professors of language andliterature talk at large about the cultures to which theirstudies are directed. But given the professional interest ofthe lecturers, such courses almost always give wildlydistorted views of the histories, polities, economic affairs,and even the geographies of the countries concerned. Suchproblems would occur, in spades, if “Canadiancivilization” courses were taught by members of theCanadian intelligentsia; it would certainly not be wise, inmy view, to export a viewof our nationwhich is derived fromsuch works asWhite Niggers, Survival, The Forked Road,or Lament for a Nation. . . . The rest of the world willunderstand us no better . . . having read MariaChapdelaine,The Shooting of Dan McGrew, Life Before Man, orWacousta. It is natural and proper for Canadians to beinterested in these works of the imagination, but in peddlingthem to the wider world we run some risk of makingourselves ridiculous, and to little purpose. Surely, it wouldbe better to focus on history and on matters of political andeconomic structure. (Drummond 121-22)

Within the cultural community there continues to be astrong sense that . . . the government should provide supportbut should not impose constraints by linking that support topolitical, economic, industrial, strategic, or any other kindof purpose. Government may articulate, in the abstract, thecelebration of culture for its own sake as a goal ofinternational relations, but governments are not in thebusiness of doing things for aesthetic reasons: they are inthe business of serving policy and protecting and advancinginterests. As a consequence the worthy goal of makingdecisions with regard to cultural diplomacy for culturalreasons alone will invariably not be attained. (Cooper andLeyton-Brown 149-50)

These epigraphs on the role of Canadian “culture” in international policyare employed here to launch an inquiry that brings their perspectives intoproductive, dialectical tension with each other and with shifts in methodsfor examining the culture-policy-economy nexus. They usefully signalmultiple, even competing, definitions of “culture” and its role in the“culture” of State and international relations as analysed in this paper. Inthe first epigraph, “culture,” or “work of the imagination” (and the work ofliterary criticism and philosophy, it would seem, if we scrutinise all of thetitles listed), is an export whose epistemological status is at bestquestionable compared to the presumably objective, reliable and moreproperly nation-representative work of “history” and “matters of political

192


and economic structure.” In the second epigraph, while “aesthetic”concerns are important to members of “the cultural community,” the Statecannot perform its job if it is not “in the business” of linking support for“aesthetic” culture “to political, economic, industrial, strategic, or anyother kind of purpose” in “protecting and advancing interests.” And, ofcourse, “interests” are (now) always economic, in the long durée of variouskinds of warring relations between nations as states.

This paper offers a preliminarymapping of proposed research, followedby an analytical catalogue of “culture” as it occurs as “value” and “means”in selected federal policy documents, from the 1951 Report of theMassey[-Lévesque] Commission to the 1995 Government Statement,Canada in the World/Le Canada dans le monde.Whether or not “work ofthe imagination” is “reliable” as a knowledge base for representingCanada(to itself or to other countries), it is an export that performs more broadlycultural work in ways that make the “aesthetic” less easily decipherablefrom “history,” “politics” and “economics” than a professor of economics— or a poet or novelist or professor of literature — might think. But “thework of imagination” may also be an export that performs more broadlypolitical work than a professor of international relations — or a poet ornovelist or professor of literature — might think.

This paper is preliminary, then, to a larger study entitled “The State ofCulture and the Culture of State: The Function of Canadian Literature inCanadian Studies Programs at Home and Abroad.” The title’s chiasmusarticulates the broad parameters and potential areas of implication of thisproposedproject: what is the state (status; condition)ofCanadiancultureathomeandabroad in thepurviewof theState; andwhat is the cultureof (whatis cultivated by, and illustrated about the State by) the State’s use ofCanadian culture in international relations? How is the historicallyprominent role of literary culture in themakingof anationunderstood in thepresent context of international culture and international economicpressures on nation-states? What are the answers to Northrop Frye’squestion “Where is here?” when creative Canadian literature is studied inthe context of Canadian Studies programs? Through analysing how“Canada” is constructed as an object of study in academic policy andliterature’s substantive and methodological place in formally constitutedCanadian Studies programs at home and abroad, together with howCanadian “culture” is used in government policy documents to continue toassert national sovereignty in the domain of international economics, thisresearch pursues the narratives of Canada’s “imagined community”beyond those already well documented within more traditional literaryhistory and scholarship. Such research necessarily works without a fixeddefinition of “culture”; it takes its methodological cues from the multiplecontexts in which “culture” is produced and deployed, and assumes thatsomething both aesthetic and (/as) sociopolitically material is producedwhen nations’ images and imaginaries are represented through national

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Culture as Security: Canadian Foreign Policy and International Relationsfrom the Cold War to the Market Wars

“cultures.” Such definitional open-endedness seems necessary whenposing the questions: What is the role of a “national” “literature” (alsoequally complex terms)? What might it tell us about the historicaltrajectories of nation-states, once held together (if just barely) by thesymbolic currency of their “language(s) and literature(s)” and todaythreatened by actual currency differentials (measured against the $US and$EURO) — whose efficacies nevertheless, and perhaps more than ever,circulate through the economy of symbols by which nations arerepresented?1

Given global capitalism’s takeover of, but necessary articulation with,the nation-state, I am interested in the function of the continued assertionthat “culture” is a vehicle of national sovereignty, despite the changeswrought by economic history on the nineteenth-century model of themaintenance (or emergence) of national sovereignty through culturalsovereignty. Is there some strategic value (differentially, for both thegovernment and for counter-hegemonies) in this continued assertion ofculture’s importance, as Canadian Studies programs proliferate abroad?Could literary culture, in particular, be in the vanguard in promotingalternative models of sovereignty in the face of economic, not military,threat? As Bernard Ostry and Kevin Dowler have noted (respectively in1978 and1996), “culture” as “security”mayhavequite differentmeanings,depending on who is reading and writing policy.2

* * *

Andrew Fenton Cooper narrates the beginnings of Canada’s culturaldiplomacy as a scene of the management of a crisis in the country’s publicimage abroad, a crisis prompted by Quebec’s independent initiatives inrepresenting itself, by the uniqueness of its language and culture, as its ownnation-state (Introduction 9-15). Here, the “enemy” within, as it were,generated both ideological and structural components of Canadian culturaldiplomacy as a matter of presenting a united, federalist, civic-nationalistfront in the field of foreign relations.3 From these origins in crisismanagement, it is a short, albeit complex, leap to the management ofeconomic relations abroad (in part) through the management of Canada’simage abroad: the creation of Canadian Studies programs, supportedthrough the Academic Relations Division of the (then) Department ofExternalAffairs, was based on the “fact . . . that greater cultural contact hadto come before trade, not after” (Cooper, Introduction 18-19; 23). Writingfully a decade later for the Association of Canadian Studies in Canada (abranch of civil society, but funded in part by the State), David Cameron,having noted the twin internal justifications of “fostering self-knowledge”and“strengtheningcitizenship” (25) throughCanadianStudiesprogramsathome, relegates to an endnote the more material, less idealisticconsiderations of cultural promotion through Canadian Studies programs

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abroad: “Clearly, the relationship between cultural promotion and theexpansion of international trade and commerce also explains in part theGovernment of Canada’s interest in international Canadian studiesactivity” (29). Whereas the Massey[-Lévesque] Commission promotedcultural policy as a means of securing and protecting Canadian culture athome in order to cultivate the population and allow the State to continue toplay a political diplomacy role abroad (a role earned by participation in twoworld wars and in the peace process thereafter), by the time of the 1980-82Federal Cultural Policy Review, the focus became “not culturalprotectionism but the more efficient international marketing of culturalproduct.” The relations between the promotion of individual talents and thepromotion of Canada as an international economic partner remainedunclear, even to those in the Department of External Affairs who arguedthat to have a separate agency for handling the artwork would be “highlydetrimental to the use of cultural diplomacy as ‘a thoroughly moderninstrument of foreign policy’” (Cooper, Introduction 25).4

In his 1985 introduction to Canadian Culture: InternationalDimensions, Cooper remarked that “Cultural diplomacy is no longer the‘neglected aspect of foreign affairs’” that Charles Frankel had named it inhis1966bookonAmericaneducational andcultural policyabroad (3).5 Yetfifteen years later, scholarship that attends specifically to the role thatCanadian culture plays in the nation-state’s political economy abroad (andin the work of political economists on Canada as a nation-state), continuesto be difficult to find.6 In the transit from “foreign affairs” to “internationalrelations,” categorical clarity is lost but disciplinary borders are openedbecause international relations take in much more material than thebipolarity that “foreign” once implied. Despite calls for, and usefulexamples of, studies of political economy that take in both wider andmorespecific views of the constituents of international relations,7 the role ofculture and cultural policywithin international policy remains conspicuousby its near-absence from the scholarship. Perhaps to think of the difficultyas produced by the shifting and as yet unformalized cross-disciplinarylanguage of research is to exaggerate the worth and relevance of thisbroader project— or to underestimate the continued power of disciplinaryboundaries. Or perhaps the paucity of scholarship reflects in the academicdomain, what Robert J.Williams describes as the bureaucratic “image thatassignments in cultural affairs are, at best, interludes in a diplomatic careeror, at worst, irrelevant to the ‘real’ work of the department [of ExternalAffairs]” (Williams 106) or political science disciplines. After all, untilrecently, the roleof culture in international relationswas referred to in termsthat designated its peripheral status: “lowpolitics,” “the fourth dimension”(“the psychological/informational dimension to world affairs”), and, morecommonly and simply, “soft diplomacy” or “soft power” (see, e.g., Nossal5; Taylor 203).

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Nevertheless, the history of the nation-state’s use of culture in foreignpolicy can be read as a sort of barometer of change in the status ofnation-statism, in the means of international relations, and indeterminations of what is at stake in security debates as power relationsshift from the Cold War to the (unnamed as such) Market Wars.8 In thecontext of the waning of so-called “high” security issues following the endof the Cold War, and the rise of formerly so-called “low” matters ofeconomic policy into the position of “hard politics,” the permutability ofculture-as-means in policy documents tells an interesting story. The storythat is unfolding is one in which culture may be the working practice of astrategic nationalism, or at least a strategic particularity, in a so-calledborderless world, in the face of unworkable theories of nationalsovereignty, and the diminishment of Canada’s reputation for policypremised on “middle-power” status and the techniques of Pearsoniandiplomacy.9

“Culture” in Canadian policy documents, as a vehicle of foreign policyrelations from the Cold War to the Market Wars, narrates the fortunes ofnation-statism, from the explicitly “ideological” threats to nationalsecurity, to the explicit but apparently non-ideological threats of globalcapitalism. Military competition involves enemies; economic competitioninvolves . . . partners, in a change of terms that occludes the continuation ofwar by other means, even as “security” issues become more complexprecisely because of economic disparities across the globe.10 Statedocuments as historically remote from each other as the 1951 Report onNational Development in theArts, Letters and Sciences, written during theCold War era, and a 1998 public address by Hugh Stephens as AssistantDeputy Minister, Communications and Policy Planning, DFAIT (“Notesfor”) specify particular roles for culture-as-security in the internationalterrain, wherein “security” comes increasingly to be defined explicitly inrelation to economic prosperity. In between, white papers on foreignpolicy, again distanced by time and by political party, frame internationalrelations as structured by economics and security, i.e., that the latter will beachieved by ensuring all nations access to the former — in its capitalistforms. Such a goal carries precisely the contradictions that threaten worldorder (the threat is written into these same papers, but its principal sourcegoes unrecognised).11 My point is not a point about economic nationalismin the face of globalization (see Reich), nor is my position that of aneconomic nationalist: rather my point is about the silence in thesedocuments on capitalism as also an ideology, the obviousness that its“victory” over communism — and we all knew that communism was an“ideology” — makes the world a safe place; and the further obviousnessthat for the world to continue to be a safe place, economic growth “for all,”as the 1995 report repeats, is required. More disturbing, but not surprising,is that Canadian “culture,” by such silent obviousnesses, becomes inofficial policy synonymous with the culture of capital.12

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AsCooper notes in his 1997 textbook,CanadianPolicy: OldHabits andNew Directions, “[w]hile it may be disingenuous to suggest that Canadawillmiss theColdWar, thepassingof the imposeddisciplinesof that erahasundoubtedly produced a sense of ambiguity concerning the foreign policyagenda. Without the constraints of a tight pattern of bipolarity, and thepressures for ideological conformity, theremaywell be an expanded spacefor innovative formsofactivityandassociation. Yet this increased roomformanoeuvre in terms of content coexists with a context of greateropen-endedness and volatility. Rather than the relative comfort extantduring the Cold War years, Canadian foreign policy now has to operateunder conditions of heightened complexity and uncertainty” (1).Interestingly, even as Cooper’s assessment implies greater (becauseunknown or uncontrollable) threats for foreign policy makers, he assumesthat “the pressures for ideological conformity” are now absent because theColdWar is over. This is a recent example—and in a textbook for studentsof Canadian Studies — of what I mean by the silence on capitalism as anideological conformity that succeeds the Cold War and drives nations’relationswith each other, and states’ relationswith nations. Let us turn to aRoyal Commission’s statements on Canada’s foreign policy of half acentury ago, in the context of a Report specifically addressed to the state ofCanadian culture and the State’s relations to it.

Culture in International Relations, 1951The chapter in the Massey[-Lévesque] Report on “The Projection ofCanada Abroad” notes that “[t]he division between information andcultural exchanges between states is indeed often blurred,” but “[a]llnations now recognize as public responsibilities both the issue ofinformation about themselves and cultural exchanges with other states.Canada is assuming these responsibilities alongwith her new internationalimportance. . . . Thepromotionof a knowledgeofCanada is not a luxury butan obligation. . . . Information about Canada as a nation serves to stimulateour international trade, and to attract tourists and desirable immigrants. Inour inquiry, however, we are more concerned with another field.Exchangeswith other nations in the fields of the arts and letters will help usto make our reasonable contribution to civilized life . . .” (253-54).

The term “civilised” here registers in two directions, one internal, oneexternal if youwill. The internal designation is to “the normal developmentof Canadian cultural life” beyond the signs “that our cultural exchanges arestill in an elementary and indeed in almost a non-existent stage” (261).Herethe rhetoric of maturity urges investment in cultural policy as a means ofsecuring a national culture worthy of “her [Canada’s] new internationalimportance” (253), i.e., subsequent to WWII. But this internal register ofcivilisation is necessitated by the emergence of the country’s “inside” onthe “outside” of international politics; the country’s image of itself at homeand its projection abroad are not separable (and indeed more than ever

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locked in mutual manoeuvres, as more recent policy documents makeclear).

Interestingly, Massey notes that the metaphor of projection is “drawnfrom the cinema and suggests a practice now universal” (253), anobservation that records with uncanny precision the emergence of one ofthe most potent means of propagandising capitalism, though the politicalclimate of the time obscured such a recognition even as it foregroundedcapital’s “other,” communism:“Forgoodor ill,” theReport carefullynotes,“information and cultural matters are now becoming more and more anessential part of foreign policy. The pace in this matter has in recent yearsbeen set by the dictatorships; democratic countries are following theirexample partly in recognition of changing circumstances which make thisactivity necessary and desirable in itself, partly because false propagandacan be countered only by the truth effectively and generously disseminatedby every practicable means” (263). When the Report then turns to theexample of the British Council (the basis for the Report’s recommendationof theCanadaCouncil), theusesof culture aredescribed thus: “Onecountrywhich has taken the lead in these enterprises [of countering falsepropaganda with truth] is Great Britain, formerly the home of laissez-fairephilosophy.This hasnot beenaquestionofpartypolitics; thepresent policywas initiated before the late war and has been continued as a matter ofcourse by governments of different political complexions” (263). Indeed,so far removed from the politics of war are the British Council’s activities“to make the British people known abroad through their cultural activitiesas seen against their social background” that they are an alternative to thepolitical or the economic; “to develop sympathy and understanding bygetting away from the exclusively political and economic approach of thepast” (263). Here we have one of those curiously symptomatic moments:British “culture” comes to the rescue precisely at the time of Britain’s lossofpoweron theworld stageandwell into itsprolongedstateof indebtednessto the new world power whose international prominence was secured byfinancing Britain’s recovery fromWWII (andwith considerable help fromfilm).13 So yes, “democratic countries are following their [thedictatorships’] example,” although what is dictating the terms ofdemocracy is unnamed, even disavowed.

Albert A. Shea’s sixty-five page handbook,Culture in Canada: A Studyof the Findings of the Royal Commission on National Development in theArts, Letters andSciences, (1949-1951)was“designed tomakeavailable toAmericans and Canadians an account and some commentary on thefindings of this unique committee of enquiry on culture” (9). Its epigraph,drawn from the Massey[-Lévesque] Report, crystallises how the Reportsignified in the early 1950s: “If we as a nation are concerned with theproblems of defence, what, we may ask ourselves, are we defending? Weare defending civilization, our share of it, our contribution to it. The thingswith which our enquiry deals are the elements which give civilization its

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character and its meaning. It would be paradoxical to defend somethingwhich we are unwilling to strengthen and enrich, and which we even allowto decline” (8). (John Ralston Saul’s remarks, cited later in this paper, arerather like these; Canada has become a model to the rest of the world, butinadequately funds the projection of our culture abroad.) Similarly, J.R.Kidd’sForeword toShea’s handbook expressed the political urgencyof theReportonCanada’scultureandofShea’s study thus: “It ishoped that a shortsummary of the recommendations will help groups in both Canada and theUnited States attain some further understanding of the relationships ofcitizens and their government in the field of arts. Some unthinking personsmay feel that any such matters should be put aside to some future morepeaceful time. But anyonewho pauses to reflect about the dangerous yearswe are living in, about the ‘war for men’s minds’ in which we are engaged,will realize thatnow,most of all, is the time for an affirmationof our life andpurposes through the arts and letters and in every other way” (5). Shea’sChapter 2begins: “At a timewhen thenewspaperheadlines reminds [sic] usdaily of Korea and communism and all that they signify, theCommissioners found their taskmore urgent than ever. They point out thatCanadians must have the will to develop their own culture, and must beprepared to spend dollars to do it, even at a time when defence is the mainitem in our national budget. . . . Military defences are not enough; culturemust be defended and developed just as vigorously” (12).14 Of particularurgency in Canada’s cultural defence at the time was protection from “thedanger of permanent dependence” on the United States, given that“American hospitality and generosity [e.g., from Rockefeller andCarnegie] has tended to make Canadians uncritical. . . . Instead of beingstimulated by the flood of cultural material received from her neighbour,Canada’s own creative effort has beenweakened. In effect, the report callsfor a cultural declaration of independence” (14).

Culture in International Relations, 1970Interestingly, by 1970, once the policing of military build-up became lessimportant than securing global markets and engaging in economicprotection/ism, the Trudeau government’s white paper on foreign policyattempted a declaration of economic independence by refusing to give overany one of its six volumes to an account of Canada’s specific relationswiththe USA. It merely noted instead that the six volumes “do not deal with thedetails of bilateral relations, even those of the greatest importance (with theUnited States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, for example). Thoserelations are clearly involved inmanyof thepolicy issues raised throughoutthe papers. The kind and degree of that involvement as regardsCanada-United States relations is attested to by numerous references to theUnited States inmost of the papers” (ForeignPolicy forCanadians 41-42).That the statewas acting in the interests of national economic security, for asecure economy (and Trudeau thumbing his nose at the Americans, no

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doubt), can be read in this refusal to speak in detail to relations with theGlobal Cop/Global Bank as the USA fashioned itself following its role inWWII.

