History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.

History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Three.




     During most of the 1950's in when I was in my teenage years, I didn't see any signs of what later historians  and writers, who were mostly Quebecois called "The Great Darkness' or "Le Grand Noirceur". They were referring to Quebec during the reign of Union Nationale premier Maurice Duplessis,.
     Yet when I ended up at McGill University in the early 1960's my rosy view of the world started to crumble. At university, surrounded by very clever and rich people I soon saw how poor my parents were. Soon I travelled across North America and saw some horrible places. I also sat on lovely beaches, drove through prosperous suburbs and strolled through shopping malls stuffed with consumer goods.
    Soon I tired of life in Montreal and by the mid-1960's I left Montreal for the west coast. Yet whatever the 1950's was for others in Quebec, it wasn't a time of a great darkness for me. I was young and healthy and optimistic.
    Now Pierre Elliott Trudeau often referred to the 1950's as a time of "The Great Darkness".  Yet Trudeau, a future prime minister of Canada had a great time in that era. He lived with his widowed mother in the wealthy suburb of Outremont. He travelled to the Soviet Union in 1952 and to Communist-ruled China in 1960. Going to the Soviet Union in 1952 could have exposed Trudeau to the wrath of Maurice Duplessis whose government sometimes imposed the so-called Padlock Law on communists and their sympathizers. Police could padlock someone's residence and lock that person and their family out of their home.
   "In the 1950's," one left leaning man told me," the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the western world was in full swing. Many communist and their allies were in Canada lived under constant police surveillance and many were harassed by the law. I know I was." Yet Trudeau's great wealth and his family connections shielded him from any penalties.
     As mentioned,  Trudeau also went to China with his friend Jacques Hebert. At this time the very leftist communist government of China was a virtual outcast in the western world. Still Trudeau and Hebert came back to Canada without any great fear and no one bothered them. They even wrote a book about their China odyssey called 'Two Innocents in China'. By 1960 Duplesis was dead and the new Liberal Quebec government lifted or scrapped a lot of heavy handed Union Nationale laws.
Still, Trudeau and Hebert did take risks going to China.
     As well as travelling around the world, Trudeau also led a very active social life. He took out one well-connected French Canadian woman after another. He also of course wrote many articles that slammed the Quebec government of  Duplessis. Yet he had a great time in the 1950's. There was no darkness in his life great or otherwise. He certainly enjoyed the good things of life then and later.