The Traitor and the Jew
Encyclopedia
The Traitor and the Jew (Full title: The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929-1939) is a 1992 book of non-fiction
by Quebec
political scientist Esther Delisle
Ph.D.
.
First published in the French language
by L'Étincelle as Le traître et le Juif : Lionel Groulx, le Devoir et le délire du nationalisme d'extrême droite dans la province de Québec, 1929-1939, in 1993 it was published in the English language
by Robert Davies Publishing of Montreal
(ISBN 1-895854-01-6). Based on her doctoral
thesis
, Delisle details the history of antisemitism and support of fascism
among Quebec
nationalists
during the 1930s and '40s.
(1878-1967), a Roman Catholic priest
and a leading intellectual, the nationalist review L'Action nationale
and the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir
. Her allegations of pseudonymous antisemitic articles by Groulx, and her assertion that he was an active Fascist sympathizer, caused great controversy, as did her reporting of antisemitic opinion pieces and articles that had been published in the respected intellectual Quebec newspaper Le Devoir during the 1930s.
Her thesis was controversial even before it was published, as conflicts over it amongst her thesis committee delayed its approval; although the normal waiting period for approval of a thesis at Université Laval
was three to six months, the approval of hers was delayed for two years. Her analysis of Groulx and Le Devoir received a sympathetic treatment in an early article on her in the Quebec newsmagazine. L'Actualité magazine
However, the treatment she received changed for the worse after her work was quoted with approval in Mordecai Richler
's controversial book Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!; Delisle has said that the reaction among the French Canadian public to his praise was as if she had been "embraced by the Devil".
In a March 1, 1997, cover story titled Le mythe du Québec fasciste (The Myth of a Fascist Quebec), L'Actualité revisited the controversy around Delisle's doctoral thesis. A profile of Groulx also appeared in the same issue; both articles acknowledged Groulx's antisemitism and the general favourable attitude of the Roman Catholic church
towards fascist doctrine during the 1930s. Pierre Lemieux
, an economist and author wrote: "The magazine's attack is much weakened by Claude Ryan
, editor of Le Devoir in the 1970s, declaring that he has changed his mind and come close to Delisle's interpretation after reading her book."
However, the same newsmagazine made a claim, never substantiated, that Delisle had been subsidized by Jewish organizations, and the claim was repeated on television by former Parti Québécois
cabinet minister Claude Charron
while introducing a 2002 broadcast on Canal D
of Je me souviens
, the Eric R. Scott
documentary about Delisle's book. Outraged at what both Scott and Delisle called an absolute falsehood, they asked Canal D to rebroadcast the documentary because it was introduced in a way they considered to be defamatory and inaccurate.
Groulx is a revered figure to many French Quebecers who see him as one of the fathers of Quebec nationalism, although his actual writings are little read today. A station on the Montreal Metro
as well as schools, streets, lakes, and a chain of mountains in Quebec are named for him. In order to separate his political and literary activities from his academic work, Groulx wrote journalism and novels under numerous pseudonyms. In her book, Delisle claimed that Groulx, under the pseudonym Jacques Brassier, had written in 1933 in L'Action nationale: "Within six months or a year, the Jewish problem could be resolved, not only in Montreal but from one end of the province of Quebec to the other. There would be no more Jews here other than those who could survive by living off one another."
Referring to Groulx and the Le Devoir newspaper, Francine Dubé wrote in the National Post
on April 24, 2002 that "the evidence Delisle has unearthed seems to leave no doubt that both were anti-Semitic and racist." And, also in 2002, the Montreal Gazette referred to "anti-Semitism and pro-fascist sympathies that were common among this province's (Quebec) French-speaking elite in the 1930s." Further support for Delisle's writings come from a variety of sources.
In a 1994 edition of The Canadian Historical Review Irving Abella
wrote: "Clearly Delisle's message is discomfiting to many French-Canadian nationalists and it should be. She portrays a nationalism which was racist, paranoid, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic. Yet its spokesmen and ideologues were not cranks, but rather the leaders of French-Canadian society, its clerics, academics, and journalists - people who were universally admired and listened to."
Claude Bélanger, Department of History, at Marianopolis College
stated: "Anti-semitism was alive and well among the ultramontane
nationalists
of the period of 1890 to 1945" and "These anti-semitic views were propounded broadly and openly from about 1890 to 1945." Bélanger refers to Delisle's book and the antisemitism in Quebec as also recounted by Pierre Anctil in his 1988 book "Le Devoir, les Juifs et l'immigration."
