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

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




   Michael Bliss was just one historian that wrote books on Canadian politics. Another man who wrote a lot about Canadian politics and history was Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Yet Trudeau wrote his most incisive essays on Canada before he became prime minister. And most of his articles were written about the province of Quebec.
         What was Quebec like in the 1950's when Trudeau wrote many of his articles? "The province of Quebec," wrote Stephen Clarkson and Sandra Gwyn in their biography of Trudeau, "had attained a measure of prosperity and social calm under the firm hand of Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis." Allied to the Catholic Church hierarchy and Anglo-American businessmen, Duplessis and his Union Nationale government ruled Quebec with an iron hand.
     Workers who went on strike in industrial towns like Asbestos in 1949 and Murdochville in 1957 faced terrible violence and repression from scabs and the Quebec Provincial Police. Duplessis also refused to take any federal money for universities and hospital insurance. Bribery of politicians was widespread and Duplessis starved social programs.
     Trudeau as a young man bristled with anger at the Duplessis government. After studying in the U.S. of A. and in England and Europe, he teamed up with people connected with the small magazine called 'Cite Libre'. Here he and other members of the magazine's staff called for many much-needed reforms. They later called the era of Duplessis who ruled Quebec from the mid-1930's to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959 "Le Grand Noirceur" or "The Great Darkness".
    Yet I lived through this period that lasted into the 1950's and I enjoyed myself a lot . In fact my teenage years that took place in the 1950's were some of the happiest times of my life. Not until I reached my 40's, was I  as happy as I was in my teenage years. If someone had come up to me and told me in the late 1950's that I was living in "The Great Darkness", I would have replied "You must be kidding."
     Now at that time, my family was dirt poor. My father landed in Quebec City in 1953 with a measly $160 in his pocket which today would be about $1,000., and he had  a wife and three young children to support.  For the next twelve years, my mother and father just struggled to survive. "Your family was poor when you came to Canada," an economist cousin told me years later. "And in Canada you just got poorer." Bailiffs, lawyers and bill collectors hounded my parents for unpaid bills that usually remained unpaid. Irate landlords kicked us out of one apartment after another when we fell behind in paying the rent.  Yet because I was young and healthy and hopeful, I was happy.
      For others life was good, or at least an improvement on the Depression era of the 1930's and the war years of the 1940's. Inflation was tamed and unemployment remained low. "The 1950's were an age of innocence," B.C. premier Dave Barrett once said. This was true. The ugly side of the 1950's such as residential schools remained out of sight and out of mind. Corruption in politics and business often went unexplored
      Hardcore drugs like cocaine, heroin, and crystal metamphetamines didn't appear in any district where I lived. Even marijuana didn't show up. The 1950's truly was an age of innocence.