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In this, he echoes the words of Claude Ryan, who many Anglophones assumed would take up their battle for them. “My advice to my anglophone friends,” he says, “is ... that they should ... learn the French language in a satisfactory manner, get involved in everything here — the caisses populaires, the unions, the political parties, the cultural activities, etc, .... Then on the basis of their mastery of the French language, they can begin acting for the defense and protection of their own rights.”
Jean-Guy Lavigne thinks of himself not as a French Canadian but as a French speaking North American. His conversation is sprinkled with references to articles in the American magazines he reads — Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Monthly. Eleven of the fourteen periodicals he subscribes to are American; none is from English Canada. He gave up on Maclean’s and Saturday Night years ago. There’s nothing distinctive about English Canadian culture, he says. Lavigne’s political heroes (apart from Gérin-Lajoie) are American. He likes quoting John Kennedy’s inaugural address, especially the part about passing the torch, although he admits, “It’s never easy to pass the torch.” He says, “Martin Luther King was a dreamer too.” The American civil rights movement means a great deal to him. Lyndon Johnson, he says, was a great president because on the one hand he legislated social change, on the other was wise enough to leave bargaining room to allow for individual differences.
Lavigne compares Bill 101 to “affirmative action” in the U.S. — the busing of children and the establishment of quotas at universities. Prominently displayed on his bookshelf is the Affirmative Action Compliance Manual. He has a framed statement by Whitney Young of the Urban League on the wall of his office: “Some practical advice to white employers who want to be fair, but can’t find enough qualified Negroes.”
I show Lavigne a recent letter-to-the-editor of Macleans’s by Pierre Berton about authoritarian aspects of Bill 101. “It’s very well for Berton to talk about liberalism,” says Lavigne. “But where was he when we needed protection? What’s he doing to protect French rights in Ontario? It’s easy to point the finger at us. The English always had freedom to do what they wanted. They were free to advertise in French. Why didn’t they?” Lavigne says he’d love to spend a couple of hours with Berton. He’d tell him a thing or two. He asks if anyone really thinks English speaking Canadians in Quebec are in danger. “If anything happened to them, there are 250-million English speaking people in North America.” He points to Israel as an example of a country that decided on its official language. It would be Hebrew rather than Yiddish because Yiddish was seen as the language of subjugation.
I quote the old maxim to Lavigne about the importance of laws not only being fair but being seen to be fair. Wouldn’t it be better not to press the school issue, after all, only a small number of children are involved. Or the issue of signs in French only. “No,” says Lavigne. “These things are symbols and symbols are important.” He talks bitterly about a different kind of symbolism that he says may seem petty. During the Canada-Russia hockey series, Foster Hewitt spent hours learning how to pronounce the Russian players’ names correctly. But he still couldn’t get “Savard” right. “It’s not hard to say ‘Savard,’” says Lavigne. “That’s a symbol too. We learned how to pronounce Diefenbaker’s name; he never learned to do the same thing with ours.”
Lavigne and other language officials I talk to think the solution to many of Quebec’s problems is within their grasp. A few months from now, once the corporate francization programmes are in place, Quebec will be well on its way to being as French as the other provinces are English. “What’s good for Toronto is good for Montreal,” says Lavigne with delight. “That’s the golden rule. What’s good for Ontario is good for Quebec.”
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