Trudeau a founder of: Cité Libre
From Desbiens, Jean-Paul: Publish in English "The Insolences of Brother Anonymous" (Publish in French "Les Insolences du Frère Untel")
From Vallières: Publish in English "White Niggers of America" (Publish in French NÈGRES BLANCS D'AMÉRIQUE)
Cité libre from TCE Standard
Cité libre, magazine founded 1950, bringing together Québec intellectuals who opposed Maurice DUPLESSIS.
Inspired by Emmanuel Mounier's philosophic system that took man as its fundamental measure of value, the editorial board, which included Pierre JUNEAU, Gérard PELLETIER and Pierre Elliott TRUDEAU, assumed that universal man was to be defended from totalitarianism. This abstract philosophy was never translated into concrete social and political objectives.
Juneau: After graduating from the University of Montreal, he studied philosophy at the Catholic Institute of Paris and the University of Paris where he met Pierre Elliott Trudeau, later to become prime minister. Back in Montreal, Juneau went to work for the National Film Board in 1949 and was one of a group, including Trudeau, that launched the intellectual journal Cité libre in 1950.
The journal was humanist, progressive and no doctrinaire - Pierre VADEBONCOEUR and Pierre Vallières rubbed shoulders with Jean Le Moyne and Maurice Blain - and its content demonstrated the unease prevalent in Québec society.
Secular and anticlericalism in orientation, Cité Libre explored religious issues in depth. The journal met intellectual mediocrity and intolerance with a rationalism inspired by the great liberal thinkers.
Cité libre sometimes took audacious stands on socioeconomic issues, yet never questioned basic social structures: it argued instead for gradual reform. It was antinationalist and, in politics, primarily concerned with the ethical issues of teaching democratic morality and fighting corruption. Its search for new values and an identity was more evident in its first series of issues (1950-59) than in its second (1960-66). In the interval, the QUIET REVOLUTION had begun.
See also LITERARY PERIODICALS IN FRENCH.
Author BENOIT MELANÇON
The Insolences of Brother Anonymous (Les Insolences du Frère Untel)
Desbiens, Jean-Paul from TCE Standard
Desbiens, Jean-Paul, member of the Marist order of brothers, teacher, philosopher, writer, journalist (born at Métabetchouan, Qué 7 Mar 1927).
His book describing the failure of the Québec educational system, Les Insolences du Frère Untel (publish. in English as The Insolences of Brother Anonymous), had unprecedented success.
His debut as a writer and pamphleteer coincided with the debut of the QUIET REVOLUTION, with which he was closely associated, although he was removed from the debate by his superiors and sent off to Europe (1961), where he studied theology and philosophy.
Upon his return to Québec (1964), he joined the Ministry of Education and became one of its chief architects of reform.
In 1970 he joined La Presse of Power corporation owned by Desmarais, as chief editorial writer and in 1972 returned to education as a school principal.
He continues to write for various publications with his characteristic sense of the sacred and deep respect for man.
He has a weekly column in La Presse.
Author ROBERT BRISEBOIS
Front de libération du Québec
from TCE Standard
Front de LIBÉRATION du Québec (FLQ), a revolutionary movement that used
propaganda and TERRORISM to promote the emergence of an independent, socialist
Québec.
The movement was founded in March 1963, when Québec was undergoing a period of remarkable change (industrial expansion, modernization of the state), but it was also stimulated by international factors such as the decolonization of Algeria.
Pierre Vallières, the author of the book NÈGRES BLANCS D'AMÉRIQUE, joined the FLQ in 1965 and is generally considered the "philosopher" behind the organization.
In 1963 underground FLQ activists (some of whom were arrested) placed bombs in mailboxes in 3 federal armories and in WESTMOUNT, a wealthy upper-middle-class Anglophone area of Montréal. In 1964 another group of FLQ members stole approximately $50 000 in cash and military equipment, and at a holdup at International Firearms the company vice-president was killed by the FLQ and another employee was killed by the police, who mistook him for one of the thieves. From 1965 to 1967, the FLQ associated itself with the activities of striking workers. It was involved in over 200 bombings between 1963 and 1970, and in 1968 it began using larger and more powerful bombs, setting them off at a federal government bookstore, at McGill University, at the residence of Jean DRAPEAU and the provincial Department of Labour, and at the Montreal Stock Exchange, where 27 people were injured. In the fall of 1969, the movement split into 2 distinct cells: the south shore gang (which became the Chénier cell) led by Paul Rose, and the liberation cell, under Jacques Lanctôt. Montréal-based, both cells claimed about 12 members.
In the fall of 1970 (see OCTOBER CRISIS), the FLQ kidnapped Pierre LAPORTE and
British trade commissioner James Cross. Laporte was later murdered. Under the
WAR MEASURES ACT, more than 450 people were arrested, including 150 "suspected"
FLQ members. Paul Rose and Francis Simard were eventually sentenced to life
imprisonment for the murder of Laporte. Bernard Lortie was convicted of
kidnapping Laporte, and Jacques Rose was convicted as an accessory. Of the Cross
kidnappers, 5 fled to Cuba and then to France, and eventually returned to
Canada.
One had remained in Montréal but was arrested in 1980 and sentenced in 1981. The movement ceased activities in 1971.
Author MARC LAURENDEAU
Vallières, Pierre writer from TCE Standard
Vallières, Pierre, writer (born at Montréal 22 Feb 1938; decease Dec 1998).
Vallières was a journalist in Montréal before joining the FRONT DE LIBÉRATION DU QUÉBEC (FLQ) in 1965. Convinced that Québec could survive only as an independent, socialist nation, and impressed by the example of Latin American revolutionaries, he pressed the FLQ to use violence to achieve their ends. A series of bomb blasts in Montréal resulted, and when his associates were arrested Vallières fled to New York, where he was arrested in 1966 and imprisoned. Deported to Canada in 1967, he spent 4 years in jail, writing his memoir, Nègres blancs d'Amérique (1968, translation White Niggers of America, 1971), and reassessing his convictions.
In 1971 he renounced violence and endorsed the PARTI QUÉBÉCOIS as the best means to independence.
In 1980 he repudiated them as well, publishing his belief that Québec was doomed to assimilation.
In 1984, after experiencing a revelation, he joined a Franciscan-influenced religious order.
Author STANLEY GORDON
Nègres blancs d'Amérique from TCE Standard
Nègres blancs d'Amérique (1968), a Marxist analysis of Québec history and a program for the future, was written under the guise of autobiography by Pierre Vallières while he was confined in a Manhattan jail for FLQ activities.
It dramatizes his impoverished, frustrated childhood during the DUPLESSIS era as the son of working-class parents in Longueuil-Annexe; his checkered career as a philosophy student, office worker, Franciscan postulant, writer and friend of the poet Gaston MIRON and of the intelligentsia associated with CITÉ LIBRE, PARTI PRIS and Le DEVOIR; and his "conversion" to MARXISM and FRONT DE LIBÉRATION DU QUÉBEC involvement following a trip to France and Spain.
To Vallières, Québec's working class reveals the characteristics of a colonized people; "white niggers" denotes a condition of being which he felt could be altered only through violent revolution.
The work was revised and expanded in 1969, and it was translated in 1971 as
White Niggers of America.
Author MICHÈLE LACOMBE