Lionel Groulx
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Lionel-Adolphe Groulx (January 13, 1878 - May 23, 1967), called Abbé Groulx (Canon Groulx), was a Roman Catholic priest, historian, nationalist, and traditionalist.
Groulx was born at Chenaux, Quebec, Canada, and died in Vaudreuil, Quebec. After his seminary training and studies in Europe he taught at Valleyfield College, then the Université de Montréal. In 1917 he co-founded and edited a monthly journal called Action Française that later changed its name to L'action canadienne-française. In the inter-war period, Groulx was an avowed admirer of Salazar and Benito Mussolini and hoped Quebec would find strong leadership. The occupation of that role by a politician like Duplessis was for him a bitter disappointment.
Lionel Groulx called the Canadian Confederation of 1867 a failure and espoused the theory that Quebec's only hope for survival was to foster a Roman Catholic Quebec as a bulwark against English power. He believed the powers of the provincial State of Quebec could and should be used, within Confederation, to better the lot of the French Canadian nation, economically, socially, culturally and linguistically.
He also developed a Quebec history curriculum that emphasized the heroism of New France, the challenge British Conquest posed to the survival of the "Canadiens", and how this challenge was met by lengthy political struggles for democratic rights. He particularly insisted on the Quebec Act of 1774 as the official recognition of his nation's rights. He bore particular affection for the undertaking of Baldwin and LaFontaine, that in 1849 successfully restored the rights of the French language along with the obtention of responsible government, thus thwarting the assimilation plans of Lord Durham's policiy of forced Union between Upper and Lower Canada. (See Lord Elgin).
Groulx was one of the first Quebec historians to study Confederation : he insisted on its recognition of Quebec rights and minority rights, although he believed a combination of corrupt political parties and French Canadian minority status in the Dominion has failed to deliver on those promises, as the Manitoba conflict exposed. Groulx believed that only through national education and the Quebec government could the economic and social inferiority of French Canadians be repaired. Groulx was very successful promoting his brand of ultramontanism.
Through his writings and teaching at the university, and his association with the intellectual elite of Quebec he had a profound influence on many people including Michel Chartrand and Camille Laurin. While studying in Europe between 1906 and 1909, Groulx wrote letters to his family in which he asserted that everything possible should be done to keep Jews out of Quebec.
Groulx's conservative Catholicism was not very appreciative of other religions, although he also professed to recognize that racism wasn't Christian, and that Quebec should aspire to be a model society by Christian standards, including intense missionary action. [Le Canada français missionnaire, Montreal, Fides, 1962].
His main focus was to restore Quebecker's pride in their identity by knowldege of history, both the heroic acts of New France and the French Canadian and self-government rights obtained through a succession of important political victories : 1774, the Quebec Act recognized the rights of the Quebec province and its people with respect to French law, Catholic religion and the French language ; in 1848, responsible government was finally obtained after decades of struggle, along with the rights of the French language ; in 1867, the autonomy of the province of Quebec was restored as Lower Canada was an essential partner in the creation of a new Dominion through Confederation [La Confederation canadienne, Montreal, Quebec 10/10, 1978 (1918)].
At the Ligue d'Action française, Groulx and his colleagues hoped to inspire revival of the French language and French Canadian culture, but also to create a think tank and public space of reflection, so that the French Canadian nation's elites would find was to remedy French Canada's underdevelopement and exclusion from big business.
Some collaborators of the review thus actively participated in the development of the HEC business school. Others yet were actively involved in the promotion of the Church's Social doctrine, an official Catholic answer to socio-economical distress that was meant to prevent the appeal of socialism and improve capitalism.
This Catholic social doctrine later became part of the 1930s Action liberale nationale party, a new party that intellectuals close to Groulx and the defunct Action française appreciated. When Duplessis's victory became apparent, some instead accepted to cooperate with his government and its reforms. But Groulx, and with him a large number of intellectuals, chose to oppose him. This led to their partial alliance with Liberal Leader Adelard Godbout, who served as Premier from 1939 to 1944. They soon broke with him on account of his submission to the Federal Liberals. Yet in 1944 they opposed Duplessis yet again, this time placing their hopes in another new party, the Bloc populaire canadien, lead by André Laurendeau. Future Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau was part of this young party, who soon suffered the same fate as the previous third party, the ALN. After the 1948 election, the Bloc populaire canadien disappeared.
Groulx was later remembered both for his strong case in favour of economic reconquest of Quebec by French Canadians, defense of the French language, pionneer work as the first chair of Canadian history in Quebec (Universite de Montreal ; see Ronald Rudin, Making History in Twentieth Century Quebec, Toronto University Press, 1997). But his very conservative Catholicism has also made him a partly controversial figure; not only is this Catholicism decidedly out of fashion but conservative opinion before the Second World War was easily anti-Judaic (see MacKenzie King, Winston Churchill, Duke of Windsor, etc.). In Groulx's case, although he declared racism reprehensible, defiance of other religions made him occasionally express the idea that immigration to Canada should be Christian, and specifically was suspicious of other religions such as Jews, Mormons, etc. This has at present focused the attention of many writers, not always ready to judge his writings in the context of his times.
Lionel Groulx's major writings include "Histoire de la Confédération", "Notre grande aventure", Histoire du Canada français (1951), and Notre maître le passé.
Groulx founded the Institut d'histoire d'Amérique française in 1946, an institute located in Montreal that is devoted to the historical study of Quebec and of the French presence in the Americas and the publication of La revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, still today arguably the main publication for professionnal historians in Quebec. A station on the Montreal Metro was named for him. In November of 1996, the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada officially requested that the Executive Committee of the Montreal Urban Community (M.U.C.) recommend a name change to the Lionel Groulx metro station in Montreal.
In November 2005, Michel Bock won the Governor General’s Literary Award in the category of Non-fiction for the book Quand la nation débordait les frontières : les minorités françaises dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx (When the nation overflowed its borders: the French minorities in the thoughts of Lionel Groulx).
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