Gary Evans, historian, author, and professor at the University of Ottawa
said: "Academic Esther Delisle angrily attacks the Establishment for its position of "Everyone knows, but no one should say" with regard to her own attempts to reveal Quebec's shameful intellectual past, including a postwar policy of welcoming Nazi collaborators from France
and of trivializing the Holocaust."
in 1994, Gary Caldwell, a sociologist and demographer who is a member of the governing national council of the Parti Québécois
, asserted in essence that:
Caldwell accused Université Laval of disloyalty to the French Canadian community for having granted Delisle a doctorate.
Methodological criticism of Delisle's work has also been made by historian Gérard Bouchard
in his work Les Deux Chanoines - Contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx published in 2003. On page 19 of his work, Bouchard warns the reader that he chose not to use Delisle's book Le traître et le Juif : Lionel Groulx, Le Devoir et Le délire du nationalisme d'extrême droite dans la province de Québec, 1929-1939 as a reference because according to his own verification, it contains to many errors in its references. To support his claim, he provides the result of his verification which had him conclude that among 57 references to texts by Groulx supposedly published in L'Action nationale between 1933 and 1939, 23 could not be found and 5 others were not exact.
Esther Delisle contested the results of Bouchard's verification in a letter published in Le Devoir on April 11, 2003. She also had her lawyer submit a formal notice to have Bouchard withdraw the assertions he made on page 19 of his book. In this communication, she provided Bouchard with clarifications on the sources she used in her work and recognized 13 irregularities in her references.
In response, Bouchard wrote a letter to Le Devoir published on May 1, 2003 in which he made public the results of a second and, he claimed, more thorough verification. In the letter, he asserted that :
Both Bouchard and Caldwell acknowledge that Groulx at times expressed antisemitic opinions; they argue that these opinions do not taint his scholarship or secular Quebec nationalism, either because the antisemitism arises from Groulx' Catholic beliefs or because it is a personal bias unrelated or peripheral to his academic work. Delisle, by contrast, argues that antisemitism is an integral component of Groulx' race-based nationalism and his enthusiasm for right-wing authoritarian governments.
and Esther Delisle
against several pre-WW2 Quebec intellectuals, including Groulx.
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
by Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
political scientist Esther Delisle
Esther Delisle
Esther Delisle Ph.D. is a French Canadian historian and author of historical works from Quebec.Born and raised in Quebec City, she completed her BA and MA in political science at Université Laval in Sainte-Foy, Quebec, and taught political theory at a Quebec CEGEP and worked as a researcher for...
Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
.
First published in the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
by L'Étincelle as Le traître et le Juif : Lionel Groulx, le Devoir et le délire du nationalisme d'extrême droite dans la province de Québec, 1929-1939, in 1993 it was published in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
by Robert Davies Publishing of Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
(ISBN 1-895854-01-6). Based on her doctoral
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
, Delisle details the history of antisemitism and support of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
among Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
nationalists
Quebec nationalism
Quebec nationalism is a nationalist movement in the Canadian province of Quebec .-1534–1774:Canada was first a french colony. Jacques Cartier claimed it for France in 1534, and permanent French settlement began in 1608. It was part of New France, which constituted all French colonies in North America...
during the 1930s and '40s.
Controversy
Delisle provided hundreds of antisemitic quotations from or attributed to Lionel GroulxLionel Groulx
Lionel-Adolphe Groulx was a Roman Catholic priest, historian and Quebec nationalist. -Early life and ordination:Groulx was born at Chenaux, Quebec, Canada, the son of a farmer and lumberjack, and died in Vaudreuil, Quebec. After his seminary training and studies in Europe, he taught at Valleyfield...
(1878-1967), a Roman Catholic priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
and a leading intellectual, the nationalist review L'Action nationale
L'Action nationale
L'Action nationale is a French-language monthly published in Quebec, Canada.The magazine publishes critical analysis of Quebec's linguistic, social, cultural and economic realities...
and the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir
Le Devoir
Le Devoir is a French-language newspaper published in Montreal and distributed in Quebec and the rest of Canada. It was founded by journalist, politician, and nationalist Henri Bourassa in 1910....
. Her allegations of pseudonymous antisemitic articles by Groulx, and her assertion that he was an active Fascist sympathizer, caused great controversy, as did her reporting of antisemitic opinion pieces and articles that had been published in the respected intellectual Quebec newspaper Le Devoir during the 1930s.
