The End of September

By Ray Z. Rivers

Did Pierre Trudeau save Canada? This book looks at an alternate future. How would Canada's history have changed had the separatist government in Quebec won its 1980 sovereignty referendum? We explore that scenario through the lives of an Ottawa businessman, his wife and their web of associates. Trudeau died at the end of September 2000 and much of the action in the book takes place in the short period from his passing to his interment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781483595320

Book preview

Epilogue

Preface

In October, 1970 Canada experienced its greatest national crisis when the decade-old Quebec separatist organization, the FLQ, staged its most daring act of terrorism, kidnapping a British diplomat and killing a provincial minister. Yet, in a matter of months the FLQ had been completely eliminated, and the resolution of Quebec separatism relegated to the ballot box instead of the gun and the street bomb. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, a native Quebecer, had been both praised and criticized for his decisive actions to effectively resolve the crisis.

The tortuous history of Quebec nationalism is complicated, even for Quebecers, who are always fiercely patriotic and determined to preserve their culture and language. Among the politically engaged in that province there are the Quebec nationalists, including the outright separatists, who would limit engagement with the rest of Canada, and those who welcome a strong federal state which includes Quebec as an equal partner in Canada’s confederation.

Canada has only ever been governed by the Liberal and Conservative political parties. The history of electoral victory for the Conservative Party has typically been through support from Quebec nationalist organizations, a sometimes-awkward marriage of convenience given their opposing cultures, perspectives and agendas. For example, Sir John A. Macdonald became Canada’s first prime minister in 1867, riding to victory on the legs of an unlikely coalition of British protestant loyalists from English Canada and the pro-Catholic Quebec nationalist Parti bleu.

Some years later the former Liberal, Henri Bourassa, inadvertently helped deliver Quebec to Conservative Robert Borden. Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis of the Union Nationale then helped John Diefenbaker win his huge election victory in 1958. Finally, Lucien Bouchard brought Quebecers on-board to support Brian Mulroney for his 1988 victory, before Bouchard abandoned him to create and lead the separatist Bloc Québécois.

It seems that when the Conservative Party was not in bed with the Quebec nationalists, it was in the political doghouse and out of power. The federal election on May 2, 2011 was one of the exceptions, as the Conservatives swept to victory with only a handful of seats from Quebec and with an attitude and political agenda flying in the face of the wishes of most Quebecers. The End of September is an historical novel where fantasy prevails, particularly for the events following 1979, but it is humbly intended to offer insight and instruction into a very complex issue for a nation still grappling with its true identity.

Ray Z Rivers

March, 2012

Prologue

Tuesday, April 15, 1980 - 9 PM - Pub St. Paul, Montreal

Mon Dieu Luc Lavoie exclaimed, "Look at these numbers. Everywhere, we are leading, everywhere. Right now we have almost 50 percent of the vote. This is better than I ever thought. It is going to happen mes amis. There will be a new day for Quebec." On the TV the Radio Canada anchor was reading off the electoral statistics poll by poll. René Lévesque was still in his legislative office in Quebec City, the room now filled with TV cameras and their camera people waiting for the signal to start broadcasting.

Lévesque, the perennial chain smoker, was sucking on another of his cigarettes in anticipation of an address to the people of Quebec. He couldn’t wait to tell them that the moment they had been waiting for was now at hand, but the results were rolling in too slowly for his liking. And, he was determined not to make his address before he was sure his victory was fully in-hand.

Luc Lavoie was sitting at a table in a crowded bar staring at the screen opposite him, the ceiling-mounted 30 inch colour television. This was his night too. At his table here at Pub St. Paul on Rue St. Paul, sat Jacqui, a twenty-one year old, five foot-six beautiful blonde whom Luc confidently assumed was his moll. Luc had been married for three years to his wife, Sophie, and they had been trying for a child, something his wife was hopeful would help settle him down. Jacqui, on the other hand was recently divorced, her marriage of less than a year, a casualty of her husband’s perpetual infidelity and her own occupation. Jacqui was the lead singer with Luc’s band, ‘Les Autres’.

Luc’s younger brother Daniel played sax and keyboard with the band and Luc played lead and rhythm guitar. ‘Les Autres’ was between drummers and Luc was still looking for a bass player to fill out the sound, so it was just the three of them tonight. Luc lived and breathed the blues and he could wail up there as well as any other white blues singer. He bore that rough street look that speaks to and for the blues.

