Part 29

"But what has that to do with Sir Lomer Gouin?"

"Directly--nothing. Sir Lomer is not even a director of the C.P.R., or of the Bank of Montreal, though one never knows what he may do with his money and his talents when he gets tired of manipulating elections."

"Oh, you mean that Gouin--does not reflect the idealism of Quebec; its love of the land that bore our fathers, its poetic isolation among the provinces----?"

He blew a shaft of cigarette smoke.

"Sir Lomer," he said, "is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Province of Quebec. His chief duty is to go about inspecting and improving properties and to sit at directors' meetings declaring provincial dividends instead of deficits."

I remarked that since Quebec is so prosperous and so large and populous with so many cradles, the Premier need not perhaps vex himself deeply about ideals such as the French language in schools outside the province.

"What!" was the reply, as a glass banged upon the table. "Would you cage us in here like Indians on a reservation? Has the French-Canadian nation no rights outside Quebec?"

"What would you do?" I asked him. "What could you do?"

"Secede!" he exclaimed. "Become the Sinn Fein of Canada."

"What about the Pope of Rome?"

"Has as much to do with Quebec," he laughed icily, "as the President of France. If the Pope should issue instructions to the bishops of Quebec, asking the clergy to educate the people of Quebec on their duty to go to war or to vote for either of the old line parties, the people would openly disregard them. We would as much resent the interference of Rome in our affairs as the American colonies did the tyranny of George the Third."

Here was the superb inconsistency of the French mind wedded to a single magnificent idea. This Nationalist admitting the possibility of secession, made sure that it would not be to the United States which puts the French language on a par with Choctaw. When I suggested as a recipe for national unity that French and English be learned by both English and French all over Canada, he flouted the idea of French-Canadians learning more English than they needed in business, and of English-Canadians learning French at all. He fervently held to the Keltic notion of making a preserve of the French-Canadian race, language, literature and customs whatever may become of the religion; yet he objected to penning the race into a reservation like the Indians. He observed that in 1911 the Nationalists bucked reciprocity with the United States.

"I think we should become an independent republic," he said as he plopped a fresh cigarette. "We have the main part of the St. Lawrence. No, you will not find Gouin say so. Gouin is a Tory prefect. He plays politics, not nationalism."

I observed that the band was about to play.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, stretching his legs with a yawn. "And the concert will conclude with that amiable farce, 'O Canada,' followed by 'God Save the King.'"

This Nationalist interview is given at some length because it illustrates much of what Sir Lomer Gouin is not, and if he were would not openly say so, because he stands for a majority the watchword of which is "Stop, Look, Listen". I went at once to see the Premier. He was closeted with confiding--perhaps confederate--priests, and with simple habitant folk who stood, not in awe but in affection, of the Premier. He might have been himself a father confessor.

Talking to him I found Gouin peculiarly on his guard; broad-faced, heavy-jawed, slow of speech, almost devoid of gesticulation, he was as unamiably dispassionate as a bank manager. There was no militant passion of the minority in this man; no heroic tilting against windmills; no expression of ideals; no suggestion of a delightful outlaw. He was amazingly practical, with no inclination to discuss freely the native peculiarities of either race. He understood Ontario--as a politician only; England as a democracy and a form of government. He had no absorbing idiosyncracies and made no attempt to pose or even to be interesting. After the bounce of the young Nationalist he was as tame as a grandfather's clock.

I felt that Sir Lomer was asking himself--what did the stranger want? He would have been infinitely more at ease discussing with a bishop how to prevent a strike in a cotton mill; or with a political outposter what to do to keep some seat for the Administration. If I had made to him such a statement as once I had made with such volcanic results to Bourassa, that nine-tenths of the population in a village like Nicolet could speak no Anglais, he would have been eloquent. Had I observed that 70 per cent of the operatives in a great Quebec industry cannot read and write French, that Ontario has a policy of good roads comparable to that of Quebec, that Orangemen do not dominate Toronto, that the Ontario farmer is a better producer than the habitant, or that Protestant clerics do not interfere in politics, he would have bristled with information to set me profoundly right. But he created no atmosphere of free discussion with a stranger. He was coldly aloof, yet earnestly endeavouring to say something worth while.

