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Quebec’s dirty secrets unveiled
January 29, 2012 - 4:35am By PAUL W. BENNETT


Confronting the darker side of Quebec’s history has not been easy, particularly for that province’s small but influential elite, dominated by nationalistes. Every society has produced popular historical myths that leave some dirty laundry buried in the past. What is unique about Quebec is a certain ingrained and overly defensive siege mentality when it comes to facing up to the odd soiled linen in the closet of modern Quebec nationalism.

That Quebec reflex reaction must be fading because Jean-Francois Nadeau, arts editor of Montreal’s Le Devoir, has now produced a full-scale biography of Quebec’s infamous Fascist party leader Adrien Arcand with an alluring title, The Canadian Fuhrer (James Lorimer and Company, 360 pages, $35). Publication of the book in French in 2010 marked a watershed in Quebec nationalist thinking, speaking to the previous silences in Quebec history.

Two decades ago, a feisty Quebec scholar, Esther Delisle, had paid a heavy price for exposing the first cracks in the nationalist armour. In her PhD thesis she offended many by identifying Lionel Groulx, Quebec’s modern patron saint, as a purveyor of anti-Semitism and a nationalist who was remarkably tolerant of right-wing extremism. Her 1998 book Myths, Memories and Lies went public with a shocking account of how some members of Quebec’s elite, nationalist and federalist, supported Nazi collaborator Marshall Philippe Petain and his Vichy government in France during the Second World War and then helped bring war criminals to safety in Quebec after the war ended.

Delisle was strongly chastised for speaking out and when Montreal writer Mordecai Richler took her side, she became a bête noir. After the Quebec premier’s brother Gerard Bouchard attacked her research and rose to defend Groulx against the charges of anti-Semitism, she was essentially blacklisted in French Quebec.

Nadeau’s The Canadian Fuhrer returns to the touchy subject of the emergence and persistence of Adrien Arcand and his Quebec fascist party from August 1939 until the 1960s. It’s a very thorough, authoritative biography with a title that not only projects a strong, powerful image, but conveys the author’s willingness to call a spade a spade.

As a former academic historian, Nadeau brings an impressive array of insight and talent to the task of unravelling the life of Canada’s best known fascist leader. It shows the vital importance to Arcand’s political life of being fired from La Presse for union activities and the founding of his wickedly satirical newspaper Le Goglu in Montreal’s working-class east end. After flirting with Italian-brand fascism, Arcand and his close associate Ajutor Menard chose a different path "paved with Hitler-style swastikas instead of Roman symbols of fascism."

The rise of Arcand’s movement is explained as a radical political response to the hunger, unemployment and war anxieties of the 1930s. Radical ideas gained currency among Canadians along the whole range of extremes from Communism and socialism to the right-wing variants, the Social Credit movement on the Prairies and Maurice Duplessis’ Union Nationale in Quebec. Amid such turmoil, Adolf Hitler cast a spell and one that even fooled Canada’s wily prime minister Mackenzie King.

The most alarming part of Arcand’s story is how he managed, while spouting Nazism and anti-Semitism and operating on a shoestring, to become a significant political force in Quebec throughout the 1930s. His role on the fringes of the Jeune-Canada movement founded by Andre Laurendeau and Lionel Groulx makes for fascinating reading. All of the Jeune-Canada partisans are shown to have shared anti-Semitic attitudes, but Groulx, the rather effete young nationalist, remained uncomfortable with Arcand’s distinctly working-class brand of fascism.

As a Le Devoir journalist, Nadeau is at pains to show how leading Quebec nationalists like Groulx and Jeune-Canada sought to keep a safe distance from Arcand. "Anti-Semitism and xenophobia," he writes, were integral to their thought and program but, unlike Arcand, "blood and race" was not "the primary standard by which everything was judged."

Arcand and his far-right National Unity Party did draw their strength from what is described as "the spirit of the 1930s." Once Canada declared war on Germany and Italy in 1939, Arcand was interned for his political views. After the war, he remained a committed fascist and resumed his political activities, forging alliances with Duplessis and the UN in a futile attempt to stave off so-called "Reds" like Jean Lesage and the Liberals, promoting the Quiet Revolution.

Adrien Arcand, as Nadeau points out, remained a committed fascist. He not only continued to espouse anti-Semitism but denied the existence of the Holocaust. After flailing away for four decades in the world of radical politics, Arcand was left destitute and beset by poor heath before he passed away quietly on Aug. 1, 1967.