His real skill was his guitar playing with blues riffs which were nothing but spectacular as he worked his way around his aging, scratched Stratocaster. The axe seemed to be attached to his hip both literally and figuratively. His face contorted as he hit each bent note, he would squeeze his eyes shut and gyrate his body almost as if that motion was the key to the amazing sound he was manufacturing.

To the neophyte music lover or the unwashed rock fan it must have looked as if someone had just thrown a beaker full of sulphuric acid in his eyes and he was in excruciating pain. Luc had always liked to play alone. He was passionate about his music and liked to be able to draw the crowd in to him as they watched and listened to this wild man gyrating and spitting into the microphone. But Luc knew that he would never be able to make a living as a solo artist, so he started the band.

Luc had mostly finished his secondary schooling in the Quebec system before heading off to work in factories and on construction jobs in Montreal, the real he-man work which best identified him. He’d never taken a business course but he had figured out that selling a band to the bar scene was easier than trying to get gigs as a solo act. His kid brother, Daniel, had still been in school when he brought him in to play sax and keys and then he hired a drummer so the band could cover pop music as its main play list.

They had been doing pretty well musically as a trio until one day he saw Jacqui singing in a coffee house and knew right away that she would be a real asset to the band. He offered her a piece of the take and then helped her transition from folk to the pop sound he was developing with the band. Pop music was gaining in popularity in Quebec bars in the late seventies and Jacqui had a beautiful delivery for the songs which Luc would pick for her.

Jacqui had accompanied herself on guitar when her musical income amounted to a few tips earned at coffee house gigs. She was not a particularly stellar guitarist and was more than happy to give up the guitar and just settle for the microphone. Now she could focus on the vocals and the results of this transition were amazing. Still, like so many other talented artists she was not making enough money each night to call it a living.

The band was playing at Pub St. Paul tonight, and the three of them were taking their first break between sets, enjoying a beer and watching the results pour in for René Lévesque’s sovereignty referendum. There was an uneasy but positive atmosphere in the bar as everyone kept at least one eye on the TV screen, almost in disbelief of what they were seeing. Nobody there or perhaps anywhere in the entire province had expected a victory, let alone one as decisive as this was shaping up to be.

A few weeks earlier Luc had been coaxed by a different René, René Dubois, into going out and playing some songs at a ‘Yes’ side rally. He had never considered himself a political person but was surprised at how moved he had become singing before an audience with that kind of political purpose and will. He had, a while back, written some bluesy protest songs celebrating Quebec’s nationalism and independent history with those repetitive refrains that distinguish great folk songs. He dragged these out for the event and scored a resounding hit with the crowd.

Luc made himself a silent promise to get these songs pressed onto vinyl once the referendum was over and Quebec was well on the road to secession. He surprised himself at how emotional he had become working the crowd and leading them in the choruses. Unfortunately he had only gone to the one rally and this had been pretty much the end of the campaign, so he never got a chance to repeat the experience. However, René had told him what a huge success he had been with the crowd and the team of young politicians who were running the ‘Yes’ campaign in Montreal.

Luc wasn’t interested in door-to-door campaigning, or dropping literature, or any of the other more mundane aspects of the campaign, but he was convinced that his bluesy music was what was needed to keep the young secessionists going. He was so flattered by René’s positive comments that he genuinely felt his contribution would be a key part of the ‘Yes’ side winning the campaign. And as it appeared that the ‘Yes’ side was on its way to victory, Luc was now convinced that his was a very bright future, for sure.

He just knew that there would be a spot for him in high places once the messy business of separating Quebec out of Canada was over. Of course Luc had no idea what separation would really mean for him, his province, or Canada and he never bothered to ask. It just seemed like a really good idea and with so much support from so many people how could it be wrong?

Luc never did grasp the concept of sovereignty association either, but then not very many people did, whether in Quebec or Canada. Luc had just decided that it was cool to be a separatist at this time in history and to be involved in this thing called politics, something which he had always shunned. To him a ‘Yes’ victory spelled an opportunity for him and his music, plain and simple. He really had no idea of the relationships or the history of federal and provincial governments in the country where he lived.

It might just have been that Quebecers largely spoke French and the rest of the country largely spoke English. Maybe that was all he needed to know. He wanted to make sure that his kid, if and when he had one, would be able to speak French. Of course Luc was more or less bilingual, had learned his English on the streets, or from television, or the songs he liked to play. He was convinced this was really only about preserving the French language. And if it took separation to do that, well that was OK with Luc Lavoie.

