Esther Delisle (born 1954) is a French-Canadian political scientist and author of historical works. French Canadian is a term that has several different connotations. ...

Raised in Quebec City, Esther Delisle earned a Ph.D. in political science from Laval University in Sainte-Foy, Quebec and did post-doctoral studies at the department of history at McGill University. In 1993, she published a historical work, a version of her doctoral thesis, short-titled The Traitor and the Jew in which she adduced evidence of a history of anti-Semitism and support of fascism among Quebec nationalists of the 1930s. Motto: Don de Dieu feray valoir (Gift of God shall make prosper) Area: 547. ... Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. ... Laval University (Université Laval) is one of Canadas leading universities. ... Sainte-Foy is a city in central Quebec, Canada on the St. ... McGill University is a publicly funded, research-intensive, non-denominational, co-educational university located in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ... Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ... // Events and trends The 1930s were spent struggling for a solution to the global depression. ...

In her book, Delisle documented hundreds of anti-Semitic quotations from the nationalist review L'Action nationale and the influential Montreal newspaper Le Devoir. However, her attribution (whose validity has been seriously questioned) of vicious pseudonymous anti-Semitic articles to the nationalist priest, Lionel Groulx and her assertion that he was an active Fascist sympathizer caused the greatest controversy. Groulx was one of French Quebec's most revered icons for two generations of Catholics, for whom a station on the Montreal Metro as well as schools, streets, lakes, and a chain of mountains in Quebec had been named. Le Devoir on the 2003 Quebec election. ... Lionel-Adolphe Groulx (January 13, 1878 - May 23, 1967), called Abbé Groulx (Canon Groulx), was a Roman Catholic priest, historian and nationalist. ... Place-Saint-Henri station The Montreal Metro is the main form of public transportation within the city of Montreal and was the second metro system to be built in Canada, opening 12 years after the Toronto subway. ...

Dellisle claimed that Groulx, under the pseudonym, Jacques Brassier, had written in 1933 in Action Nationale.

 "Within six months or a year, the Jewish problem could be resolved," Groulx wrote, "not only in Montreal but from one end of the province of Quebec to the other. There would be no more Jews here other than those who could survive by living off one another." 

A claim, never substantiated, that Delisle had been subsidized by Jewish organizations, was made in an article in the magazine L'Actualité and repeated on television by former Parti Québécois cabinet minister Claude Charron while introducing a broadcast of Eric Scott's documentary about the book. Lactualité is a French-language news and general interest magazine in Canada, published in Montreal, Quebec by Rogers Communications. ... The Parti Québécois or PQ is a political party that advocates national sovereignty for Quebec from Canada. ...

 Charron ,stated on the French-language specialty TV channel, "Canal D," that Esther Delisle had been "financed and supported by the World Zionist Organization." Charron's accusation was never challenged by the interviewer 

These nonacademic aspects of the debate created considerable heated controversy about the book.

On March 1, 1997 L'Actualité published a cover story titled The Myth of a Fascist Quebec: Ignorance or Defamation, which saw its editorial and cover story devoted on fascism in Quebec in the 1930's. and a separate profile on Abbe Groulx also appeared.

 It acknowledged Groulx's anti-Semitism and the general favourable attitude of the Roman Catholic church to fascism during the 1930s, but concluded that the only truly Quebec fascist movement during the period was the Parti national social chrétien led by Joseph Ménard and [[Adrien Arcand] 

The article's veracity came under attack after former LeDevoir editor [Claude Ryan] tempered his support of Groulx after reading Delisle's book. Ryan had defended Grouxl in the article but subsequently told the article's author [Luc Chatrand} that "he discovered in Groulx a fascist temptation - the yearning for a chief - more important than what he had suspected.

Substantive methodological criticisms have been made of Delisle's work, chiefly by historian Gérard Bouchard (links to an article and a related article by Gary Caldwell are provided below).

