By volume 2 of his Papineau the incorruptible, Anne-Marie Sicotte, historian and literary creator, completes the first complete biography of Louis-Joseph Papineau. She titles the volume The rebel president (1833-1871) and prefers to the anglicism of the time “speaker of the Chamber” the word “president” of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada (future Quebec), a position to which Papineau was elected in 1815 by the deputies, before being outlawed in 1837.
Returning from exile in 1845 after having been pardoned from the proscription pronounced against him by the British colonial power, Papineau was elected in 1848 to the Parliament of United Canada. Anne-Marie Sicotte summarizes the situation in a biting tone. “Nothing has really changed,” she writes, except for one crucial thing: the Liberals of Upper Canada (the future Ontario) are more conservative, like the French Canadians of Lower Canada who have become ministers of United Canada.
The biographer wishes, she tells me, “to correct a distortion made by so many historians: the reformers of United Canada, after 1841, would have brought the immeasurable benefit of responsible government. However, she continues, the patriots demanded long before them an executive responsible to elected officials, rather than responsible to the governor and London.
She concludes: “The reformist government, and with it Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine and George-Étienne Cartier, has been wrongly praised by generations of historians. Researcher Georges Aubin, specialist in the Papineau family, agrees. He is delighted, he confides to me, to note that “Anne-Marie Sicotte quotes abundantly the writings of Amédée Papineau”, this eldest son of Louis-Joseph whom he made known.
“Amédée,” he explains, “has unfortunately been neglected by almost all of Papineau’s biographers. However, his Diary of a Son of Liberty and his other diaries contain valuable information about his father. »
Papineau “breathes his last breath” in his seigniorial mansion in Montebello, two weeks before his 85e birthday, says the biographer. “His daughter, the very Catholic Ézilda, she adds, is saddened to see her father die as a deist rather than a Christian, but kisses his forehead. Papineau’s dream that all human beings fraternize is slow to come true. In 1849, bitterly disappointed by the future Ontario, he saw it, according to Anne-Marie Sicotte, “soiled and venal, without ‘the least political integrity’”.
Behind Papineau, verses by Louis Fréchette would be engraved at the base of a Tuscan column, “emblem of his character”. These verses: “There was a whole era, and for a long time our race / Had only its voice for sword and its body for breastplate”.
Papineau’s epitaph in Montebello reads: “Leader of the Liberal Party for 40 years.” Soul of political modernity, he founded, in fact, this party, at least in French Canada, and his faithful disciple, the poet Louis Fréchette, denounced, as early as 1866, the denial of our deputies supporters of the Confederation by the word cru of “traitors”.