Reader: Ch. 11 – Rising Canadian and Quebecois Nationalism

Primary Documents
primary documents
1.
2.George Grant (1965)
From “FLQ Manifesto 1970,” translated and edited by D.C. Bélanger From Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism,
a public declaration of policy and aims, especially one issued
before an election by a political party or candidate.
He is an Associate Professor of Canadian history at the University of
Ottawa
History
Historical Interpretations
historical interpretations
3.From “Québécoises deboutte! Nationalism and Feminism in Quebec,
1969–1975,” Sean Mills
Primary Documents
primary documents
1.
• Define manifesto:
• D.C. Belanger:
Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ)

• Terrorist organization founded in Montreal in 1963
• Fought for Quebec to become independent
• 5 October 1970, kidnapped British trade commissioner in Montreal, James Cross
• Triggered the “October Crisis” Radio-Canada broadcasted manifesto on October 8th
  From “FLQ Manifesto 1970,” translated and edited by D.C. Bélanger
  FRONT DE LIBÉRATION DU QUÉBEC MANIFESTO
  front de liberation du Quebec manifesto
  Who are The Front de libération du Québec?
• Group of Quebec workers that want Quebec to be independent
• Is a response to puppets by high finance in governments in Ottawa and Quebec
• Finances themselves through voluntary taxes
  Rene Levesque (Parti Quebecois)

History
o Hands are clean of the British parliamentary system
o Fighting for Bourassa to get his 100 000 revolutionary workers
o Believes that federalism penalizes the Quebec milk producers to satisfy the needs
of Anglo-Saxons of the Commonwealth
o Is attacking the federal system:

1. Disagrees with importation policies

2. Attacking how low wage earners in textile and shoe manufacturing trades are not treated well

3. Disagrees with Canada negatively labelling Quebec as an ethnic minority

4. Thinks government is pathetic because always trying to impress American millionaires
   o Calling out Quebec workers to take back their factories, machines, hotels, universities unions and make their own revolutions in the own neighborhoods and workplaces
   2.From Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, George Grant (1965)
   From lament for a nation: the defeat of Canadian nationalism, George Grant (1965)
   • Lament: George Grant: To lament is to cry out at the death or at the dying of something loved.
   o Mourns the end of Canada as a sovereign state
   • George Grant: Canadian philosopher who wrote the book Lament for a Nation
   • Text argues: It argues that Canada’s disappearance was a matter of necessity.
   • Hate for Protestant politician, Mr. John Diefenbaker
   o In office
   o Egocentric

   His research has addressed questions of migration, race, culture, political thought, and gender.
   History
   Q: I have implied that the existence of a sovereign Canada served the good. But can the disappearance of an unimportant nation be worthy of serious grief?
   A: For some older Canadians it can. Our country is the only political entity to which we have been trained to pay allegiance.

• Being Canadian was a unique species of North American
• To be a Canadian was to build, along with the French, a more ordered and stable
  society than the liberal experiment in the United States
  • Lamenting for Canada is inevitably associated with the tragedy of Diefenbaker.
• His inability to govern is linked with the inability of this country to be sovereign
• Although the Canadian nationalist may be saddened by the failures of
  Diefenbaker, he is sickened by the shouts of sophisticated derision at his defeat.
  Historical Interpretations
  historical interpretations
  1.From “Québécoises deboutte! Nationalism and Feminism in Quebec, 1969–1975,” Sean Mills
  • Sean Mills: Professor and Research Chair in Canadian History at the University of Toronto.

History
• On the evening of 28 November 1969, 200 women—many wearing chains to symbolize their oppression—charged out of their meeting place on Saint-Laurent boulevard into the middle of the street, where they sat down in a circle and waited to be arrested.
• Women’s liberation movement: 1969, women on Montreal’s English-speaking university campuses united and formed the Montreal Women’s Liberation Movement (MWLM).

