Of the rare conferences of the historian Maurice Séguin, one of the intellectual pillars of the Quebec independence movement, we only know transcriptions. They are now accessible in their original version.
Radio-Canada has unearthed these rare televised documents from its archives. They date from 1962. The fact that these two conferences that Séguin gives are finally circulating, on YouTube, allows us to better understand this man whom René Lévesque considered one of the “great masters” of the history of Quebec.
Who is he ? Born in Saskatchewan in 1918 to farmer parents, Maurice Séguin studied with the Jesuits at Brébeuf College. A graduate of the University of Montreal, he taught at Sainte-Marie College, another Jesuit institution, then at the university where, from 1949, he focused on the history of Canada. Died in 1984, he wrote almost nothing, left almost nothing. In the shadows, he worked to train historians.
A modest man, rather self-effacing, Séguin was nevertheless the subject of constant attention by those who were, directly or indirectly, his students. They were able to bring together scattered elements of his teaching, reconstitute fragments of his lessons to bear witness to his thinking. What little he published was practically ripped from him.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the fiery activist Andrée Ferretti attended her classes as a free student, as did the writer Hubert Aquin and several others. The future producer Marie-José Raymond, also one of his students, will convince him, it is said, to share his thoughts outside the university walls. Séguin will give political training courses to activists of the Rally for National Independence (RIN). This party is a school of democracy, Yves Michaud said at the time. “The RIN school can train real revolutionaries,” said the party newspaper in 1964.
What do we discover when we see Séguin come to life before our eyes? First a pair of glasses, a nose, two hands. This was enough, at the same time, for the historian Henri Guillemin to be quite fascinating. But Séguin is a poor architect of sound buildings. He reads his papers painfully, as if he were a stranger to them. His gaze is shifty. His speech, always a little embarrassed, monotonous, dull.
How did he manage, despite everything, to gain support with such poor persuasion? The era has a lot to do with it. In 1961, a survey stated that half of respondents were “favorable to separatist activity”. At Duty, André Laurendeau continues to raise the idea that Canada is going through an unprecedented crisis. But has this horizontal Chile that is Canada ever found itself other than in crisis?
Radio-Canada sees itself obliged to report on the reality of this independence wave. Who can talk about it? Séguin. “Partisan of living history,” writes public television, “convinced that history is not a museum relic, a pile of dust that is stirred up occasionally, but, on the contrary, that it is written daily before our eyes, Maurice Séguin, at the origin of the young school of French-Canadian history” is invited to deal with this “hot topic”. This will be the basic material of The idea of independence in Quebeca book published in 1968 by his admirers.
What does Séguin say? That separatism was born in 1760. In other words, that this defeat at the hands of the British would be its founding element. According to him, a people would have been born on this date from a tribe. Above all, he maintains that the union of Lower and Upper Canada, following the revolutionary uprisings of 1837-1838, proved almost as important as the Conquest. This forced union, carried out in the wake of Lord Durham’s report, confined “the minority residue of failed French colonization” to a state of economic and political inferiority. In his remarks, Séguin appears almost entirely focused on the accumulation of considerations which belong to the dark register of a romantic nationalism with the accents of a 19the vaguely Prussian century. He rarely considers his own century. He nevertheless arrives at a strong conclusion: on the scale of history, moving away from provincialism is an emergency, a necessity, but a difficult path to follow.
How many other treasures lie dormant in the digital archives of public television? Have you already listened to this interview with Simone de Beauvoir conducted by her friend Madeleine Gobeil, accompanied by Claude Lanzmann? Here are more conferences from Louis Aragon, Michel Foucault, Romain Gary, Albert Memmi, Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Certain conferences recorded by Radio-Canada have apparently disappeared. Where have the audiovisual archives of Roland Barthes or Maurice Merleau-Ponty gone, also recorded exclusively for the state company? How can we imagine that it was perfectly normal to make such big names heard, and also let them express themselves for more than an hour without interrupting them?
Today, just speaking for five minutes on television without being cut off seems like an achievement. These conversation formats lead to oversimplifications. The other model prioritized by television is that of so-called debates. Two speakers are placed facing each other. They represent a known opposition in the name of a supposed principle of equality. A presenter regulates the exchange between the two, while himself being framed by advertisements, which have priority. It’s entertaining at best, but rarely convincing of anything.
Listening to the conferences formerly broadcast by Radio-Canada allows us at the very least to wonder what, in our world today, could be considered tomorrow as the expression of ideas capable of arousing something other than an impression of permanent diversion and entertainment.