Generations in Canadian Society, Le phénomène des générations ...

Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction
Editor-in-Chief
Rédacteur en chef
Kenneth McRoberts, York University, Canada
Associate Editors
Rédacteurs adjoints
Mary Jean Green, Dartmouth College, U.S.A.
Lynette Hunter, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Danielle Juteau, Université de Montréal, Canada
Managing Editor
Secrétaire de rédaction
Guy Leclair, ICCS/CIEC, Ottawa, Canada
Advisory Board / Comité consultatif
Alessandro Anastasi, Universita di Messina, Italy
Michael Burgess, University of Keele, United Kingdom
Paul Claval, Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), France
Dona Davis, University of South Dakota, U.S.A.
Peter H. Easingwood, University of Dundee, United Kingdom
Ziran He, Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages, China
Helena G. Komkova, Institute of the USA and Canada, USSR
Shirin L. Kudchedkar, SNDT Women’s University, India
Karl Lenz, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Gregory Mahler, University of Mississippi, U.S.A.
James P. McCormick, California State University, U.S.A.
William Metcalfe, University of Vermont, U.S.A.
Chandra Mohan, University of Delhi, India
Elaine F. Nardocchio, McMaster University, Canada
Satoru Osanai, Chuo University, Japan
Manuel Parés I Maicas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Espagne
Réjean Pelletier, Université Laval, Canada
Gemma Persico, Universita di Catania, Italy
Richard E. Sherwin, Bar Ilan University, Israel
William J. Smyth, St. Patrick’s College, Ireland
Sverker Sörlin, Umea University, Sweden
Oleg Soroko-Tsupa, Moscow State University, USSR
Michèle Therrien, Institut des langues et civilisations orientales, France
Gaëtan Tremblay, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
Hillig J.T. van’t Land, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Pays-Bas
Mel Watkins, University of Toronto, Canada
Gillian Whitlock, Griffith University, Australia
Donez Xiques, Brooklyn College, U.S.A.
ii

International Journal of Canadian Studies
Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special Issue – Winter 1993/Numéro hors-série – hiver 1993
Generations in Canadian Society
Le phénomène des générations et la société canadienne
Table of Contents/Table des matières
Kenneth McRoberts
Introduction/Présentation ..........................5
Stéphane Dufour, Dominic Fortin et Jacques Hamel
Sociologie d’un conflit de générations : les « baby boomers » et
les « baby busters » .............................9
John C. Pierce, Nicholas P. Lovrich, Jr., Mary Ann E. Steger and
Brent S. Steel
Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy Preferences in
British Columbia..............................23
Victor Thiessen and E. Dianne Looker
Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work ...........39
Eric Mintz
Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High School Students and
Their Parents................................59
Renée Joyal
L’évolution des modes de contrôle de l’autorité parentale et son impact
sur les relations entre parents et enfants dans la société québécoise. ...73
Denise Lemieux et Léon Bernier
La transmission intergénérationnelle dans les projets de procréation :
une approche qualitative et subjective des changements
démographiques au Québec ........................85
Marta Dvorak
Nino Ricci’s “Lives of the Saints”: Walking Down Both Sides of the
Street at the Same Time .........................103

Mark T. Cameron
Justice and the New Generation Gap ...................115
Robert Drummond
Rejoinder to “Justice and the New Generation Gap”. ..........133
Mark T. Cameron
Reply to Rejoinder ............................137
Caterina Pizanias
Re-viewing Modernist Painting and Criticism in the Canadian Prairies:
A Case Study from Edmonton ......................139
Michel Tousignant, Emmanuel Habimana, Mathilde Brault, Naïma
Bendris et Esther Sidoli-Leblanc
Les rapports entre générations dans les familles de réfugiés au Québec . 171
Claire Harris
A Grammar of the Heart .........................183
Review Essai/Essai critique
Simon Langlois
Trois regards sur les générations .....................201

Introduction
Over the years, scholars have used a
wide variety of approaches to
comprehend Canadian society.
Canada has been regularly analyzed
in terms of the presence of two
societies, one Francophone and the
other Anglophone, or, more
recently, of a multiplicity of
cultural, ethnic and racial
distinctions. Another tradition has
understood Canada in terms of
regional differences: economic,
political and cultural. In recent
decades, class and gender rightly
have become central themes of
analysis.
For whatever reason, scholars have
been less inclined to use the
concept of generations to guide
their analyses. Yet, as this issue
demonstrates, there is a lot to be
gained in doing so. Moreover, these
various articles show that
generational phenomena can take a
wide variety of forms.
The most dramatic form of
generational difference is, of
course, outright conflict. In their
piece on contemporary Quebec,
Dufour et al demonstrate how the
generation of “baby boomers” that
rose to political and economic
prominence in the 1960s, thanks to
the Quiet Revolution, continues to
monopolize positions of power and
authority, to the detriment and
resentment of younger Québécois
who question the structures through
which the “baby boomers” are able
to maintain their dominance.
By the same token, Mark Cameron
illustrates how generations have
concrete differences of interest
when it comes to such policy
questions as mandatory retirement
and financing of public pensions.
He tries to develop principles of
intergenerational justice, which are
Présentation
Au fil des ans, les spécialistes ont
adopté une vaste gamme
d’approches différentes pour
aborder et mieux comprendre la
société canadienne. On a souvent
analysé le Canada sous l’angle des
deux sociétés, francophone et
anglophone, ou, plus récemment,
sous celui de la multiplicité des
différences culturelles, ethniques et
raciales. Une autre tradition
considère les différences régionales
qui caractérisent la réalité
canadienne sur les plans
économique, politique et culturel.
Au cours des dernières décennies,
les questions de sexe et de classe
sociale sont elles aussi devenues, et
à bon droit, des objets d’analyse.
Pour une raison ou pour une autre,
les spécialistes ont eu moins
tendance à recourir au concept de
générations pour guider leur
analyse. Et pourtant, comme ce
numéro en donne la preuve, il y
aurait beaucoup à gagner à explorer
cette perspective. De plus, les
divers articles réunis ici montrent
que le phénomène des différences
de générations peut prendre toutes
sortes de formes.
La plus spectaculaire de ces formes
est évidemment celle du conflit
ouvert. Dans le texte sur le Québec
contemporain, Dufour et al.
décrivent comment la génération
des « baby boomers » qui a pris le
contrôle de l’économie et de la
politique au cours des années 1960,
dans la foulée de la Révolution
tranquille, continue à monopoliser
les postes de commande. Ils
montrent aussi comment cela se fait
au détriment et au plus grand dam
des Québécois plus jeunes, lesquels
se sont mis à remettre en cause les
structures qui ont permis à ces «
baby boomers » de maintenir leur
emprise sur la société.
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
the basis of an exchange with
Robert Drummond.
Nonetheless, generational
differences need not be based on
difference in interest let alone on
conflict. They may simply entail
differences in worldview and
attitudes reflecting distinctive
experiences. For instance, Pierce et
al establish that among residents of
British Columbia there are
significant generational differences
regarding policy questions, such as
environmentalism, Aboriginal
rights, and immigration. At the
same time, turning to the artistic
world, Pizanias explores how
among Prairie artists there emerged
a distinctive modernist generation.
Of course, the phenomenon of
generations is most clearly revealed
within the family. The relationship
between mother and child is
beautifully captured in a poetic
work by Claire Harris in which a
woman reflects on the stages of her
mother’s life. Two studies directly
compare the attitudes of parents
and children. In his study of a small
Newfoundland town, Mintz shows
that the political attitudes of youth
are only weakly related to those of
their parents. In their examination
of youth in three different Canadian
communities, Thiessen and Looker
find that work expectations are less
bounded by gender than are those
of their parents. Two other studies
focus upon family structures in
Quebec. Lemieux et al examine the
degree to which attitudes about
procreation are transmitted across
generations within the same family.
Joyal traces how the Quebec
provincial state became
increasingly involved in defining
the relationship between parents
and their children.
Finally, two articles describe how
different generations of newcomers
may relate to Canada in
fundamentally different ways.
Dans la même optique, Mark
Cameron souligne les intérêts
divergents qui animent les
différentes générations en matière
de politiques, comme la retraite
obligatoire et le financement des
régimes de pension publics.
L’auteur s’efforce de dégager des
principes de justice qui, d’après lui,
devraient régir les relations entre les
générations. Une discussion
s’engage à ce sujet entre lui et
Robert Drummond.
Ce ne sont pas toutes les différences
de génération qui correspondent à
des divergences d’intérêt ou
dégénèrent en conflits. Elles
peuvent tout simplement découler
de visions du monde différentes et
correspondre à des expériences
distinctes. C’est ainsi, par exemple,
que Pierce et al. font valoir
l’existence, au sein de la population
de la Colombie- Britannique, de
différences importantes entre les
générations sur des questions de
politique telles que la protection de
l’environnement, les droits des
Autochtones et l’immigration. De la
même façon, Caterina Pizanias fait
ressortir la façon dont une
génération moderniste distincte a
émergé chez les artistes des
Prairies.
Bien sûr, la famille demeure le lieu
où le phénomène des différences
entre les générations se manifeste le
plus clairement. Une œuvre
poétique de Claire Harris dépeint
admirablement la relation mèreenfant
: une femme médite sur les
étapes de la vie de sa mère. Deux
autres études procèdent à une
comparaison des attitudes des
parents et des enfants. Dans son
étude d’une petite localité terreneuvienne,
Mintz démontre que les
attitudes des jeunes ont peu en
commun avec celles de leurs
parents. Dans leur étude de trois
communautés canadiennes,
Thiessen et Looker concluent que
les différences entre les attentes des
4

Generations in Canadian Society
Le phénomène des générations et la société canadienne
Dvorak examines how the novelist
Nino Ricci portrays the differing
perspectives of immigrant
generations and the ancestors they
left behind. Tousignant et al
examine the distinctive relations
between children and parents within
refugee families. Also, in a review
essay comparing the results of three
different studies, Simon Langlois
shows how circumstances and
belief systems can vary from one
generation to another.
In short, beyond their inherent
interest, these articles make a
compelling case that as well as such
established themes of culture,
region, class and gender, Canadian
society should also be understood in
terms of differences in interest,
experience and worldview among
the generations of which it is
constituted.
Kenneth McRoberts
Editor-in-Chief
deux sexes face au travail sont
moins marquées chez les jeunes que
chez leurs parents. Deux autres
études portent sur les structures
familiales au Québec. Lemieux et
al. s’interrogent sur le degré de
transmission des attitudes face à la
procréation d’une génération à
l’autre au sein de la même famille.
Joyal met en lumière comment
l’État québécois s’est progressivement
engagé dans un processus
de définition des relations entre les
parents et leurs enfants.
Enfin, deux textes s’attachent à
montrer à quel point les attitudes
des nouveaux arrivants à l’égard du
Canada peuvent être profondément
différentes selon la génération à
laquelle ils appartiennent. Dvorak
étudie la façon dont le romancier
Nino Ricci a dépeint le contraste
entre les perspectives des
générations d’immigrants et celles
des ancêtres qu’ils laissaient dans
leur pays d’origine. Tousignant et
al. se penchent sur les relations
particulières des enfants et des
parents au sein de familles de
réfugiés. Par ailleurs, dans un essai
critique qui compare trois
différentes études, Simon Langlois
souligne comment peuvent varier
d’une génération à l’autre les
circonstances et les systèmes de
croyances.
En somme, pour ne rien dire de leur
valeur intrinsèque, tous ces articles
font nettement la preuve de ce que
les thèmes reconnus (culture,
différences régionales, classes
sociales et sexes) ne sont pas les
seuls qui permettent de comprendre
la sociéte canadienne : il faut
également tenir compte des
différences d’intérêts, d’expériences
et de visions du monde entre les
générations qui la constituent.
Kenneth McRoberts
Rédacteur en chef
5

Stéphane Dufour, Dominic Fortin et
Jacques Hamel
Sociologie d’un conflit de générations : les « baby
boomers » et les « baby busters » *
Résumé
Cet article porte sur le conflit entre la génération des jeunes des années 1960
et celle des jeunes d’aujourd’hui. Ces jeunes, ainsi qu’il y est montré, ont été
marqués par la modernisation du Québec, plus particulièrement celle de
l’éducation au sein de cette société. Cette modernisation les a définis
respectivement comme la génération gâtée et comme la génération perdue au
sens des expressions anglaises « baby boomers » et « baby busters ». Les
premiers résultats d’une enquête portant sur les baby boomers et les baby
busters et leur insertion respective au sein du marché du travail et plus
généralement dans la société sont présentés dans cette perspective. Ils
montrent un conflit entre ces générations envisagé, d’un point de vue
sociologique, comme un rapport de domination. Celui-ci est établi à la lumière
des avancées de la théorie du pouvoir et de l’idéologie.
Abstract
This article deals with the generational conflict between the youth of the 1960s
and those of today. These two groups have been marked by the modernization
of Quebec, especially with regard to education. This modernization has
characterized them respectively as a spoiled generation and a lost generation
or as « Baby boomers » and « Baby busters ». The article reveals the results of
a survey of the two groups and their integration in the work force and more
generally in society. The data shows that the conflict between the two
generations, from a sociological standpoint, can be seen as a relation of one
generation dominating the other. This relationship is established in light of the
developments in the theory of power and ideology.
La distance entre deux générations est donnée par les éléments
qu’elles ont en commun et qui obligent à une répétition cyclique des
mêmes expériences, comme pour les comportements des espèces
animales transmis par l’hérédité biologique; tandis que les éléments
de la différence entre eux [les jeunes] et nous [leurs aînés] sont le
résultat des changements irréversibles que toute époque porte en elle,
c’est-à-dire qu’ils dépendent de l’héritage historique que nousmêmes
leur avons transmis, de cet héritage véritable dont nous
sommes responsables, fût-ce inconsciemment. C’est pourquoi nous
n’avons rien à enseigner : nous ne pouvons influer sur ce qui
ressemble le plus à notre expérience; nous ne savons pas nous
reconnaître en ce qui porte notre empreinte.
Italo Calvino, Palomar.
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
Le phénomène des générations a marqué l’histoire des sociétés canadienne et
québécoise à diverses époques mais jamais tant que dans les années 1960
durant lesquelles elles ont été en conflit. Les jeunes de cette époque ont été
« vraiment des dérangeurs importants », selon les mots de Guy Rocher (1993,
p. 20), mettant en cause la société définie par leurs aînés. L’arrivée de ces
jeunes dans la vie adulte coïncide avec l’entrée du Québec dans la modernité.
Elle leur procure d’ailleurs une identité propre qui se caractérise par la
modernisation de cette société, plus particulièrement celle de l’État et de ses
institutions, privilégiée en vue de remédier à un retard économique et social
manifeste. Cette modernisation de l’État s’exprime par plusieurs réformes
dont, la plus éloquente, celle de l’éducation. « Qui s’instruit s’enrichit » est le
slogan de l’époque. Il traduit le fait qu’une scolarité élevée assure une place de
choix dans un marché du travail en pleine mutation.
L’éducation devient donc la clef de voûte pour accéder au marché du travail et
ainsi se démarquer des générations du passé confinées à des emplois qui
nécessitent une scolarité moins élevée. « Le développement accéléré du
système scolaire et des appareils de l’État durant les années 1960, écrit Simon
Langlois, a favorisé une importante mobilité sociale chez les francophones.
Plus instruits, ceux-ci ont occupé en grand nombre les nouveaux postes offerts
dans une société en voie de modernisation. Ces diplômés [universitaires] ont
rapidement constitué une nouvelle classe moyenne, urbaine et scolarisée. »
(Langlois, 1990a, p. 82).
Les problèmes de la définition sociologique d’une génération
Cette jeunesse des années 1960, ayant connu la modernisation de la société par
l’entremise des réformes de l’éducation, forme en quelque sorte une
« génération » appelée aujourd’hui les baby boomers. La sociologie qui prend
les baby boomers comme objet d’étude doit approcher cette génération comme
un fait social, un fait de société, y compris en ce qui a trait à sa définition.
Comment donc les définir d’un point de vue sociologique? La définition
sociologique d’une génération ne saurait reprendre, sur de nouveaux frais, la
définition fournie par la démographie selon laquelle une génération est une
cohorte de la population née dans un même laps de temps. Elle ne saurait
épouser non plus la définition d’une génération en anthropologie d’après
laquelle une génération est déterminée par une cohorte de la population
constituant la descendance directe d’une autre cohorte et assurant le cycle de
reproduction physique d’une société. La définition classique d’une génération
stipule alors que ce cycle de reproduction s’étend sur une période d’environ 25
à 30 ans. Le chiffre avancé est immédiatement sujet à caution et pose problème
dans la mesure où, s’il s’appuie sur l’âge de la fécondité, il n’en reste pas moins
relatif aux pratiques liées à la sexualité, lesquelles, en termes d’âge, varient
d’une société à une autre.
Sans être détachée radicalement de ces fondements premiers que sont le
rythme des naissances et le cycle de reproduction d’une population, une
génération doit donc être envisagée comme un fait de société, et ceci serait la
définition élémentaire d’une génération en sociologie. « Le phénomène social
d’une génération, écrit Karl Mannheim dans son célèbre essai sur Le problème
des générations, se fonde certes sur le rythme biologique des naissances et de
la mort. Mais “être fondé sur” ne signifie pas pour autant “être déductible
de”, “être inclus dans” » (Mannheim, 1990, p. 44). Selon lui, il est possible de
rapprocher la situation de génération de celle de classe et de considérer la
première de façon analogique à la seconde.
10

Sociologie d’un conflit de générations
La situation de génération et la situation de classe ont en commun de
circonscrire, du fait de leur situation spécifique dans l’espace sociohistorique,
les individus dans un champ des possibles déterminé et de
favoriser ainsi un mode spécifique d’expérience et de pensée, un
mode spécifique d’intervention dans le processus historique.
(Mannheim, 1990, p. 45)
On ne peut parler d’une situation de génération identique que dans la
mesure où ceux qui entrent simultanément dans la vie participent
potentiellement à des événements et à des expériences qui créent des
liens. (Mannheim, 1990, p. 52)
Une génération est en ce sens, en sociologie, déterminée par une histoire
commune qui confère une identité propre à un groupe d’âge particulier que
Mannheim propose alors d’appeler « génération effective » produisant des
« unités de génération » dans lesquelles existent des « groupes concrets ». Une
génération ne constitue cependant pas un groupe concret au sens où ses
membres seraient unis par des liens réciproques comme la famille. Elle forme
ainsi une unité sociale exprimant des phénomènes sociaux qui interfèrent dans
le rythme biologique de l’existence, avec sa durée limitée et son vieillissement,
et qui déterminent une « situation de génération » attribuant à un groupe d’âge
particulier une identité qui est le fait de la société. Cette perspective servira
maintenant à la proposition d’une définition sociologique des baby boomers.
Nées dans l’immédiat de l’après-guerre et pendant un court laps de temps, les
baby boomers sont identifiés comme la génération des « enfants de la guerre »,
du boom démographique de l’après-guerre. La hausse de la natalité s’est
condensée en un court laps de temps du fait de la précocité des naissances après
le mariage et du bref intervalle entre les naissances. C’est ainsi qu’a pu naître
cette « génération » qui allait peser de tout son poids dans la société. François
Ricard a, mieux que quiconque, relevé ce fait :
Ce fait est capital. Il apporte à [cette génération] un immense
avantage d’ordre stratégique, pourrait-on dire, en lui donnant une
force d’impact à laquelle elle n’aurait jamais pu prétendre à elle seule
et qui dépasse infiniment celle de toute autre génération avant elle. Le
baby-boom, on le sait, est d’abord une pure question de nombre, ce
qui le rend, de fait, incontournable. En gonflant subitement la place
des enfants et des jeunes dans la société, c’est-à-dire d’un groupe
d’âge particulier au détriment des autres, il va modifier radicalement
l’équilibre traditionnel de cette société, ce qui aura pour conséquence
non seulement de créer une situation éminemment propice aux
bouleversements et aux remises en question, mais aussi de donner à
ce groupe d’âge particulier, ne serait-ce qu’à cause du poids
numérique qui est le sien, une influence et une « autorité »
considérables, réduisant du même coup celles que pouvaient détenir
jusque-là les groupes plus âgés. (Ricard, 1992, p. 31)
Les mutations de la société qui s’ensuivirent sont donc déterminées par cette
génération, son poids démographique, mais aussi son identité, le sentiment
d’appartenance que confère le fait d’être née « ensemble » et de s’insérer dans
la société, plus particulièrement dans le marché du travail, à la même date. Ceci
lui donne une « autorité » quant à la modernisation de la société dont cette
génération a tiré profit.
Dans les années 1960, une génération a accaparé un grand nombre
d’emplois, contrôlé les organisations sociales mises alors en place;
11

