Lionel Groulx

Lionel -Adolphe Groulx ( born January 13, 1878 in Chenaux, † May 23 1967 in Vaudreuil ) was a Roman Catholic priest, historian and one of the most famous representatives of Québec nationalism.

Life

Groulx was the son of a farmer and woodcutter. He received a rudimentary formal education, built this from the seminar Ste -Thérèse and was formed in 1906 as a priest until 1909 in Europe. Apart from this three-year training, he taught from 1900 to 1915, first at the Collège de Valleyfield in Salaberry -de- Valleyfield in Montreal, then at the University of Montréal, where he held the first chair of Canadian History to 1949. In 1917 he co-founded the magazine Action Française, whose editor he became in 1920. He also founded the youth organization Association catholique de la jeunesse canadienne - française.

Groulx examined the founding of Canada and was a defender of minority rights of the Francophone Canadians. He emphasized, in view of the language dispute in Manitoba and in the First World War, in his work La Confédération canadienne ( Montreal 1918), the historical derivation of these rights from the colonial era. The main stages he saw the Quebec Act of 1774, in which Great Britain had recognized the minority rights of the French in North American colonial empire and who had been based on language, religion and jurisprudence, then the self-government rights ( responsible government ) had the similar rights have been granted and finally, in the founding of Canada from 1867, in which the autonomy of Québec and the crucial role of French Canadians came forward.

Groulx saw the founding of Canada is an aberration that should be offset by creation of an independent Quebec, and that the provincial government had the task of eliminating the economic, social, cultural and linguistic plight of the French nation. However, it he underestimated the internal conflicts within the francophone society, particularly the conflicts between clerics and nationalists.

1928 called him the University of Montréal on not to attack the Constitution, but refused Groulx to sign a corresponding paper. Instead, he agreed to be confined to historical subjects. So he finished the editorship of the paper L' action canadienne - française; already presented end of the year his appearance.

Lionel Groulx to ' major works include La Confédération canadienne ( Montreal 1918), Notre maître le passé (1937 ), Histoire du Canada français depuis la découverte (1951 ) and Notre grande aventure (1958). In his eyes, the conquest of New France was by Britain a national disaster, similar to this had already seen Adam Dollard des Ormeaux, he tried to rehabilitate as a historian. He told not until then widely held view, New France had escaped in this way the terror of the French Revolution. He repeatedly stressed the achievements of the Quebec Act of 1774 and the success of Robert Baldwin and Louis -Hippolyte Lafontaine, who had with their self- government in 1849 prevented the Assimilierungspläne Lord Durham.

In the Ligue d' Action Française hoped Groulx and his fellow francophone Canadians not only return the pride in their own history, but also to promote the economic revitalization of the province and at the same time act as an intellectual pioneer. The Catholic social teaching should prevent the emergence of socialist groups and improve capitalism, both the inner and outer mission should be strengthened. For this, the economic education should be improved. His teachings were received in the party program of the liberal National Action ( ALN ), which supported Groulx. However, it was the government of Maurice Duplessis hostile towards. Instead, he allied himself with the leader of the Liberals in Quebec, with Adélard Godbout, who from 1939 to 1944 led the province. But he also broke with this, as the liberals of the province of the national Liberal Party of Canada assumed. In the elections of 1944 supported Groulx and his fellow Bloc populaire Canadien the newly established under André Laurendeau, who was also later mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau. But this party broke up and disbanded after the 1948 elections.

Groulx founded the Institut d' histoire d' Amérique française in 1946, which issued from 1947 La revue d' histoire de l' Amérique française, a trade magazine, which is the leading for francophone historians in Canada today. Although he influenced many Québec and Montréal in particular intellectuals, but in many cases they rejected his conservatism, especially in religion question from. This was especially true for his successor Guy Frégault, but also for his opponent in the Delisle - Richler controversy. Mordecai Richler and Esther Delisle Groulx threw it against anti-Semitism. On the last day of his life his thirtieth book came from his pen: Constantes de vie.

Named after him, among other things, the station Lionel - Groulx metro Montreal.