Hidden in Plain Sight: Fascism in Quebec during the Second World War

Abstract

My doctoral dissertation on anti-Semitism and extreme right-wing nationalism in 1929–39 Quebec proved to be a thread that, once pulled, would reveal other aspects of Quebec history that had also been hidden in plain sight. The writing of the most prominent nationalists of the 1930s was available in most university libraries in Quebec. While some politicians acknowledged in their memoirs the influence of these intellectuals in their youth, the appeal of fascism and anti-Semitism was never mentioned. Their resounding silence was quickly shattered by reading the Université de Montréal (University of Montreal)’s Le Quartier Latin student newspaper, where articles praising fascism and denouncing the Jewish influence were common, and a little book that claimed that Pierre Elliott Trudeau had been a member of a revolutionary organisation that aimed at toppling the provincial government to establish an independent Quebec freed from democracy. Researching the French Nazi collaborators warmly received in Quebec after the Second World War led to a little-known man who became the personal ambassador to the Vatican of the premier of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis, during the Asbestos Strike of 1949. Combing through the files of some of the leading actors of that conflict in the Jesuits’ archives would reveal that the miners’ health threatened by asbestosis was a significant issue that the historiography of the event had neglected.