Caldwell, one of the few English speaking professors at Laval University and a sovereignist , said that Laval had betrayed Francophone Quebec by awarding her a doctorate in 1992

These assertions, most of which appear not to have been validated or even seriously debated, include:

• her attributions of pseudonymous articles are often invalid (in particular, her argument depends heavily on the assumption that Groulx wrote under the name Lambert Closse, although she frankly states she has no evidence that he did; some historians have adduced evidence from Groulx's archives which suggests that Lambert Closse was the pseudonym of another priest whose correspondence Groulx did not reply to)
• she ignores articles which present more moderate opinions
• many of the articles cannot be found as referenced by her (she has corrected some of these citations)
• the extracts from the articles she selected often misrepresent the ideas in them
• she fails to distinguish Catholic anti-Semitism from fascist sympathies
• she fails to deal adequately with the contradictions in Groulx's attitudes towards Jews (he publicly denounced anti-Semitism as unchristian, for example)
• she ignores the possibility of interethnic rivalry between two minority groups (French Canadians and Jews)
• she does not compare the texts drawn from Le Devoir or l'Action nationale to texts from French Canadian publications generally considered to have been fascist.
• she presented an admittedly exploratory study as a test of several linked hypotheses (for example, by drawing inferences from isolated texts rather than by estimating the frequency of anti-Semitic themes in Le Devoir and l'Action nationale and comparing it to a control frequency, such as the frequency of anti-Semitic references in English Canadian or foreign publications of the same period).

In 1998, Esther Delisle published, Myths, Memories and Lies, an account of how some members of Quebec's elite, nationalist and federalist, supported Nazi collaborator Marshall Philippe Pétain and his Vichy government in Nazi-occupied France World War II. 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... Philippe Pétain Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain (April 24, 1856 – July 23, 1951), generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain, was a French soldier and Head of State of Vichy France, a Nazi puppet state, from 1940 to 1944. ... Vichy is a spa and resort town in central France, near Clermont-Ferrand and was the capital of Vichy France from 1940 to 1944. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air, August 9, 1945 after the Allied atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ...

A 2002 documentary film by Eric Scott titled Je Me Souviens, recounts Delisle's story using rare archival footage with speeches and commentaries by some of Quebec's leading nationalist figures of the time.

As of 2002, Dellisle had been unsuccessful in obtaining a full or part time position at any of Quebec's junior colleges or universities. But she said in a 2002 interview with the National Post that the validity of her work would outlive her/

"I have no regrets. I will be six feet under, but someone will say that I was right. I'll be dead, fine, but I'll be vindicated. Then, you'll hear from the sky: 'I told you so,'" and she laughs.

Bibliography:

• The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929-1939 (Antisémitisme et nationalisme d'extrême-droite dans la province de Québec 1929-1939) - (1993)
• Myths, Memories & Lies: Quebec's Intelligentsia and the Fascist Temptation, 1939-1960 (Essais sur l'imprégnation fasciste au Québec) - (1998)
• Le Quatuor d'Asbestos - co-written with Pierre K. Malouf (2004)

Sources

• Gérard Bouchard, "Réplique à Esther Delisle - À propos des deux chanoines", Le Devoir, May 1, 2003
• Gary Caldwell, "La controverse Delisle-Richler: Le discours sur l'antisémitisme au Québec et l'orthodoxie néo-libérale au Canada, L'Agora, June, 1994
• Luc Chartrand, "Le mythe du Québec fasciste," l'Actualité, March 1, 1997, vol. 22, no. 3
• David Lazarus "Canal D asked to re-broadcast film on anti-Semitism," Canadian Jewish News, May 23, 2002
• Gérald LeBlanc, Le chanoine et les Juifs, La Presse, March 30, 2003
• Sarah Scott, "The Lonely Passion of Esther Delisle"

[1] "Elm Street, April, 1998

• Francine Dube, "Exposing Quebec's Secret"

[2] National Post, April 27, 2002