“We always talk about Bill 101, the need to protect French in Quebec, but we never question where it comes from, linguistic policies,” says director Félix Rose. We remember Camille Laurin, the father of the Charter of the French language. “However, he was not alone! What he accomplished was the result of social and working-class struggles whose roots we had lost sight of. How come we don’t remember Saint-Léonard? How is it that such an important conflict is ignored? I had never heard of it! »
The linguistic crisis which played out at the end of the 1960s constituted a prelude to what would take place in the future, shows Félix Rose in The Battle of Saint-Léonard.
It is rare that a documentary finds its way into cinemas. To see the warm reception given to Félix Rose throughout Quebec, it appears obvious that the subject of language in Quebec continues to fascinate.
Why Saint-Léonard?
Saint-Léonard was, in the 1960s, an independent and brand new municipality on the outskirts of Montreal. Saint-Léonard had just sprung up from the ground, in the middle of the fields, at the initiative of eager entrepreneurs.
This quiet new town, with its white brick facades, would unexpectedly become one of the battlefields of a serious socio-political crisis.
“I come from a working-class family,” Félix Rose repeats to me several times in an interview. “The linguistic struggle, we have forgotten, was closely associated with the demands of this environment, with union struggles, with efforts to achieve better living conditions. »
It is the merit of the documentary signed by Félix Rose, supported by remarkable research work in the archives, to remind today’s consciences of the terms of the social conflicts which are played out around the question of language and the world popular.
This question of language was, at the end of the 1960s, an extension of a questioning of the methods of exploitation of the majority. Prime Minister Daniel Johnson had envisaged, in his old fox way, the dimension of the problem. “We would be stupid,” he said, “to spend a billion dollars a year to educate 1.2 million francophones in French only to see them not take the necessary steps to ensure that they are not second-class citizens in their own province. » However, Johnson’s death in office is not going to help matters.
In Ottawa, the Minister of Justice, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, soon to become Prime Minister, affirms a conception of life attached first and foremost to the defense of individual rights. For citizens who intend to have their children educated in English, it is a question of individual free choice.
In Saint-Léonard, basically, it is these two conceptions of the world which, for lack of having been able to reconcile, are reduced to clashing.
“No one expected it to get out of hand,” says Félix Rose. And yet, what is going to happen there, as we see in the documentary, is not an easy matter.
Two builders
To clearly define the opposing camps, The Battle of Saint-Léonard revolves around the two figures. On the one hand, we find Raymond Lemieux. Born in the United States, raised by a mother who spoke English at home, this architect was in no way destined to be interested in the linguistic question. But to work in Saint-Léonard, where he designed a church and a magnificent arena, Lemieux discovered that everything had to be done in English, even in Italian. How can we explain this situation of inferiorization of the majority in one’s own country?
Raymond Lemieux will become passionate about the question of the place of French in society. His daughter, Chantal, explains to the documentarian’s camera that when examining his children’s report cards, this activist architect was concerned about everything, but claimed that English was not important. “You don’t need it,” he said. He had chosen to live in French, observes his daughter. “It’s quite a radical position,” comments Félix Rose in an interview. “He was convinced that his society could live in French. » Obviously, it wasn’t that simple…
“Bilingualism as it is currently practiced on the island of Montreal,” declared Raymond Lemieux in a period interview, “leads in the more or less long term to advanced anglicization. Because the more we speak English, the less French is spoken to us. »
At the same time, the documentary surrounds the life of an Italian immigrant born in Naples. Mario Barone arrives in the country after the war, in the middle of winter. He leaves his family behind. He fled, like thousands of his compatriots, Italy devastated by fascism, while also avoiding military service. But what will he do in the New World?
Barone inherits jobs that no one wants. He worked, for a time, at the dump. There, among the waste, he separates what must be buried from what must be burned. At the end of his days, Barone doesn’t have the courage to take the tram. He’s too afraid that people will say that the new arrivals, the Italians, stink like it’s impossible to stink.
Then, this man becomes a construction contractor. It is he who enters the fields of the streets of Saint-Léonard, carried by the promise of a better common future.
To further his vision of development, Barone ran for politics. He became the close advisor to the mayor of Saint-Léonard. “He wants to change the zoning regulations to be able to build higher,” summarizes Rose. It is a purely capitalist conception of life in society that he affirms with conviction.
Housing crisis
At a time when we are experiencing a deep housing crisis, Félix Rose points out that a man like Mario Barone built, almost single-handedly, in just three or four years, a number of solid and functional homes which are still standing . “That wouldn’t even be imaginable today! And yet he did it. He housed many people who needed a roof over their heads. Oh, these were not beautiful houses he was building! Barone is more about efficiency. His constructions are intended for the working class. »
However, no one is interested in what is happening in these suburbs which are growing like mushrooms. “There are not even filmed archives of Saint-Léonard being built,” noted Félix Rose. “The only images I have of Saint-Léonard before the crisis come from the Barone family. »
Education policy
No one expected the question of education to disturb the peace of this neighborhood. Italian-Quebecers wanted bilingual education. They weren’t the only ones. In this documentary, based on rare archives, it is disturbing to hear children explain that it is unthinkable for them to consider that they could one day work in French.
“The Italians noticed like everyone else that, to experience better living conditions, you had to learn English,” observes the director.
“Italians have suffered the stigma of the Saint-Léonard crisis for years. » This community, he explains, found itself instrumentalized in an episode of social and political struggles whose terms we would benefit from better understanding so as not to reproduce the errors, believes the director.
“At the beginning, they are occupations. Joyful demonstrations. No one expects it to get out of hand,” says Félix Rose. And yet…
The director rightly believes that there is still a lot to learn from this crisis at a time when immigration is unfairly singled out for explaining all misfortunes and when language is only seen from a cultural angle.
The Battle of Saint-Léonard will be on display on October 11.