Recalling the question that divided families, and the night the No side won

There were a thousand broken dreams in Laurent M. Leclerc’s anguished expression the night of May 20, 1980, as he held his infant son, Benjamin, in his arms and wept.

The Yes side in Quebec’s first referendum on whether to pursue a path toward sovereignty had just conceded to the No side — the proposal of Premier René Lévesque’s separatist Parti Québécois government was defeated, 60 per cent to 40 per cent — and “the result that night was not the one I had hoped for,” Leclerc recalled in an interview with the Montreal Gazette as the 40th anniversary approached.

Then 29, he was among 5,000 PQ supporters gathered at the Paul Sauvé Arena to celebrate what they’d hoped would be a victory for the Yes side. Images of Leclerc’s tear-streaked face, captured by television cameras and beamed into homes across the country, embodied the heartbreak of many Quebecers that night.

The convoluted referendum question had asked Quebecers for permission to negotiate sovereignty — essentially, to choose between province and country. Emotions ran high during the five-week campaign as families, friends and neighbours took sides.

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“There were Quebec families who stopped talking to each other,” recalled Leclerc, now 69.

The English community was fairly united on the No side but in other communities “there were families in which you couldn’t talk about it,” recalled Quebec Community Groups Network president Geoffrey Chambers, who worked for the No camp.

Not Leclerc’s family, mind you. “We were never on the same side, but we respected the point of view of the other. You could argue but, at the end of the discussion, we remained family.

“At the time of the 1980 referendum, my parents were in the No camp and I was in the Yes camp. My paternal grandparents also voted Yes: My grandmother was born in Montreal and grew up on de la Gauchetière St. She would tell me of times when people in stores refused to serve her because she would not speak English. And that marked me.”

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His involvement with politics began at 16 when he joined the Mouvement Souveraineté-Association, a PQ forerunner, and attended small “assemblées de cuisine” in his community of St-Bruno-de-Montarville.

After the 1980 referendum, a disillusioned Leclerc gave up his party membership.

“Life had changed,” he reflected. “I had children — and less time for politics.”

Today neither he nor any of his six children identifies as separatist, he said. Benjamin, now 40, recently became a father; his infant daughter is Leclerc’s 15th grandchild.

“I can’t say I’m a federalist, but I consider myself more a nationalist than a separatist,” Leclerc said. To him, a nationalist is “sensitive to the francophone cause and the situation of francophones in Quebec, wants to promote the cause and wants us to be recognized as a nation, a founding people, but without wanting to be independent.”

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The referendum was fought on the identity issues of language and culture, much like the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, said Guy Lachapelle, a professor of political science at Concordia University. In 1980, he was a 25-year-old graduate student and an active Yes side supporter involved in pre-referendum polling. Several polls showed that most people were ready for negotiation, but not separation, he said.

“I call it a symbolic referendum,” he said. “The goal was essentially to make a statement. The project was sovereignty-association. The question was just about giving a mandate. After that, there was supposed to be a second referendum.”

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In a rousing speech on May 14, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau made it clear that “a No vote was a vote for constitutional change and a change in the distribution of power,” Lachapelle said. To him, Trudeau did not fulfil his promise.

Canada patriated its Constitution in 1982 from Britain — without Quebec signing on. When a 1987 attempt to draw Quebec in by recognizing its status as a distinct society, the Meech Lake Accord, fell apart, Quebecers viewed it as a rejection by English Canada. Another plan to bring Quebec into the Constitution by promising it greater autonomy, the 1992 Charlottetown Accord, also failed.

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Alienated Quebecers returned the PQ to power and Premier Jacques Parizeau promised a second referendum on sovereignty in 1995.The No side squeaked by with 50.58 per cent of the votes. To Lachapelle, the results meant “there was no winner, no loser.”

For Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies, the 1980 referendum was a Battle of the Titans, with two visionaries — Trudeau and Lévesque — pitted against each other. History, he believes, will view it as a sort of trial run for the 1995 referendum.

Were there to be another referendum, Leclerc mused, “I would have to see how to vote. I believe less; maybe I am disillusioned.”

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In 40 years he has become more of a centrist. “I have seen a lot. I have seen the PQ in power, seen all the good they did — and also the errors they made.”

He was disappointed, for instance, by the PQ government’s proposed secularism charter in 2012, which would have barred government employees from wearing such religious symbols as the Muslim veil, Jewish kippah or Sikh turban. (The bill died on the order paper when an election was called in 2014; in 2019 Premier François Legault’s government passed its own secularism law.)

“It shocked me personally,” Leclerc said. “I have friends in all communities and I hope that, in the 40 years ahead of us, we can build a nation that is inclusive and recognizes everyone, wherever they come from.”

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Recent stories of neglect and abandonment of Quebecers in long-term care are “scandalous,” he said. “But I see in the reaction of Quebecers their solidarity, and that has revived in me a pride in being a Quebecer and made me think: If we had been independent 40 years ago, what kind of situation would we be in now?

“As I see it, many political decisions taken during the past 40 years would not have been the same. All the constitutional decisions and the waste of time and energy invested in debating those decisions in the 15 years between 1980 and 1995: All that would never have happened.”

sschwartz@postmedia.com