IJCS / RIÉC
elle s’est dotée d’un système de sécurité jusqu’alors inconnu.
Phénomène qui, de soi, n’avait rien de tout à fait inédit. Chaque
génération du passé avait tenté de procéder de la même façon; mais
aucune n’y avait aussi parfaitement réussi. Et aucune, étant donné la
durée moyenne de la vie, n’était parvenue à se maintenir aussi
longtemps dans ses conquêtes. Cette génération, qui est maintenant
dans la quarantaine, est implantée au milieu de toutes les autres dans
une singularité extrêmement visible. (Dumont, 1986, p. 22)
Cette « singularité extrêmement visible » est-elle véritablement le fait d’une
génération, de la génération du baby boom, ainsi qu’invite à le penser Fernand
Dumont? Car s’ils sont nés ensemble, les enfants de l’après-guerre n’ont
cependant pas tous bénéficié des retombées de réformes qui ont découlé de la
modernisation de la société québécoise. Les baby boomers sont en fait les
enfants de l’après-guerre qui ont souscrit au slogan « Qui s’instruit s’enrichit ».
Il importe donc de distinguer les baby boomers des enfants du baby boom. Les
baby boomers constituent donc cette partie du baby boom qui détient des
diplômes universitaires, expressions par excellence de cette modernisation.
La date d’insertion de cette génération dans le marché du travail s’effectue
ainsi au tournant des années 1960, et il est fondé de penser que les baby
boomers y ont obtenu une place avant le choc pétrolier de 1973. De ce fait, ils
étaient partie prenante des luttes syndicales du début des années 1970 et des
victoires remportées principalement au sein de la fonction publique. En effet,
le système de sécurité précédemment évoqué par F. Dumont pour caractériser
cette génération tient à des conditions salariales, des avantages sociaux et une
sécurité d’emploi inédits jusque-là dans le travail.
Ce « système de sécurité », manifestation des progrès économiques des
francophones, est tenu pour suspect aujourd’hui tant il apparaît comme
l’apanage des baby boomers. C’est même là-dessus que s’appuie l’opposition
à cette « génération ». Si naguère celle-ci était opposée aux générations
d’avant-guerre au nom des valeurs modernes, l’opposition qu’elle suscite
remet en cause un « système de sécurité » qui caractérise la place de cette
génération dans le marché du travail sous forme d’une valeur devenue sociale.
Car les progrès dans le domaine de l’éducation ont continué de se manifester
chez la génération qui a suivi celle des baby boomers et de caractériser la
société québécoise contemporaine. Une scolarité élevée n’est donc plus le seul
fait de cette génération des années 1960. L’étude des tendances de la société
québécoise tend à montrer que les jeunes d’aujourd’hui constituent une
génération massivement inscrite à l’université, à telle enseigne qu’elle compte
davantage de diplômés universitaires que celle des baby boomers, en dépit du
fait qu’elle est moins populeuse que cette dernière.
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Sociologie d’un conflit de générations
Tableau 1
Nombre de diplômés de l’enseignement universitaire,
réseaux public et privé, Québec 1970-1988
Année Baccalauréat Maîtrise Doctorat
1970 13 771 2 234 285
1971 17 446 2 307 326
1972 18 021 1 958 320
1973 13 735 2 599 407
1974 16 007 2 430 369
1975 16 942 2 514 354
1976 17 400 2 676 340
1977 18 675 2 706 274
1978 20 982 3 125 368
1979 20 411 2 901 333
1980 21 678 3 109 331
1981 21 830 3 200 395
1982 22 724 3 435 397
1983 22 245 3 594 418
1984 21 737 3 721 420
1985 22 221 4 025 499
1986 23 625 4 544 516
1987 23 860 4 553 593
1988 25 057 4 608 601
Source: Simon Langlois (sous la dir. de) (1990b), p. 551.
Le constat à tirer de ce tableau n’a en soi rien de surprenant. En effet, si les baby
boomers furent partie des tenants des réformes de l’éducation engagées dans
les années 1960 au Québec, les jeunes d’aujourd’hui sont assurément partie de
leurs aboutissants et en ont recueilli les fruits. Les chiffres cités démontrent en
effet un net allongement de la période d’études et une augmentation marquée
du nombre de diplômés universitaires. Il importe donc de constater que les
jeunes d’aujourd’hui sont très scolarisés à l’instar des baby boomers.
L’insertion de cette jeune génération fortement scolarisée dans le marché du
travail s’avère pourtant problématique. Les problèmes rencontrés se résument
en termes de dévalorisation des diplômes, de chômage et de précarité du travail
marquant un net recul de la jeune génération par rapport celle des baby
boomers dans le marché du travail. Ce recul se manifeste au demeurant tant du
point de vue de la rémunération que de celui des conditions de travail, mettant
un frein à l’élévation du niveau de vie dans les sociétés occidentales. La
détérioration des conditions salariales et des conditions de travail touche
principalement la jeune génération, au point d’ailleurs que ce sont là les traits
marquants de la génération des baby busters. « La génération du baby bust
pourrait ne jamais atteindre le niveau de vie de ses aînés. Ce serait la première
fois que cette situation se produirait, explique Jeffrey G. Williamson,
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spécialisé dans l’histoire de l’économie à l’université Harvard, même la crise
économique des années 30 n’a pas affecté toute une génération » (Cité par
Berstein et al., 1991, p. 13). Il est donc permis de penser que les jeunes
n’auront pas droit, dans un avenir prochain, à la place dans le marché du travail
et dans la société dont jouit la génération des baby boomers. Par rapport à cette
dernière les jeunes sont « perdus » au sens où, pour reprendre les mots de F.
Dumont, ils n’arrivent pas à « maintenir les conquêtes » des baby boomers,de
sorte que les jeunes peuvent être envisagés comme une baby bust generation
selon l’expression américaine utilisée par Williamson.
Les études sociologiques sur les problèmes d’insertion des jeunes dans le
marché du travail, voire dans la société, mettent l’accent soit sur les
changements technologiques, soit sur la dévalorisation des diplômes (Saint-
Pierre, 1982; 1990; Langlois, 1986; Gorz, 1988). L’insertion poussée de la
micro-informatique et de la robotisation ont, par exemple, entraîné une
suppression graduelle des places dans le marché du travail définies par une
scolarité élevée et, par conséquent, une déqualification accentuée du travail, de
même que l’éclatement des conditions et des lieux régularisant la pratique
proprement dite du travail. Le sens de l’appartenance et les diverses formes de
solidarité suscités par la pratique du travail et rendus caducs en pareilles
circonstances, les conditions et droits qui définissent cette insertion ont connu
un éclatement. Ce mouvement s’est amorcé avec le premier choc pétrolier de
1973, pour s’accentuer avec la crise économique.
Les études sociologiques consacrées à cet éclatement ont parlé de
« flexibilisation » du travail et de ses conditions. Ce caractère de flexibilité
vaut dans l’horaire du travail, le lieu où il prend place 1 , sa durée (travail sur
contrat, par intermittence, à temps partiel, etc.), ses prérogatives, etc., à tel
point, du reste, que le travail revêt désormais indubitablement une forme
éclatée. Cet éclatement met fin au « travail salarié, à temps plein, s’exerçant en
un lieu unique, protégé par une série de règles issues de la législation ou de la
convention collective, dans lequel le salarié est lié à un employeur unique par
un contrat de travail normalisé » (Caire, 1982, p. 135). Si le travail dans cette
forme connaît son apogée dans les années 1960-1970, et ce de façon accentuée
au Québec, plus particulièrement chez les francophones, avec les grèves
massives de la fonction publique 2 , celle-ci connaît un premier recul avec le
choc pétrolier de 1973 et la crise économique qui s’ensuivit. Cette tendance
s’observe du reste dans la plupart des sociétés occidentales. Les répercussions
de cette crise économique se manifeste certes par une augmentation du
chômage, expression par excellence de pareille crise, mais aussi, dans un
même temps, par la dénégation des droits acquis dans les domaines de la
sécurité d’emploi, des conditions normatives et salariales en vigueur dans le
marché du travail. L’insertion dans ce marché devient donc compliquée en
pareilles circonstances, et ce pour la génération qui suit celle du baby boom,
plus particulièrement, des baby boomers tels qu’ils ont été définis
précédemment. Puisque ceux-ci y sont massivement présents et disposent de
diplômes universitaires, les places de choix sont donc par conséquent déjà
occupées.
L’augmentation du nombre de détenteurs de diplômes universitaires et celle
du nombre de diplômes détenus découlent de cette saturation du marché du
travail, et l’insertion des baby busters en son sein se complique, voire se
compromet. Cette insertion se complexifie d’ailleurs à ce point que cette
génération est contrainte à prolonger indûment une période d’études sans que
les diplômes universitaires soient reconnus à leur juste valeur. En effet, le jeu
14

Sociologie d’un conflit de générations
de l’offre et de la demande établi en matière de diplômes par des économistes
et sociologues de l’éducation (Passeron, 1982) révèle une nette disproportion
entre le nombre de détenteurs de diplômes universitaires et les places offertes
dans le marché du travail. Les « effets pervers » de la démocratisation de
l’enseignement universitaire se manifesteraient ainsi sous la forme de ce
déséquilibre dû à une inflation des diplômes.
Les explications avancées, qui mettent l’accent sur les mutations
technologiques ou la dévalorisation des diplômes, ne sauraient cependant
suffire, pour intéressantes qu’elles soient. Si l’accent porté sur les mutations
technologiques permet de saisir la flexibilité du travail qui en découle, le fait
que celle-ci marque, pour l’heure du moins, l’insertion des baby busters dans
le marché du travail est laissé dans l’ombre. L’éclatement du travail régulier,
salarié et protégé consécutif à cette flexibilité ne touche pourtant pas le marché
du travail des baby boomers. La flexibilité du travail n’émane donc pas que
d’impératifs techniques, mais exprime un rapport social constituant le marché
du travail sous deux formes qui définissent la place des baby boomers et des
baby busters en son sein. Ce rapport social comprend donc le rapport entre ces
deux générations, rapport pouvant être envisagé comme un conflit de
générations dans le marché du travail dont la flexibilité du travail exigée des
baby busters est l’expression par excellence.
Une étude sociologique sur les baby boomers et les baby busters
L’étude sociologique de ce conflit de générations s’impose. Ce n’est, en effet,
que récemment que la sociologie a pris ce conflit pour objet d’étude, ici comme
ailleurs (Ferry, 1986; Grand-Maison et Lefebvre, 1993; Light, 1988). En 1991,
une équipe de sociologues de l’Université de Montréal se proposait de
l’étudier, tentant de saisir les processus d’« insertion dans la société » de ces
deux générations, plus particulièrement l’insertion dans le marché du travail
par la mobilisation de leurs diplômes universitaires, grâce à une démarche
d’étude inductive.
Dans cette perspective, il peut s’établir une stratégie méthodologique selon
laquelle on considère les étudiants universitaires comme une population de
choix en vue de saisir le rapport entre baby boomers et baby busters en terme
d’un conflit social. En effet, la scolarité universitaire apparaît comme la clé de
voûte de l’insertion dans la société, qu’elle ait suscité ou non un saut, voire un
« boom » dans la mobilité sociale. De ce fait, deux cohortes de Québécois
francophones ayant obtenu des diplômes universitaires ont été privilégiées.
Par surcroît, dans la perspective évoquée plus tôt, la première cohorte
envisagée devait réunir des étudiants qui ont obtenu un premier diplôme
universitaire durant les années 1968-1973. En effet, cette période est
consécutive à la réforme de l’éducation au Québec. Les années 1968 et 1973
sont marquées en outre par les contestations étudiantes et le choc pétrolier.
Elles déterminent par conséquent le début et la fin d’une période de prospérité
économique, accentuée par le développement de la fonction publique et
l’intervention économique de l’État permettant des gains syndicaux quelque
peu érodés par la crise économique suivant le choc pétrolier. La période 1984-
1989 correspond, elle, à une reprise économique consécutive à la crise
économique de 1981-1982 et ses répercussions : crise de l’État-providence et
« flexibilisation » accrue du travail et de la main-d’oeuvre. Sans être identique
à la première, cette seconde période est aussi caractérisée par une relative
prospérité économique. On peut donc supposer que l’insertion dans le marché
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du travail, et donc dans la société, s’est faite dans des conditions somme toute
favorables.
Les cohortes établies selon cette stratégie sont représentatives des détenteurs
de diplômes universitaires au Québec. Leur représentativité n’est toutefois pas
d’ordre statistique mais sociologique, c’est-à-dire qu’elle tient au caractère
déterminant des mutations de l’éducation et du travail dans cette société suite
aux contestations des années 1960, des réformes et du développement de
l’État. Le caractère déterminant de ces mutations sociales apparaît clairement
dans la stratégie méthodologique qui vient d’être exposée 3 .
L’échantillon de chacune des cohortes a été établi à partir des registres officiels
de l’Association des diplômé(e)s de l’Université de Montréal couvrant
l’ensemble des disciplines offertes dans cette institution. Un tirage au hasard
opéré par ordinateur a réduit la population totale à une liste de 125 noms; de ce
nombre, 89 personnes ont été rejointes. Les caractéristiques de l’insertion et de
la position de chacune des cohortes au sein du marché du travail sont décrites
dans le tableau 2.
Tableau 2
Principales caractéristiques des répondants à l’enquête 1
(Secteurs économiques, insertion et position dans le marché du travail)
Baby boomers Baby busters
Secteur Privé 15 (32 p. 100) 21 (54 p. 100)
Public 32 (68 p. 100) 14 (36 p. 100)
4 s.emp. (10 p. 100)
Insertion Facile 2 45 (96 p. 100) 22 (56 p. 100)
Difficile 2 (4 p. 100) 17 (44 p. 100)
Position Stable 3 39 (83 p. 100) 12 (31 p. 100)
Instable 8 (17 p. 100) 27 (69 p. 100)
1. Sur le total des personnes rejointes (89), trois entrevues ont été écartées de l’analyse en
raison de problèmes techniques ou en raison de l’échec de l’entrevue.
2. L’insertion est jugée « facile » quand la personne s’est insérée dans le marché du travail
moins d’un an après l’obtention de son diplôme, et ce dans son domaine d’étude.
3. Un individu jouit d’une position « stable » quand il détient actuellement un travail avec
sécurité d’emploi et a profité d’une telle sécurité dans la majorité des emplois occupés
précédemment.
Chacune des personnes qui constituent ces cohortes dotées des
caractéristiques précédemment décrites a été rencontrée dans le cadre d’une
entrevue. L’entrevue se déroulait en face à face et selon un schéma d’entretien
semi-directif, c’est-à-dire à partir d’un canevas précis mais dont la définition
permettait d’explorer des avenues ouvertes par les interviewés. Ces entrevues
ont été réalisées à la maison ou au travail, au choix des interviewés.
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Sociologie d’un conflit de générations
Sociologie d’un conflit de jeunesses
Que révèle l’analyse d’une telle série d’entrevues ? Les résultats de l’analyse
démontrent que les baby boomers ont effectivement tiré bénéfice de leurs
diplômes universitaires qui, dans un contexte favorable, ont considérablement
facilité leur insertion à la société et au marché du travail. Les diplômes
universitaires acquis par les baby boomers procurent immédiatement une
place de choix dans le marché du travail dans la mesure où il est, à leur époque,
en train de se redéfinir en fonction de l’élévation de la scolarité qui en découle
et qui apparaît sous forme d’une valeur sociale.
– Donc le diplôme que vous aviez obtenu...
...avait sa valeur marchande. Bien que pas dans la discipline [cette
personne détient un baccalauréat en sciences politiques], mais la
recherche en marketing, à cette époque là, si on remonte vingt ans en
arrière, c’était le démarrage (...) on venait tous d’un peu n’importe
quelle discipline et on s’est ramassé en recherche en marketing (...).
Je pense que les chômeurs instruits se voyaient moins vers le début
des années 1970 parce que le Québec était en pleine expansion
économique à ce moment-là.(...) Tous les domaines étaient en
éclosion, donc effectivement il y avait de nouveaux domaines qui se
créaient.
Ce qui se passe maintenant c’est devenu trop gras, la machine est trop
grasse, il y a trop de fonctionnaires et de syndiqués (...) Elle a besoin
d’une cure d’amaigrissement et je pense qu’il a tellement changé, ce
marché [du travail], que, effectivement, où pour nous c’était sans
doute plus facile parce que c’était florissant à l’époque. (BB, bac en
science politique)
La cure d’amaigrissement évoquée ici concerne des gains au plan de la
rémunération et des avantages sociaux qui, s’ils sont aujourd’hui mis en cause
par les baby boomers eux-mêmes, n’en reste pas moins l’aboutissement de
leurs revendications. Ces revendications ont donné lieu à des gains
(amélioration du salaire, de la sécurité d’emploi, du pouvoir sur le travail, etc.)
dont la généralisation, rendue possible par l’ampleur démographique de cette
génération instruite, a donné lieu à une richesse collective jamais égalée dans
l’histoire du Québec. Le schéma d’entrevue privilégiée autorisant une
description du cadre de vie des interviewés permet à l’analyse de montrer
qu’on a assisté sans contredit à l’émergence d’une « classe moyenne » chez les
Québécois francophones. Sans éviter un jeu de mots facile, il est permis de
définir cette « classe moyenne » comme une classe qui dispose de « moyens »
financiers, scolaires et sociaux. La hausse de revenu que les baby boomers ont
connue leur donne accès à la propriété d’une maison dans des quartiers chics,
de voitures de luxe, d’une maison de campagne, bref, d’un bien-être « bien
mérité », selon les mots de plusieurs interviewés, puisque « durement » acquis
par le travail.
L’analyse révèle par ailleurs que le travail constitue le trait saillant des baby
boomers. En premier lieu, il est le fait des hommes et des femmes de cette
génération. La totalité des interviewées faisaient partie du marché du travail au
moment de l’enquête. En second lieu, le travail se révèle pour eux l’activité
dominante de leur cadre de vie. Si le travail suscite un « manque de défis
personnels » tant il est régulier et assuré, il donne lieu dès lors à un autre
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« travail » : création de petites entreprises ou participation au jeu économique
(investissements, etc.).
En marge de nos professions, ma femme et moi avons investi dans de
petits commerces, de petits immeubles, de sorte que nos enfants nous
disent « vous pensez juste à ça ». Ils nous considèrent comme très
matérialistes. Les enfants sont très critiques de ce point de vue là. On
a toujours eu des affaires en marge de notre travail, le 9à5etla
sécurité [d’emploi] à vie ça devient vite lassant... (BB, bac en
architecture)
Le travail, pour ne pas dire l’économie, est devenu dans de telles conditions la
valeur propre à cette génération. Cette valeur devient sociale, au sens où elle
vaut à l’échelle d’une société marquée par le poids démographique des baby
boomers et le pouvoir qu’il procure à cette génération. Il ne s’agit pas ici
d’affirmer que les hippies d’hier sont devenus les RÉActionnaires
d’aujourd’hui. Les baby boomers sont en fait partie et produit d’une société
dont la modernisation a coïncidé avec leur date d’insertion. Il n’en reste pas
moins que la modernisation de cette société a « doté » cette génération d’un
« système de sécurité », pour reprendre l’expression de F. Dumont, lui
conférant une « singularité extrêmement visible » qu’elle parvient encore à
maintenir. Si cette singularité est « extrêmement visible », c’est qu’elle ne
touche, à première vue, que cette génération par rapport à d’autres générations,
particulièrement celle qui suit les baby boomers, la génération dite du baby
bust.
L’analyse de la série d’entrevues réalisées auprès de la seconde cohorte qui
compose la population privilégiée pour les fins de l’enquête va parfaitement en
ce sens. Scolarisée et détentrice de diplômes universitaires avantageusement
comparables à ceux de ses prédécesseurs, cette génération s’insère dans le
marché du travail dans des conditions précaires qui se manifestent en premier
lieu par l’intermittence du travail : travail à forfait, à la pige, à temps partiel ou
surnuméraire. En second lieu, cette précarité s’exprime par des failles dans le
« système de sécurité » qu’auraient dû leur conférer droits et avantages
sociaux.
Les contraintes du travail résultant des gains obtenus par les baby boomers
résident dans son caractère régulier, protégé et hautement rémunéré qui lui
vaut d’être aujourd’hui décrié comme rigide dans le marché du travail où
l’accent n’est désormais plus mis sur la valeur du diplôme universitaire mais
sur la compétence, la flexibilité et la mobilité manifestées chez les baby
busters dans le travail proprement dit.
Bien d’abord j’étais à temps partiel, j’étais syndiquée mais j’étais ce
qu’on appelle une catégorie que sont les statuts précaires, dans le
jargon syndical, ce qui fait que je n’avais pas de sécurité d’emploi...
– Comment sont définies les conditions de travail ?
Ça se fait par beaucoup d’ententes verbales, parce que c’est un travail
à la pige, il n’y a pas de contrat de travail, si l’on veut. Alors c’est
l’entente verbale et l’usage qui prévalent. (...) Alors tout le monde est
traité à peu près sur le même pied, il yauncontrôle naturel qui
s’établit entre les gens. (bb, maîtrise en études françaises)
Quoique souvent protégé par un syndicat, le travail ne procure pas ou plus de
« système de sécurité »; à tout le moins, le caractère officiel de celui-ci
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Sociologie d’un conflit de générations
s’estompe, ce qui suscite une sorte de régulation diffuse. Celle-ci se différencie
du système de sécurité dont elle est néanmoins la contrepartie en abolissant ce
qu’il est désormais convenu d’appeler ses « rigidités sociales ». « Nous
entendons par là, écrit Simon Langlois, les contraintes qui sont codifiées
formellement et qui sont susceptibles d’affecter les comportements des acteurs
sociaux, notamment les jeunes. (...) Mais ces rigidités ne découlent pas
seulement de la codification légale qui contraint différents publics ou diverses
catégories d’acteurs; elles résultent aussi de l’institutionnalisation des
relations sociales — notamment dans le domaine des relations de travail [dans
la société d’aujourd’hui] » (Langlois, 1986, p. 303.) Ces rigidités sociales ne
découlent donc pas du travail lui-même mais de ce qu’y exerce la génération
des baby boomers du seul fait de son poids démographique, politique et social.
La « dualisation » du marché du travail (Gagnon, 1990) est invoquée pour
rendre compte de cette différenciation du travail et du « système de sécurité »
dont il était jadis pourvu. Mais on relève pas assez que cette dualisation est un
fait de générations qui oppose les baby boomers et les baby busters.«Aufil
des ans et sans trop qu’on s’en rende compte très explicitement, ajoute Simon
Langlois, diverses formes, maintenant cristallisées, de relations sociales ont
été mises en place, avec pour résultat de rendre plus difficile l’insertion des
jeunes, et notamment parce que s’est institutionnalisé un rapport de forces qui
semble jouer systématiquement contre les jeunes sur le marché du travail. »
(Langlois, 1986, p. 319.)
Ce rapport de forces ne semble pas, pour l’heure, s’incarner dans un conflit
ouvert entre générations comparable aux contestations étudiantes des années
1960, voire aux mouvements des jeunes dans leur ensemble qui ont marqué
cette époque. Il n’en est pas moins manifeste mais semble se dissimuler
derrière, ou plus précisément se confondre avec les contraintes nouvellement
apparues dans le marché du travail. En effet, l’analyse de la série d’entrevues
précédemment évoquée démontre que l’opposition des baby busters face aux
baby boomers s’exprime principalement par une mise en cause du « système
de sécurité » dont jouissent ces derniers, système dont la rigidité est envisagée
de façon critique par une mise en valeur de la précarité du travail.
[La précarité du travail], moi je trouve au contraire que c’est un
stimulant très, très important... On ne risque pas de s’encroûter quand
on est toujours sur la corde raide et dans une situation précaire. Il n’y a
rien de pire, à mon avis, que la sécurité d’emploi, le syndicalisme
jusqu’aux oreilles, qui vous met sur les rails jusqu’à la retraite. Au
contraire, moi ça me stimule et je n’en souffre absolument pas. (bb,
maîtrise en études françaises)
La difficulté de parvenir à ce « système de sécurité » par le travail contraint
sans doute les baby busters à une telle critique. Ainsi, le travail perd auprès de
cette génération sa valeur de « système de sécurité » au profit d’une précarité
du travail jugée « stimulante ». De ce fait, cette génération a tendance à rejeter,
par exemple, la protection de syndicats dont elle est par ailleurs exclue en
raison de sa position précaire dans le marché du travail ou dont elle peut faire
les frais en raison de sa « rigidité ». En la rejetant ou en s’en excluant, les baby
busters confortent eux-mêmes leur position précaire dans le marché du travail
en faisant éclater la rigidité du travail.
Ceci met au jour la position paradoxale, pour ne pas dire contradictoire, des
baby busters dans le marché du travail voire plus généralement, dans la
société. La théorie de l’idéologie et du pouvoir proposée par l’anthropologue
19

