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Adrien Arcand
Adrien Arcand (October 3, 1899 – August 1, 1967) was a Canadian fascist politician, writer, and journalist. He founded and led the far-right National Unity Party of Canada from 1934 until his death in 1967. During his political career, he proclaimed himself as the "Canadian Führer".
Arcand was detained by the federal government for the duration of World War II under the Defence of Canada Regulations.
Arcand was the son of Narcisse-Joseph-Philias Arcand, who was a carpenter and trade union official, and Marie-Anne (Mathieu). He is also the great-uncle of the movie director, Denys Arcand. Arcand was born into a family of 12 children and grew up in a house on Laurier street in Montreal. Narcisse Arcand was active in the Labour Party that advocated free education, old age pensions, health insurance and universal suffrage. The appeal of the Labour Party in Quebec was resisted by the Catholic Church, which was powerful at the time in Quebec, as priests instructed their congregations not to vote for the Labour Party. Though the Labour Party stated it was open to all, the party's rules explicitly banned Asians from joining, and the party's policies advocated the "absolute prohibition of Chinese immigration" to Canada, as Asians were considered economic competitors of the Caucasian working class. Although the number of Chinese immigrants to Quebec was small—the 1901 census showed there were 1,648,898 people living in Quebec of whom only 1,037 were Chinese immigrants—their presence was sufficient to cause the formation of an "Anti-Yellow Peril League" many of whose members were also members of the Labour Party. Narcisse Arcand was very active in lobbying against Asian immigration, testifying in 1909 before the Royal Commission on Education, as long as Asian immigration continued, it would be impossible for the white working class to advance economically. From advocating a ban of Asian immigration to advocating a ban of all immigration was not a great difference, and soon Arcand was arguing for the cessation of all immigration. Arcand's son inherited his father's belief that immigration was a threat. However, Montreal at the time had a large English-speaking minority, and Adrien Arcand recalled later that he "was raised in an atmosphere not conducive to separatist and Anglophobic sentiments" as he knew many English-speakers as he was growing up and came to speak English fluently.
Though Narcisse Arcand was often at odds with the Catholic Church, all of his children were educated in Catholic schools (Quebec did not have a public education system until 1964 and all schools prior to 1964 were managed by churches). Adrien Arcand was educated at the College de St. Jean d'Iberville, Collège Saint-Stanislas and Collège de Montréal in Montreal. He received the standard 8-year collège classique education emphasizing French, Latin, Greek, religion, mathematics, classic literature, and French history. Arcand considered studying to be a priest, but changed his mind as "weakness" made a life of celibacy unappealing to him. The Collège de Montréal was managed by the Sulpician monks, who had been active in Quebec since the 17th century, and most of the Sulpicians at the college were from France. Many Quebecois thought of themselves at the time as the last remnant of the Catholic ancien-regime France that had been ended by the French Revolution, and Arcand's education at the Catholic schools emphasised royalist and Catholic values. The Sulpicians from France tended to be hostile to French republicanism and many had relocated to Quebec, a society dominated by the Catholic Church, because it was considerably closer to their idealized version of ancien-régime France than the French Third Republic was.
By Arcand's own account, his education by the Sulpicians at the Collège de Montréal was "decisive" in shaping his opinions. In 1918, he studied science as a part-time student at McGill University, but the great "Spanish influenza" pandemic of 1918–1919 resulted in the closure of public places after the disease arrived during October 1918 including all theaters, cinemas, concert halls, libraries, schools, meeting halls and hockey arenas in Montreal. During the closures, Arcand wrote to help ease his boredom. Several articles he submitted to newspapers were published, beginning his interest in journalism. In 1919, he was hired by the newspaper La Patrie and in 1920 he began to write a weekly column dealing with labour issues. In 1921, he began work for the Montreal Star, reporting the news in English. After that he began work for La Presse, the largest newspaper in Quebec. A keen amateur violin player, Arcand worked as a music critic for La Presse. As Montreal was the largest and wealthiest city in Canada at the time, many famous musicians such as Ignacy Paderewski often played at concerts in Montreal, and Arcand was there to interview him.