Rather than citing the policy itself, I quote here criticisms of the 1970Liberal white paper on foreign policy, as ameans of quickly illustrating theshift in values and national definition from the 1950s to the 1970s. Much ofthe criticism had precisely to do with the loss of investment in Canada’sinternational reputation and position as a diplomatic, peace-keeping, andforeign aid state, a reputation well under construction at the time of theMassey[-Lévesque] Report. Commentaries invited by The CanadianInstitute of International Affairs / Institut canadien des affairesinternationales (“Foreign Policy for Canadians: Comments . . .”) expressvarying degrees of disbelief concerning the agenda’s explicit movementaway fromCanada’s distinctness in international relations to its wholesaleembrace of economics-driven policy. As PeytonV. Lyon remarked, “[t]hemost distinctive thing about Canadian nationalism, and the best, has beenits internationalism. Can we really foster Canada’s distinctive identity byeliminating this solid element of distinction?ByhavingCanadabehave justlike any other nation-state?” (15). MP Andrew Brewin cited the policy’sposition on South Africa (a position handily summarized in J. L.Granatstein’s phrase “Condemn and trade” [8]), as indicative of “the trendtowards pragmatism and indeed towards a narrow materialism” (2). MPGordon Fairweather similarly objected that “[t]he globe is more than aplace where men buy and sell goods and narrow self-interest is not asufficient goal these days” (7). GillesLalondenoted that the policy “shouldhave called for a new breed of Canadian diplomats (not salesmen)” (14).Thomas A. Hockin observed that “[w]e are all, it seems, in the thrall ofeconomic technocracy. . . . This new emphasis on the observable— largelyeconomic — dimensions of foreign policy may turn out to be a usefulantidote to much of the murkiness of some of our old federalist andvoluntarist style in the past. However there is a danger that arguments forinternational action which are not directly related to Canada’s interest willbecome cynically ignored. . . . [T]he ambiguity of international relationscomes to be avoided for the clarity of international trade. . . . It could... becalled a foreign policy for international economists” (10-11). Granatsteinexpressed similar objections, though with a heavier ironic hand inexplainingwhat the three priority areas of the policy really represent: “Ourpolicy now is to makemoney for businessmen (economic growth), to keepthe restless natives under control abroad (social justice), and to find someway to avoid drowning in our own effluents (quality of life)” (8). K. J.Holsti more mildly registered that “it is disheartening to see foreign policyreduced primarily to trade promotion and cultural and technologicalexchange” (12), though “[i]t is refreshing to see a policy statement devoidof cold-war clichés” (12). Indeed, the clichés no longer apply because the“enemy” is no longer recognizable as such.

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Hockin’s forecast that the state’s “arguments for international actionwhich are not directly related to Canada’s [i.e., the nation’s] interest willbecome cynically ignored” has, unfortunately, and for the most part, beenwrong. The ‘clear and present danger’ not named as such but incorporatedin its early stages in the 1970 foreign policy statement, and in thesereactions to it, is the globalization of capital. And as Joachim Hirsch hasrecently argued, “globalization should not be seen as an adherence to aneconomic ‘logic’ or some sort of natural tendency of a market economy.Rather, globalization should be understood as a decisive political strategyaimed at the restructuring of post-war capitalism in terms of its economic,social and political dimensions” (41).15

The hegemony of a consensus counter to the “logic” of the “natural”progress of a market economy is difficult to achieve, because as MarkNeufeld indicates, “hegemony is understood to involve not dominance ofone state by another [in the neo-realist model of international and securitystudies], but rather the institution and maintenance of a world order whichserves the interests of the dominant class of the dominant state while at thesame time it serves the interest of the dominant classes of other states aswell” (13). In other words, when “the international/interstate realm [is]coupledwithhegemonic relations at the level of civil society in core states,”what becomes visible is a series of interlocking legitimations orobviousnesses (Neufeld 14).16 However, as Richard K. Ashley argued asearly as 1984 in “The Poverty of Neorealism,” the reification of the state ascore object in international studies, and of capitalist economics as atranscendental signified, or, the foundation of states’ relations with eachother after theColdWar, occurs at the expense of the role of “social forces,”or of pockets of civil societywhichmay have different values and differentmeans. The struggle between “the cultural community” and the State overthe definition, funding, andmechanisms of Canadian “culture,” referred toby Cooper and Leyton-Brown in this paper’s second epigraph, records thepossibility of a counter-hegemony; “imaginative” “culture” as theunreliable “other” of Dr. Drummond’s history, politics, and economics inthis paper’s first epigraph,might offer a space of counter-consensuswithin,for example, the “legi t imacy” ofState-funding-of-Canadian-Studies-abroad-for-purposes-of-trade. Inother words, we need a method for reading the space where culture islocated in these documents, as these documents are located in the structuralspace of contradiction whereby national interests strengthen internationalcapital when they represent the hegemony of capital or of “accumulation”worldwide. Pace Frank Davey’s Post-National Arguments, what happensif national culture does not line up with the state and the firm?17 And whathappens if “national culture” is readdifferentlyoutsideof thenation, inboththe public domain of sales and reviews and in the institutional domain ofCanadian Studies programs abroad? And what is the significance ofdiminished funding within Canada for Canadian Studies programs at thesame time that such programs proliferate abroad: is it too cynical towonder

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if these new programs are situated geopolitically in relation to globalcapital’s search for new markets, in the culture-as-economic-securitynexus? Further still, as Ric Knowles notes, “[w]hy is it never a question ofinvestment in cultural production in the first place (so that there’ssomething to export—not tomention something to ‘consume’ at ‘home’)”(n.pag.).

Culture in International Relations, 1995The1995Chrétiengovernment statement,Canada in theWorld/LeCanadadans le monde as the most recent policy document in this survey is, notsurprisingly, the most explicit about the complexities of the intrication ofgovernment, economics, and securityunderglobal capitalism.While “[t]heprojection of Canadian values and culture” is one of “three key objectives”in the pursuit of foreign policy, it is preceded by “[t]he promotion ofprosperity and employment” and “[t]he protection of our security, within astable global framework” (i). Interestingly, the repeated and insistentreferences to these complexities in the Statement’s opening pages callattentionnotonly to increased international economicpressuresonnationalpolicy, but perhaps also prepare the reader for the justification of fiscalrestructuring (i.e., cutbacks) later on in the Statement.

Within such a context, then, of international economic pressure, whichgenerates international security threats — but which is also the pursuit ofhappiness for all and the guarantee of stability (matters on which theStatement is again repeatedly and contradictorily insistent) — the“projection of Canadian values and culture” as a foreign policy objective iscouched at some length within the rhetoric of the possibility that fiscalpressures will prevent the full implementation of policy on this front.“Cultural affairs, in addition to politics and the economy, are one of thepillars of our foreign policy,” and the government “want[s] to recognize therole played by artists and creators in disseminating Canadian values anddiversity throughout theworld. . . . TheGovernment has already reversed adecision of the previous government to close the cultural services of someof our missions abroad [they reopened a cultural centre in Paris] . . .Nevertheless, theGovernment is very consciousof the limits of its financialresources in this sector, as in others. Budgetary constraints oblige us to beparticularly prudent with public funds. We will, therefore, have to worktogether with all of our partners in Canada to publicize our cultural assetsabroad, and topromoteour cultural industries andeducational services. Wewill also implement the Government’s strategy in this field as meansbecome available to do so” (38). Casting the net of responsibility for theimplementation of culture-as-foreign-policy farther and farther afield (andinto a different designation of “public” funds, through the language of“assets,” “industries,” and “services”), the statement then isolates thosemost globally lucrative aspects of “culture” as exemplary and worthy ofparticular attention: “[o]ur expertise in the communications field” allows

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“the Prime Minister” to “offer to help the new democracies in Europestrengthen free media in a context of democracy and respect for humanrights” (39); and “Canadian participation in the international televisionnetwork TV5 represents an exceptional showcase for our francophonetelevisual productions” (39). Here, the Government manages to do a littleof its own “democracy and respect” work in relation to an ongoing ruptureon its domestic policy front, while engaging in the development of“democratic” values in formerly totalitarian states (i.e., states withlimited-access or inaccessible markets).

This most “rhetorical” of the statement’s six chapters ends with therousing “celebration of Canadian culture and the promotion of Canadiancultural and education industries, so that they can continue to compete athome and abroad . . .” (39). The government pledges to “remain vigilant inprotecting and promoting the capacity of our important cultural industriesto flourish in the global environment” (39). Such vigilance iscomplemented in the “Promotion of Prosperity and Employment” chapterby the policy on marketing Canadian cultural goods as a means ofmarketing Canadian trade opportunities: “Wewill seek to make better useof Canada’s artists and scholars as part of a fundamental re-thinking of thewaywe promote ourselves and our products abroad. It will be important tocontinue to developnewexportmarkets for the products and services of ourcultural industries. At the same time, we will provide foreign serviceofficerswith better tools needed to sell Canada abroad, includingCanadianculture and learning” (22). Such officers will participate in “a strategy thatdefines roles and responsibilities and seeks to eliminate overlap andduplication and install one-stop shopping for export-related intelligenceand services” (23). Given the location of foreign service officers’ employ,the development of such a policy will presumably depend on“state-of-the-artmarket intelligence gathered throughCanadian embassiesand consulates abroad” (21). The language here clearly designates therelocation of spying from themilitary to the economy in away that capturesthe shift from the Cold War to the Market Wars.18

The pursuit of capital is not projected as a value but rather taken forgranted as a transcendental signified, an obvious and stable foundationfrom which other meanings and values are produced, and indeed securityguaranteed. Thus, “[t]he promotion of prosperity and employment is at theheart of the [1995] Government’s agenda. International markets presenttremendous opportunities for Canadians: we can compete with the best inthe world. . . . The Government will also work to reinforce globalprosperity.Whenotherparts of theworldprosper,webenefit inmanyways.Prosperity helps to anchor international stability and enables progresstowards sustainable development. More prosperous people are able tomaintainmoremature andmutually beneficial economic partnershipswithCanada, becoming increasingly open to our values and thus more activepartners in building the international system. The promotion of global

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peace as the key to protecting our security remains a central element of ourforeignpolicy. Stability andsecurity areprerequisites for economicgrowthand development. However, the threats to security now are more complexthan before. . . . Our own security, including our economic security, isincreasingly dependent on the security of others” (ii). Thus, the thirdforeign policy objective, to project Canadian values and culture, is toproject not just “respect for human rights, democracy, the rule of law, andthe environment” (ii): it is also, in terms of the collocation or intrication ofthepolicyobjectives tout court, to project capitalismas avalue, as a culture.This gives a somewhat different twist to frequent designations ofCanada as“postmodern nation,” when “[t]he becoming cultural of the economic, andthe becoming economic of the cultural, has often been identified as one ofthe features that characterizes what is now widely known aspostmodernity” (Jameson 60).

Thus,Canada’sOfficialDevelopmentAssistance toother countries, likethe projection of Canadian values and culture, is refracted through “thecontext of its [the Government’s] broader foreign policy review,” which isto say that what used to be called “foreign aid” is explicitly now “aninvestment in prosperity and employment. It connects the Canadianeconomy to some of the world’s fastest growingmarkets— themarkets ofthe developingworld. . . . International assistance also contributes toglobalsecurity by tackling many key threats to human security, such as . . . thewidening gap between rich and poor. Finally, it is one of the clearestinternational expressions ofCanadian values and culture—ofCanadians’desire to help the less fortunate and of their strong sense of social justice—and an effective means of sharing these values with the rest of the world”(40; emphasis in original). Indeed, “[r]ecognizing the importance ofODA,the Government remains committed to improving its effectiveness and tomaking progress towards the ODA target of 0.7% of GNPwhen Canada’sfiscal situation allows it” (43; emphasis added). And “Canadians want tobe sure that their aid dollars are being used effectively, that their help ismaking a difference in the lives of people benefitting from Canadianassistance by increasing their self-reliance. The Government shares thisconcern . . .” (46).

The policy categories of “international assistance” and “projectingCanadian values and culture” are the only categories to be subjected to thisrhetoric of “public resources permitting”: perhaps they are theonly areas offoreign policy that may not necessarily be seen to promote supranationalcapital, despite the rhetorically mutual constitution of democracy andcapital elsewhere in federal foreign policy? Here, the Government’sstatement seems to override the perspective of one of the experts consultedby theSpecial JointCommittee reviewingCanadian foreignpolicy in1994,who spoke of Canada’s “funding disadvantage” compared to othercountries’ expenditure on the export of their culture: John Ralston Saulremarks, “In these tight financial times all our budgets are being cut.

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Foreign Affairs cultural budgets have dropped drastically since 1990. Buteven at its highest it was seven times less than the French; four time [sic]less than the British. The question is not whether we can afford to spend toexport culture. The question is whether we can afford not to” (86).19

The Government did listen to the Committee, however, in itsextrapolations from Saul’s position paper and the statistical relevance ofreferences to Canadian culture in its hearings: “Never before has aParliamentary Committee reviewing Canadian foreign policy receivedsuch a simple message from so many witnesses: Canadian foreign policyshould celebrate and promote Canadian culture and learning as animportant way of advancing our interests in international affairs” (61);“Strengthening Canadian identity and enhancing our innovative andcreative capacity make us better armed to deal with a more intenselycompetitive global system” (63). Better armed indeed.

* * *

The 1995 Government statement, then, continues to promote theobviousness that the pursuit of prosperity guarantees security at both thenational and global levels; it folds into this particularmixCanadian cultureas an export and an industry, and Canadian valuesmeasured in terms of thenation’s tradition of commitment to international social justice, with noawareness that these happen to be necessarily asymmetrical and internallycontradictory.

But, then, perhaps this comes as no surprise when the statement’sopening Summary Remarks speak of a strategic leadership position forCanada “among the open, advanced societies which are becomingincreasingly influential as world power is dispersing and becoming moredefined in economic terms” (i). If we parse the terms of this remark, wediscover that the conjunctive “as” performs some interesting work:presumably it signals “while” but it may also signal “because” or “since,”yet I would argue that the conjunction should be “but”. I recognise that thesense of the remark is the obviousness that “open, advanced societies” areexercising influence because “world power is dispersing” after the ColdWar, and that power is, then, “becomingmore defined in economic [than in“hard” politics, military security] terms.” But if the nature of the influencethat is being exercised is to define power in economic terms, then bordersand malls may be open for business, but societies are closed to one way ofconducting business. The “dispersal of power” into greater definition “ineconomic terms” isnot adispersalofpowerbut aconcentrationof it intoonevalue system across wider geopolitical space.

Butdoes thehookingof culture toeconomiccompetitivenessnecessarilymean that culture performs only thework that policy intends?What literaryculture’s role, in particular, might be in this complex space is a question

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worth pursuing, given the prominence of Canada’s writers and publicintellectuals abroad (see, e.g., Saul’s paper on this, 85, 105), given thedialectical history of the intrication of language, literature and nation, andgiven the need for alternative models of international relations — whichmay very well be under construction by cross-border communities ofreaders as NGOs. But that’s several other papers.20

Acknowledgements“The State of Culture and The Culture of State” project was awarded a Universityof Guelph Office of Research SSHRC seed grant and a three-year StandardResearch Grant from SSHRC; I gratefully acknowledge the support of theCouncil. I also acknowledge the assistance afforded by the Ontario Work StudyProgram which, in conjunction with the support of the School of Literatures andPerformance Studies in English, permitted the hiring of two undergraduateresearch assistants, Joanne Di Vito and Julian Robertson. My thanks to Joanneand Julian for invaluable assistance in getting this project off the ground. Thanksto Professor Jarmo Oikarenen and readers for “Border Crossings: The EighthTampere Conference on North American Studies, University of Tampere,Finland (April 22-25, 1999) who accepted the paper in proposed form andscheduled it for a panel on National Policies and Globalization; I regret not beingable to attend the conference. Thanks to Professors Klay Dyer and Marilyn Rose,organisers of the Two Days of Canada Conference ’99 at Brock University(November 3-4, 1999) and to conferees, particularly Christl Verduyn, MisaoDean and Linda Warley, for their encouraging reception of a much abbreviatedversion of this paper. Thanks as well to Brian Woodrow for collegialencouragement from a political science perspective; to Ric Knowles for detailedcommentary on the manuscript; and to Christine Bold, Susan Brown, DianaBrydon, Linda Mahood, Danny O’Quinn and Ann Wilson, for continued collegialsupport of writing and research during difficult administrative times.

Notes1. Such symbols may be contested within the country, but they retain a certain

stability nevertheless outside of it; see, for example, Rukszto; Newton.2. See also Acheson and Maule.3. Lucien Bouchard was engaged further in independent external relations while I

was drafting this paper in winter 1999, as reported in “Quebec must speak toworld by itself, Bouchard says / Premier wants Canada to allow province toprotect culture and language on the international stage,” The Globe and MailTuesday, March 16, 1999. The consciousness of the politically representativevalences of language and literature, and the explicit distinctness-of-culturearguments in francophone Quebec discourse, are matched by the thorough-goingsociological tradition of approaches to culture for which Francophonecomparative and Québécois literary scholars are renowned. My proposedresearch will collect and analyse the on-the-ground narratives and scholarly andcurricular practices of teachers and students working in formally constitutedCanadian Studies programs per se (i.e., named as such) regardless of the languageof instruction or of texts read; it will not include a study of separately constitutedQuebec Studies programs (nor of Ethnic Studies, Native Studies, etc., which may

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also have significant Canadian content). Given their present strengths as entitiesindependent of Canadian Studies programs per se, given thelanguage-literature-nation nexus and the necessarily different concepts ofnation-state and “Canadian” cultural history that inform the history and practicesof Quebec Studies programs, they seem to me to require a similar but separateproject to the one proposed here. Similarly, a study of programs not organised bythe name of the nation may speak to other communities of belonging or modes ofidentifying that usefully critique certain versions of nationalisms but may alsocomplement what I refer to here as a strategic particularity for somethingrecognisable as “Canada.”

4. Here Cooper cites the Department of External Affairs Statements and Speeches,May 1983, 11.

5. Frankel’s book is entitled The Neglected Aspect of Foreign Affairs: AmericanEducational and Cultural Policy Abroad (Washington: Brookings Institution,1966).

6. Maude Barlow and Bruce Campbell are perhaps the best known of recentpopularisers of the stakes here in Canada-US relations. Formative work appearedin Crean, Audley and selected essays by Allan Smith (rpt. in Canada: AnAmerican Nation?). Bashevkin is helpful for case studies such as theTime-Reader’s Digest Bill. More recently, essays by Gasher, Goldfarb, Newtonand Ferré offer specific points of entry into this terrain. Berland, Collins andDorland have worked extensively on radio broadcasting, television and film,respectively, in ways that can be extrapolated; Strange’s work on internationalpolitical economy is also methodologically informative, particularly her Statesand Markets and The Retreat of the State. In more strictly “literary” scholarship,see Corse, Czernis and Hunter.

7. See, for example, Resnick, Masks of Proteus; Stopford and Strange, with Henley;Strange, Retreat and States and Markets; Jameson and Miyoshi; Gill, ed.Gramsci; Gill and Mittelmann; Lapid; Lapid and Kratochwil; Neack, Hey, andHaney; Roseneau and Czempiel; Walker and Mendlovitz.

8. For a recent survey on the status of nation-statism, with specific reference toCanada, see Penrose; Kymlicka and Lenihan; see also the useful conferenceproceedings published under the direction of Lapierre, Smart and Savard; andthose edited by Symons, Dickinson and Niederehe, particularly Lorimer’s andO’Donnell’s essay.

9. The literature on Canada’s power-status in international relations and its historyof diplomacy is voluminous: see, for example, Smith; Nossal, The Politics ofCanadian Foreign Policy; Molot; for more recent studies, see, for example,English and Hillmer; Cooper, Higgott and Nossal; Keating; and Cooper, ed.,Niche Diplomacy. For careful arguments about how a strategic nationalism doesnot presume or impose homogeneity, see Angus; Findlay. For elaboration of themethodological value of the notion of “strategic” as I intend its use, see Spivak.

10. For useful overviews of security studies in their early and recent stages, seeBuzan; Lipschutz; Le Prestre; and Cooper, “Stretching the Boundaries ofSecurity,” Canadian Foreign Policy: Old Habits and New Directions 110-41.

11. See, for example, Competitiveness and Security, Foreword (n. pag.), and 3. Seealso Foreign Policy for Canadians, chapters IV and V in particular, where“economic growth is essential to sovereignty and independence” (25) becausecapital, not military might, is power (28-35), and “Social Justice”=“Developmentassistance” (35-36) in order to ensure “Quality of Life” and “Peace and Security”(36-37).