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français Maurice Godelier permet de poser que cette contradiction est
constitutive d’un rapport de domination dont la « domination la plus forte n’est
pas la violence des dominants mais le consentement des dominés à leur propre
domination » (Godelier, 1978, p. 176):
Pour mettre et maintenir « au pouvoir », c’est-à-dire au-dessus et au
centre de la société une partie de la société, un ordre, une caste, une
classe par rapport à d’autres ordres, castes, classes, la répression fait
moins que l’adhésion, la violence physique et psychologique moins
que la conviction de la pensée qui entraîne avec elle l’adhésion de la
volonté l’acceptation sinon la « coopération » des dominés.
(Godelier, 1978: 176).
Dans la mesure où la domination définie dans cette théorie n’est pas réduite à
son aspect proprement politique — renvoyant aux stratégies délibérées et
volontaires des parties sociales considérées, telle une classe ou, en
l’occurrence, une génération — cette contradiction peut donc être posée en un
rapport de domination par lequel les baby boomers dominent les baby busters
dans le marché du travail et, plus généralement, dans la société non sans que
ces derniers « coopèrent » en quelque sorte à leur propre domination. La
coopération à cette domination n’est en rien délibérée ou volontaire, comme
incite à le penser une lecture rapide de la théorie de Godelier. Celle-ci est
inhérente à la contradiction précédemment relevée. Ce rapport de domination
se confond avec les contraintes du marché du travail, pour ne pas dire se
dissimule sous les exigences du travail proprement dit alors que celles-ci sont
le fait de l’histoire de la société québécoise aboutissant aujourd’hui à ce conflit
des générations.
Conclusion
Suite à la présente analyse, la mise au jour de ce conflit des générations entre
baby boomers et baby busters permet par surcroît d’établir que la « faillite » qui
caractérise les baby busters n’est pas un « effet d’âge » suivant lequel les baby
busters, étant jeunes, sont en train, comme les baby boomers au même âge, de
s’insérer dans le marché du travail et la société et peuvent par conséquent
aspirer à occuper la position qu’occupent aujourd’hui les baby boomers. En
effet, pour l’heure, « l’observation des 10 ou 15 dernières années montre qu’il
n’y a pas ici seulement un effet de l’âge. Il y a aussi un effet de génération : en
vieillissant les jeunes retrouvent moins que ce que les autres avaient au même
âge » (Langlois, 1990a, p. 95).
Cela n’est pas propre au Québec mais vaut sans doute de différentes manières à
l’échelle de la société canadienne. Néanmoins, la position dominée des baby
busters qui découle de ce conflit des générations vient compromettre les
avancées de la modernisation de la société et de l’éducation au Québec qui se
manifeste par les conquêtes des francophones dans le marché du travail,
modernisation jadis revendiquée par les jeunes des années 1960 devenus la
génération gâtée des baby boomers.
Notes
* Cet article émane de recherches bénéficiant de l’aide financière du Conseil de recherches en
sciences humaines du Canada et du ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la science du
Québec. Nous tenons à exprimer notre gratitude à Marcel Fournier et Yolande Cohen pour
leurs commentaires opportuns et féconds. Nos remerciements vont aussi aux deux
évaluateurs anonymes qui nous ont transmis leurs judicieux commentaires.
20

Sociologie d’un conflit de générations
1. La micro-informatique permet, par exemple, le travail de bureau à la maison. Les avancées
en cette matière sont aujourd’hui considérables. Près de 12 p. 100 du travail naguère réalisé
en un lieu de travail est présentement effectué à domicile, selon un horaire voulu.
2. Le début des années 1970 a été marqué par des grèves importantes de la fonction publique
québécoise, majoritairement francophone; celles-ci ont donné lieu à des victoires syndicales
de première importance, qui ont permis des gains nets en termes de salaire et d’avantages en
matière de sécurité d’emploi. Voir J. Rouillard (1989).
3. Ces considérations s’appuient sur la méthodologie qualitative caractérisant la méthode de
cas. Sur ce sujet, voir Hamel, dir. (1992); DUFOUR, FORTIN et HAMEL (1991); et RAGIN
et BECKER (1992).
4. BB: baby boomer; bb: baby buster.
Bibliographie
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pp. 13-16.
CAIRE, Guy (1982), « Précarisation des emplois et régulation du marché du travail », Sociologie
du travail, 2, pp. 135-158.
DUMONT, Fernand (1986), « Âges, générations, société de la jeunesse » in Fernand Dumont
(sous la direction), Une société des jeunes?, Québec, Institut québécois de recherche sur la
culture, pp. 15-28.
DUFOUR, Stéphane, Dominic FORTIN et Jacques HAMEL (1992), L’enquête de terrain en
sciences sociales, Montréal, Éditions Saint-Martin.
FERRY, Luc (1986), « Interpréter Mai 68 », Pouvoirs, 39, pp. 5-14.
GAGNON, Gabriel (1990), « Travail, culture et émancipation », Revue de l’Institut de sociologie,
n o 3-4, pp. 285-291.
GODELIER, Maurice (1978), « La part idéelle du réel. Essai sur l’idéologique », L’Homme, vol.
XVIII, n o 3-4, pp. 155-188.
GORZ, André (1988), Métamorphoses du travail. Quête de sens, Paris, Galilée.
GRAND-MAISON, Jacques et Solange LEFEBVRE (1993), Une génération bouc émissaire,
Montréal, Fidès.
HAMEL, Jacques, sous la direction de, (1992), « The Case Method in Sociology », Current
Sociology, vol. 40, n o 1.
LANGLOIS, Simon (1986), « Les rigidités sociales et l’insertion dans la société québécoise » in
Fernand Dumont (sous la direction), Une société des jeunes?, Québec, Institut québécois de
recherche sur la culture, pp. 301-323.
LANGLOIS, Simon (1990a), « Anciennes et nouvelles formes d’inégalités et de différenciation
sociale au Québec » in Fernand Dumont (sous la direction), La société québécoise après 30
ans de changements, Québec, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, pp. 81-98.
LANGLOIS, Simon, sous la direction de, (1990b), La société québécoise en tendances 1960-
1990, Québec, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture.
LIGHT, Paul C. (1988), Baby boomers, New York-London, W.W. Norton & Company.
MANNHEIM, Karl (1990), Le problème des générations, Paris, Nathan.
PASSERON, Jean-Claude (1982), « L’inflation des diplômes », Revue française de sociologie,
vol. XXIII, n o 4, pp. 551-586.
RAGlN, Charles et Howard BECKER, sous la direction de, (1992), What is a Case? Exploring the
Foundations of Social Inquiry, New York, Cambridge University Press.
RICARD, François (1992), La génération lyrique, Montréal, Boréal.
ROCHER, Guy (1993), « Repères pour une société en mutation », Forces, n o 100, pp. 15-20.
ROUILLARD, Jacques (1989), Le syndicalisme au Québec : des origines à nos jours, Montréal,
Boréal.
SAINT-PIERRE, Céline (1982), « Les jeunes et le travail : remise en question ou fuite en avant?
», Revue internationale d’action communautaire, 8/48, pp. 158-164.
SAINT-PIERRE, Céline (1990), « Transformations du monde du travail », in Fernand Dumont
(sous la direction), La société québécoise après 30 ans de changements, Québec, Institut
québécois de recherche sur la culture, pp. 67-80.
21

John C. Pierce,
Nicholas P. Lovrich, Jr.,
Mary Ann E. Steger and
Brent S. Steel
Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia*
Abstract
This paper examines generational differences on three issues of public policy
based on public opinion of samples taken in two cities (Vancouver and Prince
George) of British Columbia. The three issues polled are forest management,
native claims and immigration. Along with differences between the publics of
the two cities, significant generational differences of opinion surface in the
survey results. However, the differences vary somewhat, depending on the
relative salience of the policy issue to the local political and social context. The
study examines the generational differences in policy preferences controlling
for two “new politics” value dimensions (postmaterialism and libertarianism)
and two measures of core Canadian cultural values (communitarianism and
particularism). The generational differences in policy opinions remain
widespread and significant even after introducing controls for the four sets of
political values mentioned above. The study suggests two possible
explanations for these results. First, other measures or dimensions of “new
politics” and Canadian cultural values may produce results more consistent
with their hypothesized impact. Second, these issues of public policy may be so
salient that they are rooted in very specific generational contexts and thus
unconnected to larger value dimensions. In either case, the generational
differences portend significant change in the policy future of British
Columbia.
Résumé
À partir d’un sondage d’opinion publique mené dans deux villes de la
Colombie-Britannique (Vancouver et Prince George), l’article examine les
différences générationnelles concernant trois questions de politiques
gouvernementales : la gestion forestière, les revendications autochtones et
l’immigration. En plus de révéler des différences d’opinion entre les deux
villes, les résultats du sondage indiquent des différences importantes entre les
générations. Par contre, ces différences varient selon l’importance de ces
questions dans le contexte social et politique au niveau local. Les auteurs
examinent ces différences quant aux préférences politiques en se concentrant
sur les dimensions de valeurs de deux « nouvelles politiques », le
postmatérialisme et les idées libertaires, et sur deux mesures des valeurs
culturelles fondamentales des Canadiennes et Canadiens, le
communitarianisme et le particularisme. Les différences générationnelles
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
dans les opinions de politiques gouvernementales demeurent répandues et
considérables même une fois que des éléments sont introduits pour soumettre à
un contrôle les quatre valeurs mentionnées ci-dessus. L’étude offre deux
explications des résultats. Premièrement, d’autres mesures ou dimensions
relatives aux nouvelles politiques et aux valeurs culturelles canadiennes
peuvent produire des résultats plus compatibles avec leurs impacts prévus.
Deuxièmement, ces questions de politiques gouvernementales peuvent être si
saillantes qu’elles sont ancrées dans des contextes générationnels très
spécifiques et donc détachées des dimensions de valeurs plus vastes. Dans les
deux cas, les différences générationnelles annoncent un changement
important dans l’avenir des politiques gouvernementales de la Colombie-
Britannique.
Introduction
The question of generational change in Canada takes on special meaning in the
context of political culture’s effects on the public policy preferences of a
country’s citizens. Numerous observors have pointed to distinctive
orientations to politics and society in the culture of Canada. In contrasting
Canada to the United States, Lipset has written that “...the cultural differences
of the past continue” (1990:212), while Merelman has noted the presence of
“quite distinct cultures of political participation” (1991:11). This unique
cultural character of Canada is said to have grown out of its particular
historical and institutional roots. The preservation of this Canadian cultural
identity across succeeding generations remains a concern for those who
observe a gradual cultural erosion from the wave of media, economic and
social influences from south of the border (Jackson et al., 1986:149-160;
Westell, 1991).
The potential divergence among generations in Canada was emphasized in a
recent study by Neil Nevitte, who concluded that “evidence that young
Americans and Canadians are more like each other than their elder conationals
underscored and visibly illustrated just how similar the prevailing
values in these two countries have become” (1991:11). If the younger
generation in Canada is becoming separated from its older co-nationals, one
need not look too far for evidence of that distancing—generation-specific
responses to the cross-border penetration of media and economics generally,
and the recent free trade agreement particularly. Even more broadly, however,
Canadian cross- generational cultural homogeneity has run into divergent
forces produced by powerful transnational, post-industrial effects. These
transnational, post- industrial forces are said to be separating the political
values of younger generations from their elders in many modern democracies
(van Deth and Jennings, 1989:17). Economic security, highly developed mass
communication systems and sophisticated technologies in all walks of life are
thought to have created a greater emphasis on libertarian (emphasizing
individuals’ freedom and control of their own lives) and “postmaterial” (noneconomic
concerns with freedom of speech and widespread participation in
politics) values, especially in those generations maturing after World War II.
That one might observe an interplay of historical, generational convergence
and contemporary, post-industrial-produced, generational divergence is
consistent with what is known about the learning of attitudes central to a
political culture. It is widely thought that most political learning occurs during
a citizen’s early years (Jennings, 1989:315). In times of stability, culturallydominant
political orientations will be transmitted across generations in a
24

Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia
relatively unimpeded manner. On the other hand, if different generations are
affected by dissimilar environmental forces during their respective formative
years the generations are more likely to have uniquely characteristic political
attitudes, and to hold relatively strongly to those attitudes throughout their
lives. Thus, the historical view of Canadian cultural homogeneity (regional
differences set aside for the moment) would suggest socialization processes
resulting in cross-generational similarity within Canada. On the other hand,
the theories of post-industrial political change would point toward the position
that younger generations in Canada will have been socialized to a cultural
content that differs systematically from that of their older compatriots.
The potentially contrasting effects of traditional and post-industrial cultural
forces on generational differences in Canada may be uniquely revealed in the
responses of individuals to contemporary issues of public policy. The salience,
visibility and personal relevance of current issues of public policy may provide
a powerful stimulus to the activation of deep-seated historical and
contemporary values. This paper explores the dynamics of generational
differences in public policy attitudes and their traditional and modern cultural
roots in British Columbia. We address the question of whether there are
significant policy differences among generations within each of two locations,
and whether those public policy differences are affected by individuals’
adherence to Canadian cultural values and to post-industrial values.
Public Policy, Political Culture and Post-industrialism
We expect to find generational differences in attitudes about issues of public
policy in British Columbia, but we also expect that these generational
differences will be significantly altered by the degree to which individuals
support values inherent in traditional, Canadian political culture and by the
extent to which they adhere to “new politics” post-industrial values. More
specifically, we anticipate that support for traditional, Canadian cultural
values will bring the generations closer together on issues of public policy,
while differences on “new politics” values will push the generations farther
apart.
Issues of Public Policy
This paper looks at generational differences in public attitudes about three
issues of public policy. These three issues are immigration, native land claims
and forest resource management. They were chosen because they have been
high on the contemporary Canadian political agenda, and hence should be
salient to Canadian citizens. Moreover, these issues have the potential to tap
into the traditional cultural roots of Canada while at the same time being
clearly connected to many of the values identified with “new politics” conflict
in the post-industrial era. Attitudes about these issues of public policy provide
the opportunity for a concrete expression of historical cultural orientations and
of contemporary values because each reaches into Canada’s past while
emerging high on the present political agenda.
Canadian Political Culture
The distinctive characteristics of the Canadian political culture are welldescribed
in the writings of the last several decades. Seymour Martin Lipset,
noted and often controversial sociological observor of Canadian political
culture, contends that “Canada has been and is a more class-aware, elitist, law
25

IJCS / RIÉC
abiding, statist, collectivity-oriented and particularistic (group-oriented)
society than the United States” (1990:8). Robert Presthus believes that
“Canada’s political culture includes a generally affirmative perspective of
interest groups, based largely upon a corporatist theory of society and a mildly
positive appreciation of government’s role and legitimacy” (1974:4). Richard
Merelman suggests that “...in Canada the culture of political participation is
dominantly group-oriented, somewhat dynamic, and divided between a
hierarchical model of parliamentary politics and an egalitarian model of
dualism involving British and French cultural groups” (1991:11).
Adherence to these distinctive cultural norms certainly may structure the
nature of generational differences on the three issues of public policy. That is,
we picked policy areas that are currently salient, but which also seem to tap
into the core areas of the Canadian political culture. Specifically, the issues of
native claims and immigration strike at the heart of Canadian corporatism and
particularistic group-based views of politics and society. The issue of forest
management policy may reflect conflict over the Canadian value of collective
decisions about a resource that many consider to be a public good. As noted
below, these issues also are directly relevant to the central dimensions of postindustrial
change and its value effects.
Post-industrial Value Change
Shared support for core elements of the Canadian political culture would act to
minimize generational differences on issues of public policy. At the same time,
a number of observors have commented on fundamental changes in the
political and social world of modern democracies that have acted to separate
the policy positions of younger and older generations. Environmentalism, civil
rights for minorities and women, peace movements, anti-nuclear attitudes,
greater openness and access to the political process—these are said to
characterize individuals with political values produced by post-industrial
change. These political values are said to have grown out of the peace,
prosperity and technological changes of the post-industrial era. University of
Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, the leading contemporary
exponent of this view, has suggested that because many in the younger
generations no longer had to worry about threats to economic and physical
security, the peace and prosperity of the “new politics” period produced
commitments to “postmaterial” values (those values giving high priority to
widespread public participation in political processes and to the protection of
freedom of speech) for individuals socialized during that period (1977; 1990).
Thus, a potential foundation of generational differences in opinions about
issues of public policy in Canada would be one’s relative adherence to these
“new politics” values. Indeed, these “new politics” values would seem to have
a direct link to the public policy issues under consideration here. One would
expect the younger generations—those most likely to be socialized into “new
politics” values—to be more likely to support native land claims, to be open to
immigration, and to be more protective of the environment in their reaction to
issues of timber policy. If so, one then can ascertain whether the political
values themselves account for the generational patterns in opinions about
those public policy issues.
Data Collection
In 1991-92, a mail survey was used to collect public attitudes on issues of
public policy, Canadian political culture, and post-industrial political values
26

among two random samples of one thousand citizens each drawn from two
cities in British Columbia. After eliminating non-deliverable mailings and
deceased addressees, a response rate of about 43 percent obtained in both cities
(the resulting sample sizes ranged from about 275 to 300). The sample
addresses were purchased from a commercial market research firm whose data
base is built from telephone directories. The two cities in British Columbia are
Vancouver and Prince George. Vancouver is the major metropolitan coastal
city of the Province, while Prince George is the major interior population
center. These two cities should provide an appropriate context for contrasting
the relative influence of cultural and post-industrial orientations on
generational differences. Vancouver is the modern, worldly city of western
Canada in which one would expect the influences of post-industrial society to
work most effectively in the socialization of recent generational cohorts.
Moreover, it is in Vancouver where immigration is the most salient, with the
conflict and controversy engendered by the heightened immigration of Pacific
Rim peoples. On the other hand, Prince George, as the more isolated interior
city, may be a more likely repository of traditional, Canadian cultural values
and a less likely home for “new politics” attitudes. Moreover, because of its
location, the issues of native land claims and forest resource management are
more likely to be salient to the residents of Prince George. These
characteristics of the two cities thus provide the opportunity to observe the
impact of contextual effects on the interplay of generational influences and
cultural and “new politics” values. For purposes of the subsequent data
analysis, the respondents are grouped into three age cohorts or “generations.”
These three are: the “younger” generation, which includes those less than forty
years of age at the time of the survey; the “middle” aged generation, which
includes respondents forty to fifty-five; and, the “older” generation, including
those over fifty-five.
Findings
Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia
Generational Differences
The impact of generation on public policy preferences in Vancouver and
Prince George is shown in Table 1. The results in that table reveal significant
generational differences in both locations. In both Vancouver and Prince
George, the older generation is less likely to see forest management issues as
particularly serious, although the gap between generations is greater in
Vancouver. Likewise, in both locations the older generation is much more
likely to come down on the side of economy when posed with a trade-off
between the environment and the economy, and more likely to support clearcutting
as a forest management tool. Overall, then, on the public policy issue
of timber management we do find a number of generational differences.
Moreover, those generational differences appear to be larger and more
frequent in Vancouver than in Prince George.
Several generational differences also surface in the immigration issue area. In
Vancouver, the youngest generation is slightly more likely to see immigration
as a serious issue. In Vancouver, contrary to expectations, the youngest
generation is more likely to oppose additional immigration and more likely to
think that native born residents should have priority in rights. In Prince George
it is the middle generation that stands out, being more likely to support
additional immigration.
27