Her thesis was controversial even before it was published, as conflicts over it amongst her thesis committee delayed its approval; although the normal waiting period for approval of a thesis at Université Laval
Université Laval
Laval University is the oldest centre of education in Canada and was the first institution in North America to offer higher education in French...
was three to six months, the approval of hers was delayed for two years. Her analysis of Groulx and Le Devoir received a sympathetic treatment in an early article on her in the Quebec newsmagazine. L'Actualité magazine
L'actualité
L'actualité is a Canadian French-language news and general interest magazine published in Montreal by Les Éditions Rogers, which is owned by Rogers Communications. The magazine has over a million readers, according to Canada's Print Measurement Bureau, from its circulation which is mainly...
However, the treatment she received changed for the worse after her work was quoted with approval in Mordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler, CC was a Canadian Jewish author, screenwriter and essayist. A leading critic called him "the great shining star of his Canadian literary generation" and a pivotal figure in the country's history. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version,...
's controversial book Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!; Delisle has said that the reaction among the French Canadian public to his praise was as if she had been "embraced by the Devil".
In a March 1, 1997, cover story titled Le mythe du Québec fasciste (The Myth of a Fascist Quebec), L'Actualité revisited the controversy around Delisle's doctoral thesis. A profile of Groulx also appeared in the same issue; both articles acknowledged Groulx's antisemitism and the general favourable attitude of the Roman Catholic church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
towards fascist doctrine during the 1930s. Pierre Lemieux
Pierre Lemieux (economist)
Pierre Lemieux is an economist and author born in Sherbrooke in 1947.He holds graduate degrees in economics from the University of Toronto , and in Philosophy from University of Sherbrooke ....
, an economist and author wrote: "The magazine's attack is much weakened by Claude Ryan
Claude Ryan
Claude Ryan, was a Canadian politician and leader of the Parti libéral du Québec from 1978 to 1982. He was also the National Assembly of Quebec member for Argenteuil from 1979 to 1994.-Early life and career:...
, editor of Le Devoir in the 1970s, declaring that he has changed his mind and come close to Delisle's interpretation after reading her book."
However, the same newsmagazine made a claim, never substantiated, that Delisle had been subsidized by Jewish organizations, and the claim was repeated on television by former Parti Québécois
Parti Québécois
The Parti Québécois is a centre-left political party that advocates national sovereignty for the province of Quebec and secession from Canada. The Party traditionally has support from the labour movement. Unlike many other social-democratic parties, its ties with the labour movement are informal...
cabinet minister Claude Charron
Claude Charron
Claude Charron is a former CEGEP teacher, provincial politician, writer and broadcaster. He graduated from the Université de Montréal with a degree in political science. During 1969 and 1970 he taught at Cégep Édouard-Montpetit and the Cégep du Vieux Montréal.In 1970, Claude Charron entered...
while introducing a 2002 broadcast on Canal D
Canal D
Canal D is a Canadian French language Category A specialty channel owned by Astral Media. Canal D focuses on documentary programming primarily in the form of documentary-style television series that focus on a variety of topics such as crime, biographies, nature, science, and more.-History:In June...
of Je me souviens
Je me souviens
Je me souviens is the official motto of Quebec, a province of Canada. The motto means "I remember".- Origins :In 1883, Eugène-Étienne Taché, Assistant Commissioner for Crown lands in Quebec and architect of the provincial Parliament building had the motto carved in stone below the coat of arms of...
, the Eric R. Scott
Eric R. Scott
Eric Richard Scott is a Canadian film-maker working in Montreal. He has been working in television and documentary film making since the early 1980s and also works as a researcher for television programs...
documentary about Delisle's book. Outraged at what both Scott and Delisle called an absolute falsehood, they asked Canal D to rebroadcast the documentary because it was introduced in a way they considered to be defamatory and inaccurate.
Groulx is a revered figure to many French Quebecers who see him as one of the fathers of Quebec nationalism, although his actual writings are little read today. A station on the Montreal Metro
Montreal Metro
The Montreal Metro is a rubber-tired metro system, and the main form of public transportation underground in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada....
as well as schools, streets, lakes, and a chain of mountains in Quebec are named for him. In order to separate his political and literary activities from his academic work, Groulx wrote journalism and novels under numerous pseudonyms. In her book, Delisle claimed that Groulx, under the pseudonym Jacques Brassier, had written in 1933 in L'Action nationale: "Within six months or a year, the Jewish problem could be resolved, not only in Montreal but from one end of the province of Quebec to the other. There would be no more Jews here other than those who could survive by living off one another."