In addition to Paderewski, Arcand's work as a reporter for La Presse allowed him to interview many famous people during the 1920s when they visited Montreal such as the Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Anna Pavlova, Vincent d'Indy, Vladimir de Pachmann, Alfred Cortot, Feodor Chaliapin, Cécile Sorel, Jascha Heifetz, Isadora Duncan, Mario Chamlee, Queen Marie of Romania, Jacques Thibaud, Stanley Baldwin, Fritz Kreisler, Douglas Fairbanks, Maurice de Féraudy, Tom Mix, Mary Pickford, Efrem Zimbalist and Lord Birkenhead. In 1923, he joined a militia unit named the Châteauguay Regiment (whose traditions are continued by the 4th Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment). On April 14, 1925, he married Yvonne Giguère. During the late 1920s, he became active in organizing for Catholic trade unions and became president of the first union local at La Presse. His trade unionism caused him to be dismissed in 1929. Arcand later recalled that his dismissal came as "a surprise, cruel and hard, with the result that my wife and my young babies suffered the effects of painful, abject poverty". For a time, the water and electricity to his home was terminated due to his inability to pay the bills. Arcand's dismissal gave a lifelong grudge against his former employer, Pamphile Réal Du Tremblay, and caused him to found a new newspaper, Le Goglu, in August 1929. His sudden transition from the respectable lower middle-class to poverty radicalized him.
Arcand was assisted in founding Le Goglu by a printer, Joseph Ménard, who wanted to begin his own newspaper. In joual (Quebec French), goglu is slang for someone who is jovial and who loves to laugh, and Le Goglu belonged to a type of satirical newspaper that was popular in Quebec at the time. Le Goglu was an eight-page-long broadsheet full of cartoons that mocked various prominent people, for instance, showing Mackenzie King as a clueless ape staring vacantly into space. The newspaper was based in a lower class part of Montreal, described by Arcand as an area "where are found Chinese gambling dens, Negro shacks, Greeks, cutthroat Slavs, Bulgarian ruffians, Oriental grocers, nauseating Palestinian restaurants, European ex-convict scum, diamond importers from Chicago, and dives of every kind, where officers of the Canadian militia will get it on for 50 cents". The major target of Le Goglu's humour was what Arcand termed "the clique that is stifling the province", by which he mainly meant his former employer, du Tremblay, whom he was relentless in attacking as an exploitative boss and a hypocrite who failed to practice the Catholic social teachings in which he professed to believe. Le Goglu was a successful newspaper, and by 1929 for the Christmas special edition, Arcand could afford to print his paper in colour for 12 pages. The cartoons that mocked the ministers of the cabinet of Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau as corrupt resulted in several libel suits, which increased the paper's circulation.
The major advertisers for Le Goglu were at first the famous Bronfman family of Montreal who published advertisements promoting their brands of alcohol, but ceased their advertising after Le Goglu began publishing anti-Semitic statements. In August 1929, Arcand started publishing in Le Goglu a serialization of a novel he was writing, Popeline, chronicling the story of the eponymous heroine, an 18-year-old beauty "who had drunk long and deep from the cup of woe which gave her a heady feminine aura". Popeline was notable as one of the first novels written in the joual (local vernacular French), instead of Parisian French which had been the standard in Quebec until then. During November 1929, Arcand initiated his own political philosophy, the Ordre Patriotique des Goglus for the "general purification, on preserving our Latin character, our customs and our habits, on protecting our rights and our privileges". In December 1929, Arcand began a companion newspaper for Le Goglu, the Sunday weekly Le Miroir, which was more serious. In March 1930, Arcand initiated a third newspaper Le Chameau that soon failed during 1931 as it was unprofitable. He published and edited several newspapers during this period, most notably Le Goglu, Le Miroir, Le Chameau, Le Patriote, Le Fasciste Canadien and Le Combat National.