IJCS / RIÉC
An important pattern has developed in these first two policy areas.
Generational differences in response to these issues are greater in those
contexts where the issue is not as salient. That is, immigration is clearly more
of an issue in Vancouver than in Prince George, while timber management is
more disputatious in Prince George than in Vancouver. One possible
explanation is that value-based, generational differences in policy evaluations
are more likely to surface in the absence of over-riding cues and information
present when all generations are similarly exposed to a highly salient issue.
The third issue area with generational differences in policy preferences is
native claims. In both cities, the youngest generation is least likely to see the
issue as particularly important. Again, contrary to expectations, in both
locations the youngest age group is less likely to believe that native claims
should be protected and less likely to support additional claims.
To this point, then, it is clear that there are a number of important generational
differences in individual preferences on important issues of public policy. At
the same time, the magnitude and the consistency of those differences depend
on the relative salience of the policy area to the particular city in which the
respondents reside. The more salient the policy area to the location of the
respondents, the less likely is there to be generational differences in attitudes
about those policies. The possible explanation is that the relative absence of
policy salience requires the respondent to move away from the common
experiences shared across generations within the geographic location to a
reliance on relevant individual values which are thought to vary more
systematically across the generations. The next task then is to attempt to assess
the impact of traditional and post-industrial values on generational differences
in policy preferences. We begin with a look at the extent to which controlling
for “new politics” values diminishes the differences among the generations. If
the generational differences in policy preferences stem from generational
differences in the prevalence of “new politics” values, controlling for those
values should significantly reduce the cross-cohort policy preference
disparities.
“New Politics” Values
If the response to issues of public policy flows out of fundamental and
characteristic values relating to political culture, then when people in different
generations agree on those cultural orientations the generational differences
should be significantly reduced, regardless of the location. To test this
proposition, in this section we examine the impact of cultural values on
generational differences in policy preferences.
28

Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia
Table 1
Generational Differences on Policy Issues:
Mean Responses to Survey Questions
Forest Management
Serious Issue a,b
(1=not; 7-most)
Environment/Economy b
(1=environment;
7=economy)
Clear-cutting a,b
(1=stop; 7=allow)
Native American
Claims
Serious Issue a
(1=not; 7=most)
Protect Native Rights b
(1=same; 7=additional)
Native Claims a
(1=fair now; 7=more)
Prince George Vancouver
Young Middle Old Young Middle Old
6.15 6.00 5.80 5.73 5.79 4.96
3.43 3.48 3.85 3.30 3.27 3.82
3.57 3.79 4.56 3.18 3.38 3.74
4.03 4.42 4.40 4.21 4.67 4.57
1.86 2.13 2.82 2.44 3.01 2.85
3.11 3.13 3.63 3.79 3.89 4.02
Immigration
Serious Issue a
4.43 4.41 4.35 4.91 4.73 4.73
(1=not; 7=most)
More Immigration 3.50 3.82 3.60 3.53 3.85 3.97
(1=limit; 7=encourage)
Rights of Immigrants b 3.00 2.68 3.09 2.87 2.79 3.56
(1=same; 7=less)
a location differences p.05;
b generational differences p≤.05
The dominant conceptualization of value change in the last thirty years is
found in the work of Ronald Inglehart (1977; 1990). Inglehart contends that
the younger generations are distinguished by their disproportionate
commitment to what he calls “postmaterial” values. Postmaterial values
emphasize the right to say what one thinks and to participate in decisions and
processes of government. Material values, on the other hand, emphasize
stability in the economy and the maintenance of order in the country.
Postmaterial values are said to have grown out of the security and prosperity of
the l960s and l970s, when most of the younger generation learned and
developed their own values. Postmaterial values generally are linked to more
29

IJCS / RIÉC
“liberal” and inclusive kinds of policy positions, such as support for the
environment and support for native claims. Thus, controlling for those value
preferences of our respondents may significantly alter the impact of generation
on policy preferences. The results are shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Generational Differences Controlling for Postmaterial Values:
Mean Responses to Survey Questions
POSTMATERIAL VALUE
ORIENTATION
Materialist Mixed Postmaterialist
Forest Management Y* M O Y M O Y M O
Serious Issue b
5.78 6.00 4.90 5.91 5.81 5.28 6.22 6.10 5.69
(1=not; 7-most)
Environment/Economy a,b 3.61 3.55 3.90 3.34 3.44 3.94 2.93 2.90 3.31
(1=environment;
7=economy)
Clear--cutting a,b 2.83 4.21 5.15 3.49 3.68 4.08 3.41 3.12 3.69
(1=stop; 7=allow)
Native American Claims
Serious Issue a,b
(1=not; 7=most)
Protect Native Rights a,b
(1=same; 7=additional)
Native Claims a
(1=fair now; 7=more)
4.11 4.52 2.74 3.89 4.34 4.84 4.66 5.08 4.66
1.94 2.45 2.16 1.84 2.24 2.75 2.86 3.22 3.75
3.78 2.59 2.95 3.28 3.29 3.90 3.83 4.38 4.38
Immigration
Serious Issue a
4.00 3.93 3.79 4.53 4.63 4.57 5.03 4.67 5.23
(1=not; 7=most)
More Immigration 3.53 4.07 3.89 3.47 3.70 3.82 3.48 4.20 4.19
(1=limit; 7=encourage)
Rights of Immigrants b 2.82 3.40 3.42 2.76 2.88 2.92 3.10 2.20 4.26
(1=same; 7=less)
a value differences p≤.05;
b generational differences p≤.05
* Y = Young; M = Middle; O = Old
Postmaterial values are measured by the respondents choosing which two of
four statements most closely reflect their own priorities. These four value
statements are: maintaining order in the country, giving people more say in
government, fighting rising prices and protecting freedom of speech. Those
30

Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia
respondents choosing statements two and four are called postmaterialist,
while those picking options one and three are materialist. Other combinations
are labeled mixed.
It is clear from Table 2 that introducing the control for postmaterial values fails
to erase the significant impact of generation on policy preferences. In all three
cases dealing with forest management, there are significant differences among
the generations. To be sure, value type also makes a difference on the
environment/economy trade-off question. On two of the three native claims
issues (seriousness and the protection of rights), generational differences
remain when controlling for postmaterial values. Even on the third issue,
inspection of the table reveals generational differences there as well, but
somewhat inconsistently patterned within the different value types. Likewise,
on each of the native claims issues, postmaterial value orientation also
significantly differentiates the generations. In the immigration issue domain,
no overall generational differences remain after the postmaterial value control.
However, a close look at the table shows a few generational distinctions—the
younger materialists and the younger and middle postmaterialists are less
likely than their older counterparts to argue for fewer rights for immigrants
than for native born residents. Similar, very weak patterns exist in the findings
on whether Canada should allow more immigration. Overall, across the three
issue areas, several important findings emerge. First, postmaterial value
orientations do independently affect respondents’ opinions about issues of
public policy. Second, however, even when taking into account those values,
many generational differences in public opinion remain.
A second approach to fundamental value change in recent decades was
developed by Scott Flanagan (1982). Flanagan believes that an authoritarianlibertarian
dimension best captures the nature of recent value changes, with the
predominant movement along that dimension from the authoritarian end
toward the libertarian pole where there is greater emphasis on individual
freedom and independence. We employed Flanagan’s index of libertarian
values, which includes fifteen questions (l982). The items in that index are
shown in Appendix I. We summed the number of libertarian responses for each
respondent, and then trichotomized the resulting distribution of scores into
groups: low, medium and high. Table 3 presents the average generational
policy preferences within each level of support for libertarian political values.
As was the case with postmaterial values, controlling for libertarian value
orientations does not eliminate the impact of generation on public policy
preferences. To be sure, libertarian value orientation also influences public
policy preferences, especially on forest management and Native American
issues. Yet, on those two policy areas, in five of the six instances, generational
patterns also are significantly different. Even on the immigration issues,
within certain of the value groupings there are obvious generational
differences, but not always in the same direction for each level of support for
libertarian values. Thus, for example, among those with low levels of support
for libertarian values, the young cohort is less likely to believe immigration to
be a serious issue, but the pattern is reversed for the middle age cohort.
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Table 3
Generational Differences Controlling for Libertarian Values:
Mean Responses to Survey Questions
LIBERTARIAN VALUE ORIENTATION
Low Medium High
Forest Management Y* M O Y M O Y M O
Serious Issue a 5.38 5.61 4.93 6.19 5.96 5.32 5.87 6.13 6.05
(1=not; 7-most)
Environment/Economy a,b 3.84 3.55 3.93 3.17 3.49 3.86 3.38 3.00 3.32
(1=environment;
7=economy)
Clear-cutting a,b 4.00 4.30 4.70 3.17 3.61 4.04 3.30 2.89 3.95
(1=stop; 7=allow)
Native American Claims
Serious Issue a,b
(1=not; 7=most)
Protect Native Rights a,b
(1=same; 7=additional)
Native Claims a,b
(1=fair now; 7=more)
3.84 4.52 4.14 4.06 4.17 4.43 4.28 5.22 5.25
1.75 1.83 2.64 2.08 2.33 2.66 2.20 3.29 3.63
3.00 2.78 3.62 3.39 3.17 3.81 3.41 4.58 4.38
Immigration
Serious Issue
3.94 4.59 4.75 4.93 4.52 4.57 4.65 4.38 4.83
(1=not; 7=most)
More Immigration 3.63 4.20 3.45 3.41 3.56 4.00 3.54 4.00 3.75
(1=limit; 7=encourage)
Rights of Immigrants b 2.63 3.05 3.36 3.21 2.69 3.16 2.94 2.42 3.38
(1=same; 7=less)
a value differences p≤.05; b generational differences p≤.05
* Y = Young; M = Middle; O = Old
Traditional Canadian Culture
As noted earlier in the paper, several significant attributes are said to
distinguish the Canadian political culture. In particular, especially when
compared to the culture of the United States, the Canadian culture is thought to
be more supportive of collective political activity and a communitarian
orientation to rights (Lipset, 1990), and to be more likely to view society as a
collection of groups and politics as a group activity (Presthus, 1974). Our
survey contained seven questions that were designed to tap support for these
two dimensions of Canadian political culture. A principal components factor
analysis of the responses produced two distinct dimensions. The first
dimension includes four of the seven items, and has face validity as
representing communitarian concerns. The four items measuring support for
32

Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia
communitarianism reflected attitudes about: 1) whether all persons should
earn about the same amount; 2) whether the way property should be used
should be decided by the community; 3) whether competition is often wasteful
and destructive; and 4) whether society is more than a collection of
individuals. Each response could be placed on a seven-point scale. For each
individual, the responses were summed across the four items. The resulting
distribution of individual scores was trichotomized so that each individual was
placed in a high, medium or low category of support for communitarian values.
A similar process was employed to measure support for the values of
particularism. Three questions provided the foundation for the measure: 1)
whether interest groups are necessary; 2) whether people of great
responsibility should be treated with special respect; and 3) whether some
groups should have privileges in some cases. For each individual, responses
were summed across the three items and the resulting distribution of individual
scores was trichotomized into low, medium and high categories.
Controlling for support for communitarian values fails to erase generational
differences in public policy preferences. As Table 4 shows, generational
differences remain on all three of the forest management items, on two of the
three Native American claims questions, and on one of the immigration items.
At the same time, in six of the nine cases, there also are significant differences
among the individuals at different levels of support for communitarian values.
Thus, the measure of support for the putative Canadian communitarian value
does distinguish among individuals on a number of important policy opinions.
However, that measure is not an acceptable surrogate for generation in
accounting for policy preference differences among Canadians.
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Table 4
Generational Differences Controlling for Communitarianism Values:
Mean Responses to Survey Questions
COMMUNITARIANISM VALUE
ORIENTATION
Low Medium High
Forest Management Y* M O Y M O Y M O
Serious Issue b 5.82 5.82 5.05 6.02 5.89 5.24 6.03 6.08 5.41
(1=not; 7-most)
Environment/Economy a,b
(1=environment;
3.96 3.79 3.98 3.16 3.42 3.60 2.74 2.88 3.88
7=economy)
Clear-cutting a,b 4.16 4.64 4.64 4.29 4.82 4.83 3.83 4.35 4.48
(1=stop; 7=allow)
Native American Claims
Serious Issue a
(1=not; 7=most)
Protect Native Rights a,b
(1=same; 7=additional)
Native Claims a,b
(1=fair now; 7=more)
4.19 4.03 4.20 3.69 4.68 4.48 4.49 4.77 4.96
1.95 1.77 2.07 1.95 2.65 2.58 2.64 2.80 4.29
3.02 2.49 3.25 3.24 3.52 3.71 4.26 4.18 4.71
Immigration
Serious Issue
4.82 4.64 4.64 4.29 4.62 4.82 4.83 4.35 4.48
(1=not; 7=most)
More Immigration a 3.86 3.58 3.17 3.10 3.86 3.82 3.63 4.05 4.43
(1=limit; 7=encourage)
Rights of Immigrants b 2.89 2.71 3.27 3.02 2.85 3.21 2.88 2.61 .04
(1=same; 7=less)
a value differences p≤.05; b generational differences p≤.05
* Y = Young; M = Middle; O = Old
The measure of support for the values associated with particularism does a
little better than the communitarian measure in suppressing the impact of
generation on public policy preferences. Nonetheless, as Table 5 reveals, on
five of the nine policy questions, there remain significant generational
differences—all three of the timber management questions, and one each for
the native claims and immigration domains. Even in some of those cases where
overall statistical signficance is not attained, important generational
differences remain within certain categories of support for particularism.
Thus, on the question of the seriousness of native claims, in each particularism
level the younger generation is less likely to think of the issues as very serious.
34

Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia
Table 5
Generational Differences Controlling for Particularism Values:
Mean Responses to Survey Questions
PARTICULARISM VALUE
ORIENTATION
Low Medium High
Forest Management Y* M O Y M O Y M O
Serious Issue b
5.90 6.10 5.14 6.01 5.84 5.47 5.87 5.92 4.85
(1=not; 7-most)
Environment/Economy a,b
(1=environment;
3.26 3.04 3.63 3.54 3.56 3.86 3.32 3.42 4.06
7=economy)
Clear-cutting a,b 3.51 3.10 3.55 3.23 3.86 4.29 3.64 3.77 4.21
(1=stop; 7=allow)
Native American Claims
Serious Issue
(1=not; 7=most)
Protect Native Rights a,b
(1=same; 7=additional)
Native Claims a
(1=fair now; 7=more)
4.08 4.59 4.90 4.28 4.53 4.48 3.83 4.35 4.10
2.51 2.85 3.02 2.13 2.40 3.00 1.72 2.13 2.59
3.54 3.81 4.16 3.23 3.29 3.63 3.51 3.24 3.59
Immigration
Serious Issue
4.49 4.62 4.85 4.43 4.31 4.41 4.98 4.77 4.61
(1=not; 7=most)
More Immigration 3.26 3.61 3.57 3.73 3.96 3.74 3.50 3.62 4.16
(1=limit; 7=encourage)
Rights of Immigrants b 2.95 2.76 3.42 2.88 2.50 3.50 3.09 2.92 .65
(1=same; 7=less)
a value differences p≤.05; b generational differences p≤.05
* Y = Young; M = Middle; O = Old
The final portion of the analysis integrates all of the independent variables into
a single regression analysis predicting each of the nine policy preference
items. In addition to cohort and the four value measures, the regression also
incorporates locale as a variable. That is, we create a dichotomous,
independent variable with residence in Prince George as one value (1) on the
measure and residence in Vancouver as a second value (2) on the measure.
This allows us to determine if cohort maintains its independent effect on policy
preferences while controlling simultaneously for all of the other independent
variables. The results of the regression analysis are shown in Table 6.
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Table 6
Regression Analysis Predicting Policy Preferences With
Cultural Values, “new politics” Values, Location and Cohort
POLICY PREFERENCES
Forest Nature Claims Immigration
Serious Envir/ Clearcut
Serious Rights Claims Serious More Rights
Econ
F 7.2 11.1 7.7 4.4 16.6 14.2 3.5 .34 1.5
Fsig .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .002 ns ns
R 2 .09 .12 .09 .05 .17 .15 .04 .01 .02
Communalism* .06 -.20 c -.09 a .11 a .25 c .27 c -.03 .10 a .06
Particularism -.09 a .13 b .12 b -.12 a -.19 c -.12 b .04 .04 .00
Locale -.13 b -.02 -.06 .01 .13 b .11 a .11 c .03 .05
Libertarianism .16 c -.08 -.19 c .08 .11 a .14 a -.04 .02 -.03
Postmaterialism .03 -.16 c -.05 .12 b .11 a .10 a .17 c .00 -.02
Cohort -.14 b .16 c .15 b .04 .13 b .06 .03 .01 .10 a
a p£.05; b p£.05; c p£.001
* Entry in each cell is the standardized regression coefficient
Even in the context of the simultaneous controls for the other five variables,
generational cohort retains a statistically significant impact on five of the nine
policy preferences, and on at least one preference from each of the three policy
areas. Cohort has the most consistent effect in the forest management policy
arena. Perhaps contrary to expectations, the youngest cohort is less likely to
think of forest management as a serious issue, more likely to affirm economic
values when traded-off against environmental values, and more likely to
support clear-cutting as a forest management practice. Similarly, the younger
cohorts are less likely to believe that immigrants should have the same rights as
native born citizens. Importantly, each of the other variables also has a
statistically significant impact on multiple policy preferences. While a detailed
discussion of each significant relationship is beyond the scope of the paper, it is
important to note that locale does affect four policy preferences while
controlling for all of the other variables. Thus, for example, Prince George
respondents are more likely to think that forest management is a serious issue,
while Vancouver respondents are more likely to think that immigration is a
serious issue. In each case, the policy area has a particular salience for the
individuals from that locale—forest policy for the natural resource-dependent
community of the interior, and immigration policy for the immigrant-rich city
of the coast.
Conclusion
This paper has investigated the question of whether there are generational
differences in the public policy preferences of residents of two cities in British
Columbia. The answer to that question clearly is in the affirmative. The
generational differences surface in both Vancouver and Prince George,
36

