Editing Lionel Groulx (section)

===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''.