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12. In order to begin the work of the larger project on the role of literary culturewithin nation-based programs abroad, I have made this oblique point of entry,culture as security, hoping thereby to track — and to bear in mind — thecomplexities of relations that make the nation-culture-economy nexus of topical,political, and methodological interest. I feel a certain trepidation, given Dr.Drummond’s dismissal of English professors in Canadian Studies as the peopleleast likely to “do something during their professional lifetime to make Canadabetter known in the rest of the world” (126), but I also take heart from PhilipResnick’s more recent remarks on theoretical and methodological expansivenessin the field: “National history, international position, and various cultural factorsplay roles that make difficult all-embracing theorizations about the modern state.. . . A product of human history, it [the state] must be studied historically, and inthat endeavour, philosophy, political theory, and historical imagination have noless a contribution to make than political economy” (Masks 130-31). I take heart,as well, from the methodological and research base in such collections as Beerand Hariman; Biersteker and Weber; Der Derian and Shapiro; Gill andMittelmann; King; Lapid and Kratochwil; Lipschutz; and in the work of Ashley;Campbell; Cox; Halliday; Katzenstein; Walker; and Weber, where the influenceof such theorists as Gramsci, Derrida and Foucault, long familiar to literaryscholars, is facilitating work in international relations studies that I recognise andcan learn from as forms of institutional ethnography (which, for my purposes andfrom my position as a Canadian/ist scholar, are intricated with geopolitics).Dowler’s remark “that the analysis of [cultural] policy must begin with thequestion of security and governmentality” speaks to the disciplinary limits ofcommunications (and other) scholarship; he concludes that “[a]lthoughhackneyed as an expression at this juncture [in 1996], an ‘interdisciplinaryapproach’ is more urgent than ever . . . ” (344). Findlay has eloquently repeatedthe urgency of this call in a more recent meditation on interdisciplinarity in/andCanada.

13. For a useful and quick summary of the shift from the Pax Britannica to the PaxAmericana from an historical, materialist point of view, see Gill and Law,“Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital,” 96-97. For stimulatingremarks en passant on the Hollywood film in the context of the Marshall Plan, seeJameson, “Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue,” 61-62. For anaccount of an interesting return of a strategic particularity in British culturalpolicy, see Sparks.

14. Filewod usefully summarises the Massey[-Lévesque] Report’s position onculture as defence with the following remark: “a national arts policy is anecessary defence against un-Canadian communism” (19).

15. For related studies, see, for example, Resnick, Twenty-First Century Democracy;Dryzek; Bowles and Gintis; Reich; Sakamoto; Strange, “The Problem”; Wood.

16. Pauly notes: “if a regime of international capital mobility is now commonlydepicted as inevitably governing the lives of citizens in an increasingly globaleconomy, the consent of the governed has not adequately been sought. The factthat such consent is routinely sought in analogous trade matters makes its absencein the financial field all the more glaring.This is the source of mis-identified fears concerning nation-states’ ‘losing theirsovereignty’ in the international arena. At issue is the legitimacy of an emergentregime, not the sovereignty of the states participating in it” (371).

17. Jameson’s “Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue” is methodologicallyuseful in this regard, as are several essays in the following collections: Drache

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and Gertler; Gill, ed. Gramsci; and Pheng Cheah and Robbins. Buell’s position,while I do not agree with it in all its details, is nevertheless salutary for itsoptimism.

18. But as we have already noted, the economy is not ideologically driven unless it isa “Marxist” or somehow other than a capitalist one. See, for example, “Canada inthe World,” Extracts of Statements by The Right Honourable Joe Clark, Secretaryof State for External Affairs, to the House of Commons Standing Committee onExternal Affairs and International Trade, External Affairs Canada: Statementsand Speeches, Canadian Foreign Policy Series (89/17), May 11, 1989 (Ottawa),for the deployment of Marxism as an ideology by other states and Clark’svigilance around Gorbachev’s idea “to the effect that their economic system doesnot work and needs an in-depth overhaul. I find that highly interesting, not onlywith regard to the Soviet Union, but also concerning Vietnam, Mozambique andother countries with a Marxist economy. If that is the base for their reform, thenwe must encourage the development of another approach in the Soviet Union”(4). This in contrast to the African National Congress’s “alleged association withMarxism. . . . that is now a part of the past” (3) and therefore helps to explainretroactively Canada’s contradictory position on South Africa (“condemn andtrade”) and Clark’s unwillingness “to introduce mandatory sanctions” (2). On“economic intelligence,” see Potter.

19. Saul’s position on culture’s role is that “[c]ulture is a value in itself. It is the realexpression of the country, as well as being a money-making business. . . . In fact,trade is in many ways an adjunct of culture. It is the widespread, varied andaccessible presence of Canadian culture in a foreign country that creates many ofthe conditions which industry can then take advantage of” (87).

20. Over the course of drafting this paper in Winter 1999, the newspapers were full ofthe complexities of the culture-security-economy nexus on the internationalstage: e.g., the US desired to re-open and revise the ABM treaty; everyone atWorld Trade Organization meetings noted the likelihood of US protectionismbeing activated strongly (it was) if Canada passed Bill C-55 to prevent “dumping”in the magazine industry; and NATO bombed Eastern Europe (I designate a largetarget here, given that a Chinese Embassy was hit during these operations). Undersuch circumstances, to suggest the political efficacies of reading creativeliterature seems, well, rather naive — and yet we need to know aboutrepresentations of nations in terms other than those generated by official policyand media.

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Review Essays

Essais critiques

Alvin Finkel

Rebellion and Resistance ofAboriginals and Labour

Winnipeg and its environs have a special place in the history of rebellionand resistance in Canada. The Seven Oaks confrontation of 1816, the RedRiver Rebellion of 1869-1870, and the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919made public school students like myself inWinnipeg in the 1960s feel thatour area had been snubbed as we read national histories with ameta-narrative in which rebellion in Canada ended with the granting ofresponsible government to pre-Confederation colonies. Scholarly work onthe uprisings of Aboriginals and workers at the time was primitive. SevenOaks and the Red River Rebellion, along with the Northwest Rebellion of1885,were discussedwithin the ethnocentric “civ/sav” (civilization versussavagery) framework, while progressive work on the Winnipeg GeneralStrike attempted to blot out its class-versus-class character by focussing onthe strike leaders’ limited objectives, mainly the recognition of collectivebargaining. The school texts used for grades 5, 8, and 11, when the SocialStudies curriculum for the province mandated the teaching of Canadianhistory, were biased towards the Canadian state in their discussion of theMétis struggles, and ignored First Nations altogether. They also ignoredworking people and made no mention of the Winnipeg General Strike, orany other strike.

Since the 1960s, the number ofworks onMétis, FirstNations, and labourhistory has mushroomed, and a variety of perspectives now exist on themajor rebellions of these groups. In particular, the national andinternational context of rebellions and movements of resistance is thesubject of much more commentary. The Winnipeg General Strike is nolonger seen as a unique rebellion in 1919 which sparked a series ofsympathetic general strikes in other cities and towns across the country.Instead, it is considered part of an international (mainly European andNorth American) pattern of worker rebellion against both capitalists andstate authorities during and immediately after the First World War. Thesympathetic strikes are viewed as the product of local conditions and localstruggles, and support for international labour developments, asmuch as anexpressionof solidaritywith theWinnipegstrikers.Meanwhile,Aboriginalresistance is increasingly viewed as a manifestation of indigenousopposition to colonialism. Such perspectives are not, however, universallyshared; nor do they result in unanimity regarding the causes and degree ofmilitancy associated with Aboriginal and labour revolts in Canada. An


analysis of some recent works on rebellion and resistance by these twogroups demonstrates the contradictory perspectives that have emerged.

The latest monograph on the Red River Rebellion is Gerhard Ens’Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of the Red River Metis inthe Nineteenth Century (Ens, 1996). Like a variety of works on the RedRiver Métis over the past decade, the underlying concern of Homeland toHinterland iswhenandwhy thediaspora ofRedRiverMétis occurred.Thisis not a purely academic concern. The Manitoba Métis and the Canadiangovernment have been involved in a prolonged and bitter dispute aboutwhether Canada owes compensation to the heirs of the Métis pioneers ofRedRiverwhoweredisplacedbywhite settlers.As a result of theRedRiverRebellion, theMétis were promised generous agricultural land grants. Butthe transfer of landoccurred slowly, andmost of theMétis had sold the scripentitling them to land to white settlers before the transfer took place.Historical defenders of theMétis, led by Doug Sprague, have claimed thatpublic documents reveal that the Canadian government deliberatelydragged its heels inorder todiscourage theMétis andencourage themto selltheir land andmoveaway fromRedRiver.They suggest that themajority ofthe Métis held out for at least five years before desperation forced them tosell out and move on (Sprague, 1988; Corrigan and Barkwell, 1991;Chartrand,1991).Defendersof thegovernment side in thecourt case, ledbyThomas Flanagan, and supported by Gerhard Ens, have disputed thisversion of events (Flanagan, 1988; Flanagan and Enns, 1993). Whileconceding unconscionable government delays, they blame bureaucracy,not the conspiracy suggested by Sprague. Furthermore they have arguedthat the Métis would have moved on in any case. In Flanagan’s view, theMétiswerea free-spiritedpeoplewhodidnot look forwardwithequanimityto a life of bucolic bliss, and gladly followed the buffalo, whose numberswere dwindling close to home, to the Northwest.

Flanagan’s writing, while free of the racist language that generallycharacterized scholarly writing on Aboriginals before 1970, is viewed bymanycritics as subtly reinforcing theciv/savdichotomy.His claims that theMétis didnotwant to farmare rejected asunfounded: after all, theMétis hadfarmed even at the height of the buffalo hunt in the region south of RedRiver. In any case, since the government had made it so difficult for theMétis to farm, what evidence can possibly prove that they would not havemade a go of farming had the obligations to the Métis in the Manitoba Actbeen fulfilled in the spirit intended by the partners to the agreement? Here,Ens jumps into the fray, attempting to debunk the Métis land claim whileavoiding the civ/sav dichotomy. Ens, using the records of two largeparishes, one mainly of English-speaking Metis, the other largelyFrench-speaking, carefully constructs the economy of the Metis of RedRiver. While his underlying purpose is to trace out-migration from thecolonyanddeterminewhat typesof individuals remained in thecolony,Ens

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provides a fuller pictureof occupational and incomedivisions amongMétisthan earlier accounts.

But Ens’ model for understanding the Métis colony is suspicious. Hecompares the Métis to European peasants, and suggests that at the time ofthe rebellion, the Métis lived in a “proto-industrial” mode of production,akin to cottage industry in industrializing Britain. While they hunted andcarried out subsistence farming, they also made buffalo robes and leathergoods for both the Hudson’s Bay Company and American buyers (Ens,1996: 73). Some Métis also prospered as commercial farmers. Sinceproto-industrialism is a transitional formof economy, it co-existswith bothtraditional subsistence production and proletarianization of some elementsof the population. In theRedRiver case, the traditionalists were the buffalohunters and the proletarians were the boatmen employed on the boats andcart trains. While these may have been distinct groups, it seems forced tocategorize the buffalo hunters,who had always produced pemmican for themarket, differently than themanufacturers of buffalo robes.While the lattermay have earned more, they were no more nor less “proto-industrial” thanthe former. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ens finds that the boatmen were themost consistent supporters of Louis Riel during the 1869-70 rebellion.“Proto-industrial” manufacturers and farmers, and even plains hunters,while sharing a general Métis concern about the federal government’sintentions for their region, were leery about an armed confrontation thatmight lead to federal retaliation of harm to their business interests (Ens,1996: 126). This is a useful counterpoint to previous histories that havesuggested the primary division among Métis during the 1869-70 eventsfollowed ethnic lines, with English-speakingMétis rejecting Riel’s tacticsandFrench-speakingMétis supportinghimunitedly.Ensdemonstrates thatthe fault lines of support forRielwere not primarily linguistic and religious,but occupational. But he also provides enough examples of prosperousMétis who were on Riel’s side to partially dispute his own thesis.

Ens’ focus on the economic dimension ofMétis life, while adding to thepicture of social relations within the colony, ends up unfortunately with amonocausal explanation of events in the colony, whether in terms ofsupport for rebellion, or of decisions to stay in the colony or leave in theperiod after the rebellion ended. Ens ignores, and perhaps rejects,Flanagan’s view that the Métis were culturally disposed to avoid farmingand to focus on the buffalo hunt. Instead, he portrays the post-rebellionRedRiverMétis as rational, economicmenandwomen responding to economicopportunities. In this market model of “economic man,” the greaterpotential income offered by the hunt disposed most Métis to follow thebuffalo to the west as local sources depleted. Disastrous crops in the earlyseventies, and scant capital to develop the large amounts of land theyexpected to receive fromgovernmentmade agriculture seem less attractivethan the buffalo hunt and the buffalo robe industry toMétis families as theymade their individual calculations to depart from the Red River homeland.

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Indeed, Ens provides statistical evidence that the move west had begunbefore the rebellion; the rebellion, in his view,merely spedupaprocess thatwas already underway. But this evidence has been disputed by DougSprague, who suggests that Ens treats each migrant from a parish as amigrant from the Red River colony when, in fact, many of them simplymoved from one parish to another (Sprague, 1991).

The chief problemwith Ens’ approach is that, in its effort to remove raceas a factor in determining relationships among individuals inRedRiver andbetween the federal government and Red River, it ignores that race was anever-present factor. Somehow, as he marshals his statistical evidence, heforgets the colonial context in which the Métis lived, and pretends that itmade little difference to their individual rational economic calculations. Infact, it was central to their decision-making. Ens acknowledges that theFrench-speaking Métis experienced considerable racism, including racistviolence, at the hands of the troops sent by the Macdonald governmentunder the leadership of Colonel GarnetWolseley, later a hero of the Britishsuppression of the Zulu rebellion in Natal, as well as from other settlers(Ens, 1996: 161, 175). But he adds, perhaps with an eye to the court case:“The coercion involved in theMétis exodus fromRedRiver after 1870wasrelated to the intolerant actions and behaviour of the incoming Protestantsettlers from Ontario, not to government illegalities” (Ens, 1996: 170).What, however, were the government’s responsibilities? It sent the troopsinto the region, claiming that it intended both to maintain order and toimplement the provisions of the Manitoba Act. Can it be exonerated if thetroops proved to be terrorists rather than peacekeepers? Did it have noresponsibility to insure that new white settlers respected the person andproperty of Aboriginals in Red River? For that matter, can the governmentbe absolved if its bureaucratswaited almost ten years to proceedwithmanyof the land grants to Métis?

Perhaps Sprague lacks the “smoking gun” to prove that the Macdonaldgovernment consciously and actively worked to make the Métis of RedRiver, and later the Northwest, feel unsafe in their homes and insecureabout their property rights. But Ens, like Flanagan, seems at pains toabsolvewhat appears at best to have been gross incompetence on the part ofthe Government of Canada. Suspiciously, such incompetence seems not tohave been apparent in other areas of government dealings. TheMacdonaldgovernment appeared able to rapidly shovel millions of dollars into thehands of theCPR and theHudson’s BayCompany even as it struggled for adecade to simply drawup land grants for theMétis. It seemed to have amplecontrol over its officials and its troops in every other circumstance.Certainly, it made no effort to punish troops or colonists whenLieutenant-Governor Adams Archibald alerted it in 1871 that “many ofthem [ed.Metis] actually have been so beaten and outraged that they feel asif they were living in a state of slavery” (Ens, 1996: 161).

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Sprague, along with historians uninterested in the Métis lands questionper se, have established that theMacdonald government shared the racismof thewhite settlers inwesternCanada. Itwouldhavebeensurprising if theydid not, since common notions bound the white rulers of the varioussectionsof theBritishEmpire.For all of them, therewasahierarchyof racesand of social values, and the white Christian Europeans, with theirtechnological achievements, stood at the apex of this hierarchy.Aboriginals were seen as shiftless, nomadic and dishonest, the sort ofpeople who could not be given large tracts of land without sacrificingprogress.

As Frits Pannekoek (Pannekoek, 1991), Jennifer Brown (Brown, 1980)andSylviaVanKirk (VanKirk, 1980;VanKirk, 1983) have emphasized intheir works, the English-speaking Métis, who often appeared moreacculturated to European norms than the French-speaking Métis, wereblocked in terms of their advancement in the colony. This was particularlytrue for males; some girls were able to marry well, but at the price of thenhiding their Native identities, often with costly psychologicalconsequences. For French-speaking Métis, prospects were also limited.Ens unwittingly provides evidence of this in his questionable characterassassinationofLouisRiel.Quoting admitted enemiesof the rebels’ leader,he presents Riel as a loafer who considered himself above the manuallabour that was all he could potentially find in the colony (Ens, 1996: 134).It does not occur to Ens to ask why a relatively educated youngman for thetimes would be ineligible for any white-collar work at Red River.

Sarah Carter adds an important gender component to our understandingof the colonial justifications for deprivingAboriginals of property and civilrights. Her book, Capturing Women: The Manipulation of CulturalImagery in Canada’s Prairie West (Carter, 1997), while it deals with theNorthwest Rebellion of 1885 rather than theRedRiverRebellion, providesa view of the place of the Métis and Aboriginals more broadly in westernCanada quite at variancewith Ens’ construction of a proto-industrial socialclass similar in many respects to proto-industrial groupings in Europe. ForCarter, the issue is how andwhywhite elites constructed particular imagesof Aboriginals and with what impact on relations between Euro-Canadianauthorities andNativepeople.Thespecificquestion she tackles is theelites’characterization of the relative behaviours and values of white men andNative men, on the one hand, and white women and Native women, on theother.

Carter traces the history of the capture of twowhitewomen at FishCreekby Cree from Big Bear’s band during the Northwest Rebellion. While thetwo Theresas, Delaney and Gowanlock, were held captive, newspapersspeculated on their fate, resorting to stereotypedviewsofFirstNationsmenas rapists and sadists. When the women escaped from their captors twomonths after they were seized, they initially disappointed the makers ofsuchclaims, observing that theyhadbeen treatedwell andpayingparticular

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thanks to several Métis who were also taken captive by Big Bear’s peopleand had interceded with the Cree to ensure that the women were not onlywell treated but not made to do much work. The two women, whosehusbands were among those who had been killed during the confrontationat Fish Creek, criticized government policies that had led to Native angerand the deaths of their husbands. Yet a fewmonths later, an account by thetwowidowswas published that suggested they had beenworked very hard,lived in continuous fear of their “savage” captors, and regarded theMétis ascynical collaborators with the Cree. Rather than criticize governmentpolicies, the two former captives praised government generosity andsuggested that an iron fist was needed in government relations withAboriginals if settlers were to be protected from the fury of allegedlyprimitive peoples.

Carter places this account within a long history of writings aboutAboriginals in various places where colonial conquest occurred. Shedemonstrates that there is a conformity of themes in these writings.Whether the Fish Creek captives simply changed their story to conform tothe expectations of thegenres, or their publisher did thework for them, theirpublished account followed the main outlines of “captivity narratives.” Insuch narratives, the white women who are captured are invariably weaklittle flowers who, if not murdered, serve to satisfy the insatiable sexualappetites of Aboriginal men. The Aboriginal women, whose sense ofmorality is leagues away from that of the delicatewhite ladies, are beasts ofburdenwith foul tempers that they takeouton thewhiteprisoners.AsCarterobserves, all of this caricaturing had a definite end in mind: to justify theEuropean seizure of the Aboriginals’ land. White women, themselveswithout any political power, were depicted in such a way as to make themuseful ideological tools for thewhitemaleconquerorswhodispossessed theNatives. The conquerors, instead of appearing as land thieves, weretransformed into defenders of the purity of white women.

In such “captivity narratives,” of course, Aboriginal rebellion andresistance was unproblematic. It could not be explained as a reaction tooppressive behaviour on the part of colonialists, or even tomiscommunication between two cultures. Instead, it was simply theprimordial response of savage and ungrateful peoples to their betters whowere doing all that was possible to improve their lot and to ensure that thehand of progress was set free in the lands benighted for centuries by theNative presence.

Returning to the Ens book, one finds simply a discounting of theimportanceof race relations atRedRiver andadismissal of earlier accountsthat take ethnicity seriously. Ens makes a useful contribution to ourknowledgeofRedRiver’s economicdistinctions, but at the cost of reducingsocial relations in the colony to economic self-interests, in turn definedwithout reference to the ways in which race created limits for

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non-Aboriginals and left them insecure regarding properties they heldwithout official recognition from the white-settler state in Ottawa.

In the areaof labour resistance and rebellion aswell, there ismuchdebatein recent literature about the impact of purely economic conditions as amotivator for revolt relative to demands for fundamental shifts in social,economic, andpolitical power.Amajor recentworkon the intenseperiodofclass conflict in Canada fromWorldWar I until the mid-twenties suggeststhat it ismyopic to focus on economic demands narrowly comprehended orto isolate “big events” such as theWinnipegGeneral Strike of 1919 and thegeneral strike of Cape Breton coal miners in 1925 from the larger nationaland international picture of labour revolt. The Workers’ Revolt in Canada1917-1925, edited by Craig Heron (Heron, 1998), presents regionalportraits of worker attitudes and actions beginning with the period ofwartime labour shortages, and on through the post-war recession that gaveemployers the upper hand. While the period of greatest militancy lastedfrom 1917 to 1919, the authors demonstrate that workers attempted forseveral years tomaintain thegainswon throughmilitancy in the faceofbothstate repression and a nasty recession from mid-1920 to mid-1924 thatbrought high unemployment and underemployment in its wake.