Generational Differences in the Public’s Policy
Preferences in British Columbia
although the apparent relative salience of issues in the two cities does seem to
alter those patterns. In particular, the greater the salience of the issue, the less
evident are the generational differences. The significant salience of the issue
for a locality may suffuse the environment with sufficient information
common to all generations to allow locational self-interest to overwhelm the
distinctive values that would separate those generations.
The focus on generational differences within a particular society usually
points to changes in values across time such that younger generations acquire
fundamentally distinct orientations to politics and society. We tried to
determine if our observed generational policy differences are the consequence
of differences in fundamental value orientations. We looked at two sets of
values: the values of postmaterialism and libertarianism which many scholars
believe to be the wedge driven between generations across a broad spectrum of
democratic societies; and, the values of communitarianism and particularism,
which numerous observors identify as distinctively characteristic of Canadian
society and politics. Yet, controlling for individual’s positions on these four
value dimensions did little to eliminate the generational differences observed
in the beginning of the paper. There remain significant generational
differences in positions of public policy for which these value dimensions are
unable to account.
Why might the generations differ on these issues of public policy in ways that
are not significantly changed by taking into account either “new politics” or
traditional Canadian values? Several tentative answers may be proffered.
First, it may be that we have simply failed to identify the appropriate value
dimension which simultaneously is associated with these policy questions and
disproportionately situated within particular generations. While we have
included those values that should be particularly relevant to either the younger
generations (postmaterialism and libertarianism) or to the older generations
(communitarianism and particularism), their inclusion fails to produce the
anticipated effect. Subsequent analyses thus should be directed at identifying
alternative value dimensions that may account for these generational patterns.
A second possibility is that these particular policy questions are simply not
connected in the public mind to fundamental value orientations. They may be
so salient and so connected to the day-to-day lives of people that they produce
opinions long before they become engaged with fundamental, transnational or
nation-specific values. With such political and personal prominence, certain
public issues may stand alone, in effect becoming value dimensions in and of
themselves. But the objects of those independent beliefs still may be
differentially relevant to the different generations, given their variable
positions in the social and economic structures, and hence produce wide gaps
in the responses of different generations.
What is clear is that there are significant generational differences in the policy
positions of residents of British Columbia. Regardless of whether those
differences stem from fundamental values, or from the idiosyncratic nature of
their relationship to the different age groups, it is clear that they will have a
long-term impact on the politics of the province. As the younger generations
mature and move through the political and social structure, they will gradually
change the overall colouring of the province’s public opinion, and with that
change produce evolution in public policy itself.
37

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Notes
* The research reported here was funded by the Canadian Embassy, Washington, D.C. The
ideas and the views expressed in this paper, however, are entirely those of the authors.
References
Flanagan, Scott C. 1982. “Changing Values in Advanced Industrial Societies.” Comparative
Political Studies 14:403-444.
Inglehart, Ronald. 1977. The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among
Western Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Inglehart, Ronald. 1990. Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Jackson, Robert J., Doreen Jackson and Nicholas Baxter-Moore. 1986. Politics in Canada:
Culture, Institutions, Behaviour and Public Policy. Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice-Hall.
Jennings, M. Kent. 1989. “The Crystallization of Orientations.” Pp. 313-348 in M. Kent Jennings
and Jan W. van Deth et al., eds., Continuities in Political Action. New York: Walter De
Gruyter.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1990. Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United
States. New York: Routeledge.
Merelman, Richard M. 1991. Partial Visions: Culture and Politics in Britain, Canada and the
United States. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Nevitte, Neil. 1991. “North American Continental Integration and Value Change: Cross- National
Evidence.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science
Association, August 25-September 1, 1991. Washington, D.C.
Presthus, Robert. 1974. Elites in the Policy Process. London: Cambridge University Press.
van Deth, Jan W., and M. Kent Jennings. 1989. “Introduction.” Pp. 3-22 in M. Kent Jennings and
Jan W. van Deth et al., eds., Continuities in Political Action. New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Westell, Anthony. 1991. “The Weakening of Canadian Culture.” The American Review of
Canadian Studies 21:263-268.
Appendix I
The authoritarian-libertarian value orientation index is based on
responses to whether too much, about right or not enough emphasis is
given to each of the concerns listed below. The “libertarian” response
is indicated in parenthesis.
1. Increasing benefits for the disadvantaged (too little).
2. Protecting homosexuals from discrimination (too little).
3. Personal freedom (too little).
4. Seeking personal fulfillment (too little).
5. Being open-minded to new ideas (too little).
6. Sexual freedom and abortion (too little).
7. Improving the environment and quality of life (too little).
8. Patriotism and loyalty to one’s country (too much).
9. Providing for strong defense forces (too much).
10. Respect for authority (too much).
11. Preserving traditional morals/values (too much).
12. Following custom and the expectations of one’s neighbours (too much).
13. Removing pornography from the marketplace (too much).
14. Having deep religious faith (too much).
15. Teaching children good manners and obedience (too much).
38

Victor Thiessen and E. Dianne Looker
Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on
Work
Abstract
This paper examines the culture of youth’s work expectations. These are
contrasted with the images they have of their parents’ work world, as well as
their parents’ own descriptions. A generational-linked sampling design was
employed, consisting of 1,200 Canadian 17-year-old adolescents and their
parents. We document a homogenization of youth’s expected work culture.
Intrinsic to this homogenization process is a significant blurring of class and
gender typification. Also implied (and observed) is a process whereby
working-class youths distance themselves from their father’s work, while
middle-class sons and daughters pattern their expectations after their father’s
work. Finally, the attributed generation gap in work culture for both working
and middle class, and among both sons and daughters, is substantially greater
than the experiential generation gap.
Résumé
Les auteurs de cette étude examinent les attentes des jeunes en ce qui a trait au
travail. Ces attentes sont comparées à l’image qu’ont les jeunes du travail de
leurs parents et à la description des parents de leur propre travail. Les auteurs
utilisent un échantillon de parents-enfants canadiens composé de 1200
adolescentes et adolescents âgés de 17 ans et de leurs parents. L’article repère
une homogénéisation auprès des jeunes face à leurs visées de carrière. Ce
processus d’homogénéisation s’accompagne d’un mélange considérable des
types basés sur la classe et sur le sexe. On y retrouve également un processus
par lequel les jeunes de la classe ouvrière se distancient du travail de leurs
pères, tandis que les garçons et filles de la classe moyenne façonnent leurs
attentes selon le travail de leurs pères. Enfin, l’écart que l’on attribue entre les
deux générations pour ce qui est du travail sur le plan des classes ouvrière et
moyenne, et selon le sexe des jeunes dépasse de beaucoup l’écart basé sur
l’expérience.
Canadian youth face a work future radically different from that of their parents.
In this paper we will first sketch the major changes in the work opportunity
structure. This brief description will be followed by a review of the literature,
focusing especially on the work expectations of youth and their relationship to
work experiences of the parents. Then we present our data, which contains
images of work of adolescents and their parents. This data will permit an
assessment of the fit between the culture of work expectations and the structure
of work opportunities. It will also contribute a Canadian perspective on the
debates detailed in the literature review.
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
The Work Opportunity Structure
This past generation witnessed deep structural changes in the nature of the paid
labour market. In this respect Canada shares a number of features with other
industrialized countries. These characteristics include a marked decline, both
in relative and in absolute terms, of jobs in the manufacturing sector. Capital’s
response to each downturn in the economy is to displace even more workers
with modern technology, and to relocate production to settings where labour
costs are relatively low. The end result is the shrinking of traditional blue collar
jobs in Canada.
At the same time, the past generation or so has seen a doubling of the
proportion of married women in the labour market. A division of labour in the
nuclear family between homemaker and breadwinner is no longer tenable.
Young men are competing with young women on arguably more equal terms
for scarce jobs.
One immediate corollary of these trends is the spectre of long-term
unemployment and under-employment. One in five youths under the age of 25
is currently unemployed; and the percentage of part-time jobs has doubled in
the past two decades (Macleans, August 2, 1993:35).
Jobs are also increasingly polarized between well-paying professional type of
work and low-wage, dead-end service type work—between the yuppies and
the McJobs. Although the latter are more numerous than the former, they are
also increasingly casualized. Krahn (1991:23) reports that part-time jobs
increased at a rate four times that of full-time work in Canada between 1977
and 1986. With the number of jobs in between these two extremes
disappearing, the stakes surrounding job entry are higher than ever. To obtain
and retain the good jobs will increasingly require flexible skills and general
problem-solving abilities, including information processing and
organizational skills. Even a university education may not be sufficient
preparation.
Among the industrialized nations, Canada’s continued role as a resource
hinterland exacerbates uncertainties. The vagaries of foreign markets are such
that boom-and-bust cycles are virtually synonymous with reliance on the
primary sector. The resource sector has been the backbone of rural Canada. As
Osberg, Wien, and Grude (forthcoming) note, “the full-time employment of
male breadwinners in forestry, fishing, mining and agriculture was the
economic basis on which successive generations of rural Canadians were
raised. In Nova Scotia, as elsewhere in Canada, the most crucial problem
facing rural areas today is the large scale disappearance of such traditional
jobs.”
This situation introduces a regional/geographic aspect to the transformation of
the opportunity structure. Jobs in the expanding service sector are increasingly
concentrated in urban centres. Consequently the rural areas are witnessing the
disappearance of their traditional resource sector jobs without obtaining the
benefit of the general increase in service-sector jobs.
How do these trends intrude on the consciousness of adult Canadians? And are
they reflected in the job and career expectations of their children? The main
interest of this paper centres on generational differences in the cognitive maps
of the world of work. How do parents describe their work world? What does
the parents’ work world look like through the eyes of their children? And how
do these images relate to what these children expect for their own near future?
40

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
When assessing these generational similarities and differences, it is important
to be mindful of gender and class variations in these images. That is, we will
ascertain the extent to which men’s cognitive profiles of their work is different
from that of women’s and the extent to which social classes differ in their
views about men’s and women’s occupations.
Literature Review
Class and gender, along with race/ethnicity and region, arguably constitute the
key dimensions which condition work experiences. Most scholars accord an
essential role to parents for creating generational continuity along the class
dimension, and to the family and other patriarchal institutions for perpetuating
gendered work roles.
Kohn’s (1969) pioneering work on the relationship between social class and
work values deeply appreciated the fundamental difference in work processes
between the middle and the working class. He recognized that control over the
work process and the conditions of work was key. Consequently he expected
working-class parents to inculcate values of obedience and conformity in their
children which would realistically prepare them for their work conditions.
Middle-class parents, in contrast, would emphasize and reward autonomy.
From this perspective, important parental class differences in images of work
would be expected. Additionally, to the extent that parents successfully
socialize their children, substantial class differences in youths’ expectations of
work could also be expected.
Bowles and Gintis (1976:143) express the impact of parents this way: “There
is a tendency for families to reproduce in their offspring not only a
consciousness tailored to the objective nature of the work world, but to prepare
them for economic positions roughly comparable to their own.”
Given the generational shifts in occupational structure, how apparent are they
to the parents and the youth? Weis (1990:151) concludes, on the basis of her
case study of a working-class community in the United States, that “[p]arents
understand clearly that the jobs in which they participated upon leaving high
school are no longer available. They have lived through de-industrialization
and stress to their children that education is the only way to obtain stable
employment.” In her case study, the town’s major employer had closed down,
providing concrete evidence of de-industrialization. It remains an open
question as to what extent parents in our Canadian samples have lived through,
or are aware of, de-industrialization.
Braverman’s (1974) deskilling thesis can also be seen as predicting a
homogenization of work processes, with increasing routinization in all work,
making it less likely that there would be class differences in how boring,
difficult or rewarding work is experienced to be. Willis (1977:127) echoes this
view: “More than ever today the concrete forms of most jobs are converging
into standard forms. They require very little skill or opportunities for intrinsic
satisfaction.”
If working-class parents understand the eclipse in their traditional jobs, then
the basis of Kohn’s expectation of class-specific values would be removed.
Working-class parents should describe their work environment quite
differently from how middle-class parents describe theirs. Their respective
offspring, however, should describe their expected work in quite similar terms.
41

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That women’s work is treated differently from men’s work constitutes a truism
that hardly needs to be pointed out: it is usually paid less, given less respect,
and considered to be less important to the community. Even where women
have managed to be represented in traditionally male occupations, they earn
less and they earn less prestige. Thus, one would expect mothers to describe
their work in substantially different terms than fathers. At the same time, the
feminist movement has had some success in addressing these inequities and
the mass media increasingly views these as mainstream issues rather than
marginalized issues of an unreasonable fringe. The gains made by the
women’s movement should be reaped by the young generation, and would, in
the first instance, be reflected in the images of work young women and men
hold. Adolescent women’s images of their future work should be comparable
to the expectations of their male counterparts.
Current studies reveal gender patterns at variance with earlier ones. Thus,
Weis (1990:55) in her ethnographic study of working-class youth remarks
that: “The most striking point about female identity ...is that there is, unlike the
case in numerous previous studies, little evidence of a marginalized wage
labour identity. These girls have, in fact, made the obtaining of wage labour a
primary rather than a secondary goal.” Boys’ identities continued to be defined
in terms of “other than” feminine. That is, they define their aspirations and
futures as distinct from those of girls and women. In this respect, Weis’ boys of
the late 1980s show no change from Willis’ lads of the early 1970s. But in
another respect they were different: Weis found no evidence of glorification of
manual work that so pervaded Willis’ description of working-class boys.
Unfortunately both studies are ethnographic accounts of single communities
that differ not only temporally but also culturally (Weis studied a U.S.
community; Willis U.K.). Thus, it is perilous to conclude that changes have
occurred. At the same time, both studies found that working-class boys
distanced themselves from the feminine. In a recent Canadian study of
working-class male culture, Dunk (1991) reports that “the Boys” in his
Thunder Bay study classified work as manual or mental, and devalued the
latter as devoid of practical abilities. They were also unabashedly sexist. How
might such gender distancing manifest itself in the teen-aged men in the
sample used here? Perhaps they would see little similarity between the
attributes of the jobs they expect and those they see as characterizing their
mother’s work.
The manual/mental distinction and the class-linked glorifying of the one and
devaluing of the other seems to be a particularly pronounced part of male
identity. Although this distinction is also a relevant class distinction for
women’s work, it does not appear to be as clear, neither does it play as
prominent a role, in women’s identity. For these reasons, stronger class-linked
images of work among men than among women can be expected.
The approach in this paper focuses more on sex typing than on gender
segregation. What are the attributes associated with women’s work and men’s
work?
Bradley (1989:9), referring to the work of Game and Pringle (1983), describes
the sex typification this way:
“[Woman’s work] is usually indoor work, considered to be ‘lighter’
than men’s work; it is clean, safe, physically undemanding, often
repetitive and considered boring, requires dexterity rather than
‘skill’....By contrast, if we visualize typical men’s work, we tend to
42

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
evoke images of the outdoors, of strength and physicality; men’s
work may be heavy, dirty, dangerous....It is frequently highly
technical, based on mechanical knowledge or scientific expertise; at
the highest level it requires characteristics of creativity, innovation,
intelligence, responsibility, authority and power.”
Since our study taps many of these sex typification, we would expect fairly
large differences between the descriptions of mothers and fathers, and between
sons and daughters. In light of Weis’ (1990) description of young women’s
expectations for entering non-traditional occupations, we might hazard that
the expectations of sons and daughters will be less sex-typed than the reports of
their parents.
At the same time, it is to be remembered that we are dealing with the meaning
the work has for mothers and fathers, and the expected work attributes sons and
daughters hold, regardless of how realistic or unrealistic, how accurately or
inaccurately they might mirror actual work processes. One can imagine a
variety of “coping strategies” that might operate universally among men and
women, the working class and the middle class, youths and their parents, to
distort images of their own work, permitting them to face anew each days
work, to see it as meaningful, interesting, important to society and worthy of
respect. Bradley’s (1989:7) quote of Ruth Wills (Lays of Lowly Life, 1861), a
Leicester working woman and poet, captures this component:
“No more delightful wandering.... Henceforth it must be work,
woman’s work, dreary and monotonous sometimes, yet pleasant
withal, as it rewarded me with the proud consciousness that I was not
only able to eat my daily bread but earn it.”
These quotes suggest patterned actor-observer differences in perception.
Specifically, it could be expected that teenagers view their parents’ jobs in a
less rosy light than the parents do.
Examples of youthful optimism abound. Such optimism flourishes even when
it has little objective basis. Thus, Tanner (1991) in a study of high-school drop
outs in Edmonton, Alberta notes that many of them nevertheless have high
expectations for their work futures.
Data and Measurements
Sampling Design
Analyses of generational differences is made less hazardous if the sampling
design links the generations. A linked design, where respondents and their
parents are included, for example, “holds constant” all socio-economic factors
that might otherwise be differentially distributed between generations due to
sampling fluctuations. Such a design also creates a direct way of measuring the
concept of generations. Our design chose 17-year-old adolescents and their
parents. Although mother-father contrasts are an important dimension of this
study, single-parent families were included to make the sample more
representative of youth generally. School boards were approached to get the
names of 17 year old adolescents: those currently enroled, those who had left
without completing their secondary school certificate, and those who had
graduated. In depth, face to face interviews (one and a half to two hours in
length) were conducted with the youth, and questionnaires were given to their
parent(s). Three sampling sites were included: Hamilton, Ontario (to permit
43

IJCS / RIÉC
comparisons with a study conducted there in 1975), Halifax, Nova Scotia, (to
permit an assessment of regional variation) and rural Nova Scotia (to permit an
evaluation of rural-urban differences), with a target of 400 youths (and their
parents) from each of these three sites 1 . The youth response rates were:
Hamilton, 78%; Halifax, 71%; rural Nova Scotia, 72%. Adjusting for parentabsent
homes, the parental response rates were 77% and 70% for mothers and
fathers, respectively. The sample contained 1,206 youths (567 sons, 639
daughters). With respect to the topic of images of work, information was
ascertained for just under 1,200 youths, 600 fathers, and 800 mothers.
Images of Work
Our concern is not with specific occupations, nor even with their prestige or
status; rather, it is how work is experienced along a multiplicity of
descriptive/evaluative dimensions. This is done out of our belief that the
specific job or occupation is much less relevant than the general job
characteristic. Willis (1977:101) reaches the same conclusion with respect to
the experiences of his working-class `lads’: “The central subjective realisation
of the commonality of modern labour and relative indifference to its particular
embodiment, is one of the most basic things that `the lads’ truly learn at the
heart of their culture...”
Images of work were obtained through responses to a battery of 16 possible job
attributes. These were, in the order they were given, as follows: Dangerous,
Boring, Secure, Tiring, Respected, High pressure, Dirty, Good pay, Routine,
Important to the community, Difficult, Has flexible hours, Rewarding, Has a
lot of power, Has long hours, Enjoyable.
Teenagers were asked to rate the most recent job of their father and mother, as
well as their own expected job, on these attributes. The precise wording for
obtaining these images was:
Mother’s and Father’s Job:
(IF MOTHER/FATHER NEVER WORKED FOR PAY, OMIT
AND CHECK HERE )
Using the categories on card 1, how much do each of the following
describe how you would see your mother’s/father’s job for pay or
profit? (HER/HIS MOST RECENT JOB)
Expected Job:
Using the categories on card 1, how would you describe your
expected job, which is: _______________________ [WRITE IN
FROM EARLIER RESPONSES]
IF RESPONDENT HAS NO IDEA WHAT JOB HE/SHE WILL
END UP IN, CHECK HERE AND OMIT.
The possible response categories (contained in card 1) were: “Very”,
“Somewhat”, “Not very”, and “Not at all” (A “don’t know” response was
coded as such, as well as a “not ascertained” outcome).
The mother and the father of the teenager provided images only for their own
job “for pay or profit.” 2
44

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
Social class
In any given setting, a variety of approaches can be taken to capture the
concept of social class. Given our purpose, several difficulties confront us.
First, on what basis—education, income, occupation, or subjective class
identity— should class be defined. We chose occupation, since it seemed that
images of work would be most clearly related to what work is being done.
Parental occupation was obtained through the following question: “We would
like to know your job (for pay or profit)—your main job if you have more than
one. IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY NOT WORKING OR IF YOU ARE
RETIRED, please describe your usual job. It would help us if you would
provide a complete occupational title.” To obtain fuller information, seven
examples of complete versus incomplete occupational titles were listed. These
occupational titles were converted into the four-digit Canadian Classification
and Dictionary of Occupations (CCDO) 1971 (Canada. Manpower and
Employment, 1974) codes. The adolescents were also asked about their
parents’ occupations. To maximize the number of usable cases, their
information was substituted whenever this information was not available from
the parents themselves.
Second, on what basis should the occupational titles be collapsed into social
classes. Defensible arguments can be made for a blue collar-white collar
distinction, resting, as it does, on the theoretically important mental/manual
criterion. However, Dunk (1991:138) points out that this distinction is
misleading since “there are many people who do not wear blue collars to work,
yet whose work involves few skills, carries little prestige, and is relatively
poorly paid.” Women and youth are disproportionately represented here.
Additionally, the aspect of work that seemed most important to us, based on
the pioneering work of Kohn (1969) was the extent of control over one’s own
work processes. For these reasons, the CCDO codes were collapsed into the
Pineo, Porter, and McRoberts (1977) occupational classification scheme. This
classification was then dichotomized into working and middle class. We
considered an occupation as middle class if it enjoyed substantial autonomy in
the work process. This would include the self-employed, professionals and
semi-professionals, management and supervisory positions (the first six
occupational classes in Table 1).
Third, since our unit of analysis is the familial dyad/triad composed of
parent(s) and adolescent child, we need to assign a social-class position to the
family, a task more difficult than assigning a class position to an individual.
Fortunately in two-thirds (68 percent) of our families, the social class position
on the basis of the father’s occupation is identical to the one that would be
obtained if the mother’s occupation had been used. On distributional grounds
(more fathers than mothers were currently in the paid labour market, and the
split between working and middle class was somewhat more even), we chose
to classify the families on the basis of the father’s occupation. The distribution
of occupational positions of both parents is given in Table 1.
45