Referring to Groulx and the Le Devoir newspaper, Francine Dubé wrote in the National Post
National Post
The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...
on April 24, 2002 that "the evidence Delisle has unearthed seems to leave no doubt that both were anti-Semitic and racist." And, also in 2002, the Montreal Gazette referred to "anti-Semitism and pro-fascist sympathies that were common among this province's (Quebec) French-speaking elite in the 1930s." Further support for Delisle's writings come from a variety of sources.
In a 1994 edition of The Canadian Historical Review Irving Abella
Irving Abella
Irving Martin Abella, is a Canadian writer, historian and academic. He specializes in the History of the Jews in Canada and the Canadian labour movement...
wrote: "Clearly Delisle's message is discomfiting to many French-Canadian nationalists and it should be. She portrays a nationalism which was racist, paranoid, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic. Yet its spokesmen and ideologues were not cranks, but rather the leaders of French-Canadian society, its clerics, academics, and journalists - people who were universally admired and listened to."
Claude Bélanger, Department of History, at Marianopolis College
Marianopolis College
Marianopolis College is a private, subsidized CEGEP in Montreal nestled against the side of Mount Royal in Westmount, Quebec, Canada. It is one of the smallest anglophone colleges, with a student body of fewer than 2,000...
stated: "Anti-semitism was alive and well among the ultramontane
Ultramontanism
Ultramontanism is a religious philosophy within the Roman Catholic community that places strong emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the Pope...
nationalists
Quebec nationalism
Quebec nationalism is a nationalist movement in the Canadian province of Quebec .-1534–1774:Canada was first a french colony. Jacques Cartier claimed it for France in 1534, and permanent French settlement began in 1608. It was part of New France, which constituted all French colonies in North America...
of the period of 1890 to 1945" and "These anti-semitic views were propounded broadly and openly from about 1890 to 1945." Bélanger refers to Delisle's book and the antisemitism in Quebec as also recounted by Pierre Anctil in his 1988 book "Le Devoir, les Juifs et l'immigration."
Gary Evans, historian, author, and professor at the University of Ottawa
University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...
said: "Academic Esther Delisle angrily attacks the Establishment for its position of "Everyone knows, but no one should say" with regard to her own attempts to reveal Quebec's shameful intellectual past, including a postwar policy of welcoming Nazi collaborators from France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and of trivializing the Holocaust."
Criticism by Other Academics
In an article entitled "The Sins of the Abbé Groulx" published in the Literary Review of CanadaLiterary Review of Canada
The Literary Review of Canada is a Canadian magazine that publishes ten times a year. The magazine publishes essays and reviews of books on political, cultural and social topics, as well as Canadian poetry...
in 1994, Gary Caldwell, a sociologist and demographer who is a member of the governing national council of the Parti Québécois
Parti Québécois
The Parti Québécois is a centre-left political party that advocates national sovereignty for the province of Quebec and secession from Canada. The Party traditionally has support from the labour movement. Unlike many other social-democratic parties, its ties with the labour movement are informal...
, asserted in essence that:
- Articles written under the pseudonym of Lambert Closse have not been proven to be written by Groulx (the Lambert Closse articles are not central to Delisle's thesis, and were not mentioned in the doctoral thesis on which her book is based; she acknowledges that she cannot prove her suspicion that the article was written by Groulx, but asserts that Groulx' involvement in the publication of the book in which the article of concern appeared is itself of concern.)
- she ignores articles which present more moderate opinions
- many of the articles cannot be found as referenced by her (she has corrected some of these citations)
- the extracts from the articles she selected, Caldwell claims, often misrepresent the ideas in them
- she fails to distinguish Catholic antisemitism from fascist sympathies (instead, she argues that they were closely linked at the time in fascist Italy and Portugal, in Vichy France, and in the writings and radio broadcasts of the American Father Coughlin; see clerical fascismClerical fascismClerical fascism is an ideological construct that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with theology or religious tradition...
) - she fails to deal adequately with the contradictions in Groulx's attitudes towards Jews (although he expressed antisemitic opinions in his private correspondence and pseudonymous journalism, opposed Jewish immigration to Canada and urged French Canadians not to buy from Jewish-owned stores as part of the "achat chez nous" campaign, his opinions were more muted in his academic writings; he publicly denounced antisemitism as unchristian and invited French Canadians to take Jews as a model of ethnic solidarity).