The national context provided by Heron is a familiar one. Workers inCanada were angry that industrialists fattened off the war, while workersdied in the trenches or worked in the factories, mines and mills for whatappeared a pittance in often poor working conditions. Young men wereconscripted for overseas service, but wealth faced no conscriptionwhatsoever.Government efforts to control prices and limit profits appearedtoken at best. Heron notes that such contradictions appeared particularlyglaring because state propaganda focused so heavily on the notion that thiswas a war for democracy: “the war had created new expectations of publicmorality among the mass of the population” (Heron, 1998: 25). Workers’anger as citizens with the unfairness that seemed to mark Canadian publiclife was easily transformed into class activity as workers learned of thestruggleswaged against similarly corrupt governments and corporate elitesin Britain, continental Europe, Australia and the United States (Heron,1998: 26).

The regional accounts demonstrate that an earlier focus of labourhistorians on the radicalWest somewhat exaggerates regional differences,and Heron, following Greg Kealey and others who examined post-warlabour radicalism in Canada, does not want to privilege a particular region.But my own reading of the evidence of The Workers’ Revolt is thatradicalism in the West, and particularly in Winnipeg, far exceeded theradicalism in southern Ontario or Quebec or the Maritimes. Indeed, therewere differences among all the regions. Francophone workers joinedAnglophones and immigrants in demonstrating militancy in the latterstages of the war and the early post-war period. But no sizeable socialistmovement developed among these workers, and they responded coolly to

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Anglophone advocates of general strikes. Catholic unions, meanwhile,“played a role in defeating the labour revolt” (Ewen, 1998: 121).

Southern Ontario workers were more militant and included moresocialists per square inch. Socialist organizers played an important role indramatically increasing the number of unionists in Ontario in the later waryears, and encouraging a movement towards industrial unionism. TheHamilton munitions workers strike in 1916 united workers in that city.Toronto’s left-wing unionists attempted to carry out a general strike inMay1919, as the Winnipeg Strike raged, on the same issue: the refusal of theemployers to deal with the metal trades’ federation, the industrialcombination of unions in the metal trades. But, as James Naylordemonstrates, taking pains not to compare southern Ontario’s workersunfavourably with Western workers, Toronto workers and their unionswere split on the issue of a general strike. The city’s general strike was “ageneral strike ‘in name only’ ” (Naylor, 1998: 152).

As in the West, the defeat of the general strike movement caused manyworkers to look to the ballot box rather than to unionism since it becameapparent that the existing state intended to side with employers againstlabour. Ontario’s Labourites, who won 11 seats in the 1919 provincialelection inOntario, joined a coalition governmentwith theUnited FarmersofOntario.But theydelivered little to theirworking-class constituentswho,disillusioned, abstained from voting and deprived the Independent LabourParty of most of its seats in the next provincial election.

“Finally, in contrast with theWest,”writesNaylor, “the lack of dramaticconfrontations in Ontario and the paucity of material gains for laboureventually combined to blur the memory of a widespread working-classrevolt in the province” (Naylor, 1998: 145). But is this really a satisfactoryexplanation for the extinguishment of a radical tradition on the part ofindustrial labour for almost a generation in Ontario? How deep-seated wasthe desire for fundamental social change in Ontario’s working class if itsmembers gave up on industrial action within a few years of the beginningsof the industrial revolt, and thencountedonpassivevoting for a labourpartywith a rather shallow platform to achieve the desired changes? ThoughNaylor is careful to note that there were conservative as well as radicalinfluences on Ontario workers, he fails to analyse the relative strengths ofeach at different times.

Ian McKay and Suzanne Morton offer a somewhat more nuancedaccount of the rise and fall of the radical workers’ movement in theMaritimes from 1917 to 1925 (McKay andMorton, 1998). As Naylor doesfor Ontario, they demonstrate that labour radicalism was widespreadthroughout the region. If an earlier focus on Cape Breton coal miners andsteel workers may have created the view that only a small segment of theMaritime labour forcecaught thebugof labourmilitancyduring thisperiod,McKay andMorton show that this was not the case. Both in urban centres

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and in rural industrial enclaves workers fought for what they regarded astheir rights. Therewas a general strike on theMiramichi inNewBrunswickin 1919, and aviolent strike of quarrymen inHantsCounty,NovaScotia thesame year. Labour parties in both Nova Scotia and NewBrunswick scoredimpressive electoral victories in 1919 and 1920, with theFarmer-Labour-Soldier coalition in Nova Scotia becoming the officialopposition after the provincial election of 1920.

While these developments might have led to an entrenchment of classpolitics in the Maritimes and to a long-term continuation of occupationalmilitancy, McKay andMorton emphasize the economic and social factorsthatmitigated against thegrowthofMaritimeworker radicalism. In the firstplace, the political economy and political geography of the region madeworker unity difficult to achieve. Industrial workers had to make commoncause with primary producers, city workers with workers in thecountryside, Catholics with Protestants, women with men. For a period,indeed, suchalliancesdidoccur, anddemonstrated thatworking-classunitywas not an unattainable goal. But state repression of strikes, thewidespreadunemployment created by the recession of the early twenties, andlimitations in the analyses of the radical movements themselves all helpedshatter the dreams of socialism, or at least social democrary, cherished by alarge section of Maritimers from 1917 to 1925. The Maritime RightsMovement, with its cross-class appeal for the region’s citizens to worktogether and under the implicit leadership of the region’s foremostbourgeoisie, undercut the classmovements to get a better deal fromOttawaand, outside the Cape Breton coal fields, virtually erased all memory of thepopular movements for social change.

James Naylor, this time in conjunction with TomMitchell, provides thevolume’s analysis of the Prairie West during the period of labour revolt(Mitchell and Naylor, 1998). Most of the space goes to the WinnipegGeneral Strike. And the authors are clear that the general strikes in othercitiesweremodest relative toWinnipeg’s.Yet, as inNaylor’s discussion ofOntario, there are admonitions against comparing other strikes toWinnipeg’s rather than seeing them in their own light. Fair enough, butperhaps a touch naive.Winnipeg’s strike, inwhich half the families in towncould claim at least one striker, which had the backing of almost allunionists as determined by ballot, and which attracted the spontaneousparticipationofmost proletarians in the city,whether unionizedornot, doesdeserve the special attention it has always attracted.Only inWinnipegweremostwomenworkers on strike, and organizing their own support groups toensure that the poverty-stricken among them managed to eat. Only inWinnipeg were the majority of the conservative forces of the labourmovement temporarily won over to the radicals’ interpretation of the beststrategy for moving forward labour’s agenda. The purpose of emphasizingWinnipeg’s exceptionalism is not to claim bragging rights for my hometown, but to place in context the assessments of Naylor for Ontario, and

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McKay and Morton for the Maritimes and, for that matter, of Naylor andMitchell for the Prairie West. While Winnipeg labour in the post-strikeperiodwould adopt the same labourist electoral strategy as everyone else inthe wake of state suppression of strikes, it did so with a lasting success thateluded most others. It seems fair to suggest that the scale of the Winnipegstrike, and with it the perceived scale of defeat as the state authorities usedmurder and mayhem to restore ruling class control, would burn the labourrevolt of 1917 to 1925 into the city’s memory for all time. Westernalienation might create a cross-class interest in Social Credit in EdmontonorCalgaryand the farmrevoltmighthave to takea left turn inSaskatchewanbefore the labourmovement in Saskatoon andRegina could create a lastingpoliticalmovement in thecities.But, inWinnipeg,working-classbitternesspersisted towarde the employer class which had dashed its hopes anddreams, and continues to this day. Toomany people had participated in thestrike for the bourgeoisie to convince an important segment of the city’sworkers that communist agitators had caused it, or that their salvation laynot in their class identities but in a common regional front fighting thebogeymen in Ottawa. Our Liberal and Tory governments might keep theWinnipegGeneral Strike out of the classrooms in the fifties and sixties, butfew youngsters in theNorth End had not heard of the Strike from parents orgrandparents. I recall that when I asked my grade eight teacher why it wasignored in the text, she replied politely that she was asked that questionevery year and thought that it was a strange omission herself since her dadhad been among the strikers.

If radicalism in Winnipeg’s working class continued in some formwithout much of a break after 1919, Calgary was a particulardisappointment for western radicals. Its general strike might have lookedanemic compared to Winnipeg’s or Vancouver’s. And as a railroad townand regional agricultural centre, it did not experience the same level ofstrike activity as themining towns in British Columbia andAlberta. But itslabour movement enjoyed both industrial and electoral strength for someyears. Yet, in 1935, labour’s independent political movement wastorpedoed as workers jumped on the Social Credit bandwagon. By the endof WorldWar II, Calgary’s reputation as a union town was long gone, andthe energy companies that turned the city into a white-collar haven wouldsubmergemuchof theunionmovement that remained.Whathappened?

David Bright’s account of Calgary labour from 1883 to 1929 providessome broad hints regarding the forces mitigating against workers thinkingof themselves mainly in class terms. Divided by ethnicity and gender, skilllevels and ability to find work year round and during recessions, Calgaryworkers did manage from time to time to find common cause and act as arelatively united class. But such moments were rare. During the generalstrikeof1919, “divisionsof ethnicity andgender appeared todissolve in thecommon struggle against capitalism” (Bright, 1998: 156), writes Bright,seeming to echo the tone ofmost authors in TheWorkers’ Revolt regarding

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the early post-war militancy of workers. But he adds that despite theunprecedented class consciousness of a group of strikers in Calgary,exhibited by participants in the general strike, “the strike failed to gathermomentum or amass new support” (Bright, 1998: 158). Many unionsrefused to join the strike, non-unionists kept out as they had in Winnipeg,and radical speakers from outside town commented on the small crowdswho listened to their addresses.

The general strike had been too divisive to provide Calgary’s workingclass with the unifying mythology that theWinnipeg strike would provideto Winnipeg workers. In Edmonton, much the same was true. The OBUfailed to win significant support in either city, finding its major adherentsAlberta in the coal towns. While the strong labour political movement inboth of these cities in the 1920s and early 1930s might have managed toprogress despite the lack of a single event unitingworkers, it proved unableto surmount the divisions among workers in both cities based on skill,ethnicity and gender. In particular, it seemed baffled by the movements ofthe unemployed, resorting to Red-baiting the Communist leadership ratherthanoffering anyconstructive aid to theworkless and sometimeshomeless.Ultimately, an aging clique of labour officers dominated both the city’sunions and labour parties, alienatingmost workers who felt that neither theunions nor the parties offered them much in the way of participation orsolutions. In this atmosphere, a party like Social Credit with its populist butnon-class rhetoric, and its promises of monthly social dividends and pricecontrols, appeared more radical and more positive than the moribund anddivided labour parties in the city and province.

Bright’s work can be criticized for telling the story of Alberta labourbackwards. Knowing that during the Social Credit period Alberta workerswould demonstrate only sporadicmilitancy and electoral independence, hefocuses on evidence from the period preceding the thirties of conservativeforces at work among Alberta workers. Sometimes socialists and otherradicals enter his narrative, only to vent their frustrations at the low level ofclass consciousness amongCalgaryworkers. Themere existence of a largegroup of radicals, something that the authors inTheWorkers’ Revoltwouldwish to expand upon, is often given little attention by Bright. Naylor andMitchell, critically evaluating Bright’s approach to the general strike inCalgary, decry efforts to diminish the labour revolt in cities where strikesdid not follow theWinnipegmodel (Naylor andMitchell: 189).Butwhile itisuseful touncovervarious forgottenmanifestationsof labour radicalisminvarious areas of Canada, as TheWorkers’ Revolt carefully does, ultimatelyit is fair to ask why radicalism maintained a footing in such areas asWinnipeg, industrial British Columbia and Cape Breton while it virtuallyvanished in places like Edmonton and Calgary. The huge general strike inWinnipeg, and the lengthy, frequent and violent class battles in B.C. andCape Breton do therefore deserve a bit of privileging in telling labour’sstories in Canada. It would appear that a criticalmass of individuals getting

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their heads smashed inor at least their hopesdashedafter risingup inprotesthas been essential to creating a radical union and political atmosphere insome areas of the country.

The various accounts in TheWorkers’ Revolt and in Bright’s The Limitsof Labourmake some reference to the roles played bywomen in the labourmovements in Canada in the early twentieth century. But a more focusedwork on gender and labour in this period is long overdue. Linda Kealey’sEnlisting Women for the Cause is therefore a welcome addition to thehistory of Canadian labour and socialism. Kealey weaves together a greatdeal of primary and secondary evidence to suggest the forces that led somewomen to become active trade unionists and socialists, as well as to assessthe resistance they faced both from employers and male workers and tradeunion leaders. Among garment workers, for example, ethnicity oftenproved divisive. On occasion, differences of gender and ethnicity were setaside as garment workers united to wrest better wages and workingconditions from employers. “Fundamentally, however, women workerswaged an uphill battle in the context of gender divisions in the workplaceand in the labour movement” (Kealey, 1998:72).

Kealey’s comprehensive account of women’s union and socialistorganizinghelps to explainwhyWinnipegwomenworkers, bothunionizedand non-unionized, were enthusiasts for theWinnipegGeneral Strike eventhough as low-wageworkers, they generally lacked the savings required tosurvive forweeks on endwithout an income.TheWomen’sLabourLeagueof Winnipeg, led by Socialist Helen Armstrong, had helped theWoolworth’s sales clerks in the city, mainly women and girls, organize aunion in 1917, and with the help of the labour movement as a whole, toconduct a strike against the merchandising giant. While the companydefeated the union and fired most of the workers, it was forced to raise itsminimum wage. Meanwhile the city’s telephone operators, aided bysolidarity of operators across the province and cooperation frommale-dominated unions, carried out a successful strike that year.When themetalworkers andbuilding tradeworkers called for a general strike in 1919to support their efforts in the face of intransigent employers, most womenworkers identified with their cause and recognized that the stronger thelabour movement in the city was generally, the more likely poorly-paidwomenworkerswere tobeable tomakeuseofunions to improve their lives.

One curious feature about the new labour-related books discussed in thisessay, in light of the books on First Nations mentioned earlier on, is thatCanada’s first peoples appear to be absent from all of these accounts. Yetwe know, from the work of historians such as John Lutz, that they were animportant part of Canada’s proletariat. Are they unworthy of discussion inmainstream labour histories because they rarely joined and even morerarely led unions, particularly white-dominated unions? Were they toopreoccupied with issues of national survival to develop trade union or

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socialist consciousness? Whatever the case, they should not be left in theshadows.

The eliteswhose actions causedAboriginals to revolt on someoccasionsand to complain bitterly but peacefully on many others were the selfsameelites against whom labour revolts were generally directed. But these twogroups could rarely find common cause. Within labour, there were otherfissures apart from those that divided Aboriginals from newcomers.Ethnicity, gender and skill levels, as noted earlier, were not easily bridged.But at times they were. Just as with the Métis revolt of 1869, there is somedebate about how completely community fissures dissolved in the face ofthreats from a common oppressor. Colonialism in the first case and classoppression in the second produced resistance and rebellion. Staterepression and vilification of rebels in both cases proved strong enough tolimit the successes of these revolts. But internal divisions, which the statealso knewhow to turn to its advantage, cannot be overlooked in discussionsof the defeat of these movements.

BibliographyBright, David. The Limits of Labour: Class Formation and the Labour Movement in

Calgary, 1883-1929.Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.Brown, Jennifer S.H. Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian

Country. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980.Carter, Sarah. Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s

Prairie West. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997.Chartrand, Paul L.A.H., Manitoba’s Metis Settlement Scheme of 1870. Saskatoon:

University of Saskatchewan Law Centre, 1991.Corrigan, Samuel E., and Lawrence J. Barkwell. The Struggle for Recognition:

Canadian Justice and the Metis Nation. Winnipeg: Manitoba Métis Federation,1991.

Ens, Gerhard J.,Homeland toHinterland: TheChangingWorlds of the RedRiverMetisin the Nineteenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Ewen, Geoffrey. “Quebec: Class and Ethnicity.” In Craig Heron, ed., The Workers’Revolt in Canada 1917-1925. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998, pp.87-143.

Flanagan, Thomas, Riel and the Rebellion of 1885 Reconsidered. Saskatoon: WesternProducer Books, 1983.

Flanagan, Thomas, and Gerhard J. Ens, “Metis Land Grants in Manitoba: A StatisticalStudy,” Histoire Sociale 27, No. 23 (May 1994): 65-88.

Heron, Craig, ed. The Workers’ Revolt in Canada 1917-1925. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1998.

Kealey, Linda. Enlisting Women for the Cause: Women, Labour, and the Left inCanada, 1890-1920. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998.

McKay, Ian and Suzanne Morton. “The Maritimes: Expanding the Circle ofResistance.” In Craig Heron, ed., The Workers’ Revolt in Canada 1917-1925.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998, pp. 43-86.

Mitchell, Tom, and James Naylor. “ The Prairies: In the Eye of the Storm.” In CraigHeron, ed., The Workers’ Revolt in Canada 1917-1925. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1998, pp. 176-230.

Naylor, James. “Southern Ontario: Striking at the Ballot Box.” In Craig Heron, ed. TheWorkers’ Revolt in Canada 1917-1925. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1998, pp. 144-175.

Pannekoek, Frits. A Snug Little Flock: The Social Origins of the Riel Resistance of1869-70.Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer, 1991.

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Sprague, D.N., Canada and the Métis, 1869-1885. Waterloo: Wilfrid LaurierUniversity Press, 1989.

Sprague, D.N. “Dispossession vs Accommodation in Plaintiff vs. Defendant Accountsof Métis Dispersal fromManitoba, 1870-1881,” Prairie Forum 16, 2 (Fall 1991):137-156.

Van Kirk, Sylvia. ‘Many Tender Ties’: Women in Fur Trade Society in WesternCanada, 1670-1870. Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer, 1980.

Van Kirk, Sylvia. “ ‘What if Mama Is an Indian?’ The Cultural Ambivalence of theAlexander Ros Family.” In John Foster, ed., The Developing West. Edmonton:University of Alberta Press, 1983.

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Lynette Hunter and Susan Rudy

Living Together:Critical Writing by Women in Canada 1994-1999

Becoming Closer ReadersThe exceptional fecundity of women’s writing in Canada has generatedsubstantial critical response. Moreover, women writers in Canadafrequently write cultural, literary and feminist criticism and theory. In amove peculiarly located in Canadian publishing and society, manyreadings and commentaries are simultaneously writings and translations.This jointly translated/transatlanticked review limits itself to books fromthe last five years, and even more particularly, focuses on only a few ofthose engaging with reading, writing and translation. By translation wemean reaching across, out of, through and over the differences in our lives.For us, this has been an electronically-enabled1 reaching, with one of us inEurope2 and one in Canada.3 The position from which we are creating thisreview has made us especially conscious of how we read those acts oftranslation made by others also reaching over difference, difference insexuality, in ethnicity, in gender, in language, in class.

One, and possibly the only, element common to all the books we arereading, is their acknowledgement of the difficulty and odd pleasure ofnegotiating difference. Lynette Hunter is commenting on seven literary/critical books on women’s writing by academic women. Susan Rudy iscommenting on nine books of essayswritten bywomen, only two ofwhomare academics, the rest writers. The books, published between 1994 and1999, have all come into social discussion as books, but many containessays written over a number of years, during a time of uncertainty in thewomen’s movement. Reeling from the necessary combat of the 1970s and1980swhich decried academic feminism aswhite, liberal andmiddle class,which pushed to the fore issues of ethnicity and sexuality in particular,many women critics turned to post-colonialism and gender studies.

Many of those who continued to write about women’s issues have doneso in carefully delineated settings. To try to generalise about themwould beridiculous ina reviewessayof this length.Also, embedded into thisopeningcomment is another recognition: thatmuchof theworkbeingundertakenonwomen is not yet in book form, nor may it ever be so, for it circulates asperformance, article, essay, newsletter, diary entry and indeed e-mail. Wehave dealt with our task in different ways. But underlying the split in thewriting, the lapse or difference, is our shared hope that we could develop a


temporary but located historical imagination which might begin to touchthe small steps that each of us has to take every day toward valuingourselves as women.