IJCS / RIÉC
Table 1
Distribution of Parents’ Occupation
Occupational Fathers* Mothers*
Classification % N % N
Middle Class
Self-Employed Professionals 3 37 0 4
High Level Management 6 65 2 26
Employed Professionals 12 133 13 142
Technical, Semi-Professionals 5 56 13 142
Middle Management, Small Business 9 100 5 52
Supervisors 4 45 3 38
Working Class
Foreman 5 57 0 3
Skilled Clerk, Sales/Service 3 33 15 169
Skilled Crafts, Trades 18 201 2 17
Farm Owners, Operators 1 8 0 1
Semi-Skilled Clerk, Sales Service 4 46 23 251
Semi-Skilled, Skilled Crafts, Service 14 158 5 59
Unskilled Clerk, Sales, Service 2 20 7 75
Unskilled Labour 13 145 12 131
Farm Labour 1 7 0 2
Total 100 1111 100 1112
* The occupational classifications of 98 fathers and 97 mothers were not ascertained.
Hypotheses
A review of the literature suggests a number of working hypotheses:
1. Prevailing class and gender myths, stereotypes, and actualities will
manifest themselves in the various characterizations of the work domains.
Class
With respect to class differences, it would be expected that working
class will be more likely than the middle class to describe their work
as: dangerous, boring, tiring, dirty, and routine. These attributes
reflect the more manual nature of their work. Conversely, we
hypothesize that the middle class will be more likely than the working
class to describe work as: secure, respected, pressured, well paying,
important to the community, difficult, with flexible but long hours,
rewarding, having greater power, and enjoyable. Most, but not all, of
these attributes are positive ones, indicative of the privileged position
of the middle class. High pressure, difficulty, and long hours are the
46

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
stereotypical costs associated with the more intellectual (as opposed
to manual) nature of middle-class work.
Gender
The attributes we expect men more than women to endorse as
features of their own work are: dangerous, secure, tiring, respected,
pressured, dirty, well paying, of importance to the community,
difficult, rewarding, powerful, long hours, and enjoyable. Vice versa,
women more than men are expected to state that their job is: boring,
routine, and has flexible hours.
2. Gender moderation of class differences.
Class differences are experienced and attributed primarily to men’s
work. The differences between working- and middle-class mothers’
descriptions of their work for pay will be smaller than the
corresponding descriptions of working- and middle-class fathers.
3. Homogenization of work expectations.
Class homogenization.
Class differences in the work attributes adolescents expect will be
minimal.
Gender homogenization.
Gender differences in the work attributes adolescents expect will be
less than those manifest in their parents’ generation.
4. Self-enhancement.
Adolescents will perceive parents’ work in less positive terms than
parents describe their work, reflecting a difference between actor and
observer perspectives.
5. Adolescent optimism.
The younger generation expects their own work world to be better
than their parents’ work. This is also a form of self-enhancement.
Findings
Quartile analysis
A preliminary task is to provide the respondents’ cognitive map of women’s
and men’s work. How do various family members describe the world of paid
work? What terms do they use to describe what does not characterize their
work? A first way of approaching these questions is to determine which terms
were most, and least, frequently chosen as very descriptive of their work
domain. Table 2 provides this information for mothers, fathers, sons, and
daughters, separately for working- and middle-class families, in the form of
the top quartiles of most and least descriptive attributes.
The first two rows of Table 2 show that mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters of
both the working- and the middle-class consider the jobs of both parents as
important to the community and secure. These are the only two attributes that
were in the top quartile in all family members’ ratings. Note that, with the
exception of working-class fathers, all family members regard their own job
(or, in the case of adolescents, the job they expect to have) as both enjoyable
47

IJCS / RIÉC
and rewarding. At the same time, neither working- nor middle- class sons or
daughters perceive either parent’s paid work as particularly enjoyable or
rewarding. It is the first indication of distinct differences in generational
perspectives. These differences are of a kind which support the selfenhancement
thesis: parents evaluate their own work more positively than
their children do 3 . In short, with the exception of working-class fathers, all
gender, generational, and class groups see their own or their expected work in
primarily positive terms.
“Good pay” has an interesting pattern that deserves some comment. Middleclass
sons and daughters perceive their father’s work as well paying, but
middle-class fathers do not rate their pay this way. In contrast, working-class
fathers feel their own pay is relatively good, but their children don’t see it that
way. This difference suggests the importance of knowing the comparison
group for personal assessments. It is unlikely that working-class fathers are
comparing their pay with that of middle-class fathers. They likely evaluate
their pay relative to others with similar educational achievements and
managerial responsibilities. With such a comparison group, they consider their
pay to be quite attractive. In the school context, middle-class children can see
that their fathers likely make more money than the fathers of working-class
children; hence they consider good pay to be a defining feature of their father’s
work. Note also that money seems to be more important for adolescent men
than for adolescent women, since both the middle-class and the working-class
young males expect well-paying jobs, but their female counterparts do not.
Turning to what least characterizes the various work domains, there is
substantial consensus that it is neither dangerous nor dirty; all groups consider
dangerousness as one of the least descriptive attributes of all work domains,
and only working-class fathers and their daughters consider his work dirty.
Adolescents of both classes and sexes expect work not to be boring, and it is
not experienced as boring by their parents. Congruent with both the reality and
the stereotype of women’s work, the absence of power features in both middleand
working-class mothers’ experiences (and their children’s perception) of
their work. This lack of power is also experienced by the working-class
fathers. The work of fathers is neither perceived nor experienced as having
flexible hours, although the middle-class fathers do not consider flexible hours
as one of the least descriptive attributes. Finally, working-class children
describe their mother’s work as not at all routine (although the mothers
themselves do not hold this view).
In short, there is substantial overlap in the structure of the work domains.
Attributes situated in the top quartile in one domain are likely to be in the top
quartile of other domains or from the perspective of other groups. Vice versa,
those found in the bottom quartile in one domain are also likely to share that
position with the other domains.
Self-enhancement and Youth Optimism
The quartile comparisons have revealed substantial similarities in the
experienced, perceived, and anticipated work characteristics. Despite such
overall similarity, meaningful and important differences between generation,
gender, and class may nevertheless exist in the actual percentages endorsing
certain job attributes. By comparing quartiles, we have ignored possible
differences in the absolute judgements of women’s and men’s work. We focus
now on the absolute percentages themselves.
48

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
Table 2
“Very descriptive” and “Not at all descriptive” Response Quartiles
Across Work Domains
*W
MM
M
MM
W
SM
M
SM
W
DM
M
DM
W
FF
M
FF
W
SF
M
SF
W
DF
M
DF
W
SX
M
SX
W
DX
M
DX
VERY DESCRIPTIVE
Community
Importance • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Secure • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Enjoy • • • • • • •
Reward • • • • • • •
Tiring • • • • • •
Respect • • • • • •
Routine • • • • •
Pay • • • • •
Dirty • • •
Long Hours
•
NOT AT ALL DESCRIPTIVE
Danger • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Dirty • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Boring • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Power • • • • • • • • •
Flexible Hours • • • • • • • • •
Routine • • •
*KEY:
1st character refers to social class: W=Working class, M=Middle class
2nd character refers to respondent: M=Mother, S=Son, D=Daughter, F=Father
3rd character refers to work domain: M=Mother’s, F=Father’s, X=Expected
49

IJCS / RIÉC
Supporting our self-enhancement thesis, the absolute percentages show that
teenagers describe their mothers’ work in substantially less glowing terms
than the mothers themselves. They are more likely to describe it as boring,
fatiguing, routine and less likely to describe it as respected, important to the
community, rewarding, or enjoyable (see Appendix Table A1). Although
daughters descriptions are quite similar to sons, the two largest differences are
that daughters see their mothers’ jobs as more enjoyable and more rewarding.
This perception could facilitate sex-specific role modelling and reinforce male
devaluation of things feminine.
Generation and gender patterns are somewhat more complex with respect to
men’s work. Both sons and daughters see their fathers’ job as substantially less
rewarding or enjoyable, and more fatiguing, dirty and routine than he describes
it. This is congruent with our hypothesis. Yet they are as likely as the fathers
themselves to describe his work as respected, well paying and important to the
community. A gender effect exists here as well: daughters, more likely than
sons, see their dad’s work as fatiguing, stressful and dirty. Indeed, even on the
other negative attributes, daughters consistently tend to describe their father’s
job more negatively than sons do. Despite such a negative view, they are as
likely as sons to see the father’s job as respected, rewarding, enjoyable, and of
importance to the community
Parental Class Work Cultures
Table 3 presents the class differences revealed in parents’ descriptions of their
work, and in sons’ and daughters’ perception of the work attributes
characterizing their parents’ work. Several patterns are clear. First, the
expected class differences exist. They exist in parents’ descriptions of their
work, and, in adolescents’ perception of their parents’ work. Of the 96
comparisons contained in Table 3, only nine are in the wrong direction, and, in
only one instance, is the reversal by as much as five percent. These figures
constitute strong support that class differences in work characteristics, are, on
the whole, as expected.
Gender Moderation of Class
A second pattern in Table 3 supports our hypothesis that the class differences
will be stronger for men’s than for women’s work. Specifically, in 42 of the 48
relevant comparisons, the class difference with respect to father’s work
exceeds the class difference reported for mother’s work.
50

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
Table 3
Class differences in image of parent’s work
(Percentage difference between working and middle class)
Teen’s Perception of
Attribute Mother’s Father’s Mother’s Work Father’s Work
Work Work Son Daughter Son Daughter
Working Class Exceeds Middle Class
Danger -1 a 16 3 1 13 20
Boring 3 4 9 5 2 10
Tiring 4 7 4 4 16 22
Dirty 6 30 2 6 33 17
Routine 16 18 4 5 9 17
Middle Class Exceeds Working Class
Community
Importance 2 6 7 11 2 7
Secure 13 14 1 6 13 20
Pay -2 a 3 5 -1 a 11 6
Respect 2 14 0 -2 a 21 27
High
Pressure 6 7 3 2 9 14
Difficult 1 14 2 3 4 6
Flexible
Hours 2 6 3 -1 a 2 -5 a
Rewarding 15 26 7 12 20 20
Power -2 a 2 -2 a -2 a 10 6
Long Hours 0 1 6 2 3 6
Enjoy 13 21 5 7 12 14
Notes:
a A minus sign in front of any percentage indicates that the class difference is opposite to that
hypothesized.
Homogenization of youth’s expected work profiles
As mentioned in the discussion of the Canadian opportunity structure, work is
increasingly polarized into good jobs and bad jobs. The high-school
generation can expect their work environment to be even more varied in this
respect than that of their parents’ generation. In contrast to this trend, the
youth’s culture of work expectation is remarkably homogenous. One way of
summarizing this homogeneity consists in comparing the standard deviation
of adolescents’ expectations with the comparable attributes they perceive in
their parents’ work. To be compatible with the likely opportunity structure, the
standard deviations of youth’s expected work attributes should exceed those
perceived to characterize the parental generation. The predominant pattern is
just the opposite. In 29 of the 32 possible comparisons (16 attributes compared
with perceptions of both parents), the standard deviation of youth’s expected
work attributes was less than the standard deviation of the corresponding
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IJCS / RIÉC
attribute they perceived in their parents’ work (data not shown). In brief, youth
expect a common work environment.
The large number of descriptive phrases (16), the contrast between the three
task domains (mother’s occupation, father’s occupation, and teenager’s
expected occupation), and the necessity of distinguishing between the working
and middle classes, requires additional condensing techniques. Pearson
correlation coefficients between generation/class/sex group profiles is one
possible way to condense such a wealth of comparative information. Here, the
cases represent the 16 descriptive words/phrases, and the variables, the
different groups. The input data consisted of the percentage of each respondent
category who chose “very descriptive” as their response 4 . This method allows
for a summary of the extent of similarity in the work domains between the
different generations, classes, and sexes. The numbers in the remainder of the
paper refer to such correlation coefficients.
Good and bad jobs will likely be distributed on the basis of sex (men obtaining
the better jobs) and class (working-class youth will disproportionately end up
with the poor jobs). The profiles of youth’s work expectations do not reflect
this observation at all. The attributes of work young people expect in their job
is neither gendered or class-specific. That is, working-class males’ hierarchy
of expected job attributes does not differ from those of middle-class males.
The same holds for the middle-class young women and their working-class
counterparts. Indeed, the expectations of working-class males closely
resemble those of middle- class females and, analogously, the expectations of
working-class females are practically the same as those of middle-class males.
(The Pearson correlation coefficients for all of the above comparisons exceed
0.93.)
Attributed Generational Gap
Having established the pervasive homogenization of youth’s expected work
culture, the question of how their expected work culture compares with images
of their parents’ work must be examined. Three patterns emerge: a) young
people expect their work experience to be better than their parents, b) middleclass
fathers represent work-role models, and c) working-class fathers are
perceived to hold undesirable work.
Elsewhere we documented young people’s high expectations with regard to
their future work (Looker and Thiessen 1993). Although they may not expect
to be upwardly mobile, they expect better work than that of their parents in
many of the work attributes.
Turning to the work profiles, it is clear that middle-class males essentially
serve as work-role models. That is, the hierarchy of work characteristics
attributed to middle-class male jobs is moderately compatible with youth’s
expectations.
It is not particularly surprising that middle-class boys expect the structure of
their work to share features with that of their fathers’ generation. What
surprises perhaps more is that middle-class daughters also aspire to the same
middle-class male work culture. Even more surprising is that the workingclass
youth of both sexes expect their work environment to be similar to how
middle-class youth describe their parents’ work. Youth’s expectations are not
gendered when working-class to middle-class comparisons are made. That is,
working-class males’ expectations are equally compatible with middle-class
52

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
teens’ descriptions of the work of their mothers as their fathers. The same
conclusion holds with respect to working-class females expectations. These
similarities suggest that working-class youth simply aspire to middle-class
work, regardless of gender attributes (correlation coefficients range between
0.66 and 0.73 for all sex/class youth profile comparisons with attributed
middle-class fathers’ work profile.) In contrast, middle-class youth of both
sexes clearly expect a work environment closer to their perception of the
father’s work than that of the mother’s. The compatibility with images of
mother’s job is decidedly lower, with correlations of 0.55 and 0.34 for
daughters and sons, respectively.
If the work of middle-class fathers is perceived as most compatible with
adolescents’ expectations, that of the working-class fathers is judged as least
compatible. Neither sons nor daughters expect their own job to be similar to
how they perceive the father’s job (correlation coefficients are 0.20 or lower).
This expectation confirms what Sennet and Cobb (1973) have termed the
“hidden injuries of class.” Clearly, working-class children recognize that they
must distance themselves from their parents, particularly their fathers. In this
process they devalue the foundation for his identity.
Experiential Generational Similarity
The work profiles in the parental generation, as experienced by them, is
remarkably compatible with the expected work culture of their offspring. In
the middle class, the structure of job characteristics obtained from fathers’
reports resembles the expected job characteristics of both sons and daughters.
The descriptions mothers give of their job is similarly compatible with the
expected job characteristics of both sons and daughters. The relevant
correlation coefficients range between 0.84 and 0.94, and, in all comparisons,
are greater than the corresponding figures for the attributed generational
similarity.
In the working class, how parents describe their own job also compares with
the expected job characteristics of their children, but less so for fathers’ than
for mothers’ descriptions. How mothers describe their own work is compatible
with the expected job attributes of sons and daughters (coefficients of 0.75 and
0.88, respectively). How fathers describe their own work is less compatible
with the expectations of both sons and daughters (coefficients of 0.69 and 0.62,
respectively).
Thus for both sons and daughters, in both working class and middle class, with
respect to the work of both mothers and fathers, the attributed generational gap
in work culture far exceeds the experienced generational gap.
Gender Typing
From a methodological point of view, it is gratifying to note that the profile of
fathers’ jobs through the eyes of their sons is virtually identical to that obtained
through the daughters’ eyes. This is true in both working- and middle-class
families. (Pearson correlation coefficients range between 0.95 and 0.97).
Despite such overwhelming similarity, the two views are not interchangeable;
they have discernibly different relations with teenagers’ own expected job
characteristics. Thus, the descriptions daughters provide of their expected job
is more compatible with their own descriptions of mothers’ job than it is with
sons descriptions of their mother’s job. In the middle class, these coefficients
are 0.55 and 0.38 for daughters and sons reports, respectively; in the working
53

IJCS / RIÉC
class, 0.38 and 0.19 for daughters and sons reports, respectively. For the sons,
the same pattern holds only in the working class. Here the expectations they
have for their own job is more compatible with their description of their
fathers’ jobs than it is with daughters’ descriptions of the father’s job (Pearson
coefficient of 0.20 with the sons’ perceptions versus 0.02 with the daughters’
perceptions). There is no such difference in the middle class, where both sons’
and daughters’ reports of father’s job characteristics have identical
coefficients of 0.71 with sons expectations.
An analogous interesting pattern is found with respect to opposite-sex parent.
Here in both classes the young men describe the mother’s job in such a way that
it distances it more from their own expected job characteristics than do the
descriptions that the young women provide of the mother’s job. That is, the
descriptions young men provide of their expected job is less compatible with
how they describe mothers’ jobs than with how daughters describe mothers’
jobs (the coefficients are: for the middle class, 0.34 and 0.48 for sons and
daughters, respectively; the analogous coefficients for the working class are -
0.01 and 0.16). The working-class daughters also distance themselves from
fathers. That is, they see the work of the fathers as less compatible with their
expected jobs than the descriptions sons provide of father’s job (coefficients of
0.00 and 0.16, respectively). This again is not true in middle-class settings,
where both coefficients are identical at 0.66.
Conclusion
The class similarity of youth’s expectations suggests that a de-industrialized
future will not, in itself, create identity problems for Canada’s working-class
adolescents. That is, in contrast to earlier studies (Willis, 1977), there is no
evidence that Canadian working-class adolescents glorify physically
demanding, dirty, manual work. Such glorification seemed to be essential to
earlier working-class youth’s identities as “other than” feminine. Although
there may be pockets of such definitions as central components to workingclass
boys’ identities, on the whole the centrality of gender identity differences
in the work place seems to have lessened. Thus we may see lessened sex typing
of jobs in future generations.
Our findings reinforce those of Weis (1990) with respect to young women’s
identity and its relation to work. It is quite remarkable that adolescent women
described their expected work in terms most comparable to how middle-class
fathers jobs are seen. Indeed, young women seem already to take thoroughly
for granted that their own work will be most similar to that of a middle-class
male. There is no trace of even a lingering gender difference here. Young men
are not more likely than young women to expect to obtain a job with all the
benefits of middle-class male privilege.
Our findings also suggest difficult family dynamics in current working-class
homes. In many of these homes the father has a manual, industrial-type job.
Their teen-aged sons and daughters seem to see few redeeming features in his
work. They certainly do not envision their own future work world to share
many of the characteristics of his. Given the historic centrality of work to
definitions of self-worth, it is quite unlikely that the children will provide
positive reinforcements to working-class fathers’ sense of their worth.
Although we have argued that the centrality of gendered work expectations is
declining, and will continue to decline in the next generation, there are still
powerful manifestations of its existence. The images that sons have of
54

