Once a month, The duty challenges history buffs to decipher a topical theme based on a comparison with a historical event or figure.
On February 22, 1919, a procession of more than 100,000 people took WilfridLaurier to his final resting place. Many people had reason to mourn the passing of Canada’s first French-speaking prime minister. Defined as a man of compromise, the liberal politician had skillfully succeeded in making people forget the radicalism of his first commitments in active politics. For proof, who today remembers the opposition of the young politician to the confederation?
Wilfrid Laurier was born on November 20, 1841 in the village of Saint-Lin, which then had more than 2,000 inhabitants. His father and grandfather were members of Louis-Joseph Papineau’s Parti patriote, which Wilfrid Laurier would talk about extensively in his youth. His father, Carolus, was the first mayor of the municipality of Saint-Lin.
The members of the Laurier clan also castigate the Union of the two Canadas, which occurred in 1840, a year before Wilfrid’s birth. It was this family environment, open and literate, which would have represented fertile political ground for the formation of liberal convictions in the political mind of the young Laurier.
From the age of 10, Carolus had placed his son in boarding school with a family in the small neighboring village of New Glasgow, made up of a population that is both Scottish and Irish. Wilfrid attended an English-language school there until he enrolled in classical college. From his time there, Laurier retained a slight Scottish accent when he spoke English and a certain Anglophilia for the rest of his life, for which he was sometimes reproached in Quebec.
The virus of politics
In 1854, Wilfrid Laurier was enrolled at the Collège de L’Assomption, a privileged place to grasp the austerity of Catholic education, an austerity which was marked by the breath of ultramontanism which was then carried by Ignace Bourget.
If he was not particularly touched by divine grace—he only believed in God—Wilfrid definitely contracted the political virus at L’Assomption. Above all, it is already red. In addition, the conservative intellectual framework of the college collides with his family background.
As reported by his biographer Réal Bélanger (Wilfrid Laurier. When politics becomes passion, PUL), he affirms one day in front of his classmates that he does not believe in the temporal power of the pope. At another time, he fled from college to listen to Liberal MP Joseph Papin, former president of the Canadian Institute of Montreal. Is it the conservatism of the college which gave him so much the burning desire for liberalism?
The McGill years
As soon as Wilfrid’s classical course was finished, his father must be congratulated for having allowed him to learn English: his prodigal son went to McGill College and its faculty of law. By moving to Montreal, he will soon be exposed to the first tumultuous moments of Canadian Confederation.
The context of opposition to liberalism and the direct attacks of Mgr Bourget towards the Parti rouge did not in any way shake Laurier’s convictions, which, on the contrary, became more radical. First affiliated with the Institut canadien-français, he gradually broke away from it to join the much more militant Institut canadien.
Introduced by Rodolphe Laflamme, one of the most convinced members of the Parti rouge, Wilfrid Laurier finds himself naturally at ease in discussion circles where it is possible to question the power of the pope — more than at L’Assomption — and read books that are on the Index.
Within the Institute, he is part of a committee aimed at “smoothing out” the difficulties between Mgr Bourget and the organization. Despite this attempt at rapprochement, the Church would always retain a bitter memory of Laurier’s early years, to the point that he was suspected of anticlericalism throughout his life. When he married Zoé Lafontaine, the bishopric demanded that he give up his status as a member of the Institute. Suffice to say that we did not laugh with the reds at the episcopal palace.
Opposition to Confederation
When the confederation project took shape over the failures of the various coalition governments of United Canada, the Parti rouge naturally sided against it, and Wilfrid Laurier, who had just been called to the bar in 1864, was no exception. . Opposition to the project of political union of the British colonies percolated in public opinion.
While the oppositions are in league, Laurier is also anchored on the side of the destroyers of the project. At the heart of its action: the defense of the national interests of French Canadians. He writes regularly to the newspaper The union national, where he defends the idea that the coming Confederation will lead to the assimilation of French Canadians. Laurier went so far as to take part in a meeting denouncing the birth of Confederation in Sainte-Julienne on February 22, 1865. On December 27, 1866, he also predicted that Canada would become “the tomb of the French race and the ruin of the Lower Canada”.