• During the protest, many anglophone women close to the MWLM joined with francophone women from leftist groups, unions, and citizens’ committees to create the Front commun des Québécoises
• English- and French-speaking women came together to form the Front de libération des femmes du Québec (FLF), a group that would become the most prominent public voice of women’s liberation in Montreal.
  • Initiatives: protests, produced important documents
  • The group slowly came apart
• The Centre des femmes, formed in part by ex-FLF members, was established
• By giving their newspaper the same name as that of the FLF, and by maintaining
  many of the fundamental tenets of its ideology, the women of the Centre des femmes consciously sought to link the two groups.
  • FLF problems
• Expelled English-speaking members because of their access to American
  literature that would control the group’s ideology
  THE FLF, THE CENTRE DES FEMMES, AND NATIONAL LIBERATION
  • Women’s lives changing in the 1960s
• In 1961 birthrate dropped due to womens greater role in the workforce

History

• 1966: 1/3 of women aged 24-34 paid in workforce
• 1971: 39.9%
  • Problems: Although entering the workforce in record numbers, women, for the most part,
  were marginalized in “women’s professions” and were often expected to:
  o work a double day
  o working in the paid labour force during the day while remaining responsible for
  housework in the evening
  • Simone Monet: Labour activist joined the “Voice of Women” a women-based peace organization that advocated greater female participation in politics, and argued that it was up to women, in their role as mothers and educators, to defend the universal values of justice, love, and liberty
  • 1966: Suffragist Thérèse Casgrain founded the Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ)
  • Union of French and English women: Deeply aware that it was an English-speaking group in the midst of a French-speaking society, members of the group began establishing contact with women in the Quebec labour movement.
• In the meetings and contacts that ensued, anglophone women began talking with francophone women about the possibility of holding an all-women’s protest to denounce the city’s increasingly repressive political climate
• On 28 November, women from different backgrounds joined together to take to the streets to defend the right to protest in the city.
  • FLF was born in the streets of Montreal in 1969
• A hybrid movement, one that combined the insights of the nascent women’s
  liberation movement in the United States with conceptions of anti-colonialism
• The FLF set its goal as the liberation of women through the creation of an
  independent and socialist Quebec.

History
• How women in the FLF were relegated to subordinate and traditionally feminine roles within mixed groups, while being excluded from the larger movement.

• This led some women to argue for the creation of autonomous women's organizations in order to develop their own terms of reference and voice. By organizing autonomously, women could make their own independent analyses of their place in the larger struggle and build a deeper and more inclusive understanding of liberation.
  • FLF's Actions for Female Political Participation
• The FLF fought to widen the sphere of female political participation in Montreal
  by engaging in various activities. They plastered stickers around the city, occupied taverns that excluded women, and even occupied the jury boxes of a courthouse to protest against the discrimination of women in the justice system.
  • Creating a New Interpretation of the World
• The FLF also aimed to develop a new interpretation of the world by voicing the
  concerns and desires of Quebec's oppressed and colonized women. They hoped to create new values and possibilities for the future and empower women to determine their own conditions of existence. They argued that women had never had a say in major decisions affecting their daily lives and had been given an education that prevented them from becoming full and equal human beings.
  • Solidarity among Quebec Women
• The FLF outlined its goal of creating solidarity among all Quebec women to
  articulate together the meaning of their liberation. They were tired of being told that their liberation was implied by Quebec's national liberation and saw their struggle as forming an essential element of it. The FLF situated its struggle in the rhetoric of universal emancipation and argued that the liberation of women was part of a process of liberating all human beings.

History
Subheaders:

1. Comprehensive program of national liberation for the emancipation of women
2. Exclusion of Anglophones from FLF ranks due to colonial attitude
3. Francophone autonomy for Quebec women
4. Francophone women's autonomous voice
5. Francophone-only composition of FLF
   • The FLF believed that women's emancipation could only be achieved through a comprehensive program of national liberation.
   • Cellule II and another group argued that the FLF needed to focus on a common objective: the sexual, social, political, and economic liberation of Quebec women.
   • Cellule X believed that the FLF needed to be a part of the struggle for Quebec independence and social revolution, while also identifying the common plight of all women under patriarchy.
   • The FLF distanced itself from English-Canadian feminist organizations and refused to participate in the anglophone-organized abortion caravan to Ottawa.
   • The francophone members of the FLF decided to exclude anglophones from its ranks, arguing that the anglophones exerted ideological control over the group, giving it an American orientation that had little regard for the specific realities of Quebec.
   • The FLF felt that the movement must be composed only of francophones, hoping to create a movement based on both an international awareness of women's oppression and a firm understanding of specific issues relating to Quebec women
   • Many anglophones, deeply integrated into the francophone and separatist community, were hurt and upset by their exclusion and decided to stop feminist activity altogether.
   • The FLF also decided to conduct abortion counseling only in French, and the francophone women moved out of the shared house on rue Sainte-Famille.
   FLF:
   • After two turbulent years, the FLF had staged demonstrations, opened a daycare, and published a newspaper.