A couple of years earlier René Dubois had been at another bar where he’d heard Luc belting out his passion and pouring out his soul. He liked the sound and had started to follow Luc, becoming a fan. Then Luc assembled his band and another passion engulfed René as he found himself falling into an unrequited love with the band’s lead singer, Jacqui.

Unlike Luc, René had actually played a key role in organizing the vote for the ‘Yes’ side. He had been made responsible for organizing the foot canvas and the special awareness events in the downtown Montreal area. René was, unlike Luc, well-educated. He was, at the time of the referendum, a professor of political economy at the relatively new Concordia University in Montreal.

René felt it was his obligation to use his classroom as a place to recruit supporters for the cause. So, he ensured that his passing-grade students all understood why Quebec separation was the right answer. Politically, socially and economically it all made sense to him and if his students didn’t get that picture then there would be consequences and they might need supplementary teaching, he would joke with them.

René was an ethical and honest man, a professional, but he was always pleased that at least his francophone students understood his point of view and claimed to have agreed with him, all on their own. René, perhaps better than anyone other than Lévesque himself, understood that sovereignty didn’t necessarily mean separation. He knew that it was not meant to be the beginning of a new nation state, but just a reallocation of political powers in Canada such that Quebec could truly consider itself maître chez nous – master of its own house.

Lévesque, himself, had made that clear on several occasions but this whole business was complicated, ambiguous and just so confusing. That may have even been the point after all. Let people think what they wanted as long as they voted ‘Yes’. The hardcore separatists would be so driven that ‘Yes’ would mean independence and nothing else. And Lévesque had enough wiggle room in this so-called sovereignty association label for most federalists to be convinced that it just meant new roles and rules for the federal and provincial governments but still within the current constitutional framework.

Well if he could pull that off he would win. And it sure looked like he had pulled it off. Lévesque had never actually used the word ‘independence’ in the campaign; he didn’t have to, but any thinking person should have been able to see where this might be going. Although Luc had encouraged them, Jacqui and Luc’s brother, Daniel, had only been marginally involved in the campaign, mainly spreading the word and telling their friends and family to vote ‘Yes’. Luc had promised them that if their side won, the band would become famous playing one of their bluesy protest songs as the new national anthem. And although Jacqui may not have bought that line, she preferred the blues to the pop she usually sang with the band and so went along with the fantasy.

Luc kept telling her and Daniel about the bags of money they were going to make with their music after the big victory. But in the meantime, given their measly gig-night earnings, the band members had had to take on daytime employment, work part-time or find odd jobs to survive. Even Luc wasn’t full-time although he got the biggest cut from the earnings. Daniel changed oil and mufflers at a local garage, while still trying to finish his schooling, and Jacqui waited on tables at a nearby café. So even if they had wanted to campaign more for the ‘Yes’ side, it was almost impossible given the hours they were keeping.

Daniel had also become involved in the environmental movement; initially working with Greenpeace to help fight sulphur emissions from American electric power smoke stacks which led to the dreaded acid rain problem of the time. He was very concerned about the consequences of these trans-boundary pollutants as well as those from Quebec’s own northern smelters at Rouyn-Noranda.

The acid rain environmental campaign was facing stiff resistance in the U.S. where Ronald Reagan was, irrationally, arguing that it was the trees which were the cause as well as the victims of acid rain. Really, what an idiot those Yanks had elected, he’d remark to anyone willing to listen to him. For some reason Daniel had developed this strong passion for saving the environment and had been dedicating at least a couple of evenings a week to meet with his colleagues to chart and work on acid rain and other environmental issues.

Like Luc, Jacqui and Daniel were delighted that their side, the right side, was winning the hearts and minds of Quebecers that night. Jacqui had always liked René Dubois, and looked up to him as a very intelligent and wise man. She also found him to be kind of sexy, even though he suffered from the curse of premature baldness. If there were romantic sparks there, they never came to light as René had started bringing his girlfriend, the lovely Marie, with him when he’d show up to hear the band. From the way she always hung onto his arm it was pretty clear that that they were firmly coupled.

