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Esther Delisle | |
|---|---|
 Delisle in Montreal, 1992 | |
| Born | 1954 (age 69–70) Quebec City, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929–1939 |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Université Laval (PhD) |
Esther Delisle (born 1954) is a Canadian historian and author. [1]
Born and raised in Quebec City, she completed her BA and MA in political science at Université Laval and taught political theory at a CEGEP, and also worked as a researcher for The Fifth Estate on CBC Television. She then studied for three years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel before returning to Laval to complete her doctorate, following which she did post-doctoral studies at the department of history at McGill University.
Her doctoral thesis, in which she adduced evidence of a history of antisemitism and support for European fascism among Quebec nationalists of the 1930s, was controversial long before it was published. The book was strongly critical of the nationalist historian Lionel Groulx and the newspaper Le Devoir . The normal time for a thesis at Université Laval to be approved was three months; her committee delayed a decision for almost two years, until articles about the delay and the controversy surrounding her work had appeared in the French- and English-language press.
In 1993, she published a book based on her doctoral political science thesis, short-titled The Traitor and the Jew . The book aroused considerable hostility; when she appeared at one Quebec bookstore, the manager of the shopping mall cut the electricity to the bookstore in order to interfere with her book signing. (Different versions of this incident appear in Sara Scott, "The Lonely Passion of Esther Delisle", Elm Street, April 1998, p. 97, and Sheli Teitelbaum, "Quebec and French Nazis", The Canadian Jewish News , December 15, 1994, reprinted from The Jerusalem Report .) A 2002 documentary film by Eric R. Scott titled Je me souviens recounts Delisle's story using rare archival footage with speeches and commentaries by some of Quebec's leading nationalist figures of the time.
The controversy over whether or not Quebec society is or was antisemitic simplifies her thesis and has obscured the more important themes of her work.[ according to whom? ] For Delisle, Quebecers were not uniformly antisemitic; antisemitism was a disease of Quebec intellectuals rather than of the common people, part and parcel of their condemnation of the vices of liberalism, modernity, urbanism, not to mention movies and jazz music and other aspects of American culture, all of which they saw as dangers to their conception of the ideal Quebec society. She attacks as myth the beliefs put forward by historians such as Lionel Groulx that the Québécois are a racially and ethnically homogeneous group of pure descent from French Catholics who immigrated to New France. She argues that the Quebec intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s were far less isolated and more deeply influenced by the intellectual currents in Europe, particularly the nationalism of the extreme right, than is described in most Quebec histories of the period.
In 1998, Delisle published, Myths, Memories and Lies , an account of how some members of Quebec's elite, nationalist and federalist, supported the French Nazi collaborator military officer Philippe Pétain and his Vichy government within German-occupied France during World War II and also helped bring other French collaborators to safety in Quebec after the conflict ended in Europe.
Historian Gérard Bouchard, who also published a book critical of Lionel Groulx, has been very critical of The Traitor and the Jew. In a letter to Le Devoir, published on May 1, 2003, he contended that only 14 of 58 quotes of Lionel Groulx in Delisle's thesis are accurate, and that the 44 other quotes contain 56 irregularities, including additions and amputations of the text, word replacements that change the meaning, and quotes that are not found in the text where Delisle claims they are. He asserts that the magnitude of inaccuracy discourages him from even considering Delisle's work as a basis for his own criticism of Groulx (Les Deux Chanoines – Contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx, 2003). Delisle admitted to 13 irregularities in the references of her book and later corrected citations for some of the disputed quotations.
Bouchard and Delisle agree that Groulx expressed antisemitic opinions. For Bouchard, these opinions do not taint Groulx's scholarship or secular Quebec nationalism because Groulx's antisemitism is seen as a personal bias unrelated or peripheral to his academic work. Delisle, by contrast, argues that antisemitism is an integral component of Groulx's race-based nationalism and his enthusiasm for right-wing authoritarian governments.
Antisemitism has increased greatly in the Arab world since the beginning of the 20th century, for several reasons: the dissolution and breakdown of the Ottoman Empire and traditional Islamic society; European influence, brought about by Western imperialism and Arab Christians; Nazi propaganda and relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world; resentment over Jewish nationalism; the rise of Arab nationalism; and the widespread proliferation of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.
Lionel Groulx was a Canadian Roman Catholic priest, historian, professor, public intellectual and Quebec nationalist.
