Fête nationale originated with secret society
Ludger Duvernay surely would be mightily impressed at how holiday has evolved
This is a condensed version of an article published June 20, 1992, in the Montreal Gazette.
One June evening 158 years ago, some 60 movers and shakers gathered for a banquet in the garden of lawyer John Belestre-MacDonell on St-Antoine St., where Windsor Station stands today. The occasion was organized by a vigorous young newspaper owner, Ludger Duvernay, and its purpose was to celebrate the spirit of French Canada.
From that modest beginning on June 24, 1834, has sprung not just the Société St. Jean Baptiste de Montréal, the most venerable of French-Canadian patriotic organizations, but also the Fête nationale, a potent reminder of the survival, the pride and the hopes for the future of French Canada.
The meaning of St. Jean Baptiste Day has evolved over the years. Both the day’s festivities and the society itself have become largely secular; the emphasis now rests more on Quebec than on French Canada; and an air of political nationalism is inescapable in all the waving blue- and-white flags. But if this isn’t quite what Duvernay might have envisaged, he surely would be mightily impressed.
Ludger Duvernay was born in Verchères in 1799 and apprenticed as a printer. He founded several short-lived newspapers in TroisRivières and then moved to Montreal where, in 1827, he purchased La Minerve. It quickly became the voice of Louis-Joseph Papineau’s Patriote party, to which most progressive people — anglos included — gravitated.
Early in 1834, Duvernay and several other young Patriotes, including 19-year-old GeorgeÉtienne Cartier, a future father of Confederation, formed a secret society whose members would produce and read essays on politics or literature. From there, it seems to have been an easy step to Duvernay’s idea that French Canada should have a yearly patriotic festival.
Hence his June 24 banquet. Jacques Viger, elected Montreal’s first mayor the year previous, presided, and there were speeches and songs. Toasts were drunk to the people (“the primary source of all legitimate power”), to Papineau, to liberal clergymen, to the great Irish reformer Daniel O’Connell, to reformers in Upper Canada, even to the United States, whose democracy was much admired.
The banquet became an annual affair. In fact, in 1836 and 1837 there were two: one at Rasco’s Hotel on St. Paul St., dominated by Duvernay, Papineau and the Patriotes; and a rival dinner under the more moderate Belestre-MacDonell in his garden. Both celebrations were suspended after armed rebellion broke out in Lower Canada late in 1837.
As the rebellion erupted, the authorities hoped to lock up the troublesome editor, but Duvernay got away from the city before the arresting officers could arrive. He went on to lead a Patriote battalion at Moore’s Corner, south of Montreal, but they were badly outnumbered and again Duvernay was forced to flee, this time to the United States.
The rebels were quickly put down, but Duvernay remained in exile. By 1842, however, the moderate reformer Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine was displacing Papineau and needed a newspaper to broaden his appeal. Duvernay returned to Montreal and, on Sept. 9 of that year, La Minerve reappeared.
In 1843, the idea of establishing a formal
St. Jean Baptiste society, based on the ideals of the previous decade’s banquets, gathered momentum in Montreal. Duvernay organized a well-attended meeting at St. Ann’s Market in Place d’Youville and became the society’s first president. In short order, it could number among its members most of Montreal’s prominent French Canadians.
Ludger Duvernay died on Nov. 28, 1852. Three days later, on the occasion of his funeral at Notre Dame Church, The Gazette wrote:
“Opposed as we have been to the political opinions of M. Duvernay, we have no reason to believe that the principles which he so ardently advocated were not always honestly held and maintained from a love of his country and his race. That is enough for us or his intimate friends to know.”