The wink is amusing: the book is called The Four Musketeers of Quebec (Septentrion, 2021, 296 pages) and its author is called Alexandre Dumas. The work, however, is no joke. If it does read like a novel, this essay is primarily intended for readers who are madly fond of the political history of Quebec.
Dumas advances the original thesis according to which Quebec’s delay in modernizing compared to the rest of North America, if there has been a delay, is not so much attributable to its religious tradition as to its overly partisan political tradition. To do this, the historian examines in detail the journey of four forgotten politicians who, in the 1930s, were furiously active in reforming Quebec, before admitting defeat to Duplessis and his Liberal opponents.
The four musketeers, a title given to them by their contemporaries, are lawyers OscarDrouin and René Chaloult, professor Ernest Grégoire and dentist Philippe Hamel, all from the Quebec region. Dumas likes to liken them to the heroes of the famous novel by his namesake.
Drouin, he suggests, is Aramis, that is to say the only one of the quartet who is really in his place in politics, while the other three rather embody the spirit of chivalry. Chaloult, the youngest of the gang, can be compared to d’Artagnan. A defender of women’s rights — the vote, the status of adults — and of the right to vote of the First Nations, he is not afraid of opponents stronger than himself. Grégoire, mayor of Quebec from 1934 to 1938, reminds Porthos by his aggressiveness. Hamel, precursor of the nationalization of electricity, is similar, by his intransigent integrity, to Athos.
These men went into politics when the crisis of the 1930s took its toll. They don’t go there out of a taste for power, but to defend principles. Disgusted by the patronizing management of the Liberal Taschereau and skeptical of the Conservatives led by Duplessis from 1933, they joined Paul Gouin’s National Liberal Action (ALN), founded in 1934.
This party defends the ideas formulated the previous year in the Social Catering Program, from the popular social school of the Jesuits and focused on the social doctrine of the Church. Without condemning capitalism, this document denounces savage liberalism and advocates state interventionism in order to ensure a certain social justice.
In 1935, the ALN joined forces with the Duplessis Conservatives to beat the Liberals, but the latter narrowly won. The following year, the two opposition parties merged to create the National Union, under the leadership of Duplessis who made a commitment to the musketeers to apply the ALN program and to nationalize electricity. The unionist leader will betray his promise, raising the ire of the musketeers who will become his opponents.
This story, explains Dumas, illustrates the difficulty of defending real ideas in Quebec politics. Partisanship, at the time, reigned supreme and the political struggle boiled down to an exchange of power between the reds and the blues. When they serve one or the other, men of ideas are acclaimed; when they cling more to their principles than to their party, they are mocked and thrown off.
In 1937, the musketeers founded the National Party (PN) to promote their reformist program: nationalization of electricity, agricultural credit, support for the labor movement and public funding of political parties to end patronage. Nationalism, chauvinistic at times, determines the ideology of the party. Unionists and Liberals, feeling threatened, raged against these mavericks, who struggled to find political funding.
When they find that their chances of beating Duplessis in 1939 are non-existent, the headliners of the PN become disillusioned. The blues and the reds, who, a few months earlier, vomited them, tore them away. Chaloult, who compared Duplessis to Hitler, joined the Liberals, as did Oscar Drouin. Hamel, disgusted with the political contest, withdrew. Grégoire, who has become a Créditiste, is out of the game.
Godbout’s Liberals will win and make a few good moves, but the partisan tradition, which stifles bold ideas and prevents independent personalities from giving their best for the benefit of the nation, will endure. The subsequent reign of Duplessis illustrates this, just as, adds the historian, recent political history, with the cases of dissidents Jean-Martin Aussant, in the Parti Québécois, Fatima Houda-Pepin, in the Liberal Party, and Sylvie Roy, to the Coalition avenir Québec. Politics prefers good soldiers to musketeers. Maybe that’s what’s holding the group back.