Intellectual life is thankless. If you are under 60, for example, you probably don’t know François-Albert Angers (1909-2003). However, the man ruled the roost in Quebec nationalist circles from the 1940s until the 1980 referendum. Today, almost no one remembers him. A harsh lesson in humility for current thinkers who believe themselves to be indispensable: time will erase their work, which will end up appearing outdated.
François-Albert Angers, therefore, is clearly no longer a reference in today’s debates. Despite everything, the young historian Jean-Philippe Carlos, aware of the fact that the man not only profoundly marked his era, but also, through his journey, embodied the Quebec transition from traditionalism to modernity, had the good idea of devote a remarkable intellectual biography to him.
From a doctoral thesis presented at the University of Sherbrooke, François-Albert Angers. The rebelTHE traditionalist (Boréal, 2023, 416 pages) brilliantly immerses us in a Quebec in transition, torn between its attachment to its Franco-Catholic roots and its desire for modernity without denying its identity, constantly on the receiving end of the Canadian colonialist attitude.
Nationalist and traditionalist, that is to say faithful to the authority of the Catholic Church and its vision of the world, Angers will first be a supporter of autonomist federalism before becoming, in the 1960s, a flamboyant defender of the independence cause, without abandoning his fundamental conservatism.
What sets Angers apart from most of the great nationalist figures of the time is that he is a brilliant, internationally recognized economist. First a student at HEC Montréal, founded in 1907, before working there as a professor (1938-1974) after studying at the prestigious École Libre des Sciences Politiques in Paris, Angers, like his masters Édouard Montpetit and Esdras Minville, intended participate in Quebec public life as an economic expert and nationalist intellectual.
The idea that then animates committed Quebec economists is that of “the economic reconquest of French Canada,” notes Carlos. The Great Depression has just revealed the failures of liberal capitalism, and we are looking for solutions to get Quebec out of the doldrums. Canada, at the same time, engaged in centralization inspired by the economic ideas of Keynes, at the origins of the welfare state.
Angers fears the effects of this centralization on the preservation of the Catholic and French identity of Quebec. He is also opposed to Keynesianism, which is too socializing for his taste. He rather advocates cooperatism and corporatism, more respectful of the social doctrine of the Church and the responsibility of the individual for his economic fate. These elements of Angers’ work, with the exception of cooperatism, have aged poorly, as has his very conservative vision of the role of women, confined at home to her status as queen of the home.
It is the sequel, above all, which remains interesting for us. In the 1940s and 1950s, Angers produced a host of studies denouncing the fiscal imbalance favoring Ottawa to the detriment of Quebec. “Those who fear independence because of the costs should think about what the French Canadian people could have achieved with all the efforts and funds they had to devote to their survival as a people! » he told journalist Jean-Marc Léger in 1996. At a time when the Parti Québécois is proposing an update of the budget for an independent Quebec, the Angers conclusion is relevant.
In the 1970s, noticing that its Catholicism no longer had much echo in modern Quebec, Angers, which still shines with “its polemical verve” and its “sharp reflective sense” in the pages of National Actionnotes Carlos, made the fight for French Quebec and the defense of the economic viability of an independent Quebec his main battle horses.
Even if he mutes them, his traditionalist beliefs will never leave him. Ambivalent in his assessment of the Quiet Revolution – he loved its liberating national momentum, but deplored its Keynesianism and its contempt for the French-Canadian past – Angers remained convinced, until his death, that the modern Quebecois rejection of our ancient roots, particularly Catholics, partly explains the weakness of the independence movement. The sociologist Jacques Beauchemin, in more contemporary terms and in a resolutely secular logic, says the same thing today.
It is possible, yes, to respect the past and cherish it, drawing inspiration from the best of one’s spirit and letting go of what, in it, would weigh down the future. This is what Jean-Philippe Carlos invites us to do by bringing the work of Angers back to life.
Columnist (Présence Info, Jeu), essayist and poet, Louis Cornellier teaches literature at college.