Thoughts on Trudeau’s Memoirs
Memoirs by Pierre Elliot Trudeau gave me a lot of insight to some of the things that the French had to go through. One of the things that they dealt with being a large minority was living in a unilingual country and government. The French people were trying to get some balance between them and the English, especially in the government, but it was moving along so slowly. Not being treated as “equally” as the French would like could be part of the reason why Quebec nationalism started becoming so popular in the 1960’s. It could also be why the FLQ was formed, which escalated to them kidnapping James Cross and killing Pierre Laporte. If the FLQ did get what they were asking for from the government then something like this could happen again. It may not though since nothing has since Trudeau handled this situation in 1970 by enacting the War Measures Act. I don’t know that it will or not, but if it does I know that I would not be extremely surprised. I was surprised however, to learn some of the things that I did reading Memoirs.
One aspect that surprised me was that it wasn’t until Louis St. Laurent was in the Prime Minister’s office for several years did they put “Bureau du premier minister” on a plaque on his door (Trudeau, 119). It shocked me to read that they didn’t have that French inscription already on there or that it had not been put on soon after St. Laurent got into office. The francophone public servants should have also been able to send memos to another francophone public servant in French, not in English (Trudeau, 119). I believe that if a francophone public servant was sending a memo to an Anglophone public servant then it should be written in English, but if it’s to another francophone, then it should be allowed to be in French. The opposite should also be true, with an Anglophone sending a memo to another Anglophone it should be in English and in French to a francophone public servant. I think that everyone working in the government should be able to speak both French and English, but I also realize that they didn’t have anything established at this time stating that they must. There is one other aspect that I was unaware of, and that was that Trudeau was reluctant to enact the War Measures Act. Reading Memoirs I found out how many people pressured Trudeau to enact this Act and how he finally realized that he had to even though he was reluctant to do so (Trudeau, 138-9). Then because Trudeau did this, people such as Rene Levesque, thought he acted stupidly and said that he made a wrong decision (Trudeau, 149). I didn’t realize what a big decision it was and that Trudeau was a friend of Pierre Lapport. I actually found Trudeau’s decision and the whole October crisis quite interesting. I liked Trudeau’s reasoning that “there could never be any question of negotiating with terrorists, not even to obtain the release of a hostage” (Trudeau, 134). If the FLQ succeeded in getting what they wanted then obviously they or other people would be likely to try it again. While reading about the October Crisis I began to really understand some of the pressures of a Prime Minister and also gained some respect for Trudeau and his attempts at handling the situation.