"Neither Cardinal nor Prime Minister" , but beautifully human
Like everyone else in Quebec, I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of historian Marcel Trudel, which occurred on January 11. Born near Trois-Rivières May 29, 1917, in the hot days of the Great War, he entered his 93ième year. Quebec lost one of its richest feathers, but history our portion of humanity earns a thought that will not die. With him is a little off that spirit of the eighteenth ...
Mr. Trudel was a friend. I had just talked on the phone a few days before Christmas. I then thanked him for having so kindly sent his last literary committee ( "Myths and Realities in the history of Quebec , Volume 5), freshly autographed his trembling hand, he who had almost lost his sight. This little book without artifice or frills, is a fallen curtain that nothing mars the eloquence of the work of the author to whom Time was running out. History as a researcher, writer and teacher, he has been a model of tenacity, intelligence and kindness well contained exquisite. In our verbal and letter writers who have drawn on the past quarter century, the soul of the teacher was never far behind that of the historian. It was a rare availability and princely generosity. It made me double honor to preface my "Saguenay Fur" (1989), and write the dedication that ennobles the cover of my "Fragments of Memory" (2009).
"I was neither Cardinal, nor Prime Minister, or member, not even alderman, he writes at the outset in his wonderful memoirs; I spent my career in teaching and research, far from the main street . It is the art of saying everything in a single sentence, a little known corner of his literary personality. His own conception of history, coupled with the challenge of excellence that has continued to launch its students, also sets it apart from its peers in Quebec. She is alone in praise of freedom of thought that has professed throughout his life:
"A historian should extend the possible field of culture. [...] For the history, everything is food, including works of literature and art, all necessary to understand an era. Indeed one of the primary qualities of the historian is the sensitivity, without which one remains a manipulator of statistics and graphs. [...] And we must know how to express this sensibility by writing a vividly and with clarity. I kept telling my students read, read, and not only of history, Take Voltaire, Anatole France or any writer who gives the devil in your pen. "(Memoirs of another century, 1987, p. 199)
A precursor to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec
This thought of mine who joined already proclaimed that the good schoolmaster is first he who teaches his students to free themselves from the mind of the master. While reading his Memoirs of another century " the rest I decided to write my Memoirs of a Rock Shooter" , a way for me to some pictures of the society in which I evolved. I liked his writing style and his way of telling the past behind which he was never far away. Voltaire has happened in my life that in the meantime. The rest is Marcel Trudel who was introduced to me in a different light than that revealed by Groulx et al. Knowing that I loved the free spirit of this little devil skinny and enjoying my fighting spirit, Trudel offered me the two volumes of his youth spent writing "The Influence of Voltaire in Canada." It was a discovery!
to Rebel his way, he published this work in 1945, while Quebec still crashed in the politico-religious dictates of the time. The case is noteworthy in this praise. That was three years before the release of famous "Manifesto of the Total Refusal" which is presented today as the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. When it has caused the phone, he had almost apologized for it being rather tiptoe without skinning the higher clergy who had total control over when Laval University, a senior clergy who Inquisitor waiting for a misstep from him to crush.
Already at this time, Trudel was ahead of his time in this regard, we must take time to remember that all books of Voltaire, like the rest of the Encyclopédie were still confined in the section called bookish ... "Hell," which were placed in sealed shelves within educational institutions. All seminars and Quebec had a "Hell", a forbidden place that did not hesitate to attend, obviously for so little, the clerical elite!
...
caustic vision of the British conquest
In his view, the English conquest, although disturbing and deplorable for the conquered people, had not only produced inconvenience, the decapitation of the French Canadian bourgeoisie, wrote he was not, as it was taught, with the arrival of new masters but to the collapse of the fur trade. Many of his peers-the priests identified in the School of Montreal obviously did not like and their zealots have mounted this story hairpin, although the facts cruelly gave him reason. We understand why
Trudel-we 're quite wrongly accused being the master of the School of Quebec (sic) - was not entirely comfortable in the ideological corset universities of Quebec have always had tend to submit ideas rather than releasing them. This corporatist tendency against which he has stood out, marked all his work. For proof, just read the rich text that has spent ... "Advantages" of the Conquest of 1760 in the first volume of "Myths and Realities of History Quebec " (2001, pp. 209-234). Vapid and confused minds beware!
Marcel Trudel was a free thinker and, as such, it now feeds Quebec historiography of originality, strength and sincerity of his thought. For a very long time, he had nothing more to prove. He enjoyed just write about what he had learned hard and he scraped the paper with his pen until his death. He spoke about the history of the most beautiful manner and with the finest minds in the world. His work is imperishable. It was unique and, as such, it will not be replaced. Thanks to him Champlain and New France that remains a work in progress, have a memorial for eternity.
akakia