Nadeau’s The Canadian Fuhrer will go a long way toward extinguishing the trace of stench associated with the heirs of Lionel Groulx, Quebec’s modern-day nationalists. It will quickly be recognized as the standard work on a sordid aspect of Quebec’s 20th-century history. In one particular, perhaps picayune aspect, the book falls short. It’s curious to me why this otherwise fine book contains no direct reference whatsoever to Esther Delisle, the intrepid scholar who first blasted open the larger story. When that happens, all will be well with the world.

About the Author
Paul W. Bennett is founding director, Schoolhouse Consulting in Halifax, and lived in Montreal from 1997 until 2005.

- by Lois Legge, Chronicle Herald, December 4, 2011

IT’S GOT SPIES and battles, paternity scandals and prison escapes. Even high seas adventures. Not the usual storylines for histories of the Acadian Expulsion.

But in her new book, Halifax author Dianne Marshall explores a less-reported chapter of this 18th century British campaign against Nova Scotia’s early French settlers.

Heroes of the Acadian Resistance: The Story of Joseph Beausoleil Broussard and Pierre II Surette 1702-1765 chronicles the struggles, strategies and significance of a small but persistent opposition movement battling a British empire.

"It came to my attention a long time ago when I was a teenager," says Marshall, whose maternal ancestors were Acadian. "We had a distant cousin who taught at Harvard and when he retired he decided to do some genealogical research and when he finished he sent us each a copy of what he had written and throughout it says little things like "participated in an ambush against the British" or "participated in a raid" and I thought, ‘I didn’t even know there was anything like that.’ "

Marshall’s ancestors were more "foot soldiers" than leaders. But these historical footnotes sparked her interest in the more-than-decade-long struggle — led by Broussard and Surette — who, while friends, often fought in separate areas of the region.

They and their foot soldiers hid in forests and rescued Acadian prisoners, launched surprise ambushes against the British and even became prisoners of war in the name of their cause. And their cause became much bigger after the British started expelling Acadians in 1755, ostensibly because they wouldn’t swear allegiance to the British king.

Their refusal isn’t surprising, says Marshall, since doing so would have meant battling their own blood.

"In the oath it said they had to take up arms on behalf of the King and they all had relatives living in French territories and they didn’t want to be taking up arms against their family," she says. "Many times they agreed to sign an oath provided that part was taken out."

But Broussard’s distrust of the British started even earlier.

His father Jean-Francois Broussard, a farmer near Port Royal, had been imprisoned after the British seized that French garrison in the early 1700s. Later released, he never forgot the squalid conditions of his underground dirt cell or other tactics of the so-called "invaders," instilling the fire of rebellion in his 10 children.

"His father, I think, was the inspiration," Marshall says. "He grew up with this drilled into him that he had to take his land back from the English and that seemed to have been his goal his entire life . . ."

"He was very young when his father died too, so this story of his father’s imprisonment was one of the things he remembered most about his dad."

Surette has a much different story. His father long held out for neutrality, eventually signing an oath when assured by one British governor he wouldn’t be required to take up arms. But the British government reneged, and as Marshall writes, that became the final straw for the younger Surette, tired of seeing his people exploited for cheap labour or unfairly imprisoned by the British.

Surette also has a far less scandalous history than his brother-in-arms, who took a few detours before becoming a respected leader, and in some quarters today, a revered hero of history.

As a young man and newly married, Broussard became embroiled in a paternity scandal, accused of fathering the baby girl of a teenager. He disputed the claim but was eventually ordered to pay nine pence per week to support the child until she turned eight. The incident tarnished his reputation for years.

"He was a bit of a rabble-rouser," Marshall says with a laugh. "He got himself into a bit of trouble but he seemed to mature," taking a break from battles in the early stages of his children’s lives. But he and Surette emerged as key resistance leaders after Gov. Charles Lawrence ordered the deportation of Acadians, as British soldiers burned their homes and drove them from their land, as they separated families, sometimes forever.

Some suffered or died in squalid refugee camps. Others were banished to places far from home. And hundreds of resistance fighters fought on, living in immense hardship and sometimes committing their own atrocities along the way — scalping innocent civilians, even children.

"Sometimes some of their assaults were extremely violent," says Marshall, also author of Georges Island: The Keep of Halifax Harbour. "They did scalp children but (by) the same token the British killed Acadian children as well. War is a nasty business no matter how you cut it."

