Editing Lionel Groulx (section)

== Biography ==

===Early life and ordination===
[[File:Acte de baptême Lionel Groulx 13 janvier 1878 Vaudreuil.jpg|thumb|left|Birth and baptismal certificate of Lionel Groulx, 13 January 1878, église Saint-Michel in Vaudreuil (Québec).]]
Lionel Groulx, né Joseph Adolphe Lyonel Groulx, was the son of Léon Groulx (1837–1878), a farmer, a lumberjack and direct descendant<ref>{{cite web|url=http://archives.vigile.net/groulx/ancetre.html|title=L. Groulx, Notre maître, le passé, 1924, pp. 71-76.|access-date=2012-10-29|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120310123910/http://archives.vigile.net/groulx/ancetre.html|archive-date=10 March 2012|df=dmy-all}}</ref> of [[New France]] pioneer [[Coulée Grou|Jean Grou]], and Philomène Salomé Pilon (1849–1943). Groulx was born and died at [[Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec|Vaudreuil, Quebec]]. After his seminary training and studies in Europe, he taught at [[Collège de Valleyfield|Valleyfield College]] in [[Salaberry-de-Valleyfield]], and then the [[Université de Montréal]]. In 1917 he co-founded a monthly journal called ''[[L'Action nationale|Action Française]]'', becoming its editor in 1920.

He was [[Ordination|ordained]] to the [[Priesthood in the Catholic Church|priesthood]] on 28 June 1903.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Groulx Lionel |url=https://agora.qc.ca/dossiers/lionel_groulx |access-date=2023-01-28 |website=agora.qc.ca |language=fr}}</ref>

===Study of Confederation===
Groulx was one of the first Quebec historians to study Confederation: he insisted on its recognition of Quebec rights and minority rights, although he believed a combination of corrupt political parties and French Canadian minority status in the Dominion had failed to deliver on those promises, as the [[Manitoba Schools Question|Manitoba conflict]] exposed. Groulx believed that only through national education and the Quebec government could the economic and social inferiority of [[French Canadian]]s be repaired. Groulx was quite successful promoting his brand of [[ultramontanism]].

His main focus was to restore Quebeckers' pride in their identity by knowledge of history, both the heroic acts of New France and the French Canadian and self-government rights obtained through a succession of important political victories: 1774, the Quebec Act recognized the rights of the Quebec province and its people with respect to French law, Catholic religion and the French language; in 1848, [[responsible government]] was finally obtained after decades of struggle, along with the rights of the French language; in 1867, the autonomy of the province of Quebec was restored as Lower Canada was an essential partner in the creation of a new [[dominion]] through [[confederation]].<ref>La Confédération canadienne, Montréal, Quebec 10/10, 1978 (1918)</ref> 
 
Lionel Groulx called the [[Canadian Confederation]] of 1867 a failure and espoused the theory that French Canada's only hope for survival was to bolster a French State and a Roman Catholic Quebec as the means to emancipate the nation and a bulwark against English power. He believed the powers of the provincial government of Quebec could and should be used, within Confederation, to better the lot of the French Canadian nation, economically, socially, culturally and linguistically. 
 
His curriculum and writings de-emphasized or ignored conflicts between the clergy and those who were struggling for democratic rights, and de-emphasized any conflicts between the "habitants" or peasant class and the French-Canadian elites. He preferred the settled habitants to the more adventurous and, in his view, licentious [[coureurs des bois]]. His work, under the pseudonym '''Lionel Montal''', was part of the [[Art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics#Literature|literature event]] in the [[Art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics|art competition]] at the [[1924 Summer Olympics]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/920374 |title=Lionel Groulx |work=Olympedia |access-date=23 July 2020}}</ref>

In 1928, the Université de Montréal insisted that Groulx sign a paper saying that he would respect Confederation and English-Canadian sensibilities as a condition of receiving a respectable salary for his teaching work. He would not sign, but finally agreed to a condition that he would limit himself to historical studies; he resigned from the editorship of ''L'action canadienne-française'' soon after, and the magazine ceased publication at the end of the year.<ref>Mason Wade, ''The French-Canadians 1760–1967'', vol. 2, p. 894.</ref>

Lionel Groulx's major writings include the novel ''[[The Call of the Race|L'Appel de la race]]'' (1922); ''Histoire de la Confédération''; ''Notre grande aventure'' (1958); ''Histoire du Canada français'' (1951), and ''Notre maître le passé''.

===Writings on New France===
In order to inculcate pride in a nation he considered degraded by Conquest, Groulx engaged in national myth-making, celebrating the days of New France as a golden age and elevating [[Adam Dollard des Ormeaux|Dollard des Ormeaux]] into a legendary hero. He has been described as the first French Canadian historian to consider the period of French colonial rule superior to that of the British control that followed it, evaluating the [[Conquest of New France (1758–1760)|conquest of New France]] as a disaster rather than the common 19th-century Canadian view of it as a 'blessing' that saved Quebec from the [[Atheism|atheist]] terrors of the [[French Revolution]].<ref>Olivar Asselin, ..L'Oeuvre de l'abbé Groulx.., 1929.</ref>

He also developed a Quebec history curriculum that glorified [[New France|French colonization in Canada]], the difficulties imposed upon the ''[[French Canadians|Canadiens]]'' by the conquest of New France, and how these were countered by lengthy political struggles for democratic rights. He insisted, as had many before him, on the [[Quebec Act of 1774]] as the official recognition of his nation's rights. He bore particular affection for the undertaking of [[Robert Baldwin]] and [[Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine]], that in 1849 successfully restored the rights of the French language along with the obtention of responsible government, thus thwarting the assimilation plans of [[John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham|Lord Durham]]'s policy of a union between the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