Lynette Hunter

Falling in love with the textPauline Butling’s Seeing in the Dark: The poetry of Phyllis Webb openswith an argument for the “value of situated and historicised criticism” (ix)that looks at the “recurrences, intersections and interventions within socialand epistemological formations” in the writing. What results is not only aclose and intense exploration of different ways of reading Webb’s poetry,but also one person’s history of recent feminist thought as well as herhistories of Canadian literature and criticism. When Butling, in the firstchapter, speaks of Webb’s movement from a split sense of objective/subjective self to a questioning of “how” to break this apart (9), shedescribes her own processes. Webb is read as moving from Romantic(nineteenth century) to post-modern poetics. Yet the process of Butling’sclose readingsmakes available to us, her readers, not only anunderstandingof why she wants Webb to develop post-modern poetics, but also, moreimportantly, a set of strategies for readingWebb into our own engagement.The reading that is offered demonstrates that Webb moves from beingpositioned within the struggles of the female subject under patriarchy to a“woman-to-woman language, including the language of the lesbian erotic”(22). The theory rehearsed in the background of this development comesfrom the academic feminism of the 1970s and 80s, inflected by the morerecent discourses of Homi Bhabha and Judith Butler. It is like watching ahuge, powerfulmachine in the hands of an expert technician, coming downonto a complex texturing of silk threads and torsioning it through severaldegrees. Formanypeoplewhodecide to live in the conceptual shifts of theirtime, this violence may feel familiar: a massive wrenching out of therepresentativeposition that is disorientingand frequentlypainful.Yet at thesame time, Butling steps delicately through the threads, working away sothatwe canwatch the labour.Webb,we are told early on, blurs binaries “byimitating a seeingwithin the dark” (1), a darkness “intermingledwith light”(2). She destabilises the lyric “I” with her “tone leading of vowels,” “thebreath line” and “field composition” (21) that combines particle physicsand gestalt theory. The dark that is woman’s lot in the blindness ofrepresentation is infiltrated by “nonlinear grammatical and discursivestructures” (24) to “initiate a transformative process” (29). I was going tosay thatButling is teasing apart a dense, suffocating fabric,whose loosenedfibres begin to let in light along the striations of the fibres, but that is notwhat is happening here. Instead amaterial change in the fibres makes themradiant with light as the writer and reader work on them. Butling calls thiswork “free translations” (31).

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The participatory reader is key to Webb’s writing, and is most fullystudied in the concept of “clustering” where “particles of languagecluster[ing] into different arrangements of rhythm, tone, sound, andmeaning” (40) so that each theme, meaning and subjectivity only“temporarily cohere.” Both writer and reader “re-member” while theywork on the text. Butling then makes a superb move. She undercuts anynotion that these devices in themselves can provide a methodology forchanging the “dark,” and insists on Webb’s growing attention tointerventions in “restrictive social and epistemological systems,” (47)interventions that are local and interactive. This is especially important inWebb’s use of the ghazal form to create gaps in Western thought, anddemands an ironic consciousness of the “impropriety of her borrowing”(65).

Among the strategies Butling discusses is the use the white space as an“energized silence” (66), the long line/short line gasps of the verse, anddifferent kinds of repetition of rhythm and sound. She proceeds to discussthe movement of pronouns, so pronounced in Canadian writing, from theCartesian “I” to the “participatory ‘I’” in framingoppositional politics (81).All of the strategies, including a predominant use of intertextuality that is“imitation, theft, translation, allusion, parody, pastiche…” (90) build anaggregate structure that leaves the poetic processes “visible” andparticulate. But a key element of the intertextuality is Webb’s attraction tothe intertexts of “father figures,” often male poets. While she recognisestheir work, she asserts her difference from them. Butling suggests that theeffect of this engagement is that Webb establishes “a textual, social spacefor female subjectivity and agency” within that empowered position.

The penultimate section of the book rehearses the critical reception ofWebb’s work, noting that “aesthetic judgements are necessarily informedby social values” (109), and that as people in positions of artistic powerhave shifted in the late twentieth century, so have the “ethics of thelocal... contextualised subjectivities” (111) also shifted. The shift in criticalemphases has started to value Webb in far more interesting ways becauseher poetics, according to Butling, are precisely engaged with the local andwith contextualised subjectivities. The final chapter offers us the “Bio asText,” a “parallel text or intertext” (125), with a decisively written piece ofliterary history that takes in archival material, poems, history, opinion andanalysis, to give a detailed pre- and pre-pre-TISH perspective on Webb’swork. It is a background that illuminates the specific kind of “dark”WebbandButlingwere and are dealingwith, but is properly placed after theworkonstrategies so that that labourof love isnot forced into falseoppositions.

A similar labour of love pervades Coral Ann Howells book MargaretAtwood. While she moves the ground from language to genre, Howellsbeginswith the sameproblemasButling: theyare readingwritings that theyneed if they are to find agency aswomen in a political system that basicallyignores them. Each reader/critic translates the text into agential mode.

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Howells says “Atwood’s fiction draws attention not only to the ways inwhich stories may be told but also to the function of language itself: theslipperiness of words and double operation of language as symbolicrepresentation and as an agent for changing our modes of perception” (8).At the same time, the reading is primarily focused on the way Atwooddelineates the borders and extents of power as she playswith realismand itsassociated genres, testing their seductions, cruelties and abuses, their falserepresentations.

The critical text here focuses on historical, social and political contextsfor thewritings, and is rooted in the field of discourse studies. It looks at theconcept of “authenticity” in politics by reading Atwood’s development ofthe topos of wilderness, and demonstrates the acuity with which the writerquestions the notion while simultaneously valuing it. Howells offers herown history of feminism, reading it through the structures of fantasy, thegothic, cultural displacement, science fiction and autobiography thatconstitute Atwood’s narratives. The political power they address isconsistently contextualised within issues such as globalisation,Darwinism, pornography and gender construction. Howells interweavesquestions of the “unaccommodated remainder” that men pose to someforms of feminism, the “Derrida domesticated” (56) into the deferredmeanings of women’s lives, and the way that Atwood’s prose is so often aliteral re-working of theoretical suggestions, as in her display of Cixous’elaboration on gender differentiation in The Handmaid’s Tale. The acuityof the readings is found in their insistence that realism does not reify. Thereis no “referential plenitude” or ideological blindness. Yet just becauseAtwood works with elements within the subjectivity of women in westernnation states today, just because she works with the commonplace andundermines its capacity to satisfy, the writing is unsettling, and Howells’readings pick up on the nervous energy of desperate control.

What arrives strongly from the translations in this book is the way thatAtwood’s writing understood, so many years before the women’smovement articulated it, the difficulties thatwould arisewithwhite, liberal,middle-class feminism. Where Howells is most subtle, where she risksmost, and delivers her body to the text, is in the commentary on the gothic.How the gothic genre asks the reader not to participate as an agent, somuchas to become complicit in the structures of power. How the later work byAtwood in thegothic genre erodes andblurs the boundaries thatwe think liein place between our “moral engagement” (10) as individuals and oursubjectivity, between our bodies and their representations. And how anyaction that goes “beyond decorum” (81) invokes an “otherness” that has tobe destroyed (84). It is as if the critic recognises the desperation of the story,the courage of the “indecorous” woman who has to be annihilated (84).Atwood is concerned with the suffocation of the dark: our fears, worries,anxieties are her medium, and that we do survive the texts has its ownradiance if we care to attend to it.

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Alice Parker’s Liminal Visions of Nicole Brossard is dealing withconcepts aswitha fistful of snakes.Brossard’sworkdoeshave this effect onpeople: they feel as if they are staring intoMedusa’s face, serenely locatedin the light suffusing the conceptual lineswrithing newborn in the open air;an impossibility for many readers to take on, an enchantment for others, acombat for some, an embrace for a few. Parker carries outwork of immensecare as shemoves chronologically throughBrossard’s texts. There is a needhere for the critic/reader to instantiate Brossard as a writer moving frommodernity (different from modernism) into postmodernism, and as thisdelineationcomes intoplace thedependenceofmodernityona limit edgeoftranscendence becomes clear. Transcendence is that element that has keptaesthetics going for most of the modern period. It promises us that we willovercome the inadequacy of language but simultaneously locks us into it.As a result, the early chapters of this book stage a tangle between thehegemonic structures of beauty and the gradual netting of an écriture auféminin. At the same time as reading is aligned with “unlearning” andwriting with “learning,” reading and writing are both positioned assimilarly directing us to memory work. Just so, Parker says that writingsuspends our sense of “reality,” of history, that is tied to the representativeor fictional. But what then of the hurried returns to social immediacy andpolitical efficacy thatoccur toward theendofmostof theearlychapters?

Beyond that snarling of threads, Parker gets us to think that perhapsreading Brossard is instead about altering our body memory. We need tolearn to breathe with the text, slowly, arresting time, breaking down therepresentative functions of words, their sounds, their look, theircollocations, their syntax and grammar. This we do because the writer isalso breathing with the text, through that huge second lung, the skin, thesurface of syntax, grammar, wordplay, phonics, stretching it into differentextents and shapes so that we distort representation, torsion it at the surfaceof containment. Although Parker does not write in quite this way, thereading would not be possible without her reading/writing, and she noteslater that reading is “déliring,” getting closer to the surface.Yet, both readerand writer re-work the points of tension and torsion: as Parker notes,Brossard “displaces traditional rules and patterns, incites/inscribes sensualexcitement.” This iswork on the body, and thework-in-process ismemory,and when memory articulates itself into the political it may not deal with“history” as a fixed past, but it does dealwith history as the future. The needfor the future becomes clearer when the critic’s reading moves on to thelater books (96).

The analogy of the spiral, widely recognised as central to Brossard’sconceptual activity, allows Parker to set out the “contra-dictions” of thewriting from the 80s: outside/inside, reality/subjectivity, daily life/fiction,social programming/desire, evidence/ecstasy, the dark night of patriarchalhistory/the luminous certainty of lesbian memory. The pairs are notopposites, nor even particularly contestatory, but part of a spiral with a

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centre of inner “forgetfulness” (58). Parker goes on to elaborate onBrossard’s “fiction theory” as no longer linked to representation, but givingbirth to reality (75). It is, however, a holograph, because it cannot betranslated discursively beyond the frame. What is of philosophical notehere is that situated textuality, the textuality of situated knowledge, doesjust this kind of work. If a central dilemma of contemporary Westernthinking is to do with the extents of determination by ideology, theover-determined, the “always already,” Brossard neatly opens anotherplace. If we do not think in terms of ideology and the temporary holograph,then the holograph becomes the structure of another location in whichactivities happen in another way. Ideology does not go away, but its powerto define the representations that allow us subjectivity is profoundlydiminished. Furthermore, the memory-work of the holograph hasconsiderable power over the skins of those representations. It is not aone-way street. We do have agency.

Significantly, when Parker discusses fiction theory she also introducesWittgenstein’s work on the situated knowledge of the sentence. One of theknots in the reading is the early claim that Brossard is not doing “situatedknowledge” existing alongside continual and evermore profuse referencesto situated knowledge as the critical readingmoves along. The knot locatesBrossard’s important realisation that situated knowledge needs to betextualised. When Parker reads Brossard’s engagement with reading thewriting of Djuana Barnes, this realisation enters the text. At this point,Parker begins to elaborate not only on the “genericwoman” that overwritesthe phallicmothers and daughters of representation and “reinscribes realityas a revised ecosystem” echoingwith the work of Donna Smyth or DaphneMarlatt, but also on the way readers invent themselves when they read(111), and on the various strategies that can help. When we “read, write,imitate, mirror another” (115), we take the “other” as a guide or translatorinto another possibility, somethingBrossard has called “virtual” but whichretains none of the tautologous connotations that now pressure the wordfrom the computing world. The other becomes our community (116).

Parker saysof the relationshipbetweenBarnes andBrossard,whatmightbe the relationship between Brossard and herself, or between herself andher readers, that the text is subversive and intertextual, “it solicits a readerwhoengages a text as a lover, passionately,while reinventing the context ofits creation and the material circumstances of the writer, collecting andcollating all of the testimonies” (118). Readers and writers becometranslators, transforming subjectivity, here female subjectivity, as does thecollaborative work of Daphne Marlatt and Brossard in theirtransformances. A key conceptual shift read by Parker in Brossard’swriting from the late 80s is that of the agency released by distinguishingbetween the private and the intimate (174). The private is the alternativeface of the subject, the repressed shadowland of the banal. But the intimateis reinscription of the individual, the overwriting of the subject/private, that

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works on difference rather than on the principle of the same. Translation istaken not as the violence of the same, but as working on difference, in the“lapse” (167).

Parker’s readings then turn briefly to strategies for the generic woman,focused through Brossard’s rituals of reading that bring the reader andwriter together into the inter-text, into thephysicalworkon thebody that thememory re-members in breath (skin) and poetry. The first ritual, of“trembling,” is the recognition of/by the body. The second, of “shock,” isthe consciousness of the suffocating texture of representative words. Thethird, sliding, is forme themost complexbecause it locates, in the skinof thetext, the intensity needed to torsion theword into that “revised ecosystem.”Parker briefly promises a set of linguistic strategies, such as the activity ofthe verb, but does not pushmuch further.And the fourth, breath, is the stagefor the performance of our reinvention, the “stage on which poetry isenacted” (183). At the same time, the rituals are not chronological butcyclical. Somuchhas beengestured to in this section by the preceding bodyof the book that it is almost disappointing. In retrospect, however, many ofthe strategies Parker engages are in the process of her earlier readings.

At this stage, Parker takes on the social and political dimension ofBrossard’s textuality, and outlines a radically altered notion of “presence”as“particular, embodied subject positions” (203).Further, “Tobepresent isto reject one’s location in a masculinist imaginary, in history, in a fictionthat mascarades [sic] a reality” (191), and to engage in body work . Thebody is the hinge between the social and the individual, and “Writing,poetry and fiction-theory… explore these thresholds” (206).Writing is theintimate scene of textual embodiment, for reader, writer and translator, astheywork on the “lapse” (213). Parker’s brave embrace of theMedusawilltranslate many readers into love.

What I find interesting, from having written about Howells’ reading ofAtwood and Parker’s of Brossard, is the enormous control that Brossardplaces on trembling and shock, which are presented as dangerous becauseof their complete rupture from reference (180). Curiously, Atwood,especially in her last three novels, focuses precisely on the apparentlyuncontrollable destructiveness of that rupture if there is no supportivecommunity for the individual to turn to.Andmany ofAtwood’swomen areprofoundly isolated. Brossard’s use of the word “lesbian” to delineate an“intensification and refinement of the word woman” (35) that is notconflated with “homosexuelle,” is withdrawn at many points in Parker’stext to argue for the social reality of women’s life with women. But it is notas simple as suggesting that Brossard’s generic woman can move on pastfear because she has a lesbian community, or that Atwood’s women arecaught in heteronormative patriarchy. There is simply no theorising aboutthe heterosexual erotic outside of the heteronormative, a queering of theheterosexual if you like. There is yet no writing that positions the

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heterosexual woman in a located place of radiant transformation, ratherthan the private hallucinations of representative subjectivity.

Smaro Kamboureli’s Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature inEnglish Canada is a salutary reminder that the “racialised” body also hasfew located positions of value recognised by the predominantly white,mainstream, theoretical domain. Much of this book is not about women’swriting, but about the waywriting bywriters designated as “ethnic” is readand theorised by academic critics. This is important because academiccritics are among the few communities with the time and commitment(albeit induced at times by ambition rather than love) to work on newwaysof reading. Through the educational system, they also form one of themostinfluential institutions for the dissemination of new reading strategies andhencenewwritings.However, theanalysispreparesus for the last quarterofKamboureli’s book that emerges into my readings for this review becauseof the focus that her analysis gives to the racialised woman’s body in JoyKogawa’s Obasan.The argument centres on the wider reception of Obasan as a novel that

reaches some kind of reconciliation or assimilation, a receptionKamboureli suggests, following Roy Miki, based on a postmodern notionof pluralised ethnicities. Pluralism functions through toleration, throughimplicit, invidious and hidden structures that demand “sameness.”Kamboureli’s reading of the novel situates Naomi’s body as amemory sitefor race, gender, sexuality andnationalism, and reads theways thismemoryis worked on by Naomi and the textual context for the constituting of hercharacter. Despite Naomi’s apparent affirmations at the close of the novel,the critic/reader of the writing argues that the character “misreads” (220),that the text engages us in a recognition not ofNaomi’s desire to assimilate,but of her bodily need to articulate difference.

Here, Kamboureli makes a distinction between her reading of “body”andJudithButler’s towhichweshouldattend (180).Butler’s earlynotionofthe silent body permitted her to designate many of the ideologicallydisempowered as abject. But Kamboureli works on Kogawa’s writing in acareful following of the threads that imbricate the language of the body intothe language of the text. It allowsher to readNaomi as a body that continuesto be racialised by the representations of the society in which she lives,which is surprisingly, a generative reading. Rather than assimilation intothe representations on offer, the fate of the desiring, abject, racialised other,Kamboureli would have Naomi’s body as scandalous, different, hence fullof possibility. Yet “possibility” for whom? Naomi? Kogawa? The critic?The reader? The community? (What community?) Certainly onepossibility is the recognition of the continued othering of those visiblydifferent from a young, healthy, white norm, and with that recognition,impetus to political change. But it is more difficult to see how thescandalous body can offer a location for working on articulations of needwithin the ethnic community itself.

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Central to the collection edited by Barbara Godard and Coomi Vevaina,Intersexions: Issues of Race andGender in CanadianWomen’sWriting, isthis question of locations for working on articulations of need withincommunities of difference. One of the examples is indeed Kogawa’sObasan as the text of the hysteric, split subject, as a site for the “creativepotentialities for splitting, of becoming, versus the fixity of the fetishizedother in the elegiac discourse of loss and abandon” (45). The introduction,written by both editors, begins by underlining the importance of reading towriting, and proceeds to argue that India has developed advanceddiscourses for reading cross-culturally particularly because, likeCanada, itis made up of many different cultures defined by language, yet unlikeCanada, has addressed these differences for a much longer period. Thecollection will offer the opportunity for “dialogue among / minoritizedgroupsoutside thecentre-peripheryaxisofhegemonicdiscourses” (12-13),and takes on theoretical positions from Jan Mohamed’s “collectivesubject-position of the minoritized subject” (13), to McFarlane’s “deadbodies” of those excluded-from-Eurocentrism (14), to Kristeva’s“abjection” (latterly Butler’s) (37), to Bhabha’s logic of mimicry, of theseries, of slippage in discourse (48), to Gunew’s (Brossardian) vocabularyof the “virtual,” “figuration with a speculative discourse of writing asresearch… as the embrace of fluid identity” (49), to Chow’s claim that allliterature is resistant (49), to Partha Chatterjee’s “imagining of a‘community’, a process distinct from, rather than co-terminous with, theconsolidation of a nation-state” (50).

The thematic areas addressed are as follows: first, the rupture of identityposedwith the loss of language (38); second, mourning over silence, or theagonwith themother tongue, the elegyof re-membering thematernal body;third, that the body provides a figure of genealogy in excess of the absentnational language; and fourth, the body as the site of sexual difference. Justas with the previous readers/critics, these areas indicate the pulse of needwithin the textual engagements.Eachof the essaysonFirstNationswriting,byVevaina, Sacat and Thompson, deals with the illusion of satisfied desirepromised by assimilation. Vevaina relocates indigenous writers in aposition of healing and change through their focus on an “integration ofspirituality with politics” (69). The spiritual is associated with the oral inSacat’s study of Ruby Slipperjack’s writing, and is the primary means forfocalising the importance of the “Native tradition of community” (84).Thompson picks up the problematic of the braided oral text positioningBeatrice Culleton’s In Search of April Raintree, and April Raintree asautobiographical versus collective memory, the latter breakingreferentiality but constituting a “concrete and situational realism” (97) thatinvites “participatory performance” (98). There are gaps and slippagesaround notions of orality which rhetoric teaches us has just as muchpotential for fixity as writing, and around the situation of the criticalreading, yet the readers are clearly preoccupied with the focus on the

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autonomous individual that deprives them of the community supportneeded for change.