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Adrien Arcand
Adrien Arcand (October 3, 1899 – August 1, 1967) was a Canadian fascist politician, writer, and journalist. He founded and led the far-right National Unity Party of Canada from 1934 until his death in 1967. During his political career, he proclaimed himself as the "Canadian Führer".
Arcand was detained by the federal government for the duration of World War II under the Defence of Canada Regulations.
Arcand was the son of Narcisse-Joseph-Philias Arcand, who was a carpenter and trade union official, and Marie-Anne (Mathieu). He is also the great-uncle of the movie director, Denys Arcand. Arcand was born into a family of 12 children and grew up in a house on Laurier street in Montreal. Narcisse Arcand was active in the Labour Party that advocated free education, old age pensions, health insurance and universal suffrage. The appeal of the Labour Party in Quebec was resisted by the Catholic Church, which was powerful at the time in Quebec, as priests instructed their congregations not to vote for the Labour Party. Though the Labour Party stated it was open to all, the party's rules explicitly banned Asians from joining, and the party's policies advocated the "absolute prohibition of Chinese immigration" to Canada, as Asians were considered economic competitors of the Caucasian working class. Although the number of Chinese immigrants to Quebec was small—the 1901 census showed there were 1,648,898 people living in Quebec of whom only 1,037 were Chinese immigrants—their presence was sufficient to cause the formation of an "Anti-Yellow Peril League" many of whose members were also members of the Labour Party. Narcisse Arcand was very active in lobbying against Asian immigration, testifying in 1909 before the Royal Commission on Education, as long as Asian immigration continued, it would be impossible for the white working class to advance economically. From advocating a ban of Asian immigration to advocating a ban of all immigration was not a great difference, and soon Arcand was arguing for the cessation of all immigration. Arcand's son inherited his father's belief that immigration was a threat. However, Montreal at the time had a large English-speaking minority, and Adrien Arcand recalled later that he "was raised in an atmosphere not conducive to separatist and Anglophobic sentiments" as he knew many English-speakers as he was growing up and came to speak English fluently.
Though Narcisse Arcand was often at odds with the Catholic Church, all of his children were educated in Catholic schools (Quebec did not have a public education system until 1964 and all schools prior to 1964 were managed by churches). Adrien Arcand was educated at the College de St. Jean d'Iberville, Collège Saint-Stanislas and Collège de Montréal in Montreal. He received the standard 8-year collège classique education emphasizing French, Latin, Greek, religion, mathematics, classic literature, and French history. Arcand considered studying to be a priest, but changed his mind as "weakness" made a life of celibacy unappealing to him. The Collège de Montréal was managed by the Sulpician monks, who had been active in Quebec since the 17th century, and most of the Sulpicians at the college were from France. Many Quebecois thought of themselves at the time as the last remnant of the Catholic ancien-regime France that had been ended by the French Revolution, and Arcand's education at the Catholic schools emphasised royalist and Catholic values. The Sulpicians from France tended to be hostile to French republicanism and many had relocated to Quebec, a society dominated by the Catholic Church, because it was considerably closer to their idealized version of ancien-régime France than the French Third Republic was.
By Arcand's own account, his education by the Sulpicians at the Collège de Montréal was "decisive" in shaping his opinions. In 1918, he studied science as a part-time student at McGill University, but the great "Spanish influenza" pandemic of 1918–1919 resulted in the closure of public places after the disease arrived during October 1918 including all theaters, cinemas, concert halls, libraries, schools, meeting halls and hockey arenas in Montreal. During the closures, Arcand wrote to help ease his boredom. Several articles he submitted to newspapers were published, beginning his interest in journalism. In 1919, he was hired by the newspaper La Patrie and in 1920 he began to write a weekly column dealing with labour issues. In 1921, he began work for the Montreal Star, reporting the news in English. After that he began work for La Presse, the largest newspaper in Quebec. A keen amateur violin player, Arcand worked as a music critic for La Presse. As Montreal was the largest and wealthiest city in Canada at the time, many famous musicians such as Ignacy Paderewski often played at concerts in Montreal, and Arcand was there to interview him.
