On the morning of May 10, 1972, Théodore Leblanc had had enough of the union demonstrations in Sept-Îles. In this working-class town on the North Shore, the demonstrations took on near insurrectionary proportions while the state worked, throughout Quebec, to repress the unions. Leblanc, a local Liberal Party organizer, wants to get it over with. He climbs aboard his big American car. And he rushes, with open tomb, on the demonstrators gathered in front of the courthouse.
In its race, Leblanc’s car mows down about forty demonstrators. The accumulation of bodies ends up immobilizing the vehicle, without its driver ceasing to press the accelerator to death. It is almost a miracle to find only one death in the end: Herman Saint-Gelais, a “peaceful 22-year-old worker”.
But why is this drama, which all the newspapers are talking about, quickly forgotten? Even the victim’s gravestone ignores the cause of his death. The monument indeed affirms that Saint-Gelais was the victim of an “accident”…
For Pierre-Luc Junet and David Simard, the directors of the documentary to be able to forget, this drama is symbolic. It crystallizes a whole era of disappointed demands that the memory of the first union common front in 1972 covers like a shroud. Then Minister of the Public Service, Jean-Paul L’Allier goes so far as to affirm that improving the condition of employees will lead to the reduction of public services, to postponing for a generation the minimum wage and drug insurance plans… spring of 1972, tensions with the government peaked. After a general strike, the three main union leaders were arrested and imprisoned: Marcel Pepin (CSN), Louis Laberge (FTQ) and Yvon Charbonneau (CEQ).
In addition to relying on archival documents and reconstructions with polished images, to be able to forget gives the floor to several trade unionists. We hear, among others, Gérald Larose, Monique Simard, Clément Godbout, Lorraine Pagé, Louis Roy, Michel Rioux, Jocelyn Dupuis as well as some specialists in the history of popular movements.
The quest for a kingdom
In 1972. Repression and political dispossession, a book also appearing these days, essayist Olivier Ducharme shows how Quebec society is in search of “a kingdom without a king,” to use the words of filmmaker and essayist Pierre Perrault. That year, women landed in taverns, even though the law forbade them access. Armed police evacuate them by force. The October crisis has barely passed. One of the strong figures of the Front de libération du Québec, Pierre Vallières, turned around and joined the Parti Québécois. His alter ego, Charles Gagnon criticizes this choice. “The Parti Québécois will not make the revolution,” he declared. One can even wonder if he will achieve independence. Instead, Gagnon decided to delve deeper into the culture of a Marxism from which he hoped—in vain—to draw fruit for his society.
In this year 1972, sociologist Fernand Dumont declares that Quebec is heading straight for socialism, but it remains to be seen what form it will take. The presentation of Claude Gauvreau’s play oranges are green caused a scandal. The Minister of Culture, Claire Kirkland-Casgrain, refuses to support the influence of Michel Tremblay’s work, judging from above the use of popular language in art. The hydroelectric development of James Bay is decreed without even having been discussed beforehand with the occupants of the affected territory. The film Acadia, Acadia?!? by Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault, banned from broadcasting for a while, just like 24 hours or more, by Gilles Groulx, make you think about what awaits society if it does not manage to break out of the mold that compresses it.
At the time, recalls the documentary broadcast this week by Télé-Québec, public service employees are demanding better working conditions and a more decent salary. The majority of employees don’t earn $100 a week. But the state does not want to hear anything. It’s not new. In the early 1960s, Prime Minister Jean Lesage said, when refusing to negotiate with his employees, “that the Queen does not negotiate with her subjects”. Even René Lévesque, though reputed to be sensitive to social demands, has dissociated himself from union demands on several occasions. At the start of the 1970s, the unions placed themselves in square opposition to the state. And the beatings rain down. On April 21, after a game of arm wrestling, the state decrees that a forced return to work is required. The three main leaders of the Common Front are imprisoned, even if they have ended up decreeing, at the very last minute, that it is better to submit to the law.
Chartrand’s words
The fiery Michel Chartrand criticizes the three union representatives for playing the game of “business unionism”. Chartrand argues, like his writer friend Pierre Vadeboncœur, for another use of trade unionism. The militant trade unionism that they advocate intends to profoundly change people’s living environment, without limiting itself to begging for simple wage catch-ups.
For Chartrand, “the current number of unionized workers constitutes a sufficient force” to turn the tide, provided that Quebecers “stop being fearful”. The crux of the matter, he says in his high pitched voice, is that “we are too afraid to say it can change, it must change, it will change”.
Vadeboncœur reminds us that union work must be done while keeping in view a horizon of global changes. “It is because there are serious problems facing wage-earners and the mass of the people, outside companies and work, that it is important to bring elsewhere, equally and in parallel, the action of the union movements. »
Lessons
The question of the need for new common fronts periodically resurfaces, but “the revolutionary spirit was disappointed everywhere, before gradually fading”, regret the documentary filmmakers. Faced with repeated shattered dreams, there are only a few remedies to revive them, if not to forget the failures, they suggest in a rather dark finale.
“Whoever advocates remembrance knows that we cannot draw any serious lesson from history without confronting its ghosts. But who doesn’t know how to forget can never fall in love again”, finally drops David Simard, who provides the narration for the documentary. Has oblivion in the face of a historic engine ever been a fuel for the future? In his original book, Olivier Ducharme pleads for his part for the need to store up this historical baggage left on the sidelines of official history to learn how to get out of a dead end, to finally deliver life prohibitions of the power that suffocates it.