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Authors: Nino Ricci
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an anti-conscription rally as a momentary effort that had less to do with the war than with the affront to democracy shown by the federal government’s reversal on conscription. In reality, however, Trudeau’s speech was the culmination of many weeks of involvement in a federal by-election on behalf of the anticonscription candidate Jean Drapeau. The speech itself, given at a rally in the campaign’s final days, made such an impression that Le Devoir quoted great portions of it. Speaking of the hysteria he claimed the government was stirring up of an imminent German invasion, Trudeau said he“feared the peaceful invasion of immigrants”—often a code word for Jews—“more than the armed invasion of the enemy.” While in the past, he went on, the French Canadians had had to fight against the Iroquois, “today it is against other savages” they had to fight, namely the Mackenzie King Liberals in Ottawa.
All of this went far beyond the innocent defence of democratic principles into the truly hateful. It was demagoguery; it was, in this man who would later be known by the motto “Reason over passion,” an appeal to the basest impulses. At twenty-three, Trudeau was still clearly of his times rather than above them. As at Brébeuf, he was still attracted to the rhetoric of revolution, but as then, he took care to apply it in a way more likely to earn him accolades than billy clubs.
The other holdover from Brébeuf, however, was Trudeau’s telltale playfulness. The speech was full of inside jokes and puns, playing throughout on the name Drapeau, or flag, and that of Drapeau’s rival, La Flèche, or arrow. It ended with the line “Enough of cataplasmes [bandages], bring on the cataclysms,” exactly the sort of clever formulation the young Trudeau revelled in, at once rousing and comic. As odious as the speech was, then, it bore the trace of the same doubleness as his play, Dupés, a tone of mockery whose target remained unclear. Self-mockery, perhaps, but also a kind ofsubconscious escape clause, as if, in a pinch, one could claim to others, or to oneself, not to have been speaking seriously. The stakes were higher now than at Brébeuf—this was the real world, with real consequences—but Trudeau still seemed to be hiding behind the same mask, half-denying even as he affirmed. Perhaps that was what lay behind his later claim that he hadn’t involved himself much in politics during the war: the sense that he hadn’t, really, not in some essential part of himself, had merely been playing a role. In one of his pranks during the war years, he and a friend dressed up in old Prussian uniforms and toured the countryside on their Harleys calling on friends and frightening passersby, who perhaps thought that the Huns had truly arrived at their shores.
If he was playing a role, however, he seemed prepared to take it to extremes. At Brébeuf, Trudeau had come under the influence of one of the more politicized teachers, Father Rodolphe Dubé, better known by his pen name, François Hertel. In 1939 Hertel had published Le beau risque, a nationalist coming-of-age tale in which the young Pierre Martel turns away from the Anglicized and Americanized values of his father toward a renewed Catholicism and devotion to his patrie . Martel’s life so clearly paralleled Trudeau’s that Hertel had surely used him as a model, though Trudeau,who reviewed the book in his journal, gave no indication of recognizing the resemblances.
After leaving Brébeuf, Trudeau kept up contact with Hertel, who was a frequent guest at the Trudeau home. In Young Trudeau, the Nemnis have made a convincing case that Trudeau was involved with Hertel and several of his old Brébeuf schoolmates in a secret society called “ les X ” or “L.X.,” also referred to as les Frères chasseurs . The society’s mission was the establishment of an independent Quebec organized on Catholic and corporatist—in other words, fascist—principles. Through the summer
All of this went far beyond the innocent defence of democratic principles into the truly hateful. It was demagoguery; it was, in this man who would later be known by the motto “Reason over passion,” an appeal to the basest impulses. At twenty-three, Trudeau was still clearly of his times rather than above them. As at Brébeuf, he was still attracted to the rhetoric of revolution, but as then, he took care to apply it in a way more likely to earn him accolades than billy clubs.
The other holdover from Brébeuf, however, was Trudeau’s telltale playfulness. The speech was full of inside jokes and puns, playing throughout on the name Drapeau, or flag, and that of Drapeau’s rival, La Flèche, or arrow. It ended with the line “Enough of cataplasmes [bandages], bring on the cataclysms,” exactly the sort of clever formulation the young Trudeau revelled in, at once rousing and comic. As odious as the speech was, then, it bore the trace of the same doubleness as his play, Dupés, a tone of mockery whose target remained unclear. Self-mockery, perhaps, but also a kind ofsubconscious escape clause, as if, in a pinch, one could claim to others, or to oneself, not to have been speaking seriously. The stakes were higher now than at Brébeuf—this was the real world, with real consequences—but Trudeau still seemed to be hiding behind the same mask, half-denying even as he affirmed. Perhaps that was what lay behind his later claim that he hadn’t involved himself much in politics during the war: the sense that he hadn’t, really, not in some essential part of himself, had merely been playing a role. In one of his pranks during the war years, he and a friend dressed up in old Prussian uniforms and toured the countryside on their Harleys calling on friends and frightening passersby, who perhaps thought that the Huns had truly arrived at their shores.
If he was playing a role, however, he seemed prepared to take it to extremes. At Brébeuf, Trudeau had come under the influence of one of the more politicized teachers, Father Rodolphe Dubé, better known by his pen name, François Hertel. In 1939 Hertel had published Le beau risque, a nationalist coming-of-age tale in which the young Pierre Martel turns away from the Anglicized and Americanized values of his father toward a renewed Catholicism and devotion to his patrie . Martel’s life so clearly paralleled Trudeau’s that Hertel had surely used him as a model, though Trudeau,who reviewed the book in his journal, gave no indication of recognizing the resemblances.
After leaving Brébeuf, Trudeau kept up contact with Hertel, who was a frequent guest at the Trudeau home. In Young Trudeau, the Nemnis have made a convincing case that Trudeau was involved with Hertel and several of his old Brébeuf schoolmates in a secret society called “ les X ” or “L.X.,” also referred to as les Frères chasseurs . The society’s mission was the establishment of an independent Quebec organized on Catholic and corporatist—in other words, fascist—principles. Through the summer
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