The old Quebec history buffs that I meet often talk to me about the Patente, which seems to fascinate them. A secret society whose real name was the Order of Jacques-Cartier, the Patente was dedicated to the defense of French-speakers throughout Canada.
Born in Ottawa in 1926 and disbanded in 1965, the society counted among its famous members politicians like Louis-J. Robichaud, Jean Drapeau, Jean-Jacques Bertrand, Bernard Landry, Pierre Laporte and Jacques Parizeau as well as intellectuals like André Laurendeau, Marcel Chaput, Jean-Marc Léger and François-Albert Angers. Even Cardinal Léger was there, like 10,000 other French Canadians in 1952.
La Patente, today, has lost a good part of its mystery. In the 1960s, two former members betrayed their oath of secrecy by revealing several secrets of the Order and identifying some of its leaders. This will be the final blow.
His days, in any case, were numbered. Stuck in a conservatism from another era, put under pressure by the rise of independence sentiment in Quebec, which disturbed the unity of the Canadian Francophonie, the Patente had had its day.
Historians since then, notably Denise Robillard in The Order of Jacques-Cartier (Fides, 2009), examined his corpse. If, today, the historian Hugues Théorêt returns to it in The patent. The Order of Jacques-Cartier, the last bastion of French Canada (Septentrion, 2024, 200 pages), is that he believes that, “despite everything that has been written on the subject, there still remain many mysteries around the Order of Jacques-Cartier”. What was his deep thought, his ideology? Did he have a real influence?
A word, first, on Théorêt’s style. In history, we generally have the choice between scholarly books, too detailed and too demanding for the general public, and popular books, pleasant to read but superficial. Théorêt combines the qualities of both approaches. Written in a clear style, his works are based on a solid and often original documentary basis. He does not have the great style of Marcel Trudel and Éric Bédard or the young François-Olivier Dorais, but his essays shine with their pleasant and instructive clarity.
To write The patenthe of course searched the archives of the Order of Jacques-Cartier, fully accessible since the year 2000, and consulted all the issues of The Swivel, the society’s newsletter. With this book, we are plunged into the heart of the secret and discover, without value judgment, what motivated its bearers.
In 1926, French Canadians did not find their rightful place in Canada. Their language is flouted in almost all provinces – that has not changed – and their elites have little access to the senior federal civil service and to the general staff of the Canadian Armed Forces.
To establish themselves in places of power, English Canadians can rely on the networking offered to them by Masonic lodges, the Knights of Columbus and the Orange Order. The Franco-Ontarians, quickly joined by Quebecers, who founded the Order of Jacques-Cartier wanted to offer a similar tool to their French-speaking compatriots. The organization, summarizes Théorêt, will be “the sword and shield of all French Canada.”
Reserved for men, who can only enter by invitation, the Patente essentially leads five battles: the defense of the French fact, the safeguarding of the influence of Catholicism, the denunciation of communism, the promotion of purchasing from us and the valorization of the rural world. It is therefore in keeping with the spirit of Duplessism and conservative nationalism. The Order’s strategy is to infiltrate places of power in order to impose its ideas there.
It will thus contribute, according to Théorêt, to the adoption of stamps, currency and bilingual checks in Canada, to the expansion of credit unions, to the recognition of the fleurdelisé as the flag of Quebec in 1948, to the opening of the Collège Royal Military of Saint-Jean in 1952 and that of the University of Moncton in 1963, as well as the election of Jean Drapeau as mayor of Montreal in 1954 and that of Louis-J. Robichaud as premier of New Brunswick in 1960.
The Patente route is not without its stains. Some of its members flirted with fascist and anti-Semitic temptation in the 1930s. Throughout its history, moreover, the Order has not stood out for its openness to modern ideas.
Théorêt nevertheless concludes, rightly, that the results of the Patente are more positive than negative and that “French Canada needed a [telle] strike force “. Did he need to add that the rebirth of French Canada, from coast to coast, today, constitutes a good program? Not sure.