I just came across the following very interesting passage in John English's biography of Trudeau:
More generally, learning more about this period makes me realize a number of things that hadn't really registered with me.
1. When Pearson persuaded the "Three Wise Men", Pelletier, Marchand and Trudeau to run for him in 1965, these weren't just the normal sort of "star candidates" you get in any election; they were the main intellectuals behind the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, a movement which was basically unrepresented in federal politics, which lack of representation had the potential to become a major national crisis. This was thus a huge deal which reshaped the intersection of politics and culture probably more than any other individual candidacy in Canadian history.
2. The three of them were left activists. By that I don't mean just that they liked to tax and spend somewhat more than the median voter, but that their involvement in organized labour (in particular the 1949 asbestos strike) was at the core of their whole political orientation. They joined the Liberals rather than the NDP not so much for ideological reasons but instead because the immediacy of the crises they faced - first Duplessis and later separatism - meant that they didn't have the time to engage in party-building.
3. I used to believe, and certainly the mainstream media and Liberal members and activists still believe, that the parties today represent basically the same interests and outlooks as they did in the 60's and 70's, but that all the parties were more economically left-wing then just because the whole political spectrum was more to the left across the western world before Reagan/Thatcher. But now I think this is wrong: instead, the Liberal Party of Canada was led by genuine social democrats from the mid 60's to the mid 80's, who were in the party because of some very specific circumstances in a very turbulent period in Quebec. Since 1984, the party has reverted to its traditional role as a coalition of Anglo-Saxon business interests (C.D. Howe, Turner, Martin) and a more cautious strand of Quebec liberalism that was acceptable (though not dominant) even before the Quiet Revolution (St-Laurent, Chrétien).
Thoughts?
