Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney speaks to supporters during a gathering to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his forming a majority government in Montreal, on Sept. 17, 2009.Shaun Best/Reuters
It is a testimony to the raw affection that Brian Mulroney inspired among Quebeckers that his death brought together long-time political rivals to mourn the former prime minster who had devoted so much of his political career to strengthening the French-speaking province’s place within Canada.
There they were, side by side, on both TVA and Radio-Canada on Thursday evening, sharing sometimes teary reminiscences about their adventures in Mulroneyland.
There was Lucien Bouchard, the Laval University law-school chum who had gone on to become a minister in Mr. Mulroney’s cabinet only to turn his back on his government, and their 30-year friendship, over the 1987 Meech Lake accord.
Beside him, Jean Charest, the Mulroney cabinet colleague whom Mr. Bouchard had blamed for diluting Meech’s provisions to win over three English-Canadian premiers who had refused to ratify the accord without changes.
Mr. Bouchard’s 1990 resignation had a Shakespearean quality. It was one of the great betrayals in Canadian politics – though just who betrayed whom remains a matter of debate in Quebec, no matter how much Mr. Bouchard is vilified in the rest of Canada.
What is beyond doubt is that Mr. Bouchard’s resignation not only shattered his nearly fraternal bond with Mr. Mulroney, causing a deep wound for both, but it led to the creation of the Bloc Québécois and helped pave the way for the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum. Mr. Bouchard led the Yes forces; Mr. Charest, by then leader the federal Progressive Conservative Party, was the de facto leader of the No side, and nicknamed “Captain Canada.” Both men went on to become Quebec premiers.
Yet, on Thursday evening, it almost seemed as if all the bad blood accumulated over the decades had been flushed from their veins, as the two men united to pay tribute to their mutual political mentor. Mr. Bouchard, who only rarely gives interviews these days, even made news by revealing that he had recently reconciled with Mr. Mulroney. His voice cracked with emotion, and regret.
“My sadness is doubled with nostalgia for the years that were taken away from us. They were not taken away by others, it was us who took them away because of our political disagreements,” Mr. Bouchard said on Radio-Canada. “Not minor disagreements, large ones, [owing to] deep convictions, but especially painful ones because they attacked a friendship that dated back to our youth.”
Now 85, Mr. Bouchard praised Meech – which would have recognized Quebec as a “distinct society” within Canada in the Constitution – as an “extraordinary” achievement that “disintegrated” during the three-year ratification period as newly elected premiers who had not been party to the 1987 deal demanded changes. Mr. Charest had led a House of Commons committee that proposed revisions that Mr. Bouchard ultimately rejected. The accord died when two provinces, Manitoba and Newfoundland, failed to ratify it before the mid-1990 deadline.
By then, Quebeckers, too, had soured on the accord as anti-Meech demonstrations in English Canada – including one in Brockville, Ont., during which the Quebec flag was desecrated – sent support for sovereignty skyrocketing.
They never soured on Mr. Mulroney, however. They believed his 1984 campaign vow to get Quebec to sign on to the 1982 Constitution “with honour and enthusiasm” had come from the heart. They believed his pledge to make good on Pierre Trudeau’s unfulfilled promise (made during the 1980 referendum campaign) to meet Quebec’s historic demands for special recognition and language protections. They handed his Tories 58 of Quebec’s 75 Commons seats in 1984, and 63 in 1988, as a result.
Mr. Mulroney was one of them, after all. Though an anglophone, the “p’tit gars de Baie-Comeau” had more in common with the French-speaking Québécois he grew up alongside on the remote North Shore of the St. Lawrence River than the English-speaking bosses who ran the paper mill where his Irish-Canadian father worked as an electrician. He also possessed the gift of the gab in both official languages, which he mastered with uncommon grace, and could charm anyone he met.
Meech’s demise was the greatest personal and professional tragedy of Mr. Mulroney’s political life, and one from which he never recovered. The accord’s ratification would have ensured his place in history as a modern-day father of Confederation by renewing the pact between “two founding nations” that had always been at the core of his, and Quebeckers’, vision of Canada. He blamed Pierre Trudeau for sabotaging the initial consensus around Meech for selfish reasons, denying Mr. Mulroney the achievement Mr. Trudeau had himself failed to secure in 1982.
In his 2007 memoirs, Mr. Mulroney wrote that he was “still intrigued by the logic of those who earnestly defend the 1982 compromises, which led to an incomplete constitutional agreement, yet condemn the relatively modest compromises of Meech Lake, which produced unanimity and would have obtained the belated consent of Quebec to the 1982 Constitution, thereby strengthening the cause of Canada’s unity.”
The p’tit gars de Baie-Comeau held that view to the end. Quebeckers will never forget him for it.
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