On the night of February 6, Corinne, on the verge of tears, cried out: “René has just killed a man!”
The accident occurred on Cedar Avenue. Suddenly, in front of him, he saw headlights and a stopped car. A young man was gesturing, signalling for him to avoid something. “What is this nutcase doing here?” Lévesque asked, accelerating. So as not to hit him, he swerved awkwardly to the left. The wheels of the car ran over a body. There was a man lying on the ground – a body on the slippery pavement. Lévesque was convinced that he’d killed him.
The victim, Edgar Trottier, was in his sixties and had no fixed address. On top of everything else – a homeless man! Even though they recognized the premier, police officers showed no favouritism and asked the usual questions. Had Lévesque been drinking too much? Had he made an error in judgment? Had he been absent-minded? Had he been wearing his glasses?
After the euphoria of the November victory, he plummeted to the depths of despair. For a moment, Lévesque thought he was finished. “Should I resign?” This affair contained all the elements of a big scandal. Already, rumour mongers were stressing the fact that the premier had not been alone in the car, but “had been accompanied by his personal secretary.” Such innuendo was false. While the English-language press deprecated the premier, the francophone media took pity on him. It wasn’t his fault. What was a pedestrian doing on the pavement, anyway? And what about the boy blocking the road, had he done something wrong? In surveys, the majority of respondents accepted the police report. Lévesque had not had too much to drink.
“You’re lucky this accident happened at the beginning of your mandate; you’re still at the honeymoon stage with journalists,” a counsellor remarked to him.
Lévesque could have done without this kind of sympathy. He just wished he’d never lived through such a tragedy.
That Wednesday morning the atmosphere in the bunker was strained. The cabinet was discussing a project that Doctor Laurin had dreamed up in secret with specialists on the issue. The cover of this thick file irritated René Lévesque: the hand placing an acute accent on the word “Québec” reminded him of someone slapping the fingers of an insubordinate. From the moment the text was presented, the ministers were at loggerheads: representatives from the Montreal ridings accepted Laurin’s work without a second thought. The others were dead against it. Lévesque was caught in the middle of the attacks and insults. Going over the proposed language bill with a fine-toothed comb, he was noncommital. Did his reserved attitude stem partly from his childhood in New Carlisle where he learned to speak English fluently? Meeting supporters of French unilingualism, Lévesque felt no urgency to act, which explained his aggravation as he shouted:
“For heaven’s sake, stop frightening everyone by exaggerating so much!”
But at the same time, he added that the Parti Québécois had the right to francize the city because Montreal should no longer have “this bastard face it used to when you couldn’t even ask for a pair of socks in French from a saleswoman at Eaton’s!” The session rose; they would have to find a middle ground.
The day before presenting the proposed Bill 101 to the National Assembly, René Lévesque summoned Camille Laurin to his office. The problem of signage was bothering him: having language police measure the size of letters to the nearest centimetre in store windows was out of the question. “Our law mustn’t prevent little pizzerias with three or four employees from surviving!” Doctor Laurin reassured him; Lévesque returned to the attack. He wanted to suppress Section 73, which said that at the request of either parent, “a child whose father or mother received his or her elementary instruction in English, in Quebec” could receive their instruction in English. He preferred reciprocity, giving anglophones from other provinces the opportunity to study in their language, providing that francophone minorities could enjoy the corresponding rights.
“We are still in Canada; you must not make your proposed legislation more difficult to swallow than sovereignty-association.”
The premier rose then sat down, agitated, smoking one cigarette after another.
“Listen up – if a problem arises, you, Camille Laurin, are the one who will suffer the consequences,” stated René Lévesque, who urged his minister to go himself and sell his Bill 101 to the people, clearly letting them know that he alone was responsible for this notion.
During its first mandate, aside from the Charter of the French Language and legislation on the financing of political parties, the Péquiste government undertook significant reforms. Suffice it to mention the anti-scab legislation, legislation on occupational health and safety, consumer protection, and agricultural zoning, the creation of the Régie de l’assurance automobile du Québec, and aid to small and medium-sized businesses through the employee stock savings plan. As premier, René Lévesque presided over this energetic social and economic catch-up, but sometimes confessed to his ministers that he would rather trade places with them than be head of state. Fortunately, he was lucky enough to lead diplomatic missions outside Quebec, a role that reminded him of his profession as correspondent. After New York came Paris. The tour of the great capitals continued. But this time, improvising was out of the question. Above all, the premier must not make a gaffe: France had a long aristocratic tradition.
“You will go to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, of course.”
Lévesque remained indifferent. Was it necessary to make this pilgrimage to the tomb of General Charles de Gaulle?
“We’ll see – if I have time!”
This reply disconcerted his entourage, but they remained calm. They felt this was “no mere whim,” to use the expression employed by Lévesque for ending a pointless discussion. Colombey was a symbolic place; it would be a mistake to head straight to the capital and bypass Lorraine. Hadn’t General de Gaulle been the first foreign politician to bring the sovereigntist option to the front pages of international news?
The date was July 24, 1967. The president of the French Republic, during Expo in Montreal, had gone to City Hall. Then, to the amazement of the authorities, he had walked to the balcony where he made an impromptu speech. Carried along by the enthusiasm of the crowd, above a sea of fleurs-de-lis, his final words, distinct and direct, were “Vive le Québec libre!” These four words provoked one of the most commented-upon diplomatic incidents in history. “I was extremely upset,” remembered Lévesque who, near the balcony and crouching in front of a television set, had watched the speech broadcast live. Seeking to analyse the impact of this event, he’d been rivetted to the TV screen.
“I said: ‘Geez, De Gaulle, is going overboard!’ Comparing the euphoria of the Montreal crowd to the Liberation of Paris in 1944 was rather extreme. He was moving fast: in the summer of 1967, the Sovereignty-Association Movement hadn’t even been born yet! What I didn’t like was that the General, with all due respect, presented himself as a liberator with the idea of decolonizing us. We alone are the ones who will achieve independence, when we want, when the time is right.”
Then, after a few seconds went by, he added, grudgingly: “Okay, it’s fine. We’ll make a stop and visit Colombey. I’ll go meditate at the general’s tomb. After all, I do owe him this modest homage.”
Not
