De Gaulle’s Montreal speeches are a study in contrast
At the end there was wild applause. … General de Gaulle acknowledged the crowd’s enthusiasm and then withdrew from the balcony.
– Gazette, Thursday, July 13, 1944 Nearly
half a century has passed since Charles de Gaulle’s famous balcony speech during the summer of Expo 67. But it remains evergreen in the minds of thousands of Montrealers, those who cheered as well as those who were angered and appalled.
There were the French president’s deliberate, even ponderous cadences. There were his references to libération. There was the mounting excitement, especially among the nationalists in the crowd below.
Then, after a pause, it finally came: “Vive le Québec! Vive le Québec libre!” Never mind that he had first said, “Vive le Canada! Vive Montréal!” His implied support for Quebec’s independence was too much for the federal and provincial governments, and he was in effect asked to cut short his visit to this country, which he promptly did.
How different it all was from an earlier balcony speech de Gaulle made in Montreal. That speech came 23 years before, nearly to the day, in July 1944. It was barely a month after the Normandy landings. He was then head of the provisional French government and titular commander of the Free French forces, immersed in the fight to liberate France from the collaborationist administration in Vichy and Nazi Germany’s occupying armies.
De Gaulle had arrived early that July in the United States, where he finally gained quasi-recognition for his authority.
His visit to Canada was a sideshow, but important for his purposes nonetheless.
The Canadian leg began July 11 in Ottawa. Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, cautious as ever, played it both ways. Together with cabinet ministers, military brass and a representative of the governor-general, King greeted de Gaulle at Rockcliffe airport.
The French leader was invited to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph, to address an adoring crowd in front of the Parliament buildings and to give a press conference inside.
“Nothing has seemed more moving to me,” de Gaulle said, “than to have seen the Canadian Corps engaged on the banks of the Liri River in Italy recently, side by side with the French army, and to find first upon the beaches of Normandy … a fine and brave Canadian regiment.”
There were talks between the two leaders.
It seemed like the recognition de Gaulle craved, but was it really? Not yet. For one thing, King was chary of a political backlash from those Quebecers, a significant number, who were sympathetic to religiously and socially conservative Vichy.
The following day it was onto Quebec City where, as in Ottawa, there were quick meetings with high officials while crowds in the streets cheered, sang La Marseillaise and waved the tricolore. He flew to Montreal around midday.
In a whirlwind three hours here, de Gaulle inspected an honour guard at Dorval airport; he waved to cheering crowds while being driven into the city in an open car; he was presented with roses at Outremont city hall. At Montreal city hall, he signed the Golden Book; his visit there, at 3½ minutes, was the briefest on record, eclipsing the six minutes spent by the Duke of Kent in 1941. He laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in Dominion Square and in Lafontaine Park. There were two receptions at the Windsor Hotel.
And along the way he gave speeches, four in all, the least brief of which came at the Windsor.
In it de Gaulle repeated themes he had struck in Quebec City and Ottawa. As he stepped out onto the hotel’s balcony overlooking Dominion Square, it was sultry and raining. The thousands cheering in the street below didn’t much mind.
He emphasized the revival of the French nation and its determination to help win the peace as well as the war. But repeatedly he stressed the debt that France owed to Canada’s armed forces. “Frenchmen will never forget that your soldiers were among the first to land in my – I should say our – dear Normandy,” he intoned. He paused dramatically, then went on: “Frenchmen no matter where they may be today are grateful for what you Canadians have been doing.”
And, to conclude, what should he exclaim but “Vive le Canada! Vive la France!”
Yet it is said that de Gaulle never forgot King’s caution. Canada didn’t get around to formally recognizing de Gaulle’s provisional government until October, two months after Philippe Leclerc’s Deuxième Division Blindée led the Allies into Paris. Did a long-standing grudge help bring de Gaulle to that other balcony, in 1967?