What I really wanted to tell Gouin was that he was personally very much like the late great Tory, Sir James Whitney. But he did not warm up to personal comment. The bilingual question was too complicated. The atmosphere of the Bonne Entente was lacking. Gouin and myself were in different envelopes. He was the Premier.

From what is said of him I am sure most of the fault was my own. I did not understand him. He was too much the Premier; the master executive. The Nationalist was almost right; Gouin suggested the dividend and the census. He was the chief executive of a Province larger than almost any country in Europe but Russia, and with a population about half that of Roumania, of whom about one-sixth are the Anglo-Saxon minority. He seemed to know Quebec from Montreal to the edge of Labrador almost by telegraph poles. You recall that the French in Canada evolved the modern census with its intimate penetration into the affairs of the people, some time before the Germans did it. The Premier of Quebec was a handbook encyclopaedia of Quebec. He knew the precise location by the roads of almost any white village, pulp-mill, water-power, mine, timber limit; knew as much as a man can about the number of horses and cattle and cradles to a township; could talk with enthusiasm about the pioneer arts of the habitant--the rugs, the baskets, the furniture, the hand-made churns, the open-air bake-ovens. He could give the address and the full name of many and many a priest.

But beyond this there is a Quebec which Sir Lomer Gouin did not know, because he himself with his bourgeois excellences and his great good citizenship has not the Gallic sparkle in his mentality. He never deeply knew the soul of Quebec. He was too much concerned with its practical and useful politics to be conscious of its passions. From the shrug of his shoulder, and a certain twinkle in his eye when he mentioned diplomacy with clerics, one surmised that among the clergy he was the master among politicians who must walk warily. But he was too stout, too thrifty, too much of a high type of budgeteer to be spiritually informed of the crude but basically beautiful passions that undercurrent all peasant communities. There was no poetry in Gouin. No fire. Little imagination.

"Those Nationalists?" he repeated shrewdly, slowly. "Yes, I know their talk. Oh, they are not so dangerous, but a troublesome minority. I think--I know Quebec better than they do. You have, I daresay, Nationalists in Ontario?"

What he perhaps expected was some statement about Orangemen, who of course are nearly all Imperialists. Yet these very Orangemen represent an intense phase of Canadian life; the backwoods era, the simple industries, the old villages, the quaint settlements of the U.E. Loyalists as picturesque on the Upper, as the dormer-windowed villages of the French are on the Lower St. Lawrence. To these men the Empire is as visual, as to the intense Quebecker it is nebulous. And as the politician in Ontario has to regard carefully the Orange vote, so the Premier of Quebec had to be wary of the franchises of his emotional friends, the Nationalists. He was somewhat afraid of the minority as all masters of majorities are. Clearly--it was Gouin's main business to continue being elected. Had he gone out on behalf of enlistments, to educate his people, even to speak for France, he would have been in danger of converting Gouin Liberals into Nationalists.

Ontario cannot fail to make an asset of Gouin's anti-Nationalism. He was never for any of the violent doctrines propounded by my friend on the Terrace. He would not oppose Quebec going to war. I am sure he God-speeded the 22nd who died at Courcellette. He was the Premier of a free Province. Those men had freely gone. Others--the majority--had freely stayed. But an election was coming; where everybody would be free to vote.

Then there were the clergy; most of them friends of Gouin. The Cardinal at Quebec had been interviewed by Sir Sam Hughes on aid to enlistments. Gouin could have told Hughes that he would fail; that Begin, though not a Nationalist, was a reactionary. The bilingual controversy was still acute. Gouin could not have gone out or sent emissaries out, to reason with French-Canadians about marching with a Province which had denied the French language rights in contrast to the Government's own claim that it had given rights to the Anglo minority in Quebec.

Conscription was coming. It was a precarious time. The master of Quebec had to move cautiously. His loyalty to Britain was never questioned. His faith in a United Canada was never doubted. Had Quebec been all for Gouin instead of Gouin all for Quebec, the Premier's way would have been easier. Better let well enough alone; encourage those to enlist who really wanted to go--because Quebec was a free country.

Then there was the Laurier influence. Had the old man gone in with the Premier to help the Ottawa Government--

Impossible. Neither of them was asked before Coalition came on the heels of conscription. And when conscription came, the minority of Nationalists opposed to the war became the majority of Quebeckers who preferred not to comply with the law. From disregarding the law to rebellion, to Nationalism was not far. Gouin had the balance to hold.