Francois Aquin was Quebec’s ‘most separate-minded separatist’

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François Aquin was once a prominent Liberal who made history as the first politician to leave the federalist camp and sit in the Quebec legislature as a separatist, months before René Lévesque made the same move.

The two men, who had both left the Liberals, would become leading figures in the nascent separatist groups that eventually coalesced into the Parti Québécois. Mr. Aquin however disagreed with Mr. Lévesque's approach and left politics by 1968.

Mr. Aquin was 88 when he died in his sleep on Thursday. The cause of death wasn't immediately known to his family.

He was involved in politics during a pivotal, turbulent phase in Quebec history. The separatist movement was then splintered between several factions, amid a fractious debate over which would best lead to independence, much like it is today.

Mr. Aquin's uncompromising views – which lead to his successive resignations from the Liberals, from Mr. Lévesque's short-lived Mouvement souveraineté-association and from the legislature – prompted The Globe and Mail to label him in an editorial as "our most separate-minded separatist."

Mr. Aquin believed it was a tactical error to sugar-coat the challenges of independence. "I prefer to tell the people the truth now – things are going to be difficult for two or three years, but they'll pick up in the long run," he said after resigning from the MSA.

In Claude Fournier's biography of Mr. Lévesque, Portrait d'un homme seul, Mr. Aquin is quoted as taking a dig at his colleague's private life.

"You will never achieve independence, because it is an idea you have not really espoused," he told Mr. Lévesque. "You are trying to bring it in the back door like a mistress so as not to disturb the household. Even in your private life, that's your way. Not me!"

He was born on March 6, 1929, in Ville-Émard, a blue-collar district of Montreal, the only son of Pierre Aquin, a carpenter, and the former Ovelia Delisle.

He was a gifted student and took the cours classique at the Jesuit-run Collège Sainte-Marie. (A cousin, Hubert, who also studied there, became a prominent writer and filmmaker.)

As with many bright young men in Quebec at the time, Mr. Aquin considered the priesthood. He was also enamoured with philosophy. However, he realized that "to earn a living, law was better than philosophy," his wife, Andrée, recalled in an interview.

He attended law school at the University of Montreal and was admitted to the bar in 1956.

He had been involved with the Liberals since his first year of university. The Liberals were a natural fit for Quebeckers who didn't agree with the authoritarian government of premier Maurice Duplessis, he would later explain.

"We thought it was time for things to change," he said in a 2007 video for a legislature history project.

He was president of the Quebec Liberals during a time when the party, under the leadership of Jean Lesage and with Mr. Lévesque as a star cabinet minister, was in power starting in 1960, launching sweeping reforms that would be known as the Quiet Revolution.

For the 1966 election, the party brass selected Mr. Aquin as the candidate in the Montreal riding of Dorion, against the wishes of local members, who had nominated the professional wrestler Johnny Rougeau.

Mr. Rougeau then ran as an independent Liberal candidate. The situation went from awkward to violent one day when the future prime minister Paul Martin, then a campaign volunteer, picked up some literature at the Rougeau office, then went to the Aquin headquarters. Rougeau supporters ran after him, accused Mr. Martin of being a spy and punched him, breaking his nose. "This was my last foray into the more muscular political arts," Mr. Martin recalled in his autobiography.

The 1966 campaign was also the first time separatist parties – the Rassemblement pour l'Indépendance Nationale (RIN) and the Ralliement national – were vying for seats.

Neither won a seat. The Liberals, despite clinching the popular vote, lost power to the Union Nationale.

While in the opposition benches, Mr. Aquin espoused strong nationalist views. He said this was a logical result of Liberal policies that required increasing powers or even special status for Quebec. "There was no longer anyone who was a pure federalist," he recalled in his video.

In December, 1966, during debate at the legislature, Mr. Aquin said he would not take part in the following year's celebrations of Canada's centennial.

Confederation, he said, had reduced Quebec to one among 10 provinces and was limiting its ability to protect its people's culture. "It is … normal for a national group which is in the majority to try and became a state, to assert itself as a state," he said.

He later said he was becoming estranged from the Liberals. The turning point came when Charles de Gaulle came to Montreal on an official visit and shouted "Vive le Québec libre" from a balcony.

Mr. Lesage asked his party caucus to pass a motion criticizing the French president. Mr. Aquin disagreed.

"He came to offer France's support. … Why turn down a helping hand?" Mr. Aquin said as he resigned from the Liberal caucus.

By the fall, he was no longer the only independent separatist member of the legislature. Mr. Lévesque had also walked out of the Liberal Party, a huge boost to separatists who now had in their ranks an immensely popular politician.

Mr. Lévesque founded the MSA, which Mr. Aquin joined, and talks began to merge the separatist groups together.

At an MSA convention in April, Mr. Aquin pushed for a motion to abolish state-funded English schooling in Quebec. "I do not contest the minority's right to its mother tongue," he said, "but they do not have a right to public grants."

Mr. Lévesque went to the convention floor to warn that he wouldn't tolerate such harsh measures because "my name has been attached to the movement."

The Aquin motion was defeated, an episode that foreshadowed future convention clashes where separatist leaders like Mr. Lévesque or Lucien Bouchard had to invoke their personal prestige to temper the demands of more militant members.

By the end of July, Mr. Aquin quit the MSA and later that fall he resigned from his seat, feeling that he was ineffective as an independent. By then, the Parti Québécois had been founded and would monopolize the separatist movement for decades.

Mr. Aquin returned to private life to teach and practice administrative law.

He and his wife were in the news in April, 1977, after a man kidnapped her for ransom but was thwarted when she managed to escape.

In 1981, Education Minister Camille Laurin appointed Mr. Aquin to make recommendations about the fate of 1,600 pupils illegally attending English schools. Mr. Aquin was not as tough as expected, recommending that no legal action be taken against the parents.

Mr. Aquin was 82 when he retired.

He leaves his wife; two daughters, Valérie and Stéphanie; and four grandchildren.