Cooking for couples
By Greg Burliuk
Posted 3 days ago

Essentials

What: Fresh and Healthy Cooking For Two by Ellie Topp and Marilyn Booth is a collection of healthy recipes for couples and which often features simple four-dish meals. The recipes are meant to be cooked quickly.

Signing: Ellie Topp will be at the Kingston Seniors Centre, 56 Francis St., for a book sale and signing Monday, Dec. 5 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. One of the soups from the book will be served. It's also available for $24.95 at the Novel Idea and Indigo Books.

Cookbooks have a bias against couples. And don't get me started on singles. Check out just about any recipe and you'll see it's just about always meant to feed four or more people.

Just cut it in half you say? That's fine if you're talking about a cup of flour, but how do you bisect an egg, for example? There are cookbooks for two out there but not many. That is why Ellie Topp decided to rectify the situation. Together with dietician Marilyn Booth, she's written Fresh and Healthy Cooking For Two.

I first talked to Ellie several years ago when she wrote a cookbook about small batch preserving. The current one was inspired by her own empty nest situation.

"It's the way I cook now that my kids have left home," she says. "I used to spend half the afternoon in the kitchen doing something complicated but you're not as tempted to do that when there's only two of you."

There are a lot of advantages to this cookbook, other than its smaller amounts. First of all, it's designed for couples who don't have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen. The prep time for most of the dishes is under 30 minutes, so the cookbook is valuable not only for empty nesters, but also young couples just starting out who perhaps aren't that experienced in the kitchen.

Secondly, in the mains section, Ellie has designed a whole meal around a main, including a salad, vegetable and starch. So while your meat is cooking, you can whip up the salad and veg, and set the starch to going as well.

"They're everyday meals and if you're a single these recipes divide easily," she says.

The meals may be simple to make, but Ellie takes care to slip the unusual in there with ingredients like kale, rapini and kohlrabi, which don't show up on most of our plates with let's say regularity. "Things like kale, I can use in winter and they're wonderful in soups," she says.

Sometimes she'll take favourite recipes and tinker with them to get the calorie and salt count down. Such was the case with her version of gazpacho.

"That took a while to do, but I got it down quite a bit," she says, before adding a handy tip. "When you want a tomato flavour, tomato paste has almost zero calories and no salt whereas canned tomato sauce has a lot more of both calories and salt."

Ellie often has collaborators when she writes her books. "I like to work with a dietician," she says. "I've got my masters in food science, but I like to work with someone who's always up to date on dietary matters."

I made three complete meals with the cookbook and really enjoyed the fact that I could put out several dishes per meal in less time than I usually spend doing just one dish. I started out on Friday night with the most complicated one of the three and to our minds, the most successful.

The main was Indonesian-style chicken with savoury peanut sauce, and the sides were basmati rice with chutney, steamed green beans and kohlrabi and carrot salad with orange and cumin. Correction on that, I couldn't find kohlrabi at Loblaws, the store I figured was the best bet to have it. However, there was an informative booklet in the veggie section there where I discovered that some kind of cabbage would be a good substitute and provide the same kind of crunch. I bought some savoy cabbage, which is a milder form of this veggie.

I usually hate snapping green beans so I bought a package of pre-cut ones, which were simply steamed and then tossed with olive oil. The rice was made tastier by slipping in a couple of spoonfuls of mango chutney. The great brilliance of this meal was the way the chicken was cooked. I've seen this done before in restaurants, but had forgotten. You fry the chicken enough to get a crust and then finish it on high heat in the oven. The result is a spectacularly tender chicken, the only way we'll eat from now on when not stir-frying it.

The next night, we went vegetarian with three-cheese pasta bake with tomatoes and spinach, along with a mixed vegetable salad. I still had lots of the savoy left so I used that in the salad, whose dressing was made simply by mixing mayo and salsa and didn't turn out half bad. The pasta bake was very pretty to look at, and cheese lovers will be happy with it, but truth to tell, we felt it needed a little juicing up. My wife and daughter applied ketchup and I, a couple of shakes of hot sauce and all was well.

The last meal was another chicken one, baked chicken with a sesame crust, roasted potatoes and carrots provencale. There was also supposed to be a cabbage toss, but I still had some salad left over from the first night and served that. Not having any commercial bread crumbs, I made my own by tossing some light right bread into the food processor. I was pleased with the results as the chicken was once again baked, although it wasn't quite as tender because it was baked at a lower temperature. The big hit foGregr us was the carrots, which were tossed with garlic and black olives.

