CARRIER ON THE CONQUEST
Author offers new take on Wolfe, Montcalm
This is my story. I would not mind having a French North America but that’s not the facts. There are some lessons that we have to learn.
Montcalm and Wolfe: Two Men Who Forever Changed The Course Of Canadian History Roch Carrier, translated by Donald Winkler Harper Collins
As a child, Roch Carrier hated Maj.- Gen. James Wolfe and all that he wrought on the Plains of Abraham on Sept. 13, 1759.
“I was taught in school that some very bad people came and took my country from my ancestors. The chief of those bad people was somebody by the name of Wolfe. I hated that man.
“Montcalm (on the other hand) was very good man. He was cheated by the bad English and that’s why we lost the country.
“As a French Canadian, you think about the country that was lost.”
For the young man from the village of Sainte-Justine, about 125 kilometres southeast of Quebec City, the idea of winning and losing was present on the local hockey rink and it was present in the history he learned at school.
“As a kid I knew that Montcalm lost and I knew that winning was important. Our village had a hockey team and when the team was beaten by the neighbours, it was tough.”
As he grew up and went to university in France he started to look for Montcalm, at one point travelling to his birthplace in southern France. That early curiosity stayed with Carrier and percolated while he wrote novels and his famous story of The Hockey Sweater.
About a decade ago, he finally decided he would tackle the subject of the Plains of Abraham and the two men at the centre of the storm. “It came to a point when I had time and I said to myself, ‘Let’s go. Who are those two guys and what lesson can we learn from that experience?’ And I started to work.”
Little did he realize it would take him more than 10 years.
“It was my main activity and now my main activity will be to get rid of the tons of paper that I have.
“I could have played golf or gone skating, but I was working on it every day of the week and I don’t regret having invested my time. It was so fascinating that I wanted to tell the story in a way that was as interesting for the reader as it was for me when I was discovering the information.”
That is why he chose to focus his book on the life stories of the two military commanders, James Wolfe and Louis-Joseph the Marquis de Montcalm. “Where they were coming from, which country. How they chose to be military people until they were face-to-face on the Plains of Abraham.”
Both are tragic figures, in Carrier’s mind.
Montcalm was a nobleman from an old house. His ancestors had worked and fought for the French crown through the centuries and Louis-Joseph followed that path. In New France, though, the straitlaced marquis was not impressed by those in power and the fighters he commanded. And he had the noble’s disdain for those he felt were of a lesser class.
He was also appalled by the corruption rife in New France.
“He was troubled. He knew the corruption was making Canada not terribly popular in France. The cost of the colony was too high.” So high in fact that after the end of the Seven Years War, the French government was in no hurry to try to regain Canada. Instead they preferred warmer and more lucrative islands in the Caribbean.
Carrier also shows how French officials established a commission that ended in some of these corrupt officials going to prison.
More surprising is the opinion Carrier formed of Wolfe.
“Wolfe is somebody who impressed me quite a bit. He was very open to educate himself. He was in Belgium and started to learn French. He studied ancient battles and the strategy used. Wolfe used some of those tactics in Quebec.
“He was also really interested in the Prussian army (at the time Europe’s most effective). He wanted to know how other countries trained their soldiers and he was critical of the British army. He was demanding of himself and his men.”
He also had enemies inside his own command and as a result was very secretive about his plan of attack on Quebec.
Carrier didn’t set out to be a contrarian when he approached the telling of this very sensitive bit of Canadian history, but “I don’t see this time the same way any more.”
He says he is prepared to be pilloried by certain parts of Quebec society. In fact, he expects it.
“This is my story. I would not mind having a French North America but that’s not the facts. There are some lessons that we have to learn. It’s not to good to fight authority against authority. Miracles don’t happen.
“We should see why we lost,” he says.
“We have to live in the future. Let’s see that everything is not so bad. I kind of like this country. When you see what is happening in the world today. When you wake up in the morning you say, ‘Thank you.’ If you believe in God you say, ‘Thank you God.’
“My approach is let’s look at the story as it is. Let’s learn lessons from our experience how to do things and how not to do things.”
At the end of this process, he remains the independent thinker he has always been. “I come from a very small village where people have to be independent, not giving a damn about anybody.
“People may criticize and academics may condemn me as a novelist writing history, but I don’t give a damn. I enjoyed it.”