The Hand of God
Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925-1971
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Set against a background of intense religious and cultural change and tensions over the meanings of nationalism and federalism in both Quebec and Canada, Michael Gauvreau's The Hand of God traces the emergence of Claude Ryan as a public intellectual. This is the first comprehensive biography of Ryan based on his personal papers and extensive writings as a social commentator, editorialist, and director of the newspaper Le Devoir.
At a time of Catholic religious fervour and new currents of social analysis, Ryan spoke for a postwar generation of young Quebecers, assuring his surprising ascension as one of the most influential voices in Canadian liberalism and federalism in the 1960s. In rich detail, Gauvreau describes Ryan’s ideas on religion, politics, and society, which assured his importance both as a major figure seeking the transformation of Roman Catholicism in the 1950s and 1960s and as an advocate of a type of liberalism that was often at odds with Pierre Elliott Trudeau's. He presents compelling new material on the breakdown of social and cultural consensus, a detailed analysis of Ryan’s personal and intellectual dealings with both Trudeau and René Lévesque, and a strikingly new interpretation of the motives of the key players in the October Crisis of 1970.
A significant rethinking of the relationship between liberalism, nationalism, and federalism in Quebec in the twentieth century, The Hand of God uses biography as a lens to explore and shed new light on questions central to postwar Quebec and Canadian cultural, political, and intellectual history.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Illustrations
- Introduction: Becoming a Public Intellectual in Postwar Quebec
- 1 The New Christendom: A Poor Knight’s Quest, 1925–1945
- 2 The Bishops’ Man: Forging a Nation of Youth and Taming Action catholique, 1945–1951
- 3 “I Must See Rome Also,” 1951–1952
- 4 Diagnosing French Canada’s “Spiritual Schizophrenia”: The Travails of a Catholic Intellectual in “Late Christendom,” 1952–1958
- 5 “Are We Pagans?”: Coping with French Canada’s Religious Crisis, 1958–1962
- 6 “Deus Quod Operatus in Claudio Ryan”: Springtime in Church and State, 1962–1964
- 7 “The Dawn of a New Political Spring”: Biculturalism and the New Spirit of Federalism
- 8 Between Christendom and the “New Gods”: The Search for a Stable Society, 1964–1966
- 9 “We Choose the Canadian Hypothesis”: Defining the Ethics of Federalism, 1964
- 10 “There Have Always Been Some Bridge-men”: Navigating the Shoals of Federalism and Nationalism, 1964–1967
- 11 “Anger Rumbles over the City”: The Unravelling of the Quiet Revolution, 1967–1969
- 12 “This Bewildering Ambivalence”: The Dissolution of French Canada, 1967–1969
- 13 “The Prophetic Charisma of the Christian Journalist”: Disclosing the Meanings of the October Crisis
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index