Generation, Gender and Class Perspectives on Work
mother’s work is less compatible with their own expectations than how such
work is seen through the eyes of daughters. There are subtle processes of
stereotyping going on, which perpetuates boys’ distancing themselves from
things feminine. There is no parallel process of daughters distancing
themselves from masculine things. Although the stark identification of
working-class boys with a male manual culture seems to have disappeared,
vestiges, perhaps powerful ones, remain in which boys distance themselves
from feminine domains.
Notes
1. Although we found some regional and urban/rural differences in images of work, they were
not overwhelming, particularly after social class differences between the three sites were
taken into account. To assess such effects adequately is beyond the confines of this paper.
2. The parent questionnaires provided only three response categories: “Very much”,
“Somewhat”, and “Not at all.” This difference renders it difficult to compare the responses of
parents directly with those of the children, and is one of the reasons for focusing on the
profiles of work attributes rather than on dyadic agreement.
3. Parents were not asked to describe the job attributes they expect for their children’s future
work. Hence, it is not possible to determine whether a parallel self-enhancement process is at
work in adolescents’ work expectations. At the same time, as will be seen later, adolescents’
work expectations are uniformly high, also suggesting a self-enhancement dynamic.
4. We chose to dichotomize the teenagers’ responses into “very true” versus the other three
possible responses. Since the parents were given only three response alternatives—“very
much,” “somewhat” and “not at all”—the last two responses were collapsed. The different
number of response options for parents and teenagers makes some aspects of the
generational comparison hazardous.
References
Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America. New York: Basic
Books.
Bradley, Harriet. 1989. Men’s Work, Women’s Work. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Canada. 1971. Canadian Classification and Dictionary of Occupations. Volumes I and II. Ottawa:
Department of Manpower and Immigration.
Dunk, Thomas. 1991. It’s a Working Man’s Town: Male Working-Class Culture in Northwestern
Ontario. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Game, Ann and Rosemary Pringle. 1983. Gender at Work. Sidney: George Allen and Unwin.
Kohn, Melvin. 1969. Class and Conformity: A Study of Values. Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey.
Krahn, Harvey. 1991. “The changing Canadian labour market” pp. 15-37 in David Ashton and
Graham Lowe (eds.) Making Their Way: Education, Training and the Labour Market in
Canada and Great Britain. Toronto: University of Toronto.
Looker, E. Dianne, and Victor Thiessen. 1993. Images of Work: Women’s Work, Men’s Work,
Housework. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of
Sociology and Anthropology, Ottawa, June, 1993.
Osberg, Lars, Fred Wien and Jan Grude. Forthcoming. Technology, Employment and Social
Policy. Toronto: Lorimer.
Pineo, Peter, John Porter, and Hugh McRoberts. 1977. “The 1971 census and the socioeconomic
classification of occupations”. The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 14:91-
102.
Sennet, Richard, and Jonathon Cobb. 1973. The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Vintage.
Weis, Lois. 1990. Working Class Without Work. New York: Routledge.
Willis, Paul. 1977. Learning to Labour. Westmead, England: Saxon House Press.
Wills, Ruth. 1861. Lays of Lowly Life. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co.
55

IJCS / RIÉC
Appendix
Table A1
Percentage of “Not at all descriptive” responses across work domains,
Adolescents 1989
W
SM
M
SM
W
DM
M
DM
W
SF
M
SF
W
DF
M
DF
W
SX
M
SX
W
DX
M
DX
W
SH
M
SH
W
DH
M
DH
Danger 63 69 56 65 15 55 17 52 26 39 47 45 39 41 40 46
Boring 11 16 15 23 18 22 19 30 51 58 63 66 8 12 14 14
Secure 4 3 3 2 3 2 3 1 1 1 1 3 5 5 3 3
Tiring 3 3 3 5 1 2 2 2 4 4 5 1 2 1 1 1
Respect 5 2 5 2 3 1 2 1 6 1 0 4 7 8 8 12
Stress 9 7 8 8 8 3 4 1 3 3 5 4 6 5 7 6
Dirty 46 53 43 59 13 49 12 51 34 45 56 54 19 9 19 19
Pay 4 4 9 6 2 1 1 8 1 1 1 2 57 66 68 72
Routine 2 4 2 5 2 6 2 5 7 12 11 12 3 3 4 2
Commun.
Import. 8 5 8 8 4 4 1 1 1 2 2 1 24 23 24 16
Difficult 8 5 10 6 2 1 3 2 4 1 5 9 4 3 9 3
Flexible
Hours 17 17 20 21 19 20 23 22 10 6 15 8 20 23 25 30
Reward 7 6 10 7 8 3 8 3 1 2 0 2 6 7 7 4
Power 22 21 26 24 13 5 15 5 5 4 6 4 19 27 20 27
Long
Hours 14 13 12 15 3 5 3 5 1 2 4 1 5 2 4 1
Enjoy 12 8 12 6 8 8 12 6 2 1 1 1 13 11 11 7
56

Eric Mintz
Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High
School Students and Their Parents*
Abstract
The opinions and attitudes of graduating high school students and their
parents in a small Newfoundland city were polled over a wide range of
political issues. Generally, only weak relationships existed between the
attitudes of the two generations, suggesting the limited effectiveness of
parental socialization on the attitudes of new generations. Aggregate
differences between the two generational groups were not generally large,
although a substantial generational shift in opinions on some social issues,
particularly the position of women, was found.
Résumé
L’auteur a mené un sondage, dans une petite ville située à Terre-Neuve,
auprès des finissantes et finissants d’écoles secondaires, ainsi que de leurs
parents afin de recueillir leurs opinions et attitudes eu égard à plusieurs
questions d’ordre politique. Il ressort de ce sondage que le lien entre les
attitudes des deux générations est, en général, faible et que l’influence des
parents sur les attitudes de la nouvelle génération est limitée. Dans
l’ensemble, les différences entre les deux générations sont faibles bien qu’un
écart d’opinion assez important portant sur quelques questions d’ordre
social, plus particulièrement, sur la question des femmes a été relevé.
It has often been thought that parents exercise a strong influence on the
development of the political attitudes of their children. Not only is parental
influence likely to be the earliest source of political socialization, but it is also
likely to be more efficacious given its personal nature, its continuity, and its
credibility to the child. As well, correspondence between the attitudes of
parents and their children may be expected due to the sharing of social and
economic circumstances.
Parental influence is, however, only one possible source of political
socialization. Young persons spend far more time in the classroom and in front
of the television than with their parents. And, undoubtedly, peer groups play an
important role in the development of youthful attitudes.
In fact, studies outside of Canada have indicated that the correspondence in
political attitudes between parents and their offspring (with the exception of
party identification) is generally weak (Jennings and Niemi 1968; Tedin 1974;
Niemi et al 1978; Jennings 1984).
Even if parental influence on the attitudes of the young is not generally strong,
this does not necessarily mean that different generations have different
aggregate distributions of political attitudes. Indeed, some researchers have
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
found that intergenerational differences are small. Rather than a large
“generation gap,” there is a modest tendency for the younger generation to be
more liberal than the parental generation (Connell 1972; Jennings and Niemi
1968; Niemi et al 1978).
Although there has been some research on the attitudes of young Canadians,
our understanding of generational change in Canada has been limited by the
absence of studies examining the attitudes of parents and their offspring.
Data and Methodology
Questionnaires were administered in a class period to 251 Level III (grade 12)
students at the two major high schools serving the Corner Brook,
Newfoundland area. 1 Telephone interviews were subsequently conducted
with both parents of students who completed questionnaires. 2 Although the
study can be considered reasonably representative of graduating high school
students, the exclusion of school drop-outs and their parents (approximately
30% of the population) limits the representativeness of both generations.
An examination of the attitudes of graduating high school students (most of
whom were 17 or 18 years old) seems particularly appropriate to an
understanding of political socialization and generational change. Parental
influence on the attitudes of children will normally be of diminishing
significance as children leave home to pursue further education or
employment. As the young adult prepares to take his or her place in society, a
wide range of politically-relevant attitudes are likely to have developed.
Of course, the findings based on one community cannot be generalized to the
country as a whole, and certainly no claim can be made that Corner Brook is a
“typical” Canadian city (although claims that any Canadian community is
“typical” seem questionable). Corner Brook was established around a major
newsprint mill and has become, as well, a regional service and administrative
centre. Although average wages have usually followed closely the national
average, the Western Newfoundland region consistently has one of the highest
unemployment rates in the country. Given their remoteness from both national
and provincial centres of power, Corner Brook residents share the experiences
and problems of those on the “periphery” of the country. Corner Brook’s
population consists almost exclusively of persons of British and Irish descent
who share in the distinct cultural identity of Newfoundland.
Hypotheses
In examining democratic political cultures, political scientists have typically
focused on the attitudes of political efficacy (the belief that a person can be
influential and effective in politics) and political trust (the belief that those in
government are competent, concerned for those they govern and worthy of
respect), the extent and nature of political involvement, and the level of
support for the political community. While the declining political efficacy and
trust of the population of Canada and other Western democracies has been the
subject of considerable discussion, young adults, having less awareness of the
realities of politics and a more idealistic outlook on the world, may be more
likely to feel efficacious and to be more trustful of those in government
(Pammett and Myles 1991). Given the relative recency of modern democracy
in Newfoundland (with a past that included a Commission of Government and
the semi-authoritarian one-party politics of the Smallwood era) and the recent
60

Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High School
Students and Their Parents
addition of a required “democracy” course to the high school curriculum, it
was also hypothesized that the younger generation would be more likely to
adopt positions favourable to democratic politics than the older generation.
Although other researchers have found young persons less interested in
politics (Hudon et al 1991) and less oriented to personal participation, it was
hypothesized that younger persons would be more inclined than their parents
to be involved in “unconventional” forms of political participation (Barnes,
Kaase et al 1979).
Studies have found that Newfoundlanders, like French-speaking Quebeckers,
are divided fairly evenly between an identification with their provincial
community and the national community (Gibbins 1990). It may be argued that
because Newfoundland joined Canada only a few decades ago, a strong sense
of Newfoundland identity persists, particularly among older generations. It
was therefore hypothesized that identification with and loyalty towards
Canada would be stronger among the younger generation.
There has been considerable interest in Ronald Inglehart’s hypothesis that the
value priorities of those raised in the relative affluence of contemporary
Western democracies have shifted from the “materialism” of previous
generations towards “post-materialism.” Post-materialist values such as selfexpression,
participation and aestheticism have been viewed as underlying the
development of the “New Left” ideology and various new social movements
(Inglehart 1977; Bakvis and Nevitte 1987; Nevitte et al 1989). Thus it was
hypothesized that the younger generation would be more likely than the
parental generation to adopt post-materialist value priorities 3 and to adopt
“left-libertarian” positions favourable to civil liberties, improving the position
of women, protection of the environment, peace and toleration of the French-
Canadian minority.
Although youth have often been expected to be more “left-libertarian,” a
plausible, alternative hypothesis can be made that young persons will be more
favourable to a competitive economy and a reduced welfare state than their
parents. The political events and dominant ideological currents of the time
may affect young persons who are developing their attitudes more than the
older generation who have developed more stable and possibly changeresistant
attitudes. In particular, the collapse of communist regimes combined
with the ideological dominance of “neo-conservatism” in the Anglo-American
democracies may have made the younger generation more oriented to free
enterprise than the parental generation that matured as the welfare state was
expanding and social democratic values were gaining acceptability.
Parent-Student Correspondence
The relationships between the attitudes of parents and their offspring were
generally quite weak, although in a positive direction. 4 Combining clusters of
related questions, Table 1 indicates that only civil liberties (R=0.25) and
political trust (R=0.20) exhibited more than a weak correspondence. 5 In
addition, there was a moderate level of correspondence between parents and
their offspring in levels of interest in politics (R=0.32). 6
61

IJCS / RIÉC
Table 1
Parent-Student Correspondence
Indexes Pearson’s R Weighted N
Efficacy .16 (103)
Trust .20** (79)
Democracy .12 (106)
Participation .10 (78)
Post-materialism .17* (102)
Civil Liberties .25** (93)
Tolerance (French) .06 (126)
Feminism .13 (121)
Environmentalism .09 (112)
Competitiveness .07 (81)
Welfare .02 (116)
* significant at the .05 level; ** significant at the .01 level
There was no clear pattern of closer correspondence between young persons
and either their mother or father. Nor did mother-daughter or father-son pairs
exhibit a pattern of stronger relationships than other pairs. There was a higher
level of parent-student correspondence for the civil liberties and postmaterialist
scales among higher socio-economic status families (as measured
by father’s occupation). But for most scales, controlling for socio-economic
status made little difference.
Generational Differences
Although the younger generation was more efficacious than the parental
generation, majorities of both generations provided inefficacious responses to
the four scale questions. Neither generation exhibited a high level of political
trust.
Both parental and student groups appear to have generally favourable attitudes
towards democratic ideals with neither group being significantly more
democratic in terms of attitudes towards citizen involvement in decisionmaking.
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Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High School
Students and Their Parents
Table 2
Attitudes of Parent and Student Groups
Indexes Parents (N) Students (N)
Efficacy 5.3*** (176) 5.9*** (238)
Trust 7.1 (150) 7.2 (200)
Democracy 5.4 (180) 5.3 (210)
Participation 9.5 (136) 9.2 (229)
Post-materialism 6.4 (173) 6.4 (219)
Environmentalism 6.7* (187) 6.9* (209)
Civil Liberties 5.7*** (168) 6.1*** (209)
Tolerance (French) 6.5 (202) 6.6 (229)
Feminism 6.3*** (201) 7.0*** (227)
Competitiveness 4.2** (150) 4.0** (209)
Welfare 4.2*** (207) 4.7*** (203)
Note: The potential range of environmentalism, civil liberties, feminism, efficacy, trust, postmaterialism
and tolerance indexes is 4 to 8; participation, 6 to 12; democracy, competitiveness
and welfare, 3 to 6.
* significant at .05; ** significant at .01; *** significant at .001
There was a sharp difference in political interest with members of the younger
generation more than three times as likely as members of the older generation
to respond that they had little or no interest in politics.
Although the student generation was slightly less likely to say that it would
participate in various political activities if the Canadian government was doing
something that it strongly disagreed with, the overall difference was not
statistically significant. There was a tendency for the parental generation to be
more oriented to “conventional” and the younger generation to be more
oriented to “unconventional” activity, but this tendency was not consistent
over the range of activities.
Thus, in both generations, there was a gap between support for democratic
ideals and perceptions about the actual ability of citizens to influence
governing decisions with, particularly in the case of youth, an additional gap
between democratic ideals and actual interest in politics.
The hypothesis that students would identify more with the Canadian political
community than their parents was not supported. Indeed, students were
slightly more inclined than their parents to think of themselves more as
Newfoundlanders than Canadians, with a larger minority of students than
parents favouring independence for Newfoundland. However, since this study
was conducted at the time of a major, national constitutional crisis (the defeat
of the Meech Lake Accord) that involved bitter tensions between politicians
representing Newfoundland and other parts of the country, it is possible that
the opinions expressed were more a reaction to particular events than a
reflection of basic attitudes. Indeed, despite their greater Newfoundland
orientation and the nearly unanimous opinion that the province has been
63

IJCS / RIÉC
poorly treated by the Canadian government, the majority of the younger
generation professed at least some confidence in the Canadian government.
Contrary to expectations, there was not a significant difference between the
two generations on an index of post-materialist values. With the exception of
the higher value placed on fighting crime than developing culture, substantial
majorities of both generations appeared “post- materialist” in their value
choices. It could be argued that most of the parental generation was raised in
the 1950s and 1960s and thus, like the younger generation, had its basic
material and safety needs fulfilled. Nevertheless, “modern” levels of
education, health, welfare and transportation services were just developing in
this “under-developed” province during the childhood years of most of the
parental generation. And, the parental generation would have developed its
early social and political attitudes at a time when memories of war and severe
economic deprivation were still prevalent among parents and teachers.
The related hypothesis that the younger generation would be more “leftlibertarian”
in its issue positions was only partly supported. The younger
generation was more likely to adopt “feminist” positions concerning the
position of women with the generational shift larger among women than men.
For example, among the parental generation, 51% of men and 48% of women
agreed that women should be encouraged to stay at home to raise their
children. Among students, 19% of males and only 4% of females agreed. More
generally, about one-half of young women compared to about one-quarter of
their mothers and fathers said that they would use the term “feminist” to
generally describe their beliefs. 7
The student population also tended to be slightly more favourable towards
civil liberties and slightly more peace-oriented than the parental generation.
The hypothesis that students would be more environmentally-oriented was
only weakly supported as majorities of both generations supported
environmentalist positions. Young persons were not significantly more
tolerant than their parents in their attitudes on language issues.
The hypothesis that the younger generation would be more oriented towards a
competitive economy and less oriented to the “welfare state” was not
supported. Instead, the younger generation was more favourable to welfare
measures and the parental generation was slightly more favourable to greater
competitiveness. Differences between the two generations were particularly
noticeable in questions concerning welfare assistance to single mothers and
the provision of child care. Thus, the greater support for welfare measures
among the younger generation may reflect the differing generational views on
the position of women.
Conclusion
Rather weak relationships were generally found between the attitudes of
young persons on the verge of adulthood and the attitudes of their parents.
With the availability of a variety of diverse socializing influences and a
diminution of the importance of family life in modern societies, it is
understandable that parents appear to have only a modest influence on the
political attitudes of their offspring.
Inglehart’s hypothesis of increasing post-materialism among successive
generations was not supported as both generations tended to accept some postmaterialist
values. Likewise, support for environmentalist positions was only
64

Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High School
Students and Their Parents
slightly higher among the younger generation, with both generations being
surprisingly supportive of environmentalist positions despite the chronically
high unemployment rate and the central position of the paper mill in the local
economy. It appears that some post-materialist and environmentalist values
have gained broad social acceptance and may no longer be a matter of
generational difference.
No evidence was found that youth has become more oriented to a competitive
economy in response to the ascendance (at least until recently) of the “neoconservative”
ideology in the West and the collapse of communism in the East.
It is possible, however, that the collapse of communism was too recent to have
had an effect on attitudes towards socio-economic issues. And, the problems of
“neo-conservatism” in practice, particularly in a region highly dependent upon
government assistance and public sector employment, may have counteracted
the possible influence of the “neo-conservative” ideology on the young.
There was some evidence of a substantial generational shift in terms of
attitudes on issues related to the position of women. Although it is possible that
young women, in particular, will adopt more traditional attitudes as they marry
and have children, there are reasons to expect that this intergenerational
difference will be persistent. Not only have there been major social changes
including a dramatic increase in female labour force participation and a drastic
decline in the birth rate, but also the feminist movement has had considerable
success in placing “women’s issues” high on the popular political and social
agenda. Although there appears to be generational change in the attitudes of
both men and women, the change appears strongest among women, opening
up a “gender gap” in the attitudes toward some gender-related issues among
the younger generation (Bibby and Posterski 1992, chapter 3). It is possible
that this gap will widen, particularly if young males attribute problems in
obtaining educational, employment and promotion opportunities to policies
perceived as “reverse discrimination.”
Overall, this study found generational change in political attitudes to be
modest. As young adults go through “life-cycle” changes, generational
differences in political efficacy, interest and participation may well diminish
or disappear (Jennings and Niemi 1975). Longitudinal research would be
useful to determine whether generational differences on social issues,
particularly concerning the position of women, will persist or expand in spite
of “life-cycle” effects that may tend to lead in the direction of intergenerational
convergence.
Notes
* The research for this paper was funded by a Challenge ’90 SEED grant. Research assistance
was provided by Kevin Walker and Michael Walsh. An earlier version of this paper was
presented at the Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Political Studies Association, St.
John’s, October 20, 1990.
1. Questionnaires were administered in all level III classes at Herdman Collegiate (Integrated
Protestant) on May 15 and 16, 1990 (N=162) and in four of the five Level III classes at
Regina High School (Roman Catholic) on June 1 and June 4, 1990 (N=89). According to the
Principal of Regina, the five classes do not differ in their academic or social characteristics.
Although Roman Catholic students are slightly under-represented in this study, a
comparison of students at the two schools found few differences in attitudes (Mintz 1992).
No attempts were made to administer questionnaires to students absent from class.
Approximately 65% of all Level III students at the two schools filled out questionnaires.
65

