bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987) — Spring 1987 // Printemps 1987, pp. 45–47
René Lévesque Memoirs, McClelland and
Stewart, 1986, $24.95.
It had been almost a year since I’d last seen him. René Lévesque had just returned from a promotional tour in the Canadian West. It wasn’t his first trip, but it was the first time he’d been struck by the beauty of Jean Chrétien’s Rocky Mountains and the warmth of English-speaking Canadians. Thousands of them have bought his autobiography. This day in Ottawa, hundreds had given up their lunch hour to come and get their copies signed
I’d covered him for several years as a journalist for CBC in Montreal and Quebec City. When he saw me at the bookstore he scowled affectionately and told the storeowner I had come seeking “a Gainesburger”; journalistic slang for a juicy tidbit, a good quote for the nightly news. He nearly always delivered. And, more often than not, he delivered better Gainesburgers in English than in French.
In English he was colloquial, visceral. In French he was more restrained, often longwinded. Understandably, but somewhat unfortunately, he wrote his memoirs in the French mode. There are so many subordinate clauses, that if he sells one book for every comma, he’ll be a rich man.
Anglophone members of the press gallery at the Quebec National Assembly jokingly referred to Lévesque and his party as the “dreaded separatist menace”.. Our desks in Montreal and Toronto thought he was a great story; the closest thing to a revolutionary since Louis Riel.
However, many of us were never sure if the many really was a separatist…or if he simply wanted to negotiate more powers for Quebec. Hooked for fresh clues in his book. But, as usual, Lévesque’s message is unclear.
For example, this was his reaction when a publicity man for the Lesage government suggested the slogan “Maîtres chez nous” for the election on nationalizing electricity. “Deep down, I couldn’t help thinking it was perhaps a little strong. Masters of a huge new sector, okay. But masters of everything else? This exaggerated slogan gave me a feeling of uneasiness which has, for that matter, never entirely left me.”
But later in the book Lévesque writes “When you recognize and so often have seen oozing between the lines the superiority complex of a deep seated, majority-bred paternalism, that’s when you feel especially strongly the urge to be, at last one day, ’maîtres chez nous’ “
The most revealing moments come when he reminisces about his childhood. There had been long stories about René the runt of New Carlisle…A small town in Quebec’s Gaspé where the English were dominant.
The stories said he’d been tied to a tree in his backyard and persecuted by the other children. But Lévesque’s portrait of his youth is almost lyrical..full of happy memories. Such as the day he almost drowned
“Coming out of it was even more irresistible, for who should be leaning over me but the goddess of the beach, a long-legged, flaming readhead who had saved me.
She must have been about twelve and her name was Frances. I was her tongue-tied worshipper for many months after my day of drowning. Not daring and, for that matter, not able to imagine her in flesh and blood, I would drift off to sleep dreaming of her in the sound of the muffled rolling thunder of the waves breaking perpetually on the sand.”
There are also memorable moments in his tales of his years as a war correspondent for the U.S. government. In one of them Lévesque talks about witnessing the surrender of Marshal Hermann Goering.
“Against the vast natural setting, the resplendent epaulettes of this Reichmarshall who had been fired by Hitler, as well as a chestful of decorations, shone in the sunlight. But in less time than it takes to tell, our platoon leader, in a couple of passes worthy of a fencer, ripped away all that glitter. A few buttons popped off, too, and became souvenirs along with the rest of the paraphernalia.”
Unfortunately for Lévesque, the day of his book launch he had to admit that he hadn’t really been a witness. That he’d confused memory with imagination.
There are also strange lapses concerning more recent events. He calls the Parti Québécois convention where 500 party members walked out on him “quiet and uneventful”.. And there’s barely a word about how he was eventually forced out by Pierre-Marc Johnson and his supporters.
The only place Lévesque’s bitterness spills out is in regards to his old nemesis Pierre Trudeau. Their first meeting went like this.
“I had gone along with (Gérard) Pelletier to meet Trudeau in the cafeteria of Radio- Canada and offered to contribute the occasional article. ’Very good,’ he said in that drawling tone he affected, ’but allow me one simple question: Can you write?’ You’ll have guessed by now that we didn’t exactly hit it off.”
He accuses Trudeau of building his career around one central theme: keeping Quebec down.
“Trudeau had only to present himself as an elegant receptacle into which Canada could pour all its hidden hopes, among them the sneaking wish to see French Quebec put in its place. The unspoken but fiercely evident slogan that floated in the air everywhere was ’Keep Quebec Quiet!
It’s the only place in the book where his cautious tone evaporates and the visceral René Lévesque takes over. There is little self-justification, but here are also few insights, certainly no spilled secrets.
One wonders why he didn’t stick to his instincts. “Why didn’t I let a year go by before agreeing to write this goddamned book?” ’, he writes in the first chapter.
So much has been held back that there’s probably enough left for Lévesque to write another someday. Let’s just hope there’ll be a few more “gainesburgers” and a lot less commas.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987) — Spring 1987 // Printemps 1987, pp. 45–47. Read the rest of this issue →