In addition to Paderewski, Arcand's work as a reporter for La Presse allowed him to interview many famous people during the 1920s when they visited Montreal such as the Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Anna Pavlova, Vincent d'Indy, Vladimir de Pachmann, Alfred Cortot, Feodor Chaliapin, Cécile Sorel, Jascha Heifetz, Isadora Duncan, Mario Chamlee, Queen Marie of Romania, Jacques Thibaud, Stanley Baldwin, Fritz Kreisler, Douglas Fairbanks, Maurice de Féraudy, Tom Mix, Mary Pickford, Efrem Zimbalist and Lord Birkenhead. In 1923, he joined a militia unit named the Châteauguay Regiment (whose traditions are continued by the 4th Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment). On April 14, 1925, he married Yvonne Giguère. During the late 1920s, he became active in organizing for Catholic trade unions and became president of the first union local at La Presse. His trade unionism caused him to be dismissed in 1929. Arcand later recalled that his dismissal came as "a surprise, cruel and hard, with the result that my wife and my young babies suffered the effects of painful, abject poverty". For a time, the water and electricity to his home was terminated due to his inability to pay the bills. Arcand's dismissal gave a lifelong grudge against his former employer, Pamphile Réal Du Tremblay, and caused him to found a new newspaper, Le Goglu, in August 1929. His sudden transition from the respectable lower middle-class to poverty radicalized him.
Arcand was assisted in founding Le Goglu by a printer, Joseph Ménard, who wanted to begin his own newspaper. In joual (Quebec French), goglu is slang for someone who is jovial and who loves to laugh, and Le Goglu belonged to a type of satirical newspaper that was popular in Quebec at the time. Le Goglu was an eight-page-long broadsheet full of cartoons that mocked various prominent people, for instance, showing Mackenzie King as a clueless ape staring vacantly into space. The newspaper was based in a lower class part of Montreal, described by Arcand as an area "where are found Chinese gambling dens, Negro shacks, Greeks, cutthroat Slavs, Bulgarian ruffians, Oriental grocers, nauseating Palestinian restaurants, European ex-convict scum, diamond importers from Chicago, and dives of every kind, where officers of the Canadian militia will get it on for 50 cents". The major target of Le Goglu's humour was what Arcand termed "the clique that is stifling the province", by which he mainly meant his former employer, du Tremblay, whom he was relentless in attacking as an exploitative boss and a hypocrite who failed to practice the Catholic social teachings in which he professed to believe. Le Goglu was a successful newspaper, and by 1929 for the Christmas special edition, Arcand could afford to print his paper in colour for 12 pages. The cartoons that mocked the ministers of the cabinet of Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau as corrupt resulted in several libel suits, which increased the paper's circulation.
The major advertisers for Le Goglu were at first the famous Bronfman family of Montreal who published advertisements promoting their brands of alcohol, but ceased their advertising after Le Goglu began publishing anti-Semitic statements. In August 1929, Arcand started publishing in Le Goglu a serialization of a novel he was writing, Popeline, chronicling the story of the eponymous heroine, an 18-year-old beauty "who had drunk long and deep from the cup of woe which gave her a heady feminine aura". Popeline was notable as one of the first novels written in the joual (local vernacular French), instead of Parisian French which had been the standard in Quebec until then. During November 1929, Arcand initiated his own political philosophy, the Ordre Patriotique des Goglus for the "general purification, on preserving our Latin character, our customs and our habits, on protecting our rights and our privileges". In December 1929, Arcand began a companion newspaper for Le Goglu, the Sunday weekly Le Miroir, which was more serious. In March 1930, Arcand initiated a third newspaper Le Chameau that soon failed during 1931 as it was unprofitable. He published and edited several newspapers during this period, most notably Le Goglu, Le Miroir, Le Chameau, Le Patriote, Le Fasciste Canadien and Le Combat National.
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