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Overview
Andre Laurendeau was that rarest of Canadian personalities--"a man for all seasons." Known in Quebec as a leading nationalist activist and theorist through the critical decades of societal change from the 1930s to the 1960s, his own generation especially recalled his public role as an anti-conscription dissident and provincial politician during World War II. Younger French Canadians related to him as a gifted political journalist; a media figure in both radio and television; a novelist and tele-theatre dramatist; and through it all, "an engaged intellectual." English Canadians remember him as editor of Montreal's French language newspaper Le Devoir and as co-chairman of the 1960's Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. He was a French Canadian, in other words, whose life story mirrors, in both actions and insights, the agonizing struggle of his people to become modern while remaining distinct.
Synopsis
Andre Laurendeau was that rarest of Canadian personalities—"a man for all seasons." Known in Quebec as a leading nationalist activist and theorist through the critical decades of societal change from the 1930s to the 1960s, his own generation especially recalled his public role as an anti-conscription dissident and provincial politician during World War II. Younger French Canadians related to him as a gifted political journalist; a media figure in both radio and television; a novelist and tele-theatre dramatist; and through it all, "an engaged intellectual." English Canadians remember him as editor of Montreal's French language newspaper Le Devoir and as co-chairman of the 1960's Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. He was a French Canadian, in other words, whose life story mirrors, in both actions and insights, the agonizing struggle of his people to become modern while remaining distinct.