When our daughter leaves on her student exchange in February, I'm pretty sure we'll be coming back to this book a lot, although I'll probably add things to the recipes because in our house, we like things spicier and more garlicky.

First Acadian G-G was a dominant force in Canadian politics: scholar

By James Foster
Times & Transcript Staff




In her new book The Golden Age of Liberalism: A Portrait of Roméo Leblanc, scholar and author Dr. Naomi Griffiths paints the Memramcook-born first Acadian governor general as a selfless civil servant and one of the great governor generals in Canadian history. Some might accuse the renown Acadian scholar and historian as being biased towards LeBlanc - they were friends since they first met in London in the 1950s, but Griffiths insisted that this book should have the word "portrait" in its title for a reason.


"I wanted to give an idea of what he was like as a human being, and to tell his story against the backdrop of his experiences," Griffiths says while in Moncton on a book tour. She describes the book as somewhat of a painting; its author, the artist.

"Every artist has his biases. We all have our biases. It's what we do with those biases."

After careers as a teacher and foreign news correspondent, LeBlanc became a key player in the federal Liberal party, serving as press secretary to prime ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau in what Griffiths refers to as The Golden Age of Liberalism, when the party dominated the federal political scene. LeBlanc himself was federally elected in 1972.

As fisheries minister, he was called the fishermen's minister for his ardour at fighting for the average fisherman's plight in LeBlanc's home province and well beyond. He won unlikely battles, like Canada's declaration of the 200-mile limit and the decentralization of some federal departments and offices out of Ottawa to small communities, as seen in the federal superannuation office that dominates downtown Shediac to this day, in a mid-1970s era when the plights of small-town New Brunswick or near-shore fishermen in Prince Edward Island might not have figured prominently on the federal scene without LeBlanc to do battle on their behalf behind cabinet doors.

"He won battles he shouldn't have won," Griffiths concedes.

But that wasn't LeBlanc's greatest impact on Canada, Griffiths believes, nor was his tenure as senator which began in 1984, nor being appointed governor general in 1995, a role cut short in 1999 by illness.

Rather, it was his participation in the federal election of 1993, a vote that changed the course of Canadian history, in which her friend played a pivotal role both behind the scenes and in the forefront, she says.

In that election with LeBlanc's good friend Jean Chrétien at the helm of the Liberals, the party seemed poised for at least a minority win and perhaps a majority government, when a fatal gaff doomed the Progressive Conservative Party, when it fumbled an ad campaign that tried to shame voters into not voting for the Liberals based on the Chrétien's record, while the photo they used to illustrate the eventual winner seemed to unduly focus on his facial deformities. The attack ad was widely seen as mocking Chrétien for his medical condition that caused one side of his face to droop. LeBlanc, as the five-star general of the Liberal war room, sent out the troops to whip up outrage at what was widely seen as a personal attack, and Chrétien himself talked about how he was bullied and teased as a boy about his appearance.

While there were tons of political baggage dragging down the Kim Campbell-led Tories, Griffiths isn't alone in believing the Liberals' cunning handling of those ads brought voters on side and played a large role in the most devastating defeat of a governing party in Canadian federal political history, the Tories losing all but two seats, one of the greatest defeats of a governing power in the western world, ever.

Griffiths remembers being in a room full of mostly Conservative women when the ads appeared on TV screens.

"Those women were mortified. It hit them in a way that they were truly affronted," she says.

She has no doubt that none of those women voted Conservative in 1993, and that millions of other voters were equally appalled, and that it might not have played out the way it did without LeBlanc directing the Liberals' campaign. Within a decade, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada had disappeared completely, merged with the Reform Party.

That's not to downplay his other accomplishments, Griffiths stresses.

He excelled as governor general, easily assuming the role of the people's GG, just as he was the people's fisheries minister. He was the first to travel extensively in the role including abroad and to tiny Canadian settlements in the far north and far west, the first to adorn Rideau Hall with first nations art, a passionate believer in small towns and those Canadians who lived in them, of recognizing little people who did great things as with his Canadian Caring Awards and so much more, Griffiths says.

"With that, he was saying, 'This is how I see Canada,'" Griffiths says.

"For me, if someone asked me to tell them something about the country of Canada, I would just say, 'Roméo LeBlanc.'"

LeBlanc died June 24, 2009 after a lengthy illness. He was 81 years old.

The book is now on sale for $35 at book stores everywhere.