History
• Experimented with new non-hierarchical forms of organization, had a large impact on Quebec’s feminist movement.
• In 1971, internal divisions and reduced membership caused the group to dissolve.
• Anti-colonial framework for understanding the triple exploitation of Quebec women was
transported into the Centre des femmes.
Centre des femmes:
• Established in 1972 by ex-FLF members.
• Focused on analysis and becoming a politically homogeneous nucleus of revolutionary
feminists.
• Published Quebec’s first women’s liberation newspaper.
• Maintained a focus on Quebec workers and situated their “role as housewives, workers, and mothers in the context of Quebec society.”
• Sought to draw Quebec women together into a revolutionary organization. Revisionist History:
• Centre des femmes used their newspaper to create a revisionist version of Quebec history.
• Offered a counter-narrative to dominant representations of the past and radical histories,
which ignored the contributions of Quebec women.
• Recovered the voice of women in the past to create a more inclusive history for contemporary political struggles.
THE END OF A NATIONAL DREAM
the end of a national dream
• The Centre des femmes initially followed FLF's nationalist principles but later abandoned them.
• The abandonment of national liberation was influenced by changing parameters of nationalism, feminism, and the left, including the increasing domination of Marxist- Leninism.
• The Centre des femmes became heavily involved in the struggle to legalize abortion and saw the criminalization of abortion as a corollary of capitalism.

History
• The Centre des femmes established a link between capitalism and the nuclear family and called for "free abortion on demand."
• The Centre des femmes launched an attack on the policies of the newly formed Parti Québécois (PQ) at the same time as they became heavily involved in the struggle to legalize abortion.
• Class politics began to assume priority over national liberation for many leftists, which had a significant impact on the Centre des femmes.
• The Centre des femmes' attack on the Parti Québécois (PQ) needs to be situated in the changing ideological parameters of political dissent and the increasing influence of Marxist-Leninism.
• The Centre des femmes abandoned "the nation" as its site of struggle, and its immediate reaction was triggered by the PQ's adoption of "pro-women" resolutions at its February 1973 convention.
• The Centre des femmes argued that the PQ sought only to institutionalize women's roles and preserve the family, an institution responsible for the exploitation of women and the bedrock of capitalism. The PQ did not advocate free and legal access to abortions or a socialization of housework.
PQ’s insincere policies and the celebration of the nuclear family
• The Centre des femmes believed that the PQ’s policies towards workers and women were insincere and institutionalized the “private work carried out within the family”.
• The party sought to preserve the family, which the Centre des femmes linked with capitalism and right-wing nationalist parties.
• The Centre des femmes saw the PQ’s valorization of the family structure as an impediment to the struggle for women’s liberation.
Distancing from the national project
• The Centre des femmes began to distance itself from the national project as Quebec nationalism was no longer compatible with its struggle for legalized and state-funded abortion and emancipation in general.

History
• Many activists of the era were situating themselves within a class-based movement and turning away from the language of national alienation.
• The centre increasingly focused on class exploitation, seeing itself as forming part of the international struggle of all women and workers.
Making women’s liberation a key demand of the working class
• The centre argued that it was by making women’s liberation a “key demand of the working class that [women] will put an end to the present system of exploitation”.
• Women formed an essential element of the capitalist mode of production, and their unpaid work in the home acted as “the economic cement of the capitalist system”.
• By doing housework, women reinforced the labour power of the husband, and their exclusion from decision-making power was a consequence of society's determination of human worth by money.
Transformation within the women's movement and the Quebec left
• By the mid-1970s, the women's liberation theory in Montreal had transformed, and the women's movement had become part of a larger transformation within the language and structures of the Quebec left.
• The Centre des femmes opposed the PQ's program, which it believed stood in direct opposition to its goal of eliminating gender discrimination. The internal conflict caused the Centre des femmes to dissolve, marking the end of the initial phase of Quebec feminism.
• The women's movement gained new momentum and attracted an unprecedented number of participants in 1975, International Women's Year. The movement expanded the possibilities of imagining a more just future, but it was not without its own contradictions and shortcomings, producing its own dynamics of exclusion and remaining silent on crucial questions such as homosexuality and race.