Similarly, there are three articles addressing Black women’s writing inCanada, by Godard, Krishna Sarbadhikary and Sunanda Pal. Godardskilfully demonstrates the contesting discourses of socialist feminism usedby Black women writers and the “literary theory of Canadian feminists[white?]” (108), that contains both within each “regulating discourse ofpower” (111); and asks for a textual politics grounded on a notion of“incommensurable differences” in which all parties may take part (113).Sarbadhikary reiterates the notion of the loss and damage that occurs whenEurocentric discourses determine the language of experience (118) andargues thatDionneBrand turns not only to thememories of the past but alsoto an “aesthetic community of resistance” to find “radically differentforms.” The attack on Eurocentric discourse is continued by Pal in herreading of Claire Harris’ writing, as it attempts both to “de-colonise thelanguage” but also, importantly, to “reconstitute it” not only in a newpoetics, but drawing strength from the “nurturing aspect of femalebonding” (140). The insistent need here echoes the importance of thesupportive community, and focuses on the expression of difference.

The five articles on Indo-Asian writing in Canada, by UmaParameswaran,KavitaSharma,BuarathiHarishankar, SoshanShahani andSusan Jacobs, raise issuesof location.Parameswaranaskspointedlywhat is“South Asian Canadian sensibility?” (146), and proceeds to situate severalrather different writers and different discourses. Sharma I shall return to.Harishankar analyses the complexities of seeing and seeking, being awareof difference and the problematic of defining cultural plurality, in writingby Bharati Mukherjee. Both Shahani and Jacobs turn to the difficultiesposed by the writing of Himani Bannerji. Shahani insists that the value ofBannerji’s work is precisely that it does not restrict itself to what Brossardwould call the banal daily, to a “complaint of a localised system” (183), butturns ethnic issues into ethical issues in a critique of the larger globalpolitical system. Yet her work is also local. Just so, her aesthetics is poisedbetween art and propaganda, concerned both with attacking “art for art’ssake” and using “the word and the metaphor, in order to struggle free fromthe silencing” (186). Jacobs curiously states that Bannerji’s work is not“easily accessible to the ordinary Indian reader” (194) because of itsreferences to, for example, Dante or Christianity, yet recognises thestrategy of reappropriating the Indian past as away of breaking reificationsof representation and “locat[ing]” the immigrant self (196).

Most of these readings specify the need for understanding location, andKavita Sharma’s writing takes up an otherwise erased issue, here as mostotherplaces, of class.Sheargues thatmost Indo-Asianwomengo toCanadaas “family class” migrants who cannot work and are excluded fromgovernment help for ten years. Thesewomen inhabit a completely differentworld than themajority of Indo-Asian womenwriters who are screened by

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“education, class, money” from these problems and tend to write about thedifficulty of assimilation, the coldness and hostility of Canadians, of the“pre-Canadian experience” (158-9). Shahani asks, after K. Gunnars, forwhomare theywriting?What does ethnicitymean to thesewriters?Do theythink they “represent” others? What should be their subject matter? Indoing so, she locates a set of questions that could be asked of any of thegroups being read in this collection, that could be asked of any of thereader/critics, that could be asked of us, now, reading/writing.

The following three articles address East-Asian women writers inCanada. Annette Parks, Lien Chao and Cecily Devereaux each extend theneed for locating the writers in order to situate the reading. Parks offers adetailed and informative reconstruction of the life and writing of EdithEaton that unashamedly uses archive material along with fiction toconstruct a history we may wish to deconstruct, and which alters thelandscape of reading. Chao speaks of Sky Lee’sDisappearing Moon Caféas a community history being re-read by an individual as a process oflinking the two; the process of her reading situates “motherhood” as apowerful trope of “identity transition and transformation” (225), that iscomplex, contradictory and problematised by “self-imposed denial ofpartnership in marriage and parenthood” (227). Devereaux develops theidea of the body as a site of ethnic and gender difference in her reading ofKogawa’sObasanwhich is “articulated in terms of the body” (236), whichneeds to remember specific “knowledge” (233) throughwriting, yet whichalso forgets. She notes, doubling Kamboureli’s insight, that the novel is aparadox for there is absence at its centre.

The final three articles, by Christl Verduyn, Wendy Waring and theinterview by Sukhmani Ray of SmaroKamboureli, take onwritingwomenof mainly though not entirely “white” ethnic backgrounds in Canada.Verduyn reads the writing of Aritha van Herk, Kristjana Gunnars, NadineLtaif and Monique Bosco in terms reminiscent of Brossard’s “memorywork” that not only mediates the past but also makes it possible to resist orcircumscribe any static identity.Writing is re-membering and re-collectingaswell as “lapsing”or allowing silences in the factual. Thiswriting/readingin motion makes it possible to resist re-entering the static definitions ofrepresentation, to alert a migrant rather than immigrant voice, thatcontinually attends to difference rather than locating itself specifically in anew, fact-based place.Answering the concerns,Waring attends towayswecan write a “strategic identity politics” through a reading of HelenWeinzweig’s Basic Black with Pearls which plays with the realist genreand its codes, turning theunproblematic into the surrealwith repetitionsanddisplacement. One cannot read either thememory of the immigrant nor thepresence of the character referentially, and interestingly, this reading needs“a space which makes it possible to imagine a heterosexuality beyondpatriarchy and ethnicity as hybrid and self-defined” (263). The finalinterview by Sukhmani Roy reiterates these attempts to dislocate identity,

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keep it on the move, with Kamboureli’s phrase “Playing the hopscotch”(267). Yet rather than another plurality, Kamboureli contextualises thismovement asone that is “moreconcernedwith thedynamicsof anexistencethan a fixed ethnic identity” (267). Quoting Sneja Gunew, and echoingBrossard, Kamboureli says, “wemove towards our origins. Our origins arein the future” (267).

The collection as a whole has a wide variation in tone from the formal tothe descriptive to the authoritarian, but the consistent element is the desirefor understanding: not only of the writings being read, but through thosereadings, of the locations of the critic/readers. At the same time, the readerof the criticism can feel that pulse of need, needing support, needingdifference, needing locatedness for thewriter, needing as a reader to be partof the situatedness, needing the invention of self that is not representative.The structuring of the articles into groups addressing writers by theirethnicities encapsulates the problemof needing the supportive community,the situatedness, at the same timeas resisting the representations that accrueto people precisely because they have designated “communities”which aresubtle and variable and elude commodification. It is however, difficult tolocate the future woman, the woman who changes the hegemonicstructures, and is no longer “minoritized.”

The work on First Nations women writers in Janice Acoose’ Iskwewak:kah’ ki yaw ni wahkomakanak/Neither Indian Princesses nor Easy Squawsis directly concerned with the hard graft of articulating selves that areneither representative nor even represented. Acoose opens her work with anarrative of social location for herself, which is interwoven with politicaland historical events both in the public world of the nation state and in herpersonal world. It is an intimate documentary of the shame of differencethat encourages us to assimilate (29), and then of the tough and painfulangerwhen she recognised that she had become the “same,” being “heavilyinfluenced by the white-christian-canadian-patriarchy” (or weccp:white-eurocanadian-christian-canadian-patriarchy) (30-31).

Acoose’ readings address the dearth of images for indigenous people,and the appalling racism of the impoverished representations that are incirculation. She moves through the interconnection between racism andliterary image, the activism by women in the years 1970 to 90 bothpolitically and in writing, the subtler and invidious representations ofindigenous women by non-indigenous writers such as Kinsella andLaurence, the changes that began to happen around the time of thepublication of Campbell’s Half-Breed, the flowering of indigenouswritings, her hopes and worries for the future.

Themost intense reading ofwriting, translation, occurs around theworkofMaria Campbell, who set out to decolonise the English language for herpeople (92). Immediately Acoose enters the problematic of that act: usingthe English language, the language of oppression and abuse, using the term

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“half-breed” with all its derogatory implications, as a term simultaneouslyof pride, of anger and of daily life. Impressed with the range ofrepresentations for women that resists the binary of princess/squaw (96),the critic/reader also finds thewriter caught into stereotypical comments on“Treaty Indians” and “Half-breeds” (99) which she later in life rejects. Thereading points to an on-going dilemma, that we may, with Brossard’slanguage, palpitate a new skin for the representation,wemaybreathe it intoperformed reality inourwords, butwedo thisbit bybit.Every stepalong theway is vital, literally. Unlike clothing that we put on, skin has to grow, andwe have to live with what we have grown our bodies into.

What is interesting within the conceptual structures that other writer/readers are exploring in these texts is thatAcoose takes the position that sheand her community are living and working in a location that is out with thepredominant determinations of ideological power. Inflected yes, but nearlydestroyed by it, and hence recognisably not part of it. In other words, hercommunity is not a hologram, although she acknowledges its vulnerabilitysaying that “contemporary Indigenous writers are writing their culturesback into stability and thereby assuring survival” (114). This refreshingtrust in situatedness is built on a supportive community beginning to valueits own difference. The strategies for that valuing offer translations for thereaders reading Acoose to take into their own labour of love.

To conclude, I would like to refer too briefly to Julie Cruikshank’s TheSocial Life of Stories. This reading of the stories mainly told by YukonNative Elder women over the period 1970-85 is one of the mostextraordinary labours of valuing difference I have read. This may be partlybecause I find, as do most of my known co-readers, that the stories arevirtually impossible to read.Cruikshank,whose editing ofLife LivedLike aStory is a crucial contribution to the issues of representation andarticulation, has done more than most academics to learn about thesituatedness of the writings she attempts to read and to devise ways ofvaluing their difference. This of course is only partly about the writerswriting, and more largely about the reader’s craft of translation, her abilityto value difference in others becoming the skills and strategies she candeploy to value the difference in herself. Cruikshank says, in a summary ofher project, that colonial expansion inevitably “threatened to dislodge ortrivialize local systems of meaning, yet Yukon elders have never beendeterred from telling narratives that address precise local concerns” (xiv).She notes, and later expands on, the “interplay of externally imposedcategorieswith local concepts” and the implications for the speakers’ senseof “belonging in theYukon” and that intersectionwith “regional and globalissues.” And she concludes, modestly, by saying that the strategies she hasdeployed for reading may enlarge the “academic narratives” if “we takeseriously the stories people tell about themselves” (xv). It sounds so simple.And it is significant that she deploys Bahktin, Innis and Benjamin, earlycontributors to situated knowledge, as her guides. This is not a book about

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women readingwomen, but it is one. And that hesitation over gender couldprove helpful.

These texts, written by readers of writing by women, pose particularquestions about the etiquette/ethics of aesthetics. For the most part, thecritics here recognise that attempts at neutral comment, no matter howrespectful, are essays into a system without desire let alone withoutrecognition of need. All eschew the aggressiveness that forms from afrustrationwithdifference, a senseofhelplessness in faceof it, andaremoreconcerned to work on ways of valuing it. So, close readings are labours oflove within different contexts: they can be enclosed, they can be engagedand vulnerable. So, “theoretical reference” is an apology to understanding,a courteous/courting/wooingof difference into the room,but also at times ahedging, an option-control, a hedge-fund to reduce risk, sometimes a cage,sometimes a violence. Not all engagement is violent, but all engagementtakes risks. So, a “discursive” reading is always ironic, always works fromknown grounds although in differing ways: to repeat, to oppose, tocontradict, to transcend: As the writer/critic reads through the writingwriter or thewritingwriter reads through thewrittenwriter, in a negotiationof ideology, hegemony, subjectivity, representation: As the text negotiatesthe impossibility of saturating desire. So, a “situated” reading can bereductive or it can work allegorically at the event-horizon that necessarilychanges its situation. Most critics or readers fall in love with the writingtext, after all they dedicate their lives to it for several years. Even if theirwriting desires difference, the reader of the critic can feel the insistentpulsing of need through the arcs of impossible saturation. These writers,readers, translators, rarelymerely toleratedifference, they learn to love it.

Susan Rudy

Sorting Out Our DifferencesMore vibrant possibilities exist in the multitude of voicesnow emerging in this country. These voices see theimagination as transformative, as leading out of thepessimism of colonial discourse, as making new narratives.(Brand, “Whose Gaze and Who Speaks for Whom” inBread Out of Stone 168)

Women’s critical writing published in Canada since the mid-1990s offers“vibrant possibilities” at the same time as it draws our attention to thedifficult pleasures and responsibilities that accompany new knowledges.Like Dionne Brand, many see “the imagination as transformative” andbelieve we canmake “new narratives.” But the books I am about to reviewinclude a “multitude of voices”whoquestion justwho “we” are, valuewhatis “new” and imagine “making” (and unmaking) quite differently. Myreview considers nine books that I would like to introduce initially in terms

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their contexts. Barbara Godard’s Collaboration in the Feminine Writingson Women and Culture from TESSERA and Makeda Silvera’s The OtherWoman:Women of Colour in Contemporary Canadian Literature are bothedited collections of essays by a range ofwomenwriters and critics, severalof whom published books during this same period.4 Five books aresingle-authored collections of essays by women writers, all of them poets:Dionne Brand’s Bread Out of Stone, Daphne Marlatt’s Reading Throughthe Labyrinth, M. Nourbese Philip’s A Genealogy of Resistance, LolaLemire Tostevin’s Subject to Criticism, and Phyllis Webb’s Nothing ButBrush Strokes. Finally, ArunMukherjee’sPostcolonialism:MyLiving andHimani Bannerji’s Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism andAnti-Racism are written from the perspective of Professors of English andSociology (both at York University in Toronto), respectively. Bannerji isalso a poet.5

When Barbara Godard writes, in Collaboration in the Feminine,6 thatTESSERA’s project has been to engage “in an exchange of letters” thereby“creating a community of women of letters” she might have beendescribing the effect these books have had on at least some readers (269,258). A community of women of letters has indeed developed in Canadaover the past twenty years. Significantly, these critical “letters” take theform of the essay, not the book. In “Criticism as Self-Reflection,”7 LolaLemire Tostevin argues that “Because it is crucial for women to bearwitness to our own circumstances, our experiences and desires, inscribingourselves into a critical genre affords us a vehicle through which we canexplore the different faces of new territory while creating new levels ofunderstanding” (10); it is “no accident that the essay became such animportant genre for women in the last few decades” (9). As Godardemphasises, the exchange of letters the serious distribution andproliferation of ideas, words, insights — is a “crucial feature of identityformation” (269).

But “identity formation” is complex. Who are “we” in Tostevin’sargument for example? Perhaps women are cautious about claiming theauthority of a single-minded vision or book-length argument given ourawareness of themultiple claims on our identities. As thewomenwriters inthe single-authored collections remind us, they have been and continue tobe several selves. In PhyllisWebb’s words in her “Preface” toNothing ButBrush Strokes, “If there seems to be amultiple personality running loose inthis book, it can probably be explained by the time-span these prose piecescover — twenty-five years — and the diversity of occasions that calledthem forth.” “RE,” Tostevin’s piece in Collaboration in the Feminine,speaks directly to the complexity of the writer’s (re)reading self:

writing as reading (the past?) would only be writingwithout breathing a word while writing as rereading dou-bles back to recall to hear again the resonance asre tears from the rest reenters the mouth. (40)

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Similarly, Nicole Brossard’s “CertainWords,” also inCollaboration inthe Feminine, reminds us of reading’s promises: “Every reading is anintention of images, an intention of re-presentation giving us hope” (49).Daphne Marlatt’s Readings from the Labyrinth are critical writing as“Essayings” which try “to read the complex interactions between culturalrepresentations and self-representation” (ii). ForMarlatt, the reading self isa critical — a crucial, necessary, even essential — self, a “woman inprocess, rereading, writing herself in as subject” (183).

Why then do such conscious critics often absent themselves from thetitlesof their books?Why is their relation to theirmaterial hidden?Considerthe titles of some books under review here:

a genealogy of resistancebread out of stonecollaboration in the femininenothing but brush strokespostcolonialism: my livingreadings from the labyrinthsubject to criticism

Note the scarcity of verbs. “Living” can be read as a verb, and so, possibly,can “reading(s).” But the nouns are here in excess: bread, stone,collaboration, nothing, strokes, postcolonialism, labyrinth, subject,criticism. Several words establish relation including prepositions (from,out of, to, of, in) and articles (my, the, a).Who dowe imagine is speaking in(the titles of) thesewomen’s books of critical writing?Who are the impliedsubjects of these sentences? What are the contexts?

Let us imagine subjects, actions and contexts:Having found her way through, she writes her Readings from theLabyrinth.Resourceful and hungry, and recalling her mother’s words, shemakes Bread out of Stone.Whether she likes it or not, she feels Subject to Criticism.Although everyone sees its difficulty, she thinks of her writing asNothing But Brush Strokes.She reclaims her history as A Genealogy of Resistance.Wanting to change theworld, she enters into aCollaboration in thefeminine.

“She” the implied but absent feminist subject, writes, makes, feels, thinks,reclaims, joins, stands.Butmost crucially, she lives.Buthow?Withwhom?In whose interests?

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OnlyArunMukherjee, inPostcolonialism:MyLiving, problematiseshersubject and her relation to it in her title. In her introduction, she explainswhat is suggested by the ambiguous word “living” in her title, thatpostcolonialismhasbeenher “living” in two senses.Because shehas been ateacher of “postcolonial literature” for the last ten years, it has been her“living,” her “bread and butter.” But postcolonialism has also been herliving in the sense that she was “born a British subject 1946 and became anIndian citizen on August 15, 1947, the day of India’s independence andpartition” (xii). Like Raymond Williams, she sees postcolonialism, then,not as a theory, but a “structure of feeling”: “not all ‘the colonized’ areequally oppressed and ‘the colonized’ can be oppressors too” (xix). Ingeneral,Mukherjee’s essays explorewhat she calls the “contradictions andconditions surrounding the teaching of what we are forced to callpostcolonial literature” (xx) and examine the effects of postcolonialism onwomen, the reading and teaching of literature, and the lives of non-whiteacademics.

Himani Bannerji’s Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism,Anti-Racism and Marxism provides substantial evidence that the rise ofpostcolonial theoryhasnot eliminated racisminpostsecondary institutions.The only book under review by an academic woman who is also a poet,Bannerji is acutely aware of her positioning in terms of her sex, race andclass.Her essays are “situatedcritique[s]” that “think throughsomeof thesemakings and unmakings, doings and undoings—which happen in a banal,routinemanner inwhere and howwe live and inwhere and howwewant tobecome politically actionable” (13). Like Dionne Brand, she thinks of thisproject as an engagement with “transformative knowledges” (13). But hermessage is tentative, cautious and full of pain. Somehow, like the othersixty-fivewomenwhose insights are recorded in these books, Bannerji stillwants to connect and believes in the possibility of change. Withoutquestion, particular difficulties in “making new narratives” areencountered when some of us move toward transformation without all ofus. As it is for M. Nourbese Philip, critical writing can be a “traumaticinterruption of the NewWorld” (126). But Jam. Ismail, in an excerpt fromDiction Air, reminds us of the potential of interruption in her parodic andincisive re-dictioning: “words, incited (see also metonymy). words ar likemoney they hav no backing other than us” (101) .

Godard’s Collaboration in the Feminine: Writings on Women andCulture from TESSERA gathers essays previously published in thebilingual feminist journal of innovativewriting bywomen,TESSERA. Thetitle of the collection anglicises and repeats the early feminist label forwomen’s writing — écriture féminine. Moreover, it recuperates andextends the notion of writing in the feminine to include a sense ofcommunity, indeed of “collaboration,” which suggests the kind of covert,strategic and deliberate workings of a counter-dominant group. But thesubtitle reveals significant assumptions that the women who have edited

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and published TESSERA over the years have had the privilege to be able tomake: most obviously, the assumption that women’s writing can affordnow to be considered within the larger project of an analysis of culture. Insaying this, I feelmy own negotiation of differencemore acutely than ever.When I attempt to compare Collaboration in the Feminine with the othercollection of critical essays — The Other Woman: Women of Colour inCanadian Literature edited by Makeda Silvera — its meta-discursiveanalysis appears in an uneasy relationship with ordinary racism.

Unequivocally, Barbara Godard and Makeda Silvera value women andwomen’s writing. But the differences between them and their editedcollections illustrate the range of possibility and the potential formisunderstanding among thinking women in Canada today. BarbaraGodard, a Professor of English at York University in Toronto, is also anaccomplished translator, most notably of the work of Nicole Brossard. Hercollection gathers previously published essays from a journal she helped tofound and contributed to editing for many years. The collection includesseveral collaborativelywritten texts and transcribed conversations: such as“TheorizingFictionTheory”co-writtenbyGodard,DaphneMarlatt,KathyMezei and Gail Scott, the founders of TESSERA whose talking togetherappears, alongside Susan Knutson’s in another piece, “In Conversation.”In the Quebec context, “WhatWe Talk About on Sundays” documents theconversationofkeywriters and thinkersNicoleBrossard,LoukyBersianik,Louise Cotnoir, Louise Dupré, Gail Scott and France Théoret. In addition,theoretical musings on language and subjectivity by writers as different asDaphneMarlatt (whose “Writing ourWay Through the Labyrinth” as wellas her “Self-Representation and Fictionalysis” both appear) and LindaHutcheon (in “Incredulity Toward Metanarrative: NegotiatingPostmodernism and Feminisms”) are included.