He received the [[Royal Society of Canada]]'s [[J. B. Tyrrell Historical Medal]] in 1948.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Past Award Winners |url=https://rsc-src.ca/en/awards-excellence/past-award-winners#TyrrellMedal |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240629010729/https://rsc-src.ca/en/awards-excellence/past-award-winners#TyrrellMedal |archive-date=June 29, 2024 |publisher=The Royal Society of Canada}}</ref>

===Ligue d'action française===
{{Conservatism in Canada|Intellectuals}}
At the Ligue d'Action française, Groulx and his colleagues hoped to inspire revival of the French language and French Canadian culture, but also to create a think tank and public space of reflection, so that the French Canadian nation's elites would find ways to remedy French Canada's underdevelopment and exclusion from big business.

Some collaborators of the review thus actively participated in the development of the HEC business school. Others were actively involved in the promotion of the Church's Social doctrine, an official Catholic answer to socio-economic distress that was meant to prevent the appeal of socialism and improve capitalism.

Groulx's conservative Catholicism was not very appreciative of other religions, although he also acknowledged that racism was not Christian, and he maintained that Quebec should aspire to be a model society by Christian standards, including intense missionary action. [Le Canada français missionnaire, Montreal, Fides, 1962].

===Catholic social teaching===
This Catholic social doctrine later became part of the 1930s [[Action liberale nationale]] (ALN) party, a new party that intellectuals close to Groulx and the defunct Action française appreciated. When [[Maurice Duplessis]]'s victory became apparent, some instead accepted to cooperate with his government and its reforms. But Groulx, and with him a large number of intellectuals, chose to oppose him.

During the [[Second World War]] Groulx, like many Canadien nationalists, spoke in favour of the [[Vichy regime]] of [[Philippe Pétain]], although public statements to this effect remained rare.<ref>Lionel Groulx, ''Constantes de vie'' (Montréal: Fides, 1967), p. 111 and Éric Amyot, ''Le Québec entre Pétain et de Gaulle: Vichy, la France libre et les Canadiens Français'', p. 173 (Editions Fides, 1999)</ref>

Groulx and other intellectuals settled into a partial alliance with [[Liberal Party of Quebec]] leader [[Adelard Godbout]], who served as Premier from 1939 to 1944. They soon broke with him on account of his submission to the [[Liberal Party of Canada|federal Liberals]]. Yet in 1944 they opposed Duplessis  again, this time placing their hopes in another new party, the [[Bloc populaire|Bloc populaire Canadien]], led by [[André Laurendeau]]. Future Montreal Mayor [[Jean Drapeau]] was part of this young party, which soon suffered the same fate as the previous third party, the ALN. After the 1948 election, the Bloc populaire Canadien disappeared.

===Economic protectionism===
Groulx was later remembered both for his strong case in favour of economic reconquest of Quebec by French Canadians, defense of the French language, and pioneer work as the first chair of Canadian history in Quebec (Université de Montréal; see Ronald Rudin, ''Making History in Twentieth Century Quebec'', University of Toronto Press, 1997. {{ISBN|9780802078384}}). Rudin underscores Groulx's founding role in scholarly History with the development of the Montréal History Department. Groulx founded the ''Institut d'histoire d'Amérique française'' in 1946, an institute located in [[Montreal]] devoted to the historical study of Quebec and of the French presence in the Americas and the publication of ''La revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française'', still today arguably the main publication for professional historians in Quebec. His main intellectual contribution was to create a rapprochement between nationalism and the Catholic religion, blunting the hostility between nationalists and the Church that had existed in the nineteenth century.

===Later influence===
Through his writings and teaching at the university and his association with the intellectual elite of Quebec, he had a profound influence on many people (such as [[Michel Chartrand]] and [[Camille Laurin]]). However, many of the young intellectuals he influenced often did not share his conservative ideology (such as his successor at the University of Montreal). Groulx's traditionalist, religious form of Québécois nationalism, known as [[clerico-nationalism]], influenced Quebec society into the 1950s.

[[Collège Lionel-Groulx]], Lionel Groulx Avenue and the [[Lionel-Groulx (Montreal Metro)|Lionel Groulx]] metro station are named in his honour.

In June 2020, in the wake of global anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests, a petition was launched by Montréalers asking the city government to rename the Lionel-Groulx métro station after the African-Canadian jazz pianist [[Oscar Peterson]].<ref>{{Cite news|last=Mignacca|first=Franca|date=June 20, 2020|title=Montrealers call for Lionel-Groulx Metro station to be renamed after Oscar Peterson|work=CBC News|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/petition-to-have-lionel-groulx-station-renamed-after-1.5620991|access-date=June 20, 2020}}</ref> Peterson grew up in the Little Burgundy area of Montreal where the station is located.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Farmer |first=Bonnie |title=Oscar Lives Next Door: A Story Inspired by Oscar Peterson's Childhood |publisher=Owlkids Books Inc. |year=2016}}</ref> A counter petition also circulated, asking Montreal to retain the name, claiming that deleting Groulx's name from the station would be "a consent to amnesia and a reshaping of our past." The City kept the status quo, asserting that a moratorium on changing station names had been in place since 2006.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Schwartz |first=Susan |date=September 1, 2020 |title="Petition pushes on to rename métro station in honour of Oscar Peterson" |work=The Montreal Gazette |url=https://montrealgazette.com/news/petition-pushes-on-to-rename-metro-station-in-honour-of-oscar-peterson |access-date=20 September 2023}}</ref>