Despite her pioneering status, a parliamentary committee room named after her in the National Assembly, her prominent bronze monument on the lawns of Grande Allée and the state funeral she received, Claire Kirkland-Casgrain remains a complete unknown to most Quebecers. Why?
On February 14, 1973, when she appeared for the last time before the members of the Press Tribune, it was to announce her departure from political life. The first woman elected to the National Assembly took the opportunity to try to reconcile herself with the fourth estate. She invited the journalists present to sign the cast she was wearing because of a triple fracture she suffered in her right leg during a fall at her home. But how can we forget that over the previous 11 years, the media had so often stepped on her toes?
“Without always having deserved it, Madame Casgrain was not very happy in her relations with the press,” wrote the director of the DutyClaude Ryan. “This was mainly because she personified a rather narrow conception of politics that is less and less current today,” he adds. The member for Marguerite-Bourgeoys stood out, assures the director of the Duty. “She had nothing in common with this new generation of politicians trained in the school of modern social disciplines.”
For former parliamentary correspondent Gisèle Gallichan, the Liberal MP and minister was let down by a particular tone of voice. “She was often in the high notes,” she said in an interview with The Duty. This meant that all the uncle MPs who were sitting found her annoying to listen to.” The “tone of voice” will often be, in the offices of traditional politics, a convenient pretext for invalidating the very words of women, just as women’s laughter will be.
The high-pitched voice of Simone de Beauvoir yesterday as much as the laughter of Kamala Harris today continue to be invoked by those who wish to see them silenced. This attack is not new. To disqualify the social reforms of Léon Blum, it was repeated that the French prime minister had an “effeminate” voice.
Fully aware of this false voice handicap, Louise Harel will decide to use it as leverage. “I am convinced that recognizing the courage and place of women requires recognizing women’s voices,” said the former Hochelaga-Maisonneuve MNA in an interview, first elected in 1981, exactly 20 years after Claire Kirkland-Casgrain. “I was told from the Sainte-Thérèse seminary to speak louder. However, I have exactly the same voice as my mother. There is one thing I decided very early on, and that is not to change it,” she said.
When she was told to speak louder, she immediately tended to speak more quietly, in order to attract more attention. “It’s a major issue, the voice of women in politics. The female voice is associated with the idea of gentleness rather than determination, of combat. We have not yet broken the sound barrier!” It is not without reason, continues the former president of the National Assembly, that this question remains essential.
“Why don’t we hear women’s voices? It remains more than ever a very important question, a major question,” says Louise Harel. In A voice of one’s owna book whose title is a nod to a famous work by Virginia Woolf, essayist Aline Jalliet examines precisely this question of women’s tone of voice, observes the former MP. The case of Claire Kirkland-Casgrain should be placed in this perspective, like that of all women in politics, she believes.
In 1972, in a very short period of time, Claire Kirkland-Casgrain symbolically held the position of interim premier in her hands. Her leader, Robert Bourassa, was in Nova Scotia at the time. The delegation of powers was symbolic, but the person concerned saw it as a striking symbol. “She was so proud,” emphasizes Gisèle Gallichan. “From her point of view, she was truly the first female premier in the history of Quebec.”
This does not prevent Claire Kirkland-Casgrain from being mocked more often than not, in the name of the creaking springs of sexism. This is evidenced even by the caricatures published during Kirkland-Casgrain’s short symbolic reign at the head of Quebec. Proof of the ordinary sexism of the time: the “premier” is readily presented as a housewife to whom Bourassa had left the care of the Parliament building. “Madame has decided to wash her dirty linen,” we read at the bottom of a drawing by Berthio.
The fact remains that, strictly politically, this four-day replacement did not go very well. The 48-year-old elected official caused a kind of earthquake by denouncing, very vigorously, the “infiltration” of Radio-Canada by the separatists, thus taking up a theme that had been repeated many times, particularly by the conservative right. The president of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec at the time, Paul Racine, had denounced her remarks as “slanderous and intolerant.”