Since TESSERA “had to be critical writing with difference, reflectingnew forms, new relations to reading” (17)— “difference” understood hereto be politically motivated formal difference— none of the essays finds ituseful to analysewriting bywomen inCanada as part of awider “CanadianLiterature.” Lorraine Weir’s “‘Wholeness, Harmony, and Radiance’ andWomen’s Writing” for example refers in only one paragraph to MargaretLaurence and Alice Munro and invokes Michel Foucault and JacquesDerrida to argue that a more complex criticism in Canada is required inorder “tomove themeand style towardopen forms” (22).According toGailScott, the “other sine qua nonwas thatTESSERA should be ameeting placefor women writing in French and English” (17), a requirement that provedto be, as she herself says, “limiting, inasmuch as it so inadequately reflectedthe Canadian context” (17). But even this requirement is compromisedsince the collection is clearly directed to English readers. Texts previouslypublished in French appear in English translation: Daphne Marlatt andKathyMezei’s translation of “The Doubly Complicit Memory” by LouiseDupré, and Barbara Godard’s translation of “Certain Words” by Nicole

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Brossard, for example. Not that issues of power and ethics are not revisitedin several of the papers, particularly KathleenMartindate’s “Power, Ethicsand Polyvocal Feminist Theory” as well as Marlene Nourbese Philip’s“Whose Idea Was it Anyway?” Significantly, only one other piece by awoman of colour appears: Jam. Ismail’s “Diction Air.” In “Women ofLetters,”Godard’s “Reprise” or closing essay, she describes Ismail’s pieceas “a resistor’sdictionarywhich refigures the languageof feminist theory tobring together under the category ‘words’ both the definition ‘chinesecharacters’ and ‘the idea of race … [as] autonomous, scientific and legalstatus’.”

Makeda Silvera’s collection The Other Woman is, in her words, “along-awaited celebration of the writing of women of colour [who ‘knowwho we are: women of the First Nations, South Asians, African Canadian,East Asian, Indo Caribbean, Afro Caribbean, Latin American, JapaneseCanadian, Black, Chinese Canadian, African’] in Canada . . . The voices init speak not necessarily in unison but to and of a common interest” (x).Quite differently from Collaboration in the Feminine, The Other Womanvalues, includes and indeednames thepresenceofwomenwriterswhohaveonly recently been considered eligible for inclusion in the canon of“Canadian Literature.” Claimed as sign of this writing, the illicit,illegitimate, heterosexual connotationsof thephrase“theotherwoman”arerevised and reclaimed through an ironic reversal. The agential power ofsubversion that the notion of “the otherwoman”has conventionally lacked,and which the notion of “collaboration” unironically assumes is broughtforward. In a sense, collaboration “in the feminine” draws unquestioninglyon the resources and possibilities of collaborative work (previouslyreserved for men) and now appropriates them for (white?) women. SinceSilvera’s women have had no male precursor to (or to want to) recuperate,the place of the otherwoman is the place of awomanoutsided by patriarchyand from “legitimate” womanhood. The women in Silvera’s collectionwrite from his other othered place.

And yet Godard and the women included in Collaboration in theFeminine are not unaware of the complexities of differences of race,sexuality and class, as well as gender. In fact, Godard’s collection recordsthe movement of feminist thought through the 1980s and into the difficult1990s. As she writes in “Women of Letters”:

In recent years, following the critiques of exclusion in thediscourses of Euroamerican feminisms, race has become a majorcategory for the consideration of the production of meaning andvalue. Issue 12, “Other Looks: Race, Representation andGender”(1991), demonstrates a range of strategies forwriting the syntax ofrace and ethnicity, an oscillation between reclaiming “home”through memory, or a syntax of “retentive” particularity, and anin(ter)vention in a new country through dissidence, one of“restitutive” particularity. Some texts also manifest a thirdstrategy, a transformative project that seeks to read one cultural

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and racial text through another to conflate old and presenttopographies and languages in a syntax of “syncretic”particularity. (302)

In contrast, Silvera’s contributors to The Other Woman seek an even morepreliminary inclusion, what Silvera calls a “gift to you and to ourselves”(xii):

When I decided to work on this book it was because I wanted tohear the talk of other sister-women. I wanted to hear us talk aboutwriting, ourwriting, andwhere andhowwe fill our characterswithlife and history. I wanted to say, “here’s a book with a lot of us.We’re here, and we’ve been writing for years and we’re here tostay.” Iwanted to seeusdanceacross themarginand into thecentreofour lives. Iwantedabook that lookedbackat us throughourowneyes and not the eyes of white culture. (xi)

The pieces in The Other Woman are diverse in terms of both criticalpositioning and form. While Uma Parameswaran provides an overview ofSouth Asian Canadian Women’s writing and Arun Mukjherjee considers“Canadian Nationalism, Canadian Literature and Racial MinorityWomen,” poet Rita Wong more playfully “jumps on hyphens,” toparaphrase her essay which calls itself “a bricolage receiving‘genealogy/gap’, ‘goods’, ‘east asian canadian’, ‘translation’ &‘laughter.’” Several other writers — Joy Kogawa, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela,Ramabai Espinet, Lillian Allen, Maria Campbell, Dionne Brand, Sky Lee,Silvera herself— offer essays and interviews.What Kogawa and Koh call“The Heart-of-the-matter Questions” are asked and wrestled with.

Himani Bannerji bluntly names her relation to writing and politics in“Writingwas not a decision,” an interviewwithDionneBrand andMakedaSilvera: “To explain my life here, your life, or anybody’s life writing orpoetry or prose for that matter, how canwe not speak to this sort of rarefiedrelations [sic] of violence that are themicrocosmof themacrocosm, in eachlocal space?” (183).

The five single-authored critical books by poets wrestle with a similarmix of questions, contradictions, issues, difficulties and promises. LikeFrontiers: Writings and Essays on Racism and Culture, M. NourbesePhilip’sAGenealogy of Resistance is “critical” in a sense that foregroundsthe political ground of aesthetic practice. In “Dis Place — The SpaceBetween,” for example, she takes on the difficult connection between raceandsex for aBlackwomanby takingher readerswithher to“DisPlace,” thespacebetween,whichsignifiesherwoman’sbodyandherplaceasawomancaught between the discourses of feminism and anti-racism. Like herpoetry, her critical writing experiments with form. A play called “ButJamettes Get Raped Too!” appears in the middle of the “Dis Place” essay.These essays claimher genealogyasoneof resistance, “inwhich I speak. Ina certain manner” (13) against the “traumatic interruptions of the NewWorld” (126).

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Dionne Brand’s Bread Out of Stone brings to the forefront anothercritical difference, a difference of sexuality. In “This Body for Itself,”Brand writes:

I think that women learn about sexual pleasure fromwomen. Thestrict code of heterosexuality would have us think that we comeupon sexual pleasure when we notice men or that we should. Butcodes are only necessary where there is variation, questions ofpower. The need to regulate reveals the possible.Despite all this, Ithink we catch a glimpse, we apprehend a gesture. We rememberdespite the conditioning we receive as women not to rememberother women, or to be ashamed of that memory or to think itimmature. This gesture is where we learn our sexuality,however — lesbian and straight. (33)

For Brand, writing might dream us into memory, into alternative worldswhere more than just a glimpse of the possible is revealed. Indeed, Brandgoes so far as to insist that “There is only writing that is significant, honest,necessary — making bread out of stone — so that stone becomes pliantunder the hands” (23). For Brand, “writersmean to change theworld” (25).As her poems suggest and as these essays argue, we are able to imagine,which I take it includes our ability fundamentally to “read” in order tomakealternatives, to require “new narratives.”

A key essay in Readings from the Labyrinth, Daphne Marlatt’s incisiveplay on the words “her” and “here” in the essay “Her(e) in the Labyrinth:Reading/Writing Theory” (1992/1997) suggests a reciprocal andconstitutive relation between her critical and writing selves. The sixth inKamboureli’s NeWest “The Writer as Critic” Series, Readings from theLabyrinth tracks Marlatt’s participation in feminist politics and writing inCanada since the late 1970s.Manyof her essays have beenpublished in keyworks of the early literary feminist movement in Canada: In the feminine:Women and Words/Les Femmes et les Mots, several issues of TESSERAincluding its inaugural French issue published in La Nouvelle Barre duJour (57 [1986]), and Language in Her Eye: Views onWriting andGenderbyCanadianWomenWriting inEnglish.Hermanyother influential essays,previously published in journals, conference proceedings, or atconferences, appear chronologically following an introduction thatcontextualises the piece. In addition, Readings from the Labyrinth isinvaluable to feminist history since it includes journal entries, letters andphotographs of the women who have nourished the emergence of feministwriting and criticism in Canada.

Lola Tostevin’s Subject to Criticism, her first collection of criticalwriting, includes previously published essays, reviews and afterwordsreferring to the work of Miriam Mandel, Diana Hartog, Elizabeth Smart,Sylvia Fraser, bpNichol andDaphneMarlatt. Her published conversationswith Fred Wah, Christopher Dewdney and Anne Hébert also appear, asdoes a written correspondence with the critic and poet Smaro Kamboureli.

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Several musings on women’s writing—“Breaking the Hold on the Story”and ‘“They’ll Say It’s Stolen, orElse itWas byChance’”—also appear. Onthe whole, Tostevin’s critical work reveals a subtle and informedintelligence. “[T]he essay,” she argues, is “an act of personal witness: atonce an inscription of the self and adescription of subject and object as theyrelate to each other” (10) from her positioning as a writer.

Finally,PhyllisWebb’sNothingButBrushStrokes:SelectedProse is thefifth in Smaro Kamboureli’s NeWest “The Writer as Critic” Series. Theessays collected here are mostly on literary subjects, many previouslypublished in key feminist journals (In the feminine, Language in Her Eye)aswell as in themoremainstream journalsTheMalahat Review,Brick, andLandfall (New Zealand), and the magazine MacLean’s. One of the moststimulating recent pieces—“Poetry and Psychobiography” was firstpresented as a lecture for TheVancouver Institute in 1993. In it, she revealsher formidable critical and ethical acumen. In themidst of her investigationof art’s relation to its artist’s psychology, she takes us to Diane WoodMiddlebrook’s biography of Anne Sexton, which draws on over threehundred tapes of the poet’s sessionswith her psychiatrist.Webb takes issuewith Middlebrook’s facile attempt to connect a therapy session to aparticular poem when she does not even bother to read or interpret thepoem. Asking herself why she felt this particular moment in the book wasexploitative and others were not, she supposes that it is because “Sexton’svulnerability is so crudely exposed;” moreover, as readers “we have notearned such knowledge” (91).

Repeatedly, in the context of free-lance writing pieces, commissionedessays and conference papers and anthologies, Webb foregrounds the factthat her critical writing life has its impulse outside of herself. “[T]his verybook,” she writes in her “Preface,” “got put together because of aninvitation.” She figures herself caught between what she calls twocontenders for her soul, one which delights in “being wanted,” the other apunishing voice that claims “we won’t make it easy for you, stupid.” Shemakes peace with them by imagining they are either trying to protect herpoet self or pulling her toward the visual arts, a form that has compelled herfor the last several years andwhich is gestured toward in the title itself. Likebrush strokes, these essays touch down softly and unpredictably on varioussubjects and inmultiple forms. “On theLine” and “Up theLadder:Notes onthe Creative Process”—both significant articulations of her poetics fromher first prose collection Talking (1982; now out of print)—are included.The most recent piece is an exquisite “Photo-Collage Essay” called “TheMind’s Eye,” which juxtaposes laser prints of original collages, seven byWebb, and one by Greg Curnoe.

All of these critics see the collaborationbetweenhistory, culture, contextand reader as inextricable in the construction of women as “others”.Resistance to these constructions requires similarly wide-rangingcollaborations. In her essay “On Poetry,” Brand returns to her history and

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rereads it by representing a self reading a picture of a child self. Still,watching, she comes to the recognition that “Poetry is here, just here.8Something /wrestlingwith howwe live, something / dangerous, somethinghonest” (183). Criticism too is “something dangerous, something honest.”For Dionne Brand, since “the eye has citizenship and possession” wecannot help but “look at the location of the text, and the author, in theworldat specific historical moments” (169, 163). Text and author, language andmateriality, words and bodies. Like Brand, political scientist ElizabethWingrove9 has recently argued that we need not choose between “thecreative and destructive powers of language, culture, and society” on oneside, and “fleshy, vulnerable, bleeding, needy bodies” on the other (870).As the work of so many of these women attests, critics who are writers seeboth thedifferencebetweenand the inextricabilityof languageandbodies.

To conclude, a poem by Phyllis Webb that usefully reconfiguresdifference as a verb, rather than a noun:

The pull, this way and that, ultimately into the pullof the pen across the page.Sniffing for poems, the forward memoryof hand beyond the grasp.Not grasping, not at all. Reaching isdifferent—can’t touch that sun.Too hot. That star. This cross-eyedvision.(“Sunday Water: Thirteen Anti Ghazals,”Water and Light 18)

The “pull” for all of these writers toward poems, essays and each other is a“reaching” across difference. More than that, “Reaching is / different,”perhaps even “difference” itself. Just as reaching is beyond grasping,seeking difference is a moving toward without the requirement of acomplete understanding. Webb conflates bodies and language when shegrounds writing in the physicality of “sniffing,” locates “memory” in theforwardmotionof another’s “handbeyond the grasp.”Eyes looking across.In a hopeful inversion of Stevie Smith’s poem “Not Waving ButDrowning,” Webb figures herself as not grasping but reaching. Suchcritical moments of uncertainty produce “this cross-eyed vision,” and thedifferences we make.

Notes1. The next two notes reproduce, in slightly edited versions, a pair of our e-mail

correspondences. The first is from Lynette Hunter to Susan Rudy [Sunday, 28November 1999], the second from Susan Rudy to Lynette Hunter [Monday, 29November 1999]. This particular conversation opened up what was to become thekey point of this review: that these books provide evidence that women in Canadavalue—indeed are deeply and consistently drawn to—difference.

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2. “So Susan to continue what I started late last night, it seems to me from theoutside that from about 1990 to now there really has been little intellectualorganising around the idea of woman. It seems to me that there has been a lot offear and anxiety. Women have been worrying about not having the vocabulary toqueer heterosexuality. Not having the ethical grounding to approach differencewithin feminism (and deflecting it off into postcolonialism). Not having thehistorical imagination to value the small steps that each one of us has to take everyday so always looking for the big issues.”“This is understandable if we remember that 1987-90 were the years whenfeminism and thinking women more generally were being accused of beinguniversalising, middle class, white, liberal and narrow-minded. Although therewere a lot of good books around the 1990-1993/4 period, like JaniceWilliamson’s interviews [Sounding the Difference], these were probably projectsstarted before the collapse really came along. In effect, I think that apart from afew women writers speaking about their individual experience/particularity, whohave written valuable and interesting books, it’s as if many of the critics and othercommentators have got cold feet about generalising. This means that there’s lotsof good work being done all over the place but in much more delineated settings.So trying to generalise about them is difficult if not ridiculous in a review essay ofthe size we have got.”“So my problem is trying to figure out a way to talk about all this diversity withinwomen’s writing communities, when it’s near impossible for any one person todo so. I feel that I could take a shot at a section on women writers, and look atCoral [Ann Howells], Pauline [Butling] and one other, plus a section on the fewbooks that do try to do a broader picture like Godard and [Coomi] Vevaina[’scollection]. Or I could look at the few books that do a historical job, like MisaoDean’s, or a few books that try to do women and... like Smaro Kamboureli. But Ialso feel that I should be gesturing to all the other more specific areas of work likeMaritime and Toronto Black women, Vancouver and Western Canadian EastAsian women, South-Asian women, Latin-American women, the Quebecoise,Prairie women writers, First Nations women writers (east, Quebec, Ontario,middle, west, northwest, and northeast!). Of course I’d be bound to leave out allsorts of groups who should be included, like white middle class liberal women. OrI could organise around issues like postcoloniality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality,racism, political franchise, work, position within the home, performance,nationalism, globalism, etc. In either of these cases the significant emptiness isfound in the huge area of white working class women. I am nonplussed about thisdifficulty, and would dearly love to hear your response. I hope it can be sorted outone way or another but I need to discuss it.

Lynette”3. “Lynette, Thank you for writing down what you’ve been thinking about and

sending it to me—I’ve found so very much that is useful in what you’re saying. Iam especially taken with your naming of women’s worries, fears and anxieties inthe 1990s and wonder whether we might not organise the review around what Ithink is an extraordinary key issue you have named here. Not in terms of lack (i.e.‘not having’) but in terms of what ‘we’, that is all kinds of women, have beendoing about difference.”“In your words, I think in our review we could begin to develop the ‘historicalimagination’ we need in order to ‘value’ ‘the small steps that each one of us has totake every day’—this is just gorgeous, I almost wept when I read it. Actually, Ithink that as it was at the [‘Women and Texts’] conference, valuing what we do in

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our daily lives is the key point to be naming here. And we need to value all ofthose small steps we have been taking intellectually too. What about consideringwhat an historical imagination might be for us as academic women who readwomen’s writing? Perhaps by articulating the areas of difference women writershave been examining? My sense is that writers do this so differently from critics(unless they are critics who are also writers). And yet I guess what I’m trying tosay is that I see the pivotal difference here is around trying to accommodatemodels that are not binary. About trying to value one kind of work withoutassuming that that means excluding another kind. A key point that I’verecognised in the books on my list is that women are not using the genre of thebook-length argument at all. These “books” are in fact collections of essayswritten over a long period of time (up to 25 years in the case of Phyllis Webb).They are records of the development of their individual historical imaginations ifyou like. So that too is saying something about the way women move in smallsteps. But such ‘movement’ needs to be valued. When we consider the work ofacademic critics—your more difficult list—I’m more hesitant about what to do.Again, I think that we/women are so careful about acknowledging our ignorancesabout difference that we move even more slowly (i.e. the reticence you’ve notedin the 1990s) when we are not sure where we are going, or with whom. But eventhis hesitance is a kind of ‘movement’ to be valued, don’t you think?”“I’ll send this back to you now and see where we go from here.

Susan”4. Essays by Himani Bannerji, Dionne Brand, and Arun Mukherjee appear in

Silvera’s The Other Woman. Essays by M. Nourbese Philip, Lola LemireTostevin, and Daphne Marlatt appear in Godard’s Collaboration in the Feminine.All are reviewed in this article.

5. She has published two poetry collections, A Separate Sky (1982) and Doing Time(1986).

6. The final essay in the collection, Godard’s article is entitled “Women of Letters(Reprise).”

7. The introduction to Subject to Criticism.8. “Here” signifies on and walking with the earth since, in the full text of the poem,

the small girl has just shaken gravel from her shoes.9. “Interpellating Sex.” Signs 24.4 (1999): 869-894.

Books ReviewedAcoose, Janice. Iskwewak, Kah’ Ki YawNiWahkomakanak: Neither Indian Princesses

nor Easy Squaws. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1995. 132 p. ISBN 0-88961-209-9.Bannerji, Himani. Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism, and

Anti-Racism. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1995. 190 p. ISBN 0-88961-208-0.Brand, Dionne. Bread Out of Stone: recollections sex recognitions race dreaming

politics. Toronto: Coach House, 1994. 183 p. ISBN 0-88910-492-1.Butling, Pauline. Seeing in the Dark: The Poetry of Phyllis Webb. Waterloo: Wilfrid

Laurier University Press, 1997. 184 p. ISBN 0-88920-271-0.Cruikshank, Julie. The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon

Territory. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998. 211 p. ISBN 0-7748-0648-6.Godard, Barbara, ed. Collaboration in the Feminine: Writings on Women and Culture

fromTESSERA.Toronto: SecondStoryPress, 1994. 312p. ISBN0-929005-57-0.Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. London: Macmillan, 1995.Kamboureli, Smaro. Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada.

Canada: Oxford University Press, 2000. 268 p. ISBN 0-19-541450-0.

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Marlatt, Daphne.Readings from the Labyrinth. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1998. 232 p.ISBN 1-896300-34-0.

Mukherjee, Arun. Postcolonialism: My Living. TSAR: Toronto, 1998. 242 p. ISBN0-920661-75-0.

