The real Jacques Parizeau
Andrew Coyne is right — Jacques Parizeau was Canada’s most formidable adversary. Personally, I doubt he would have declared unilateral independence within a few days of a Yes win in the 1995 referendum, especially with a small majority. His sense of British fair play would have prevented him from going down that route, I’d guess. I’m glad we never had to find out.
But then, who knows? After the defeat, he swiftly ruined his career with his angry, off-the-cuff comment about “money and some ethnic votes,” instead of using the concession speech prepared by Jean-François Lisée. At that very moment, Parizeau’s political career came tumbling down in a cacophony of reproach and resentment than echoes today. Many of his supporters shrugged in horror while his enemies licked their chops.
It made a lot of people, in and outside Quebec, very angry. Many are still angry. I understand the sentiment, but 10 seconds should not define one’s entire life. This singular Québécois spent almost 50 years serving the people of Quebec by shaping the tools and creating the institutions the province needed to reach economic maturity.
As a bilingual and bicultural federalist, who loves Canada no matter how disappointing it can be at times, I was taken aback by the level of hatred directed his way on social media in the hours following his passing. Many comments were so mean-spirited and downright despicable, considering that a decent human being had just passed away, using the kind of language reserved for pedophiles, Nazis and Clifford Olson. So un-Canadian, n’est-ce pas?
The ugly words spoken in anger that took him down — a deserved punishment for a careless a moment — were a reflection of the man’s outspokenness more than of his views on minorities. Parizeau was a straight shooting politician, the kind we dream of but end up hating when we elect one. He was a polarizing figure, but remained an honest man, always a feat for someone who performs on centre stage in the political arena.
To use the kind of English he loved and mastered, he never fibbed.
Parizeau was a dedicated anglo- phile, down to speaking the Queen’s English, albeit circa 1956. The first Canadian to win a doctorate from the London School of Economics, he was mocked gently for the striped threepiece suits he wore every day of his working life. The scion of a wealthy Montreal business family, he was what the Québécois used to call a “grand bourgeois.” Not exactly your average plaid-shirt-wearing, overtly Cuba-loving stereotype of 1960s separatists.
He did not work to “free” Quebec, eschewing the language of tinpot revolutionaries, but to make Quebec strong enough economically to morph successfully into a country. I never shared the view that it should, but I do believe that it could. Like it or not, independence remains a morally valid option for a people, as the Scots and the Catalans remind us now.
Although I believe its time has passed in Quebec.
I admired Parizeau’s intelligence, his class and his elegance, his command of the French language, unlike many current members of the National Assembly and, until the evening of Oct. 30, 1995, his reluctance to play the victim’s card in order to advance Quebec’s interests. Which is why his words after losing the referendum were so of character, and the reason why his opposition to Pauline Marois’s Quebec charter of values should not have surprised anyone.
Was Parizeau a racist, a xenophobe? Alicia Poznanska, his first wife, the mother of his two children, a distinguished writer and a member of the Order of Canada, was a war survivor from Poland who, although she called herself a Catholic, was Jewish. Her father disappeared in a concentration camp and she spent time in BergenBelsen. Racists and xenophobes don’t stay married to refugees with foreign accents for 34 years.
My favourite Parizeau story goes back to 1962, when he was a young civil servant in Québec City. Jean Lesage’s new “maîtres chez nous” Liberal government had just won the elections. Lesage had promised to nationalize hydro power but the Montreal money men — read anglos — refused to lend the government the $300 million it needed. Parizeau and two of his colleagues went to New York City and easily obtained the loan they needed from Wall Street bankers. “It took half an hour,” said Parizeau, retelling this seminal tale.
Quebec was never the same after that. For that boost of confidence, thank you, Mssr. Parizeau.
He was a straight-shooting politician, the kind we dream of but end up hating when we elect one