Old Passions, New Visions: Social Movements and Political Activism in Quebec

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

Marc Roboy is a journalist and communications researcher who teaches at Concordia University, in Montreal. With Old Passions, New Visions, he presents a collection of critical, polemical, and activist writings from Quebec. These texts reflect Quebec concerns of the 1980s: nationalism, feminism, pacifism, egalitarianism, ecology, the need for new forms of political activism.

Nicole Laurin-Frenette, a sociologist who writes like a novelist, explores the morning-after syndrome that followed the 1980 Quebec referendum. Armande Saint-Jean, a teacher of journalism, speaks of feminist culture and general counter-culture. Eric Alsène analyzes alternative action and compares the Quebec experience to the West German one. François Demers examines the Quebec labour movement, so cruelly betrayed by the Parti Quebecois, in 1982. Ronald Babin and Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, two sociologists from the University of Montreal, place the Quebec peace movement in its international context. Marco Micone, a Franco-Italian poet and dramatist, speaks of the immigrant experience. These various and varied analyses are followed by position papers and/or manifestoes, coming from the young, the ecologists, the feminists and other political activists.

A third part, entitled “Debates,” discusses future political action in Quebec, the future of the trade union movement as well as the desire for independence.

Frankly leftist, Old Visions, New Voices shows which are the forces that Robert Bourassa must take into consideration; it reflects dreams of a better and healthier world. Such dreams and visions are not exclusively Quebecois, but maybe they are especially well dreamt and visualized in Quebec. Robert Chodos has translated them with sensitivity and a rare understanding of political passion.