- she ignores the possibility of interethnic rivalry between two minority groups (French Canadians and Jews) as did for example Morton Weinfeld in The Jews of Canada (instead, she considers that the bulk of the French and Jewish populations were not antagonistic to each other, and considers extreme antisemitism to have been more prevalent among the French Canadian intellectual elite).
- she does not compare the texts drawn from Le Devoir or l'Action nationale to texts from French Canadian publications generally considered to have been fascist such as the newspapers edited by Adrien ArcandAdrien ArcandAdrien Arcand was a Montreal journalist who led a series of fascist political movements between 1929 and his death in 1967...
. - she presented an admittedly exploratory study as a test of several linked hypothesesHypothesisA hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
(for example, by drawing inferences from isolated texts rather than by estimating the frequency of antisemitic themes in Le Devoir and l'Action nationale and comparing it to a control frequency, such as the frequency of antisemitic references in English Canadian or foreign publications of the same period).
Caldwell accused Université Laval of disloyalty to the French Canadian community for having granted Delisle a doctorate.
Methodological criticism of Delisle's work has also been made by historian Gérard Bouchard
Gérard Bouchard
Gérard Bouchard is a historian, sociologist and writer from Quebec, Canada, affiliated with the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Born in Jonquière, Quebec, he obtained his master's degree in sociology from Université Laval in 1968 and later obtained his PhD degree in history from the University...
in his work Les Deux Chanoines - Contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx published in 2003. On page 19 of his work, Bouchard warns the reader that he chose not to use Delisle's book Le traître et le Juif : Lionel Groulx, Le Devoir et Le délire du nationalisme d'extrême droite dans la province de Québec, 1929-1939 as a reference because according to his own verification, it contains to many errors in its references. To support his claim, he provides the result of his verification which had him conclude that among 57 references to texts by Groulx supposedly published in L'Action nationale between 1933 and 1939, 23 could not be found and 5 others were not exact.
Esther Delisle contested the results of Bouchard's verification in a letter published in Le Devoir on April 11, 2003. She also had her lawyer submit a formal notice to have Bouchard withdraw the assertions he made on page 19 of his book. In this communication, she provided Bouchard with clarifications on the sources she used in her work and recognized 13 irregularities in her references.
In response, Bouchard wrote a letter to Le Devoir published on May 1, 2003 in which he made public the results of a second and, he claimed, more thorough verification. In the letter, he asserted that :
- On the total of 58 references to texts by Groulx in L'Action nationale published between 1933 and 1939, only 14 were exact (the year, the month, the page number were correct and the excerpt was unaltered)
- In the 44 inexact references, "23 contain 31 modifications of Groulx's text". The modifications take the form of "amputations and other types of alterations".
- there are 21 references that cannot be found (instead of 23), 2 that were ultimately found thanks to the information provided by Delisle.
Both Bouchard and Caldwell acknowledge that Groulx at times expressed antisemitic opinions; they argue that these opinions do not taint his scholarship or secular Quebec nationalism, either because the antisemitism arises from Groulx' Catholic beliefs or because it is a personal bias unrelated or peripheral to his academic work. Delisle, by contrast, argues that antisemitism is an integral component of Groulx' race-based nationalism and his enthusiasm for right-wing authoritarian governments.
Other Themes
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. For her, 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 notes that the mass circulation newspaper La Presse, as one example, did not display the antisemitic content of the intellectually influential but less popular Le Devoir.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 (pure laine in French) from French-speaking Catholic immigrants 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.Delisle-Richler controversy
The Delisle-Richler controversy is the title of a separate Wikipedia article concerning allegations of antisemitism made by Mordecai RichlerMordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler, CC was a Canadian Jewish author, screenwriter and essayist. A leading critic called him "the great shining star of his Canadian literary generation" and a pivotal figure in the country's history. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version,...
and Esther Delisle
Esther Delisle
Esther Delisle Ph.D. is a French Canadian historian and author of historical works from Quebec.Born and raised in Quebec City, she completed her BA and MA in political science at Université Laval in Sainte-Foy, Quebec, and taught political theory at a Quebec CEGEP and worked as a researcher for...
against several pre-WW2 Quebec intellectuals, including Groulx.