​Canada in the 1960’s

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Economic and political topics became central and, especially in the 1960s Quebec became major adherent of the French Canadian community, or at least of those French Canadians (near 80% of the Canadian total) living in Quebec.
Pierre Vallières, a writer and political fighter whose emotional manifesto “The White Niggers of America” became the intellectual basis of the early Quebec separatist movement, discussed the resolution of French Canadians in Quebec to put an end to three centuries of oppression, of injustices borne in silence, of oblations accepted in vain; to bear witness to their new and progressively energetic resolution to take control of their economic, political, and social affairs. As Vallières marks, most French Canadians do not see themselves as victims of servitude; most do believe they and their culture have been subjected by persecution at the hands of English Canada. Quebec nationalism detects its roots in a nation’s effort to protect its culture, its language, and ultimately its authenticity. “The White Niggers of America” serves as Vallières’s “call to arms” for the evidently used masses of French Canadians. Vallières depicts the development of a class consciousness amid French Canadians through which they become aware of their position as oppressed, and Vallières supports for an armed uprising.
Other views Pierre Trudeau hold – politician, writer, Prime Minister of Canada. In Trudeau’s book – “New Treason of the Intellectuals”, he debated opposed to chest-thumping nationalism at all prices and pleased self-government at the outlay of fine government, less advancing the people’s living circumstances: “nationalistic governments tend by nature to be “intolerant, discriminatory, and, when all is said and done, totalitarian.” (Trudeau).
But despite of many attempts at accommodation, separatism was in the air, as noted Vallières. Screams for an “independent Quebec” made even healthier after the mudslide election of 1958, which carried the Conservative Diefenbaker regime into dominion. Bad-considered comments by members of the national administration, declaring that “Canada did not require Quebec,” and that the province furthered only “hockey players and strip teasers,” played a part in launching the separatist struggle of the 1960’s.
“The White Niggers of America” confirms that a body of literature took up the mission of: Inviting the French Canadians to remember their ‘glorious’ past, deliberately falsifying history so as to idealize the life of the Habitants under the French regime, making the words ‘rural,’ ‘Catholic,’ and ‘French’ synonymous and preaching the crusade of a ‘return to the land’ as the sole solution to the grave social problems of the French-Canadian nation”” (Vallières). Few years later Vallières published his “L’urgenee de choisir” (1972) in which he denounces his former espousal of violence, and this book noticed the end of disciplined terrorism as a political weapon in Quebec. Nevertheless the separatist question and the consecutive inquiries of national authenticity, the future of an autonomous Quebec have provided range for fiery polemics during recent years and will continue in the future.
Pierre Trudeau was French Canadian from Quebec. Before he was involved in politics, his texts were almost exclusively about Quebec and it did him closer to Pierre Vallières. His goal was to assist rid his province of the reactionary, paternalistic, nationalist system of Maurice Duplessis, and the road to that goal, as he saw it, was to teach Quebecois in the values and uses of democracy. Trudeau’s works were passionate pleas for democratization and assails on the nationalism which he considered stood in its way. For him, the checks and balances of federalism provided desirable guarantees for pluralism and freedom.
Pierre Trudeau was a significant Prime Minister because he balanced the equality between the French and English Canadians, encouraged multiculturalism to help Canada’s sovereignty grow stronger, and he passed many acts and bills that made an immense impact on Canada to grow as a nation in spite of Pierre Vallières. There may be no doubt that, during the 60s, not only Quebec but all of Canada was going through an authenticity crisis, impressed by but quite different from that which was in testimony south of the border. In “New Treason of the Intellectuals” discovered the problem of what constitutes the Canadian identity first became a national issue in a wrangle over the national origin question. As Trudeau noticed in “New Treason of the Intellectuals”, the Quebecois representatives held firm to the opinion that only those of French-Canadian background had the right to be called Canadians. Ultimately, a compromise was resulted in which “Canadian” would not be an passable answer to the question. “All except the Indians and Eskimos must come from elsewhere. Officially there are no Canadians.” wrote Trudeau (Trudeau).
However in his adolescence Pierre Trudeau may have been tempted to French Canadian nationalists like Pierre Vallières. He agitated in 1942 on behalf of a nationalist candidate called Jean Drapeau, who was a competitor of conscription for overseas service. Than he remembered in his book: “. . . I know a man who had never learned ‘nationalism’ in
school, but who contracted this virtue when he felt the immensity of his country in his bones, and saw how great his country’s creators had been.” Trudeau). This “nationalism” was differing than nationalism of Vallières; this nationalism was not connected with ethnicity, but rather with a meaning of place and pride in hereditary achievement. That possibly clarifies why he changed the word to “patriotism” when it was interpreted into English twenty years later.
Consequently by the time Trudeau choose to rush into federal politics in 1965, he had become a savage critic of nationalists such as Vallières – through he never refused the existence or value of nations. He had also become an adherent of Actonian ethnic pluralism as the unimpaired basis for a liberal democracy. By working to toughen federal representation from Quebec in Ottawa, the balance could be re-established to a situation in which Quebec noticed to be pulling itself, step by step, out of Confederation. Besides, since Trudeau and his friends trusted that nationalism in Quebec was the product of the default of Canadian Federalism to provide enough space for French Canadians to exert their rights that space would have to be made by correcting Federalism, not by seceding from Canada. The most effective way to cure nationalism alienation would probably be to put in a better kind of government,” he explained in “New Treason of the Intellectuals”.
Separation, liberty, sovereignty in Trudeau’s opinion, meant the identification of state and nationality, an inward-turning by French Canadians and, at least in the worst case scripts implied in some of the early separatist texts, a return to the reactionary community of pre-I960s. This was counter-revolution, a come back to what Trudeau scornfully called “the Wigwam complex.” Where Vallières accepted nationalism as a positive emotion that could energize reform, Trudeau trusted that nationalism based on ethnic homogeneity was negative, bound in the end to suffocate reform. Actonian pluralism, a commonwealth in which ethnic differences balanced each other and were accepted as positive goodnesses, guarantees of independence, was Trudeau’s ideal; that stood at the heart of his political ideas, and the ground of his vision of Canada. Trudeau trusted that the future of his “little homeland” would best be pledged through participation in the “bigger homeland,” a federal system built on equality between French- and English-speaking Canadians wherever in Canada. For the francophone Canadian, Trudeau, Canada was central; for the Quebecois, Vallières, Canada was marginal.

​Works Cited
Craats, Rennay. “Prime Ministers.” Calgary: Weigl Educational Publishers Limited. 2000.
Granatstein, Jack. “Pierre Elliot Trudeau.” The World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World
Book Inc. 2001.
Kivisto, Peter. “Multiculturalism in a Global Society.” Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 2002.
Maclure, Jocelyn. “Quebec Identity: The Challenge of Pluralism.” London: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2003.
“Pierre Elliot Trudeau”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Federal Publications Inc.
2000.
Trudeau, Pierre. “Feudalism and the French Canadians.” St. Martin’s Press. 1968.
Vallières, Pierre. “The White Niggers of America.” Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. 1971.

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