After “a winter of 33 years”, Brian Mulroney and Lucien Bouchard reconnected six months ago.
The break between the two men in 1990 was one of the most dramatic in Canadian political history. It was the end of a deep friendship between two politicians who had promised to legally reconcile Quebec and the rest of Canada. They turned their backs on each other while the Meech Lake constitutional accord was buried.
This intimate tear, experienced in public, had a dramatic aspect in that it seemed to foreshadow the end of Canada itself.
These two sons of workers from a regional industrial town knew each other, not to say recognized each other, from the moment they arrived at the law faculty of Laval University in 1960. This period of political ferment when modern Quebec was being built under their eyes.
Always in suits and ties, “even if we were really poor”, as Lucien Bouchard said, they met politicians every day and stopped to chat with Daniel Johnson Sr. (future prime minister). Mulroney in the student association, Bouchard editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.
“It was obvious to everyone that Brian would have a great political destiny,” Mr. Bouchard told me. In his second year of law school, he brought in John Diefenbaker, a guy from Baie-Comeau! »
Both had careers as lawyers and worked together on the Cliche Commission on the construction industry. Mulroney always called on the well-read Bouchard to write his speeches, starting with his first attempt to become Conservative leader in 1976.
However, they were not from the same political family, Bouchard having taken his Parti Québécois card. But the friendship between them was stronger than anything and survived the PQ election as well as the 1980 referendum, where they were in opposing camps. In this too, these two friends with divergent ideas embodied political Quebec in its attachments and its contradictions.
When Mulroney finally became leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, it was of course Lucien Bouchard who he called to write his speeches. The most famous of which, that of Sept-Îles, where Mulroney promised to bring Quebec “with honor and enthusiasm” into the Canadian federation.
Mulroney appointed Bouchard ambassador to Paris, failing to immediately convince him to enter politics. Then, in 1988, Bouchard made the leap, got elected in Lac-Saint-Jean and entered the federal cabinet. At that time, the Meech Lake Accord had been signed by all the prime ministers in Canada and was in the process of being ratified. René Lévesque, who died the previous year, was rather favorable to this compromise signed by Robert Bourassa. The federal “beautiful risk” bet seemed to have succeeded.
It was when ratification was blocked and a diluted version of the agreement was concocted by Mulroney’s cabinet that Lucien Bouchard slammed the door and left the government.
Brian Mulroney, like everyone else, understood the catastrophic symbolic dimension of this resignation and did everything to retain his friend. He called her into his office, showed her an old photo of her father… But that was it.
This rupture, inseparable from Meech’s death, was the signal for the rebirth of the Quebec sovereignist movement. It led to the creation of the Bloc Québécois. The PQ regained power, Jacques Parizeau became prime minister in 1994, and the following year, Lucien Bouchard was the star of the Yes camp, which almost won in 1995.
Lucien Bouchard returned to his life as a lawyer in 2000. The two men crossed paths from time to time. Mutual friends tried to reconcile them. Wasted effort. Both felt betrayed. It seemed irremediable.
Even though the years passed, the wound did not heal. Bouchard wondered if things could have ended differently between them.
I sometimes told myself that we didn’t have enough maturity or wisdom to get through a political crisis without destroying everything between us. Others have succeeded.
Lucien Bouchard
“But at the same time, the stakes were too high. That wasn’t really an option. It was a question of making a country or not, and of breaking Canada into two pieces. This is no small matter! »
He speaks of a “cruel” separation, as if they were each carried by a destiny that was beyond them.
Then last fall, at another Class of 1963 reunion, Mulroney gave “an incredible speech,” where he praised Bouchard as his cabinet minister. “With his exceptional charm, intelligence and humor. »
They called each other. They saw each other again. One evening, after an evening with friends, he kept it with him.
“We talked for real, very personally. He showed me photos of us that I had never seen. It was all our lives that came together again. You don’t have many friends like Brian in your life,” said the former prime minister, containing his emotion.
It was only very allusively that they spoke about their breakup. Everything had already been said, written, said again. They had “come out of the political furnace”.
“Age does it. We see time passing, we know that there is less and less time ahead. There are the children. He was so proud of his family, rightly so, it was so beautiful to see him with Mila. It’s true what he said: without her, he would never have been prime minister. It’s quite a human adventure, Brian Mulroney. »
A silence…
How do we compare the Mulroney years to today?
“When you’re 85 years old, it’s a bit suspicious to compare eras,” says Lucien Bouchard. Half of Plato’s dialogues consist of lamenting the new generation. I would still say that now the issues are more technical, more complex. It was a time when humans played a big role in politics, when politicians were more in contact with the population. Brian excelled at this. He had the first quality of a politician: he loved people. »
Last Friday, the old found friends spoke to each other for the last time.
Mulroney was very weakened.
“Lucien, don’t be surprised if you learn that…”
Bouchard cut him off. He didn’t want to hear the end of the sentence.
He didn’t want to hear the end.