“Logically, the Quiet Revolution should have ended with the independence of Quebec,” believes the historian Jean-Philippe Carlos while his colleague Stéphane Savard, with whom he has just edited a collective work on this flagship period of the story, smiles slightly, without deciding so categorically.
MM. Carlos and Savard have just published The Quiet Revolution, between here and elsewherea collective work whose ambition is to decenter the perspective to consider this important period from new angles.
The work leaves the strict national framework and the markers of a usual traditional history. The ambition is clear: to place the events in a broader historical context, going beyond local and national frameworks. In 2021, Stéphane Savard had already published, with the collaboration of Martin Pâquet, a Brief history of the Quiet Revolution.
Changes
The Quiet Revolution corresponds to a period of rapid changes, undertaken after the death of Maurice Duplessis in 1959. The flame of this “revolution”, tempered from the outset by its “tranquility”, burns until it flickers somewhat, during the 1970s, only to wither and die out after the 1980 referendum and the repatriation of the Constitution in 1982, while neoliberalism was on the rise. The fact remains that the State which resulted, at the same time providentialist, modernizing, democratic and secular, still constitutes to this day the basis of a model considered characteristic of Quebec. It quickly became part of a discourse of memory, as the historian Xavier Gélinas, one of the contributors to the work, shows in these pages.
If the social, cultural, political and economic phenomena that we associate with this quiet revolution have been observed repeatedly, they are generally observed in isolation, “as if they were punctual and unique manifestations or phenomena in the world,” observe MM. Carlos and Savard. The main events are often rehashed, without much more being learned about what influenced them, observe the two historians in an interview. They were interested in contributing to the writing of “a global history”, in “a broader perspective”.
Even though the Quiet Revolution has been studied for years, there remain many gray areas. “This is partly due to the fact that we have a very focused understanding of the Quebec question,” observes Jean-Philippe Carlos in an interview. But how can we give ourselves the means to better understand what happened in Quebec without considering it in the light of the effervescence of sixties, the student uprisings like May 1968, the development of the concept of the welfare state and several currents of ideas which then swept the entire world? The numerous books and collective works which have presented a synthesis or a broad vision of the Quiet Revolution have taken little time to consider what was taking place, in parallel or in conjunction, in the Canadian, North American and international context.
For example, have there been other quiet revolutions? Can the very idea be considered abroad? Was the Quebec model so particular? In any case, in English Canada, the establishment of an English-speaking policy, culture and identity was developed in parallel. A quiet English-Canadian revolution took place. This was already the thesis of Professor José Igartua, which is reinforced in this book by Matthew Hayday, professor of history at the University of Guelph.
The attention paid to the desire to reform agriculture during this period remains little studied. The Quiet Revolution was also intended to be agrarian. Did you know ? In these pages, Sarah Miles provides an original analysis of the dreams of land reform that existed, at least among certain activists, during the 1960s. “It will not succeed,” observes Stéphane Savard, “but it is interesting to see that it existed and what it meant on a global scale. It’s actually a very little-known aspect of the Quiet Revolution.”
Even if we always refer to the economic momentum of the Quiet Revolution, his story is a poor child, considers Jean-Philippe Carlos. “We forget that the great economic leap forward was inspired by external experiences. We often talk about the place that the development of hydroelectricity played in the development of a new state consciousness. However, the second nationalization of Hydro-Québec, carried out in 1963, was inspired by the Ontario model. Keynesian policies come from Great Britain. And planning efforts are directly inspired by the French model. » All of this is also partly the work of young people who are sensitive to these international experiences because they studied abroad and because they import these ways of conceiving the world.
It is also a question, in the pages of this book, of reforms in the world of health. “It’s major what’s happening in the world of health at the time. Today we see how fundamental the issue of health is in society,” says Stéphane Savard. “And yet we talk little about it when it comes to the Quiet Revolution, while major changes are taking shape. » This is the time when the design of psychiatric hospitals was reformed, for example, explains Alexandre Klein, professor at the University of Ottawa. The influence of international psychiatry had been felt for a long time, whatever the psychiatrist Camille Laurin may have written on this issue at the time.
Awakening to the world
Another part of the book observes the considerations on the Quebec of the Quiet Revolution based on what the foreign media or actors or associations linked to the international have said about it. How do representations of a new Quebec influence relations with certain countries or regions, including Belgium and China? Regarding China, historian Yuxi Liu shows that the 1960s were a time of diversification of perceptions, through a reconfiguration of relationships with the outside world.
“The awakening of small nations was not just Quebec’s business,” recalls Stéphane Savard. “The case of Scotland is interesting to observe in parallel. » For their part, would the Acadians have experienced a sort of quiet revolution at the same time? The work asks the question, through the voices of professors Marcel Martel, Julien Massicotte and Philippe Volpé. It is also a question of the emancipation of the voice of Aboriginal people in these turbulent years.
Who or what have we forgotten to talk about in this book? The feminist revolution, which counts for a lot in this period, is however conspicuous by its absence in this book. “This is a weak point of the work,” Stéphane Savard readily admits. The historian emphasizes that this book, originally the fruit of a conference, gave rise to other achievements, where however the emancipation of women was discussed.
“Quebec does not evolve in a vacuum. During the Quiet Revolution, ideas were influenced by all kinds of movements that are not specific to Quebec. Secularization, state interventionism, even nationalism have foreign sources that must be considered,” maintains historian Stéphane Savard.