Quebecers have had a troubled relationship with oaths since the Conquest of 1759. A look back at two centuries of allegiance to the British monarch, from George II to Charles III.
Quebec City, June 9, 1970. The door to the Salon Vert closes abruptly before the newly elected members of the Parti Québécois led by Camille Laurin. If they want to sit in the National Assembly, the sovereignists will have to take an oath to Queen Elizabeth II, launches the representative of the Sergeant-at-Arms. “We went as far as the door frame,” explains former Saguenay MP Lucien Lessard in an interview with The duty. “We weren’t going to fight after all! »
After two unsuccessful attempts to enter the chamber of the National Assembly, the felon deputies climbed into the visitors’ gallery, above the benches of the newly elected Liberal government of Robert Bourassa. It is from this “Upper House” – to use the expression of the cartoonist Berthio of the To have to — that the PQ opposition attend the Speech from the Throne.
As is customary, the elected officials present on the floor of the Green Room stand up when the Lieutenant-Governor, Hugues Lapointe, arrives. They are imitated by the representatives of the PQ perched in the heights. “It’s a gesture of courtesy,” explained Mr. Laurin to the parliamentary press at the time. “We do not want to contaminate our gesture with madness. It’s not fanaticism or Anglophobia,” he says.
For the leader of the Union Nationale and ex-Prime Minister Jean-Jacques Bertrand, there is nothing to make a “storm” with this story of the oath. “Everyone knows that it is a symbol, a fiction, and that the oath of loyalty, through the queen, is in fact addressed to the Quebec community. He nevertheless believes that the doors of the Chamber should be opened to protesters. “If the little pages can enter, there is no reason why others cannot do so without having taken this oath”, adds Mr. Bertrand.
Royal defilement
PQ solidarity had split even before the opening of the session, the deputy for Sainte-Marie, Charles Tremblay, having sworn loyalty to Elizabeth II “inadvertently”. The professional technician took the opportunity to win his desk on June 10. He deplores the absence of his colleagues who represent 23% of the Quebec population. “We took it for granted that this deputy, having taken the oath by distraction […] asks the questions out of distraction,” replied the Liberal Minister Pierre Laporte dryly, who was assassinated four months later by the Front de libération du Québec.
More subtle than his colleague, Robert Bourassa defends himself through his phone, his weapon of choice. He personally calls members of the Press Gallery to remind them that a parliamentary commission will soon look into the matter of the oath. “We will diligently study this question,” he promises. I did everything possible. »
The 36-year-old Prime Minister takes the opportunity to contradict the rumor that he himself ordered the Sergeant-at-Arms to block the doors of the Green Room.
The PQ resistance fighters threw down their arms in the days that followed. “We came back flouting our oath,” recalls Lucien Lessard, who will be the last of the “Group of Seven” to take the oath. The Saguenay representative quickly moves on. “Perhaps we didn’t take it as seriously as we do today, not to the point of feeling soiled,” he says.
The Armed Oath (1759)
The situation was much more dramatic in 1759, in the days following the surrender of Quebec, capital of New France. On the squares of the city devastated by the British bombardments, a manifesto signed by Brigadier Robert Monckton announces to the conquered that they must now lay down their arms and take an oath to George II, the grandfather of Charles III.
Civilians who had taken refuge in the surrounding countryside converged on Quebec on the morning of September 21. “We saw our poor women coming out of the woods, dragging after them their little children eaten by flies, without clothes, crying out for hunger,” relates the French artilleryman Jérôme de Foligné. This first mass swearing-in stretched out until 3 p.m., when Monckton allowed the king’s “new subjects” to return to their homes.
The deportation of the Acadians is on everyone’s mind. Canadians do not want to suffer the fate of their Bay of Fundy cousins, “transplanted” to the British colonies four years earlier for refusing to take an unconditional oath to yesterday’s enemy. Le Grand Dérangement was orchestrated by none other than Monckton, who took over from General Wolfe, who fell during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
In 1760, the swearing in of the Canadians followed the advance of British troops from Quebec to Montreal, as related by the Chevalier de La Pause, an officer in the routed French army. “As we evacuated the parishes, the enemies sent to disarm the inhabitants and made them take oaths and burned the dwellings of the absent. »
The “test” of peace (1763)
The establishment of a civilian government in Canada led to the introduction of the test oath in 1763. In addition to swearing loyalty to the new monarch George III, the aspiring civil servants of the province of Quebec must abjure the power of the pope, reject the claims of the Catholic son of James II to the British crown and deny the transubstantiation of Christ!
In a predominantly “papist” colony, the test oath limited access to the Legislative Council—and any eventual assembly—to Protestants in Canada, mostly Anglophones. The British governor, however, showed flexibility in calling on Catholic subjects to fill the positions of grand voyers, clerks and ushers.
Catholics in Canada were exempted from the test oath with the assent of the Quebec Act by the British Parliament in 1774. Obviously, the subject remained delicate in the National Assembly, The duty not having been authorized to speak to one of its historians specializing in the matter. “We prefer to decline your interview request,” explains communications manager Béatrice Zacharie.
The Oath to the People (1982)
The oath of allegiance to the British monarch passed like a letter in the mail until the election of the first representatives of the PQ in April 1970. Their refusal to swear loyalty to Elizabeth II was decided during a caucus held in the presence of chef René Lévesque, who had bitten the dust in Laurier. “During the election campaign, no one had thought of that,” explains Lucien Lessard.
The PQ is losing interest in the issue after its initial bravado. “It had become secondary to the objectives we were pursuing,” recalls the former MP for Saguenay. In 1982, the Lévesque government contented itself with superimposing on the oath of allegiance to the Queen a second oath by which the elected official declared that he would be “loyal to the people of Quebec” and that he would exercise his “duties as a deputy with honesty and justice in respect of the constitution of Quebec”.
Sovereignist deputies will sometimes add a supplement of their own. This was the case in 2003, when the PQ member for Lac-Saint-Jean, Stéphan Tremblay, took the oath to Elizabeth II, but also to the “king of France”, without specifying whether he rallied to the suitor of the branch Bourbons or Orléans. Five years later, it was the turn of the first elected official, Amir Khadir, to swear loyalty to the queen “while waiting for the people of Quebec, like those of Ireland, to free themselves from the archaic vestiges of the British monarchy”. .
The anti-monarchy revolt led by Paul St-Pierre Plamondon revived the memories of Lucien Lessard. “He managed to make his point of view, but he should return to the National Assembly like the rest of us at the time. He can’t stay out of the Blue Room for too long, it’s too important, ”he argues.