So maybe he just came to the bars where they played to listen to the music, Jacqui thought to herself. Before long she and Luc had become close friends with René and Marie and would share dinner and after-show drinks as good friends often did. Jacqui had been to college and had read about Quebec’s modern history and studied Lévesque’s writings so she had a pretty good idea what this campaign was all about. Daniel, on the other hand, didn’t seem to really know or care. He was a follower in this and just went along with the crowd since his real interest lay more towards preserving the environment than the French identity and culture in Quebec.

Luc ordered another round of drinks. With this referendum victory in clear sight he could play the big man. He had been a part of the success after all. He was a part of the big picture now. Luc nudged Jacqui, asking her to pay the bill when the drinks came. She hated when he did this. Luc and Jacqui weren’t really boyfriend/girlfriend, but she would sometimes accompany him to a party when his wife didn’t want to go or hadn’t been invited. Sometimes she’d sleep with him, because she liked sex and, in spite of her beauty, she didn’t really have any better offers at this point in her life.

He was the band leader and paid her in cash for each gig at the end of the night, and so that made him her boss. So, he felt he could ask her to do things like pay the bill…and she would just end up obliging him. In some bars where they had been booked to play they had been allowed a couple drinks on the house, but not this joint. She pulled out her handbag, found some bills in the wallet and placed them in the waiter’s hand expecting, and getting no change in return.

Hey! Luc! I thought I’d find you here. You should have come to the headquarters. What a party – people are dancing on the tables, René said, almost shouting as he approached Luc’s table from the other side of the room. Has Lévesque been on yet? he asked, glancing up at the TV screen then over at Luc who had just taken a drink. Not yet, Luc responded but as you know I am playing here tonight. We have this gig and I couldn’t let the band down, so, sorry I couldn’t make it. We need the money you know and these people…they really, really love us, right Jacqui?

René turned his gaze to Jacqui as he gave her a big smile and a little wink. He knew that Luc was sleeping with her since Luc liked to brag about his victories. Jacqui returned the smile and held it for a long time then asked. Where is Marie tonight? Yes well…she is still working on the numbers at the headquarters. You know she takes this very seriously. And why not take it seriously? If we get the magic two-thirds with the final tallies, that will be a solid win and we can start to remake Quebec and Canada too, René responded. He was under no illusions of the challenges ahead but this was no night to be down on the future for Quebec and Quebecers, so he might as well relish the feelings of success he was experiencing.

There had been great concern in the rest of Canada that Lévesque’s question in the referendum was so vague that it would be practically worthless for him to use in any constructive way were he to win. Former Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau had been campaigning for the ‘No’ side and that was one of his arguments. One shouldn’t be voting for something unclear; something one doesn’t really understand. This was a recurring theme for the ‘No’ side although obviously it had not been a very convincing argument given the results pouring in tonight.

Trudeau had always been a hardliner on this topic, opposed to any kind of so-called sovereignty and any erosion of federal authority in Canada. The Conservative government, in power at the time, was, ironically, more open to Lévesque’s ideas than the other Quebecer, Trudeau, had been. The Conservatives had been advocating a ‘two nations’ policy for Canada, which Trudeau vigorously opposed and Lévesque just ignored as too little too late. But then Trudeau and Lévesque went back a long way to their historic early debates about the future of the province they both loved and the country they both disagreed about.

René Dubois got up and went to a phone on the wall, picked up the receiver, dialled a number, spoke briefly, then jotted down some numbers with a pen on the back of his hand as if he wanted to permanently tattoo these numbers into history. He placed the receiver back and returned to the table with an enormous smile on his face. Well it’s official. We have won with almost 69 percent of the total vote. Radio Canada will soon declare the referendum as a victory for us declared a very proud and smiling René. Marie is coming to join us within the hour, he said. Lévesque’s speech will be good to watch. Tomorrow starts tonight when he announces a new future for us Quebecers.

Luc finished his drink and put his hand on Jacqui’s leg under the table, gave it a rough squeeze and then announced that it was time to fire up the amps and start playing the next set. Luc was looking forward to using his microphone to announce the referendum results in the bar. He thought he might play one of his own bluesy songs for a change and hoped that Jacqui could handle the lyrics. He looked at Daniel, catching his eye and smiling as he thought about him bobbing and weaving and moaning into his sax. The break was over.

Wednesday, April 16, 1980 - 9 AM - Royal York Hotel, Toronto

Holy shit! That bastard Lévesque pulled it off. And our side…? We really blew it. Lloyd Webster spoke to