Parker, Alice. Liminal Visions of Nicole Brossard. NewYork: Peter Lang, 1998. 287 p.ISBN 0-8204-3065-X.

Philip, M. Nourbese. AGenealogy of Resistance and Other Essays. Stratford, Ontario:Mercury Press, 1997. 233 p. ISBN 1-55128-047-7.

Silvera,Makeda, ed. TheOtherWoman:Women ofColour inContemporaryCanadianLiterature. Toronto: Sister Vision, 1995. 457 p. ISBN 0-920813-47-X.

Tostevin, Lola Lemire. Subject to Criticism. Stratford, Ontario: Mercury Press, 1995.215 p. ISBN 1-55128-025-6.

Vevaina, Coomi and Barbara Godard eds. Intersexions: Issues of Race and Gender inCanadian Women’s Writing. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1996. [273] p. ISBN81-86318-19-4

Webb, Phyllis. Nothing But Brush Strokes. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1995. 155 p.ISBN 0-920897-89-4.

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Valerie Raoul and Keongmi Kim-Bernard

Women’s Writing in Quebec in the Last Five Years:New Products?

Unlike most review essays published in this journal, this one doesnot focus on a few specific works; rather, it reviews the reviews,scanning issuesof theQuebec literary journalLettres québécoisesover the last five years, to ascertain what writings by women havereceived attention. This cursory overview is a preliminary steptowards a more extensive study of the critical reception ofwomen’s writing(s) in Quebec. One thing is clear from this initial,non-exhaustive inquiry: there is certainly no homogeneous“Québécoiswomen’swriting.”The field is characterisedbya richdiversity, not only of ethnicity, but of producers, readers, subjects,genres and forms.Consumers and critics alike have an“embarrasdu choix” between established values and new-name products.The“vintage”metaphor raises questions of quality, classificationand marketing.

No discussion of Quebec literature can ignore the importance of writing bywomen. In Canada, female authors have generally occupied anexceptionally important place in the literary canon. It is widelyacknowledged that althoughwomen inQuebec, as elsewhere,wrote “in thefather’s house” (to use Patricia Smart’s term), the first modern Canadiannovel, in French or English, was Laure Conan’s Angéline de Montbrun.That text has served as the starting point for a number of analyses of theposition of women in Quebec as writers.1 More recent “great names” ofFrancophoneCanadian literature includeGabrielleRoy,AntonineMaillet,Anne Hébert and Marie-Claire Blais. The first is still very present on thescenebecauseof the successofFrançoisRicard’sbiography (nowavailablein English) and the on-going edition of her private correspondence beingundertaken at McGill by Ricard, Jane Everett and others. Two of the threeother writers are still very much alive and they have all published newworks in the last five years. The loss of AnneHébert was announced as thisissue went to press: her textual legacy is rich.

Vintage Authors: Appellation contrôléeLettres québécoises and other literary reviews pay due tribute to newevidenceof theseauthors’ survivalof early literarycanonisation. In thecaseof Maillet, Le Chemin Saint-Jacques (1996: LQ 85) continues in the samevein as her previous work, weaving into the verbally effervescent story of


an Acadian woman’s life over a century echoes of fairy-tales andintimations of childhood sexual abuse. Her more overtly autobiographicalChronique d’une sorcière de vent (1999) continues in a recapitulativemode. Hébert’s seventeenth (short) book, Aurélien, Clara, Mademoiselleet le lieutenant anglais (1995; LQ 78) resembles some of her earlier worksin its limpidity and treatment of an impossible love. Est-ce que je tedérange? (1998; LQ 92) is also unmistakably by Hébert, in itsdépouillement, “poetic” atmosphere and concern for a lost country. Herlatest offering, in contrast, is set in France: Un habit de lumière (1999)focuses on a Parisian concierge and a crime plot reminiscent of her earlyplay, La Mercière assassinée.These texts, produced by aging writers whose minds and pens (or

computers) are as agile as ever, add to our understanding of a body of workwithout transforming its stature or status. Marie-Claire Blais, on the otherhand, is considerably younger and still innovating. In Soifs (1995; LQ 80),she presents an ensemble of short pieces representing a latetwentieth-century microcosm, original in form, comprising one 300-pageparagraph of extraordinarily long sentences. Assessed as possibly her bestbook to date, this work, like that of the others, raises questions about therepresentationof an established author’s output in the classroom.What is tobe selected, among such an array of diverse or similar texts by the sameauthor? Most CanLit courses continue to teach Kamouraska and UneSaison dans la vie d’Emmanuel.Howcanwe even keep upwith the prolificproduction of “new books by old writers,” whose workmust compete withthat of younger emerging authors? They are already almost irremediably(andpossiblyunfairly) classifiedas typical in somewayofanearlierperiod,yet they continue to evolve, sometimes in different directions.

Feminist Labels: Qualité supérieureA second category of Quebec women writers can also be consideredestablished, if not canonised, in the more restricted, but influential andintellectually demanding sub-field of feminist theory and criticism. TheFrench “Holy Trinity” of Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray, largely promotedby Anglophone North American criticism, has its parallel in the treatmentof Nicole Brossard, Louky Bersianik and France Théoret, with theoccasional inclusion of Denise Boucher, for theatre, and MadeleineGagnon, for poetry. Producers of Québécois versions of the French“écriture féminine” of the 70s, redefined by Brossard as an “écriture auféminin,” these authors have not remained locked into the categoriesassigned to them.2 Brossard’s novel, Baroque d’Aube ( 1995; LQ 80, herthirtieth book), continues her earlier work in its representation of a lesbianrelationship and in its formal experimentation (with personal pronouns inthis case). It is nevertheless a good deal more accessible than much of herearlier writing, marking a transition to “the other side” of transgression(“Nous ne sommes plus dans la cassure. Nous sommes de l’autre côté de la

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traversée . . .”), as well as a return to the author’s beginnings as awriter, herfirst poems entitled, Aube à la saison. The republication in 1998 ofBrossard’s Journal intime followed byŒuvre de chair et métonymies alsoconveys a greater concern for communication with a wider public. The“diary” was originally written for a radio broadcast in 1983,3 and the othertext (fragments representing four generations of Québec women over acentury) for an exhibition at theMuséede laCivilisation in 1996.The limitsof literature are challenged in a different way.

Madeleine Gagnon and France Théoret were both first known, likeBrossard, for their poetry, which they continue to produce (Gagnon: Laterre est remplie de langage, 1993; ThéoretUne mouche au fond de l’oeil,1998). Both have also written autobiographical texts (Théoret: Journalpour mémoire, 1993; Gagnon: Le deuil du soleil, 1998). They have alsoboth experimented with fiction in recent years, Gagnon in Le Vent majeur(1995; LQ 82), and Théoret in Laurence (1996, LQ 86). The latter is ahistorical novel, but one which succeeds in being neither conventional norpredictablypostmodern (seeLoriSaint-Martin’s review forVoix et images,Winter 1997, 385-9). Théoret manages to convey ideas in an original butaccessible form, as does Denise Boucher, whose picture appears on thecover of Lettres québécoises 94 (été 1999). This issue offers a summary ofBoucher’s career to date, with a focus on her more recent work for thetheatre: Les Divines, performed at the Théâtre d’aujourd’hui in 1996, andJézabel, a “lecture-spectacle” presented at the National Arts Centre inOttawa in 1997.

The most recent issue of Lettres québécoises (95, Fall 1999) bears acover portrait ofLouiseDupré, a participantwithBrossard andothers in thefeminist collectivemanifestoLa théorie un dimanche (1988), and author ofan important critical study of Brossard, Gagnon and Théoret (Stratégies duvertige, 1989). Dupré has also continued to publish poetry (Renoncement,1995, andTout près, 1998),while tryingher handat thenovel (LaMemoria,1997). Her position as a professor of creative writing at UQAM illustratesthe overlapping, in the Québécois(e) public intellectual, of various genresand roles that elsewhere often remain more distinct: poet, novelist,reviewer, critic, feminist thinker and activist. Another recent first novel isbyMarie-AndréeLamontagne (Vert, 1998,LQ93),who is also apoet, criticand translator, as well as editor of Liberté.

Unclassified (but far from ordinaires)Several other prominent women writers in Quebec are difficult to classifyand less clear in their relationship either to feminism or to the academy.These includeMadeleine Ouellette-Michalska (see special issue ofVoix etimages, Fall 1997, edited by Janet Paterson), who published a historicalnovel, L’été de l’île de Grâce, in 1995, and a diary novel, La Passagère, in1997 (LQ91).A special issue ofVoix et imageshad alreadybeendevoted to

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the polyvalent productions of Yolande Villemaire in Spring 1986. Articlesin Lettres québécoises 92 (Winter 1998) discuss her recent innovativework, includingLaMontéedesanges (a1995 “montage sonore”ofpoems),Le dieu dansant (the story of a young Indian dancer, see LQ 78, Summer1995), Les Murs de brouillard (1997, with an Amerindian focus) and Lafemme de sel (1998, with allusions to earlier references to Rrose Sélavy).Another woman writer to merit a special issue of Voix et images in recentyears (21:2, 1996) is Suzanne Jacob, winner of the Governor General’spoetry award in 1998 for La Part du feu. Jacob’s varied works arecategorised as “meta-feminist” by Lori Saint-Martin (Spirale, October1990, 12-13), who describes them as “plus personnelles, plus lisibles,davantage féminines qu’explicitement féministes,” as illustrations, not ofthe end or decline of feminism, but of “son renouvellement, voire sapérennité”4

Somewomenwriters, such asFrancineNoël (also a professor atUQAM:see special issue of Voix et images 18:2, 1993), have been described as“postfeminist” in their inclusion of feminist ideas and assumptions as“taken forgranted” inworks that nevertheless seek to reachapublicbeyondthe already converted. Others that might be included in this category areMadeleine Monette (La femme furieuse, 1997: see her article in Liberté132, August 1997) andMonique Proulx. Proulx’s collection of vignettes,LesAuroresMontréales (1996), alreadya favoritewith teachers, joinsothercontemporary texts bywomenwriters, both “Québécoises de souche” (likeProulx and Noël) and “Néo-Québécoises,” that bring out the parallelsbetween the experiences of women and those of immigrants, and drawattention to the lives of immigrant women in particular.

Imports (Mis en bouteille au Québec)Régine Robin, another novelist-professor, has been one of the mostprominent immigrant writers. She continues her work on memory in Lenaufrage du siècle (1995) andL’immense fatigue des pierres (1996;LQ 86,see alsoLiberté 233 ,Oct. 1997, 173-5). The latter, subtitled “bio-fictions,”is a collection of short texts, ambivalently autobiographical, whosemultiple levels illustrate the formal hybridity that, for Robin, parallels andconveys the migrant experience of linguistic fragmentation, physicaldisplacement and grieving for lost certainties. Variations on the theme ofexile and Jewishness echo in the autobiographical self-analysis ofMoniqueBosco’sConfiteor (1998;LQ 94). The first immigrantwriter fromChina tochoose to live inQuebecand towrite inFrench,YingChen, inher third (andprize-winning) work, L’Ingratitude (1995; LQ 82), focuses onintergenerational conflict between a daughter and her mother. Her mostrecent novel, L’Immobile (1998) was reviewed by Naïm Kattan in theInternational Journal of Canadian Studies (18, Fall 1998, 188-191), alongwith a Lebanese immigrant woman’s version of her mother’s story, AblaFarhoud’sLeBonheura laqueueglissante (1998).The latterpresentsmany

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points of comparison with poet Mona Latif-Ghattas’s Les Lunes de miel(1996), a grandmother’s story related to her Egyptian origins (see FrancineBordeleau’s comments inLettres québécoises83).Although the journalLaParolemétèque (which started in1987)no longer exists,minoritywomen’svoices are still being heard.

Crowd Pleasers and BestsellersAnumberof theseworksbywomenhave reachedawidepublic, butnoneoftheir authors had publicly announced, likeMarie Laberge, that their aim isto “galvaniser la foule” (see Mary Jean Green’s profile article in LQ 81,Spring 1996). The name and face of this prolific author of about twentyplays, a figurehead of contemporary theatre in Québec,5 appear in severalissues of Lettres québécoises where her recent novels are reviewed, withsomewhatpolarised reactions.LePoidsdesombres (1994, LQ77) connectsto her theatre, in its use of a two-voiced (mother and daughter) narrative;Annabelle (1996) is described by the usuallymoderate FrancineBordeleau(LQ 86) as a “logorrhée rhétorique,” whereas an ardent admirer (LaurentLapierre in LQ 81) waxes eloquent in praise of “la merveilleuse MarieLaberge,” who is not afraid to “toucher le public,” whose popularity isconfirmed by the success of La Cérémonie des anges (1998; LQ 94),another novel in two voices.

A glance at newspaper advertisements and bookstore shelves revealsother works by women writers in Quebec whose popularity is enormous.These include bestselling historical novels by Pauline Gill (Les Enfants deDuplessis,1991; Le Château retrouvé / La jeunesse de la Cordonnière,1996/99; La Cordonnière, 1998), or Arlette Cousture (author of Les Fillesde Caleb of television fame; Ces enfants d’ailleurs, 2 volumes 1992/4;J’aurais voulu vous dire, William, 1998), and former Châtelaine editorMicheline Lachance’s “biographie romancée,” Le Roman de JuliettePapineau (1996; LQ 82).Anothergenre that sellswell inQuebecandhas innovativequalities is the

novel for adolescent girls. Increasingly, writers who havemade their namein this field are turning their attention to adult readers. These includeDominique Demers (Le Pari,1999; LQ 93) and Christiane Duchesne(Anna. Les Cahiers noirs, 1996; LQ 85). One major new author hasemerged whose stories enthrall adolescents (both girls and boys) andadults, the detective-fiction writer Chrystine Brouillet. Her serial-killerthriller C’est pour mieux t’aimer mon enfant (1996) sold a record 30,000copies. Maud Graham, her female detective, introduces a new element tothe Francophone roman policier, from an Anglophone tradition signalledby her name. She is an engaging, plump, independent woman with a“propension au malheur,” “au caractère angoissé et au féminisme de bonaloi” (Francine Bordeleau in LQ 86). Brouillet’s latest offerings are Lesneuf vies d’Édouard (1998; LQ 94) and Les fiancés de l’enfer (1999).

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A Variety of TastesSome tendencies emerge from this broad overview. It seems that womenwriters in Quebec are successfully aiming to be (more) accessible and readby a wider public. Many continue to produce writing that, in the words ofregularLQ reviewer FrancineBordeleau, “quoi qu’on dise, se démarque detoute évidencepar soncaractèreplutôt introspectif et sa facultéd’approcherles zones de l’intimité” (LQ 85, 18-19). Some explicitly positionthemselves in a “lignée des femmes” or a “territoire féminin”(LQ 86,20-21). These aspects are emphasised in several autobiographies publishedrecently byLise Payette (Des femmes d’honneur, 1999, third volume of hermemoirs), Pauline Julien and Lise Gauvin. More light will be thrown onthese life-stories in Isabelle Boisvert’s forthcoming study of women’sautobiography in Quebec, Ouvrir les Voies/Voix (Éditions Nota Bene).A recent edition of Lettres québécoises (94, Summer 1999) includes

reviews of three new plays by women (Michelle Allen, Le jeu des oiseaux;Louise Bombardier, Le Champs; Carole Fréchette, La Peau d’Élisa),lesbian poems by Germaine Bealieu (Entre deux gorgées de mer), andselected articles by former editor ofLeDevoir, LiseBissonette (Toujours lapassion du présent). This overwhelming proof of the vitality and variety ofwomen’s literary production in Quebec is juxtaposed with an account ofwomen’s relation to language (Ces mots que les femmes détestent bylinguist Sofia Benyahia, 1998) and Lucie Joubert’s analysis of feminineuses of irony (Le Carquois de velours, 1998). There is no doubt thatwomen’s writing is not only thriving and developing in new directions, butremains a rich field for critical, theoretical and cultural analysis. Newstudies are expected soon by Lori Saint-Martin and Mary Jean Green,among others.

There are nevertheless some surprising gaps, if one relies mainly onLettres québécoises as an indicator of what is being produced and read bywomen in Quebec. First Nations or Black writers are apparentlyconspicuous by their absence, especially if one compares the situation tothat of EnglishCanada. Christl Verduyn has addressed this issue in a recentarticle.6 A new development, however, is that more texts by AnglophoneCanadian women writers are being translated into French in Quebec andreceiving some critical attention (such asAnn-MarieMacDonald’sFall onyour Knees). Many of the texts mentioned here certainly should betranslated into English. Someone likeNancyHuston, an English-Canadianwho lives in France andwrites in both French and English, remains hard toplace, from a Quebec perspective. The literary world evoked in Lettresquébécoises is one of familiarity between authors and critics. It is a lively,dynamic and productive milieu in which women writers are widelypublished and recognised as playing important roles. The stage, however,often has clearly defined limits, and it is initially primarily the home

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audience that counts. Yet there is no doubt that the quality of much of thiswriting deserves wider distribution and recognition.

Notes1. Patricia Smart, Écrire dans la maison du père (Montréal: Québec/Amérique,

1988); see also Valerie Raoul, Distinctly Narcissistic: Diary Fiction in Québec(Toronto: U. of Toronto P., 1993).

2. See Karen Gould, Writing in the Feminine (Carbondale: Southern Illinois U.P.,1990); Lori Saint-Martin, Contre-Voix: Essais de critique au féminin (Montréal:Nuit Blanche, 1997); Louise Dupré, “Trente ans d’écriture au féminin” (report ona conference held at Queen’s University in May 1996), Voix et images 64 (Fall1996), 170-1.

3. See Barbara Havercroft, “Hétérogénéité énonciative et renouvellement du genre:le Journal intime de Nicole Brossard,” Voix et images 64 (Fall 1996), 22-37.

4. See Lori Saint-Martin, op.cit. for an explanation of what she means by“méta-féministe.”

5. See Jane Moss’s article, “Family Histories: Marie Laberge and Women’s Theatrein Québec,” in Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women Writers (Minneapolis:U. of Minnesota P., 1996), and Roseanna Lewis Dufault, “Marie Laberge’sFeminist Existentialism,” in Cultural Identities in Canadian Literature, ed.Bénédicte Mauguière (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 65-71.

6. Christl Verduyn, “Relative(ly) Politic(al)s: Comparing (Examples of) Québec/Canadian “Ethnic”/ “Immigrant” Writings,” in Cultural Identities in CanadianLiterature (op. cit.), 211-225. See also Robert Berrouët and Robert Fournier,“L’émergence des écritures migrantes et métisses au Québec,” Québec Studies 14(Spring/Summer 1992), 7-22.

263


Authors /Auteurs

Peter CAMPBELL, Professor, Department of History, Queen’s University,Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6.

Guy CHIASSON, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 445,boul. de l’Université, Rouyn-Noranda, Québec, J9X 5E4.

Colin M. COATES, Director, Centre of Canadian Studies, University ofEdinburgh, 21 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD, Scotland.

Alvin FINKEL, Professor, Centre for State and Legal Studies, AthabascaUniversity, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, Alberta, T9S 3A3.

Lynette HUNTER, Professor of Rhetorics, School of English, Institute ofBibliography and Textual Criticism, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS29JT, United Kingdom.

Keongmi KIM-BERNARD, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre forResearch in Women’s Studies, University of British Columbia, 2075Westbrook Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z1.

Bernhard KITOUS, Centre d’Études Nord-Américaines, Paris, et Institutd’Études Politiques de Rennes, 104, boulevard de la Duchesse Anne,35700 Rennes, France.

Martin PAPILLON, Département de science politique, Université York,4700 Keele Street, Toronto, M3J 1P3.

Donna Palmateer PENNEE, Assistant Professor, School of Literatures andPerformance Studies in English and Centre for Cultural Studies /Centre d’études sur la culture, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario,N1G 2W1.

Valerie RAOUL, Professor, Department of French and Department ofWomen’s Studies, University of British Columbia, 2075 WestbrookMall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z1.

Susan RUDY, Professor, Department of English, University of Calgary,2500 University Drive N.W., Calgary, Alberta, T2N 3H7.

Émile J. TALBOT, Professor of French and Comparative Literature,Department of French, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA.

Joseph Yvon THÉRIAULT, professeur, Département de sociologie, 550,rue Cumberland, Université d’Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5.

Dr. Annis May TIMPSON, Lecturer in North American Studies, School ofEnglish and American Studies, Arts Building, University of Sussex,Falmer, Brighton, England, United Kingdom, BN1 9QN.


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