80 years ago, on July 15, 1944, one of the greatest Quebec intellectuals of the 20th centurye century died prematurely, at the age of 59, following an unfortunate automobile accident. Brother Marie-Victorin (born Conrad Kirouac on April 3, 1885) was returning with his colleagues from a botanical collection in Black Lake after a slight detour to Saint-Norbert-d’Arthabaska, the place of his childhood summers which inspired “La croix de Saint-Norbert” and “Sur le renchaussage” in his Laurentian storiespublished in 1920.
Although the usual reflex is to bring the work of the brother of the Christian Schools to the Montreal Botanical Garden and to the Laurentian florathis image, which reduces him to a simple botanist, makes us forget his stature as a true intellectual and the many battles that he had the courage to lead with the constant support of the artisans of Duty. It was in fact always in the pages of Henri Bourassa’s daily newspaper that he made known to the public his opinions and his projects for the development of modern Quebec. The young Marie-Victorin also followed the development of the new newspaper and, on January 22, 1911, he confided to his newspaper (My mirror) : « The duty has appeared! It’s the big event of the season.”
In the September 10, 1915 edition, Marie-Victorin, then a professor at the Collège de Longueuil, began her collaboration with the editors of the nationalist newspaper and published, for a year, “evening notes” under the pseudonym “M. SonPays”, the first of which (“Not’ langue”) set the tone and denounced the policy of assimilation of Ontario’s Francophones embodied in the famous “Regulation 17” prohibiting the teaching of French in primary schools.
Once he became professor of botany at the brand new University of Montreal in 1920, his public speaking gained weight, and The duty gives his publications great visibility, most often on the front page. Thus, the September 30, 1922 issue carries in two columns his article “Towards high scientific culture”, in which he recalls that “a people is worth not only by its economic, industrial or commercial development, but also and above all by its elite of thinkers and scientists, by its contribution to the scientific capital of humanity”.
Being ourselves in a country that is ours
Three years later, The duty publishes (on September 26) his probably most virulent text: “The province of Quebec, a country to discover and conquer. On scientific culture and economic liberation.” After stating that “our intellectuals have become accustomed to spending the summer in Paris and the winter with us” and are thus “increasingly ignorant of the true face of this great country that is the province of Quebec,” he energetically denounces the exploitation of French Canadians on the North Shore: “Large herds of our compatriots: men, women and children, driven by poverty and the inescapable determinism of economic conditions, are thrown into the heart of this boreal forest, distant and inhospitable, to lead a life of pariahs of which we have no idea.”
He adds that no “French Canadian – except the powerful of the day cultivated by those concerned – has the right to present the fly to the salmon in the fish-filled rivers of the province of Quebec, nor to fire a gunshot on Anticosti, nor to kill, anywhere, the sea game”. All that remains, he says, “to the inhabitants of the North Shore and the Gaspé who do not have the taste for bitching, the privilege of getting up at one o’clock in the morning and going out to sea, in the cold of the night, to fish with a line at sixty fathoms depth, a cod which often slips away and which, once caught and laboriously dried, is not always sold”.
He concludes this radical statement, which will earn him much criticism, by hoping that “those who currently have the mission of directing the steps of our young people and giving them watchwords will face the evidence of these truths, which are perhaps a little harsh, and that they will promote with all their strength the training of the scientific elite that we have an immense need of; it is this elite that, by giving us, in a future that we want to see soon, economic liberation, will make us a true nation.”
Receiving the Gandoger Prize from the French Botanical Society in 1932, he took the opportunity to recall (The dutyOctober 25) that he has, for ten years, been at the head of “struggles that he did not seek, the struggle for existence, the struggle for scientific cleanliness, the struggle to escape, in our humble domain, from odious guardianships and abject intellectual servility.” And he adds: “Because we have resolved once and for all to be ourselves in a country that is ours; because we have resolved not to accept, without first weighing them up, propagandists who have nothing to do with scientific France, because we reject the role of white Negroes and we demand the right to choose our masters and to determine our own admirations; because we have dared all these terrifying things, we have been accused of Francophobia.”
Think big, see far
After the election of the first government of Maurice Duplessis on August 17, 1936, The duty published on September 25 and 26, still on the front page and in two columns, another powerful text by Marie-Victorin which defines the broad outlines of a true scientific policy: “After the battle, the works of peace”. He completed this program a few months later by demanding, in a long text spread over three days (The duty 27, 28 and 29 January 1937), the creation of an Institute of Geology. The new government would respond positively to all of his requests, including that of completing the Botanical Garden, a project also launched on the front page of the daily newspaper on rue Saint-Jacques on 16 December 1929.
Reading Marie-Victorin allows us to understand that in 1938, journalist Jean-Charles Harvey was able to deplore the absence in Quebec of “half a dozen Marie-Victorins” who, he said, would transform French Canadians “in less than twenty years.” We also understand that another great Quebec botanist, Jacques Rousseau, was able to say in 1970 that Marie-Victorin was the father of the modern university in Quebec.
General de Gaulle is said to have said about France: “some countries have too much history”. This is certainly not the case for Quebec, which, on the contrary, would benefit from reading its great intellectuals. Marie-Victorin’s energetic thinking on science, nature, nation, culture and universities is, in my opinion, still relevant today. Even her profound reflections on sexuality and love, exchanged in a unique correspondence with her assistant and devoted collaborator, Marcelle Gauvreau, can still inspire us, as Lyne Charlebois’ magnificent film has just masterfully shown, Tell me why these things are so beautifulwho was able to bring to the screen his personal view of the singularity of the love that united the two characters, but also his sensitivity to the mysterious beauty of nature that Marie-Victorin was able to capture in numerous “botanical-literary” texts now brought together in a work that he himself had dreamed of publishing (Laurentia in bloom).
In short, periodically remembering the great figures of our history can also be an opportunity to reread them and even draw inspiration from them.