Joseph-Napoléon-Henri Bourassa was a French Canadian political leader and publisher. In 1899, Bourassa was outspoken against the British government's request for Canada to send a militia to fight for Britain in the Second Boer War. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier's compromise was to send a volunteer force, but the seeds were sown for future conscription protests during the World Wars of the next half-century. Bourassa unsuccessfully challenged the proposal to build warships to help protect the empire. He led the opposition to conscription during World War I and argued that Canada's interests were not at stake. He opposed Catholic bishops who defended military support of Britain and its allies. Bourassa was an ideological father of French-Canadian nationalism. Bourassa was also a defining force in forging French Canada's attitude to the Canadian Confederation of 1867.
Le Devoir is a French-language newspaper published in Montreal and distributed in Quebec and throughout Canada. It was founded by journalist and politician Henri Bourassa in 1910.
Quebec nationalism or Québécois nationalism is a feeling and a political doctrine that prioritizes cultural belonging to, the defence of the interests of, and the recognition of the political legitimacy of the Québécois nation, particularly its French Canadian population. It has been a movement and a central issue in Quebec politics since the beginning of the 19th century. Québécois nationalism has seen several political, ideological and partisan variations and incarnations over the years.
Gérard Bouchard is a Canadian historian and sociologist affiliated with the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Born on 26 December 1943 in Jonquière, Quebec, he obtained his master's degree in sociology from Université Laval in 1968 and later obtained his PhD in history from the University of Paris in 1971. Bouchard had authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited 26 books, and published 230 papers in scientific journals as of 2005.
L'Action nationale is a French-language monthly published in Quebec, Canada.
Fernand Ouellet was a French Canadian historian, author and educator.
The Traitor and the Jew, a history by Esther Delisle, was published in French in 1992. She documented the history of antisemitism and support of fascism among Quebec nationalists and intellectuals during the 1930s and '40s.
Anti-Quebec sentiment is a form of prejudice which is expressed toward the government, culture, and/or the francophone people of Quebec. This prejudice must be distinguished from legitimate criticism of Quebec society or the Government of Quebec, though the question of what qualifies as legitimate criticism and mere prejudice is itself controversial. Some critics argue that allegations of Quebec bashing are sometimes used to deflect legitimate criticism of Quebec society, government, or public policies.
Young Trudeau: 1919-1944: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada is the intellectual biography of Pierre Trudeau, the former Prime Minister of Canada, that deals with his parents, childhood, and education in the province of Quebec from his birth in 1919 until November 1944 when he left to study at Harvard University.
Je me souviens is a 2002 documentary film about antisemitism and pro-Nazi sympathies in Quebec during the 1930s through post World War II made by Montreal filmmaker Eric Richard Scott. The title of the film is French for I remember, and is the official motto of Quebec. The film was inspired by The Traitor and the Jew (1992-1993), a history of Quebec from 1929-1939, showing the links among antisemitism, nationalism, and fascism among Quebec Catholic intellectuals.
The French term pure laine, refers to Québécois people of full French Canadian ancestry, meaning those descended from the original settlers of New France who arrived during the 17th and 18th centuries. Terms with a similar meaning include de souche and old stock as in "Old Stock Canadians".
Joseph-Edmond-André Laurendeau was a journalist, politician, co-chair of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, and playwright in Quebec, Canada. He is usually referred to as André Laurendeau. He was active in Québécois life, in various spheres and capacities, for three decades. Laurendeau's career also "spanned the most turbulent periods in the history of Canada".
The Delisle–Richler controversy is the name given by academics to an historical controversy in Canadian history surrounding allegations of antisemitism made by Mordecai Richler and Esther Delisle on several pre-World War II Quebec personalities, notably against the priest-historian Lionel Groulx.
Clerico-Nationalism was a right-wing ideology current in Quebec from the years after World War I until the end of the 1950s, from the premiership of Maurice Duplessis until the Quiet Revolution. Clerico-nationalism was a traditionalist, religious form of French Canadian nationalism focused on the Roman Catholic Church. In France, a similar ideology was referred to as National Catholicism.
Paul Bouchard (1908–1997) was a Canadian (Québécois) lawyer, right-wing politician, and journalist.
La Nation was a weekly review covering Canadian (Québécois) politics and literature. It was directed by Paul Bouchard and ran from 1936 to 1939. It had a right wing sovereigntist, Quebec nationalist stance, and took for its motto "Pour un État libre français en Amérique".
Benoît Lacroix was a Quebec theologian, philosopher, Dominican priest, professor in medieval studies and historian of the Medieval period, and author of almost 50 works and a great number of articles.
Denyse Baillargeon, born in Verdun in 1954, is a Canadian historian and specialist in the social history of women, the family, and health in Québec. She was a professor of history at the Université de Montréal from 1994 to 2018.
