H-France List Archives

• Message-Id: <199604041002.LAA04320@listserv.rl.ac.uk>
• Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 14:35:17 -0800
• From: "Bertram M. Gordon" <bmgordon@mills.edu>
• Subject: Re: Vichy and Quebec (Groulx versus Deslisle) (fwd)

Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 15:59:44 -0500
From: Esther Delisle <cyes@musica.mcgill.ca>

Because someone showed some interest in hearing what I have to say about
the so-called debate about Vichy and Quebec -which deals for a great part
with my first book and not with similarities and differences between the
province of Quebec during WW2 and the regime of Vichy- here is a short
note:

I am not yet a professor.

I would rather not discuss the problems I encountered at Laval University
as a Ph.D. student in political science.

I wrote very little, if nothing at all, about my so-called "federalist
politics" because they are of very little interest to anyone concerned,
including myself.

In my Ph.D. dissertation there is a chapter of over 60 pages on the
methodological approach I used to conduct my Ph.D research on extremist
right-wing nationalism and antisemitism in the province of Quebec from 1929
to 1939. It is the kind of methodological concerns that are rarely to be
found in such works, including the books written by Pierre Anctil, a civil
servant by profession.  In his book: Le Devoir, les Juifs et l'Immigration.
De Bourassa a Laurendeau, Anctil never stated the number of articles he
gathered for his research. Instead he wrote that taken together these
articles would fill a schoolboy's small notebook. "Colliges et relies, les
textes du Devoir portant d'une maniere ou d'une autre sur la communaute
juive de Montreal tiendraient dans un petit cahier d'ecolier (p.98)." For
my Ph.D. dissertation I read every issue of Le Devoir published between
1929 and 1939 and I used 1007 articles. At least I can give numbers. I read
too all the works published by Lionel Groulx from 1929 to 1939, all the
books and booklets published by the Jeune-Canada and all the issues of the
monthly l'Action nationale.

If some people -federalists or sovereignists- feel embarassed by having
Lionel Groulx as an icon of Quebec nationalism, it is their problem and not
mine. If they want to explain their choice, some people will hear their
explanation with interest.

Esther Delisle