First sovereignist MNA clashed with Lévesque
Former MNA François Aquin, the first elected member of the National Assembly who openly endorsed the idea of sovereignty, has died, his wife announced.
Andrée Le Roy didn’t specify the exact date of Aquin’s death. The notice appeared in the Le Devoir newspaper on Saturday.
Born March 6, 1929, in Montreal, Aquin was also the cousin of writer Hubert Aquin. According to his notice of death, Aquin had a degree in law from McGill University and was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1956.
He quickly got into politics as president of the Fédération des jeunes libéraux du Québec from 1959 to 1963, and then president of the Fédération libérale du Québec in 1963 and 1964.
In 1966, he was elected as MNA for the new riding of Dorion, beating Unioniste Maurice-T. Custeau by 1,275 votes. But in 1967, outraged by the reaction of his party and leader Jean Lesage to the famous “Vive le Québec libre!” speech by French President Charles de Gaulle, he quit the party, declared his sovereignist leanings and sat as an independent. He then helped found the Sovereignty-Association Movement, ancestor to the Parti Québécois, in 1967.
But just before the PQ’s founding, he butted heads with René Lévesque, notably on the question of linguistic rights for Quebec’s anglophone minority (Aquin was more radical in his views on language). He resigned from the executive committee of the movement in July 1968. He later resigned his seat as MNA in November 1968 and returned to his practice of law and teaching, notably at Université de Montréal from 1969 to 1989.
In 2009, he received the honour of lawyer emeritus from the Quebec Bar.
Besides Le Roy, Aquin leaves behind two daughters, Valérie and Stéphanie, and four grandchildren.