Making History in Twentieth-Century Quebec

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University, the
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom,
and the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste. Marie.

In this lucidly written book, which should be required reading in
university courses on Canadian historiography, Ronald Rudin examines
what French-Canadian historians have said about Quebec’s history. He
makes a convincing case that France and the United States had a greater
impact than did English-speaking Canada on historical writing in
French-speaking Quebec.

In Rudin’s opinion, the dominant personality of 20th-century Quebec
was to be the notorious Abbé Lionel Groulx. Like all other decent,
thoughtful people, Rudin rejects the values of the bigoted, myopic
Groulx, but measures historians in relation to him. One of Groulx’s
few predecessors, Franзois–Xavier Garneau, was more liberal in
religious matters. Laval’s Thomas Chapais and Gustave Lanctot were
contemporaries, Lanctot an ideological adversary. Guy Fregault was
Groulx’s hand-picked successor, and Maurice Seguin and Michel Brunet
at the Université de Montreal admired and imitated him. The
Nazi-friendly Robert Rumilly shared many of Groulx’s values but,
unlike Groulx, did not do archival research before jumping to his
conclusions. Abbé Arthur Maheux, an anglophile, was the antithesis of
Groulx. Modern Quebecers find Groulx an embarrassment and try to dismiss
him as “an ideologue masquerading as an historian.” Rudin disagrees
and devotes half the book to Groulx, his disciples, and his influence.

Although Groulx’s followers started to disagree with the master even
while he was still alive, Rudin notes two main blocs of French-Canadian
historians. The Montreal school—Fregault, Seguin, Brunet—blamed the
Conquest for French Canada’s collective problems. The Laval
school—Marcel Trudel, Fernand Ouellet, and Jean Hamelin—thought that
Quebecers were largely responsible for their own collective fate. The
Montrealers wanted greater political autonomy for Quebec, while the
Laval group accepted the constitutional status quo.

After transitionalists Louise Dechene and Jean-Pierre Wallot, the
revisionists dominated. Fernand Harvey and other revisionists emphasized
economic matters ahead of religious ones in the Revue d’Histoire de
l’Amerique Franзais and elsewhere.