The end of university studies marks the beginning of immediate difficulties in the practice of law which will lead him to undertake a parallel career as a journalist and newspaper editor.
The Clearer
When the brother of the leader of the reds Antoine-Aimé Dorion, the very radical Jean-Baptiste-Éric Dorion, died in November 1866, it was Wilfrid who was called to replace him at the head of the newspaper. The Clearer, equally red and anti-Confederation. Located in a country in the process of being cleared, the Eastern Townships, and in a village whose name gives hope, L’Avenir, the newspaper is in the image of its founder, who was nicknamed “l’enfant terrible because of his virulent anticlericalism. Wilfrid being ill, he hopes that the country air can, at least, alleviate his asthma.
This is what drove Laurier out of Montreal: the takeover of a radically liberal newspaper. In the pages of this newspaper, the young lawyer will write lines of great hardness towards the Canadian Confederation which will soon be born. As Réal Bélanger points out in his biography, Wilfrid Laurier exhorts his compatriots to wish for the separation of Lower Canada on March 7, 1867: “Protest with all our might against the new order of things imposed on us and use the influence that we are left to ask for and obtain a free and separate government. Wilfrid therefore went so far as to consider an independence of Lower Canada in the face of the project of union of the British colonies.
In The ClearerLaurier also attacked the ultramontanes of the region, who, in turn, did not hesitate to vilify him in their respective publications, The Journal of Trois-RivièresAnd The Union of the Eastern Townships. Laurier was sometimes perceived as impious, and the parish priest of Arthabaska, Philippe-Hippolyte Suzor, invited the faithful of his parish to boycott his newspaper because of its radicalism.
The end of radicalism
Despite the struggle of the reds, the confederation project is indeed moving forward. Once again a full-time lawyer, Wilfrid was invited to enter politics in the riding of Drummond-Arthabaska, which he won in 1871. Quietly, he abandoned his radicalism and began to consider Confederation as a permanent and irreversible change; he will work within the framework he was fighting.
It is the image of a politician closer to this vision that we have kept of the Canadian Prime Minister. Although the Church continues to mistrust him due to his anticlerical parentage, he attempts to be more conciliatory and emerges from the radically red-hot stances of his twenties, which are just ending.
It was perhaps Laurier who was the greatest champion in the history of Canadian Confederation, although he first campaigned against its establishment in the 1860s. This is an obvious contradiction.
The Man of Compromise
The “turners” often have a hard life in politics. It would be surprising if that changed at all one day. However, it should not be a question of knowing if Laurier betrayed his ideal of youth, carried by an ardent radicalism. Can we blame him? How many did the same afterwards?
It is obvious that we do not remember a man whose figure became enshrined in the very identity of Canada through his initial opposition to it. Yet this is a symptomatic oversight of our vision of Canada’s beginnings, but also of its evolution as a country. Canadian Confederation did not happen without a hitch. The lack of popular consultation and fears related to the minority status of French Canadians animated the debates of the 1860s.
In the case of Wilfrid Laurier, the radicalism of his youth contrasts with the pragmatism of his years in power. We first recall his spirit of compromise on the question of denominational schools and his desire to maneuver between English-Canadian interests and French-Canadian interests. Today, his radical commitment remains unknown to the majority of people.
Wilfrid Laurier’s public life demonstrates that in politics, with enough time and ardor, a person can come to represent what he fought in his youth. Laurier described Confederation as a “tomb” in 1866. Four decades later, he announced that the XXe century will be the “century of Canada”. It is sometimes said that Canada, in itself, is a compromise. In this sense, Laurier represents in the collective memory, faithful to his country, the man of compromise.
To propose a text or to make comments and suggestions, write to Dave Noël at [email protected].