In partnership with RetroNews, the press site of the National Library of France, The duty offers a series that goes back to the media sources of the France-Quebec relationship, from the War of the Conquest to the visit of General de Gaulle, including Honoré Mercier’s diplomatic tour in Europe. Last text.
In 1967, General de Gaulle crossed the Atlantic aboard the Colbert, an 11,000-ton cruiser armed with cannons and machine guns. This trip to the sea allows the president of the Ve République to justify the launch of its Canadian tour in Quebec rather than in Ottawa, as provided for in diplomatic practice. This protocol visit is shortened by the resounding “Vive le Québec libre! »Launched by the general from the balcony of the town hall of Montreal. The hustle and bustle caused by this cry places de Gaulle at the antipodes of his first visit to the land of maples in 1944, in the weeks following the landing of the Allied forces in Normandy.
On July 11, 1944, the arrival of the “President of the Provisional Government of the French Republic” in Canada is reported by the newspaper France, a London daily for expatriates in the British Isles. “Mr. Mackenzie King and General de Gaulle,” it read, “exchanged speeches after the latter, speaking to a large audience gathered on Parliament Hill. [eut] spoke of victory on the horizon and praised “this living friendship” which unites France and Canada ”.
Like Marshal Foch, who preceded him in 1921, it was in the United States that de Gaulle first set foot on the American continent, but for other reasons. De Gaulle tries to secure his place on the political spectrum at the end of the war. He knows his fragile status. He has the intelligence not to let it be seen. In Washington, he had to answer pressing questions from journalists on the future of the French colonial empire. “I am convinced that the president, the government and the people of the United States have no intention of annexing any French territory,” replied the representative of Free France, referring in particular to present-day Vietnam, where the Americans get bogged down.
The short story of France announcing the arrival of General de Gaulle in Canada alongside a text from war correspondent Pierre Gosset, just returning from the martyred city of Caen, liberated with mortars: “Entire neighborhoods have completely disappeared. The university is nothing more than a heap of ruins. In the church of Saint-Pierre, the rain falls gently through the gaping roof on the great organ and the piles of rubble fell on the high altar. Stained glass windows litter the floor. “The soldiers of the French Canadian Regiment de la Chaudière, disembarked at Juno Beach on June 6, took part in this offensive which led to the gradual withdrawal of the German forces, placed under the orders of General Rommel, the one nicknamed the” Fox ” of the desert ”.
Canadian fog
More than 5000 kilometers away, Charles de Gaulle left Ottawa in the morning fog of July 12, 1944. A plane dropped him off in Quebec, in the heart of French Canada where several conservative nationalists were still in favor of Vichy France. Even if the winds of war have turned to the advantage of the allies, the figure of Marshal Pétain remains in these circles, in Quebec as in Montreal, very appreciated, in the name of the promise of a moral and national reform which sings the virtues of work, family and fatherland, according to themes of national preference which give off hints of xenophobia and primary anti-communism.
In Quebec, the 53-year-old general was greeted by a local Free France committee. From the town hall, where he was received with deference by the mayor, Lucien Borne, he went to the residence of the lieutenant-governor, Eugène Fiset, in Spencer Wood, a place known today as Bois -de-Coulonge. The residence of the representative of the British crown is then the obligatory passage for heads of state and foreign governments, from President Roosevelt to Prime Minister Churchill, who stop there for a cocktail with the viceroy of Quebec.
No visit to parliament is planned for de Gaulle. The places are quite simply closed for the duration of the electoral campaign which is in full swing. At the end of it, on August 8, the liberal Adélard Godbout will be beaten by Maurice Duplessis. He reigned over Quebec until his death in 1959.
It was noon when de Gaulle flew to Montreal, where a sparse crowd awaited him at the foot of the Windsor Hotel, which the newspaper France transforms into “Hotel Wilson”, while inflating the number of spectators to more than 2000. “France has done too much for the world for the world to be able to remake itself without it, launches de Gaulle in a speech centered on the Hexagon. You can see that we were all right not to despair. Two days before the feast of the Republic, the general hastens to leave for Algiers, the provisional capital of Free France.
The echoes of the general’s tour are quite different in the pages of The Work, a French periodical, whose director, Marcel Déat, the Minister of Labor of Vichy, denounces the Anglo-American invaders of France and “the Jewish staff which directs them”. A chronicler signing his initials PG makes fun of the “superb” miniature submarine offered to President Roosevelt by de Gaulle. “The small gifts not being able to be solitary and in front, like the gendarmes, to go in pairs, de Gaulle drew from the inside pocket of his general jacket, rather turned over, the second testimony of his vassalage. It’s a portrait of him. A portrait “full-length” naturally, since the bad tongues insinuate that it cannot be otherwise. “
Finding nothing better to write than such banter, the Vichy columnist of The Work mentions a batch of 25,000 toothbrushes offered by Canada to the “dissident air force”, that of Free France. “It’s a very friendly gesture considering the rarity of these essential items. […] But, is it to thank him for having shaved them so well that the Canadians are now sending the Man of Algiers something to brush their gums after having broken their teeth? “
The Little Parisian of July 18, for its part, is vindictive by denouncing the political recovery of the heroic figure of Montcalm by de Gaulle during his stop in Quebec. According to information gleaned from the airwaves of Radio-Brazzaville, the “saboteur of French unity” would have dared to meditate on the tomb of this martyred general who fell on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. In reality, de Gaulle only passed in front of the statue of Montcalm de la Grande Driveway marking the site where the “great vanquished” was said to have been fatally injured. “On the part of any other Frenchman, this pious gesture would have nothing but very normal and legitimate, we read in The Little Parisian. On the part of the one who delivered our second colonial empire to England, it takes on the appearance of a sacrilege. Unless M. de Gaulle, struck by a sudden conversion, understood in this place steeped in history the dreadful consequences of his betrayal. “
This tone will be that adopted, in French Canada, by a few emulators of Marshal Pétain who will find a meeting, at the initiative of the historian and activist Robert Rumilly, until the beginning of the 1950s, in the nostalgia of this France which had been considered for a moment outside the framework of freedom, equality and fraternity promised by the republican ideal.
Mowed
Charles de Gaulle returned to Algiers on July 14, 1944. However, it was not until the 21st that this passage through Canada was reported by New France, a weekly newspaper of the Free French refugees in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The 28 edition rehashes the patriotic remarks heard in Canada, all interspersed with texts giving the impression that France is on the way to freeing itself from itself, through sabotage perpetrated by the resistance fighters.
In this text dedicated to the grandeur of the general’s work, the reader’s attention immediately turns to the photos showing the fate of the French collaborators of the Nazi occupier. Here are women forcibly shaved, the better to humiliate them in public, as if the collaboration was first embodied in a sexual relationship. “Here is one who is not qualified to give moral lessons”, we read in the bottom of the thumbnail of a photo of The New France showing a 28-year-old teacher, forced out of her school by two “resistance fighters” wearing berets: “She seems seriously frightened. The punishment, however, is not very cruel. “