Restoring Parizeau’s legacy

By Nicole Findlay

Anne Trepanier recently lent her expertise on Quebec’s emerging identity to an upcoming documentary Enquête Parizeau. The film will focus on the legacy of Jacques Parizeau and his impact on the redefinition of Quebec as a nation. 

Trepanier, the first scholar hired in the School of Canadian Studies to address specifically Quebec and Quebec Studies, is the leading authority on the rhetoric of the 1995 sovereignty campaign.  While researching her first book, Un discours à plusieurs voix. La grammaire du OUI en 1995, Trepanier examined the different speeches of the vast political spectrum representing the “yes” side.  

She determined that Jacques Parizeau represented the point of consensus between the left and the right.

Parizeau was the first French-Canadian to receive a Ph.D from the London School of Economics, and was respected by the economists internationally.

Initially a federalist, he would become a key technocrat of the quiet revolution and finally a voice of the sovereigntist movement.

 Parizeau’s political and economic accomplishments were overshadowed when he attributed the results of the 1995 referendum to the “ethnic vote”. The declaration was traumatic for the sovereigntists Trepanier says, but also led to greater introspection in Quebec as to who is meant by “nous” in nous autres.
�
From the documents produced during the campaign, Trepanier went back in Quebec’s National History. Looking closely at hundreds of historical narratives, she noted the emergence of four distinct themes that she says underpin the “zeitgeist” of Quebec’s identity.  These include a sense of danger that the Quebecois would be culturally subsumed, and a sense of belonging. “Ex-centering”, or the notion that power is always located somewhere else, in Ottawa or previously in France, but never at the centre of actual decision-making.  The last of these elements is a sense of obligation to rebuild Quebec’s legacy.

Her conclusions and ongoing questions are presented in her last book La rénovation de l’héritage démocratique : entre fondation et refondation.

“I visualize a calder mobile when describing the ever-present four themes. They shift configuration and cast different shadows as a result,” said Trepanier.  “These elements combine to form the zeitgeist of Quebec’s identity.”

Trepanier coined the term “re-foundation” to describe the evolution and emergence of Quebec’s collective identity amidst reinterpretations of historical events. This re-foundation positions Quebec as a nation, and provides by politicians, intellectuals and artists with a link between past and present.
�
Enquête Parizeau, directed by film maker Marie Nadeau, is one of a series of four documentaries that will be aired on French-Canadian television channel Historia. Available only in French, the film will air this fall to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the October Crisis.