IJCS / RIÉC
2. Of the 421 parents that could be identified from information supplied by students, 251 (66%)
were interviewed. Parents not living with their offspring were not interviewed and no
substitutions of other relatives or guardians were made. At least four attempts were made to
contact each parent. The parental group that was interviewed included 171 mothers and 106
fathers. Interviews were conducted from May 17 to July 3, 1990.
3. Inglehart’s “post-materialism” scale (based on asking respondents to rank the importance of
twelve different goals) did not seem appropriate for telephone interviews. Instead, a simple
set of four questions involving a forced choice between values Inglehart considers
“materialist” and “post-materialist” was developed.
4. To make use of both parent pairs, the results reported in this section were calculated by
weighting cases of mother-student and father-student pairs where both were available by 0.5
and weighting cases where only one parent-student pair was available by 1.0.
5. The indexes were created by adding scores to different agree/disagree questions. Those
answering “don’t know” to any question were excluded from the calculation of the indexes.
These indexes should be treated with caution as there were low levels of inter-item
correlations for some of the indexes.
6. While most correlations for specific issue questions were weak, there was a moderate
correlation for two high profile issues: abortion (R=0.25) and support for the Meech Lake
Accord (R=0.25). About three-fifths of students had the same national and provincial party
identification as their parents, but the high level of Liberal party identification among both
generations meant that the variability in party identification was limited and parent-student
correlations were modest.
7. A list of ideological terms was provided with respondents instructed that they could choose
more than one term. Majorities of both generations said that they would use the terms
“environmentalist” and “liberal.”
8. Evidence was mixed on traditional leftist positions with the younger generation slightly
more likely to be in favour of government ownership of some major industries while the
parental generation was more likely to support taxing those with high incomes so as to
reduce the difference between rich and poor.
Bibliography
Bakvis, H. and N. Nevitte, “In Pursuit of Postbourgeois Man: Postmaterialism and
Intergenerational Change in Canada,” Comparative Political Studies 20 (October 1987),
357-389.
Barnes, S.H., M. Kaase, et al. Political Action. Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies.
Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979.
Bibby, R.W. and D.C. Posterski. Teen Trends. A Nation in Motion. Toronto: Stoddart, 1992.
Connell, R.W., “Political Socialization in the American Family: The Evidence Reexamined,”
Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (Fall 1972), 323-333.
Gibbins, R., Conflict and Unity. An Introduction to Canadian Political Life, second edition.
Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1990.
Hudon, R. et al, “To What Extent Are Today’s Young People Interested in Politics? Inquiries
Among 16- To 24-Year Olds,” in K. Megyery, ed., Youth in Canadian Politics.
Participation and Involvement. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991.
Inglehart, R., The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles among Western
Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Jennings, M.K., “The Intergenerational Transfer of Political Ideologies in Eight Western
Nations,” European Journal of Political Research 12 (September 1984), 261-276.
Jennings, M.K. and R.G. Niemi, “The Transmission of Political Values from Parent to Child,”
American Political Science Review 62 (March 1968), 169-184.
Jennings, M.K. and R.G. Niemi, “Continuity and Change in Political Orientations: A Longitudinal
Study of Two Generations,” American Political Science Review 69 (December 1975), 1316-
1335.
Mintz, E. “The Attitudes of Newfoundland High School Students: A Comparison of Two
Denominational Schools,” The Morning Watch 20 (Fall 1992), 26-33.
Nevitte, N. et al, “The Ideological Contours of the `New Politics’ in Canada: Policy, Mobilization,
and Partisan Support,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 22 (September 1989), 475-
504.
Niemi, R.G. et al, “The Similarity of Political Values of Parents and College-age Youths,” Public
Opinion Quarterly 42 (Winter 1978), 503-520.
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Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High School
Students and Their Parents
Pammett, J.H. and J. Myles, “Lowering the Voting Age to 16,” in K. Megyery, ed., Youth in
Canadian Politics. Participation and Involvement. Toronto: Dundurn, 1991.
Tedin, K.L., “The Influence of Parents on the Political Attitudes of Adolescents,” American
Political Science Review 68 (December 1974), 1579-1592.
Appendix
Selected Survey Results for Parental and Student Groups
(proportion agreeing with statement unless otherwise indicated)
Parents Students
(N=277) (N=251)
Efficacy
*1. There’s not much that ordinary citizens
can do to affect what governments
are doing. 32% 26%
*2. Generally, those elected to Parliament
soon lose touch with the people. 79% 66%
*3. Sometimes politics and government seems
so complicated that a person like me can’t
really understand what’s going on. 90% 70%
*4. Governments don’t seem to care what
ordinary citizens think. 62% 53%
Trust
*1. Many people in government are dishonest. 50% 49%
2. Most of the people running government are
smart people who usually know what they
are doing. 36% 57%
3. Generally speaking, would you say that
you have a great deal of confidence, some
confidence, or almost no confidence in the
ability of the Canadian government to do
what’s right?
great deal 8% 9%
some 64 74
almost no 28 17
4. Generally speaking, would you say that
you have a great deal of confidence, some
confidence, or almost no confidence in the
ability of the Newfoundland government
to do what’s right.
great deal 36% 22%
some 57 66
almost no 7 12
Democracy
*1. Governments should be able to make
major decisions without having to have
widespread public discussion of the issue. 25% 13%
67

IJCS / RIÉC
2. All citizens should involve themselves in the
discussion of political issues. 91% 81%
3. When developing its policies, do you think
that governments should pay the most
attention to the opinions of average citizens
or to the opinions of experts?
average citizens 75% 67%
*experts 25 33
Participation
Imagine that the Canadian government was doing something that you
strongly disagreed with. Do you think that you would engage in any of the
following activities? [% saying “yes”]
Parents Students
1. Sign a petition 98% 92%
2. Call your member of parliament 86% 50%
3. Participate in a protest march 66% 68%
4. Organize others to vote against
the government in the next election 44% 58%
5. Join with others in occupying
government offices 22% 30%
6. Join with others in refusing to pay taxes 33% 22%
Post-materialism
1. Over the next ten years, do you think that it is more important for
our society to have a high rate of economic growth or to clean up
our natural environment?
*growth 37% 14%
clean environment 63 86
2. Over the next ten years, do you think that it is more important to
ensure that order is maintained in our society or to encourage all
people to have a say on controversial issues?
*maintain order 33% 36%
have say 67 64
3. Over the next ten years, do you think that it is more important to
create an economy that is internationally competitive or to ensure
that all persons in our society are treated equally.
*competitive economy 18% 15%
equality 82 85
4. Over the next ten years, do you think that it is more important to
fight crime or to develop our culture?
*fight crime 81% 88%
develop culture 19 12
Environmentalism
1. Offshore oil developments, such as Hibernia,
should not proceed if there is a risk to the
marine environment. 77% 86%
*2. Large economic projects that could create
employment opportunities should be allowed
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Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High School
Students and Their Parents
to proceed even if they might endanger some
rare plants or animals. 25% 19%
3. People should be encouraged to have fewer
children so that there is room for all types of
plant and animal life on earth. 27% 34%
*4. The paper mill in Corner Brook should not be
forced to reduce its pollution because the mill
is the backbone of this area’s economy. 9% 14%
Civil liberties
*1. The police should be able to wiretap the
telephones of persons holding extremist ideas. 51% 36%
*2. Homosexual activity should be made illegal. 38% 44%
*3. Persons holding communist beliefs should not be
permitted to teach in our schools. 57% 44%
4. Do you think that the use of marijuana should
be legal or illegal?
Parents
Students
legal
*illegal
13%
87
22%
78
Tolerance (French)
1. All students across Canada should learn both
English and French. 56% 57%
2. French-Canadian children should be able to
receive an education in French anywhere in
Canada if at all possible. 84% 84%
*3. The Canadian government should operate
primarily in English. 56% 43%
4. Special efforts should be made to protect the
French language in Canada. 65% 67%
Feminism
1. Employers should be required to hire more
women for good jobs. 72% 73%
*2. Women should be encouraged to stay at home
to raise their children. 49% 12%
3. Universities should be required to reserve one-half
of the places for women in programs such as
engineering and science to ensure that there
will be more women in such professions in the
future. 49% 59%
*4. If a business has to lay off some workers, the
first to be laid off should be women whose
husbands have jobs. 43% 17%
Competitiveness
1. Our economy should be made more efficient
even if this means laying off some workers. 54% 30%
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2. Do you think that government should try to
assist businesses that are facing difficulties or
do you think that government should not assist
uncompetitive businesses?
*assist 74% 84%
not assist 26 16
3. Because of the problems in the Newfoundland
fishery, do you think that the government should
encourage fishermen to find other types of
employment or do you think that the government
should help fishermen to keep their jobs?
other employment 42% 43%
*keep jobs 58 57
Welfare
*1. Young persons who are able to work should not
receive welfare payments from government. 83% 80%
2. Governments should pay most of the costs of
child care for working mothers. 25% 57%
*3. Unmarried women who have children should
not receive welfare payments from government. 23% 5%
Peace-orientation
*1. Canada should develop a strong military
capability even if this means cutting other
government programs. 30% 19%
2. The Canadian government should be generous in
providing aid to the poorer countries of the world. 58% 66%
*3. Military vessels that may be carrying nuclear
weapons should not be invited to Corner Brook. 45% 53%
Support for Canada
1. Do you think of yourself more as a Canadian or
as a Newfoundlander?
Canadian 49% 40%
Newfoundlander 51 60
2. Do you think that Newfoundland is generally
well treated or poorly treated by the Canadian
government?
well treated 21% 10%
poorly treated 79 90
3. If the economy of Newfoundland improved
would you favour or oppose Newfoundland
becoming an independent country?
favour 16% 29%
oppose 84 71
4. If Quebec were to separate from Canada,
would you favour Newfoundland remaining
part of Canada, Newfoundland becoming an
independent country, or would you favour
Newfoundland joining the United States?
70

Two Generations: The Political Attitudes of High School
Students and Their Parents
remaining part of Canada 90% 69%
becoming independent 3 8
joining the U.S 7 23
5. Do you think that the politicians we elect to
represent us in the Parliament of Canada should
be concerned primarily with the interests of
Newfoundlanders or concerned primarily with
the interests of all Canadians?
Newfoundlanders 35% 52%
all Canadians 65 48
Notes: “don’t know” and “no answer” excluded from the calculations.
* scored in reverse direction
71

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72

Renée Joyal
L’évolution des modes de contrôle de l’autorité
parentale et son impact sur les relations entre
parents et enfants dans la société québécoise *
Résumé
Depuis 1977, l’autorité parentale est définie par le Code civil du Québec
comme un ensemble de droits et de devoirs exercés conjointement par les
parents à l’égard de leurs enfants, alors que l’ancienne puissance paternelle
affirmait les droits du père sur ses enfants, la mère n’exerçant qu’un rôle
supplétif. C’est également en 1977 que l’Assemblée nationale adopte une
nouvelle Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse, en vue d’assurer la protection
par l’État des enfants maltraités, abandonnés ou négligés. Ces changements
législatifs marquent une étape importante d’une longue évolution dont le point
de départ se situe dans la seconde moitié du XIX e siècle. En 1869, en effet, la
Législature de Québec adopte une première loi en la matière, l’Acte
concernant les écoles d’industrie; celle-ci inaugure une évolution qui,
s’étendant sur plus d’un siècle, assurera une place accrue à l’État dans la vie
familiale et transformera, du même coup, les relations entre parents et enfants.
Abstract
Since 1977, the “Code civil du Québec” defines parental authority as a series
of rights and obligations exercised jointly by both parents towards their
children. Prior to this date, the father held almost exclusive paternal rights
over his children, the mother exercising an auxiliary role. It is also in 1977 that
Quebec’s “National assembly” passed a new law “Loi sur la protection de la
jeunesse” intended to ensure state protection of abused, abandoned or
neglected children. These legislative changes marked an important step in a
long process that began in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1869, the
“Législature de Québec” passed its first law on this matter, the “Acte
concernant les écoles d’industrie”. This law began an evolution–lasting more
than a century–which ensured a more important role by the state in family life
and, at the same time, transformed the relationship between parents and
children.
L’autorité parentale est un concept relativement nouveau en droit québécois.
Jusqu’en 1977, en effet, les rapports entre parents et enfants s’organisaient
autour de la notion de puissance paternelle. Les modifications législatives
alors effectuées 1 n’ont cependant pas entraîné qu’un changement de
terminologie. Le Code civil définit depuis lors l’autorité parentale comme un
ensemble de droits et de devoirs exercés conjointement par les parents à
l’égard de leurs enfants, alors que l’ancienne puissance paternelle affirmait les
droits du père sur ses enfants, la mère n’exerçant qu’un rôle supplétif. C’est
également en 1977 que les mesures de contrôle de l’autorité parentale sont
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
modernisées. L’Assemblée nationale adopte une nouvelle Loi sur la
protection de la jeunesse 2 , en vue d’assurer la protection par l’État des enfants
maltraités, abandonnés ou négligés. Des dispositions prévoyant la déchéance
de l’autorité parentale, pour motifs graves et dans l’intérêt de l’enfant, sont par
ailleurs intégrées au Code civil 3 . Cette décennie voit également l’avènement
de l’enfant comme sujet de droits, la notion d’intérêt de l’enfant étant alors
jugée insuffisante, voire dangereuse d’utilisation dans les décisions
concernant des personnes mineures (Joyal, 1991, p. 787).
Ces changements législatifs marquent une étape importante d’une longue
évolution dont le point de départ se situe dans la seconde moitié du XIX e siècle,
plus précisément en 1869. Avant cette date, en effet, il faut chercher ailleurs
que dans des dispositions légales les principaux modes de régulation des
comportements familiaux. La famille élargie, le voisinage et la communauté
villageoise jouent alors à cet égard un rôle primordial, le tout sous l’oeil attentif
de l’Église et du clergé (Voisine, Beaulieu et Hamelin, 1971, p. 57; Roy, 1976,
pp. 44-45). Sauf quelques exceptions visant des problèmes spécifiques 4 , les
rapports entre parents et enfants ne sont touchés que par les lois générales de
police et d’assistance. En 1869, toutefois, la Législature de Québec adopte
l’Acte concernant les écoles d’industrie 5 . Première véritable intervention
législative en la matière, cette loi inaugure une évolution qui, s’étendant sur
plus d’un siècle, assurera une place accrue à l’État dans la vie familiale et
transformera, du même coup, les relations entre parents et enfants.
Nous distinguerons deux périodes dans l’étude de cette évolution: la première
se caractérise par la présence massive de l’Église et de ses institutions dans le
secteur de l’aide à l’enfance, tandis que la seconde marque le retrait de celle-ci
au profit des organismes et appareils d’État. Parallèlement à ce transfert de
responsabilités, qui ne va d’ailleurs pas sans résistance, les textes législatifs
connaissent une évolution, assez lente au départ, qui s’accélère sous la
pression des changements sociaux liés à la Révolution tranquille des années
1960.
Sous l’œil vigilant de l’Église (1869-1945)
Durant la période qui s’étend de 1869 à la Deuxième Guerre mondiale,
l’intervention des pouvoirs publics en faveur de l’enfance malheureuse
évolue, somme toute, assez peu. L’Acte concernant les écoles d’industrie est
modifié à quelques reprises sans toutefois toucher aux mécanismes qui en
assurent l’application. Les institutions chargées de recueillir les enfants visés
par la loi demeurent sous le contrôle du clergé et des communautés religieuses.
Une tentative de réforme amorcée dans les années 1940 tourne court, mais n’en
est pas moins annonciatrice d’un virage majeur.
Le caractère limité de l’intervention étatique
On peut se demander, d’abord, pourquoi la Législature de Québec sent le
besoin d’adopter, en 1869, l’Acte concernant les écoles d’industrie. Cette
initiative ne peut certes pas être dissociée des grands changements socioéconomiques
qui caractérisent l’époque. Bien qu’on ne puisse parler
d’industrialisation massive pour le Québec avant le XX e siècle (Poulin, 1955,
p.38), une économie capitaliste y est cependant en formation, fondée sur
l’établissement de manufactures locales et l’afflux d’une main-d’œuvre
immigrante en provenance notamment de l’Irlande (Ryerson, 1972, p. 235).
La population est encore rurale à plus de 75 p. 100 (Poulin, 1955, p. 38), mais
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L’évolution des modes de contrôle de l’autorité parentale
Montréal et Québec sont devenues des agglomérations importantes. Des
conditions de travail pénibles comme le « sweating system » s’y développent,
alors que les saisons mortes et les crises économiques entrainent chômage et
misère (Hamelin et Roby, 1971, p. 307). Il n’existe aucune mesure sociale pour
soulager ces maux. Hôpitaux, hospices et crèches recueillent les orphelins,
ainsi que les malades et les vieillards indigents. Pour le reste, il faut s’en
remettre à la charité privée, aux oeuvres paroissiales et aux sociétés de
bienveillance et de secours (Hamelin et Roby, 1971, p. 302).
Toutes ces mutations, et la désorganisation sociale qui s’ensuit, ont des
répercussions sur la vie familiale. Le nombre des enfants errants ou
abandonnés augmente, surtout en milieu urbain. L’Acte concernant les écoles
d’industrie 6 assurera la prise en charge de ces enfants perçus comme des
délinquants potentiels et, donc, comme une menace à l’ordre social.
L’Assemblée adopte cette loi à la suite de plusieurs pétitions qui émanent
surtout de personnalités ecclésiastiques tant de Montréal que de Québec 7 .En
réponse aux questions qui lui sont adressées par des membres de la
Législature, l’Honorable Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau explique que le
« bill » vise à protéger les enfants et à leur éviter les dangers qui conduisent à
une vie immorale 8 . Au moment de la présentation de celui-ci, il avait indiqué
qu’il avait pour objet de permettre l’envoi des jeunes délinquants dans des
maisons de réforme privées établies par des personnes charitables, comme en
Angleterre 9 . Il convient de remarquer ici que l’Acte concernant les écoles
d’industrie fut présenté et adopté au même moment que l’Acte concernant les
écoles de réforme 10 , ce qui illustre l’étroite association que les parlementaires
faisaient entre le placement en école de réforme, qui visait le redressement des
jeunes délinquants et le placement en école d’industrie, dont le but était de
prévenir la délinquance chez les enfants errants ou abandonnés.
L’Acte concernant les écoles d’industrie s’applique aux enfants de moins de
14 ans trouvés errants ou en compagnie de voleurs, aux orphelins et aux
enfants dont le père a été condamné à une peine de prison ou de travaux forcés.
Toute personne peut conduire un enfant qui se trouve dans une telle situation
devant un magistrat qui, après une enquête sommaire, peut ordonner son
placement en école d’industrie. Un père de famille ou le directeur d’une
institution de charité peut également se prévaloir de ce mécanisme dans le cas
d’un enfant « incontrôlable » ou « réfractaire ».
Les écoles d’industrie sont approuvées par le lieutenant-gouverneur en conseil
après inspection. Elles sont tenues d’instruire et d’élever l’enfant ainsi que de
pourvoir à sa subsistance. L’ordonnance de placement constitue un ordre de
détention pour une durée déterminée et le fait de quitter l’école sans
autorisation est considéré comme une évasion et, dans certains cas, puni
comme tel. Après une certaine période d’hébergement, l’enfant peut être
autorisé à loger à l’extérieur ou être placé en apprentissage, le tout sous la
supervision des autorités de l’école. Le financement de ces institutions est en
partie à la charge de la Législature et en partie à la charge des municipalités
concernées. Dans certains cas, les parents sont tenus à une contribution.
La nomenclature des enfants visés par la loi de 1869 témoigne du fait que le
souci du législateur d’alors en était d’abord un de sécurité publique. Il
s’agissait de combattre l’oisiveté, les mauvais compagnons et l’esprit de
révolte susceptibles d’affecter les enfants qui, pour une raison ou une autre,
vivaient hors du cercle familial et de pourvoir à leur redressement par
l’imposition d’un cadre de vie rigide et l’apprentissage d’un métier.
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Cette approche ne sera sérieusement remise en cause que dans les années 1940.
Toutefois, dans l’intervalle, s’ajoutera à la liste des enfants concernés par la
loi, de nouvelles catégories qui témoignent de l’apparition d’une plus grande
compassion à l’égard de l’enfant. Ainsi, à partir de 1884 11 , les enfants « en
besoin » de protection à cause de la maladie continuelle, de l’extrême pauvreté,
de l’ivrognerie ou des « habitudes vicieuses » de leurs parents seront-ils
couverts par la loi. En 1912 12 , on y ajoutera les enfants « habituellement battus
ou traités cruellement » par leurs parents ou gardiens.
L’Acte concernant les écoles d’industrie, malgré quelques ajouts qui
traduisent une préoccupation nouvelle pour l’enfant, ne peut être vu comme un
mécanisme de contrôle de la puissance paternelle. À l’exception de cas d’une
extrême gravité, ce texte législatif vient au contraire renforcer l’exercice de la
puissance paternelle à l’égard d’enfants jugés « incontrôlables » ou
« récalcitrants ». On ne relève donc à l’époque aucune tentative sérieuse des
pouvoirs publics pour percer une brèche dans cette « institution ». La famille
patriarcale, soumise à l’autorité toute-puissante du père et du mari, ne sera pas
remise en question avant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale.
L’émergence d’une volonté de réforme
Les années 1940 constituent en effet un moment significatif de l’histoire de la
protection de l’enfance et de la jeunesse au Québec. L’année 1944 voit même
l’adoption de la Loi de la protection de l’enfance 13 , qui se démarque
radicalement de la législation applicable jusqu’alors.
C’est dans la foulée du rapport de la Commission d’assurance-maladie de
Québec 14 , instituée par l’Assemblée législative en 1943, que ce texte législatif
prend forme. À la suite de seize décès survenus parmi les jeunes enfants
fréquentant des garderies privées de la région de Montréal, cette Commission
est invitée à faire enquête sur le problème des garderies et de la protection de
l’enfance. Après avoir tenu quinze auditions publiques au cours desquelles ils
entendent soixante-et-onze personnes représentant plus de cent dix
communautés religieuses et organismes de charité 15 , les commissaires
déposent un rapport qui reconnaît l’existence des besoins affectifs de l’enfant
et traduit une volonté marquée de responsabiliser les pouvoirs publics face au
bien-être de l’enfance.
Dans une société devenue urbaine à plus de 65 p. 100 (Poulin, 1955, p. 38),
fortement industrialisée et qui demeure marquée par la Grande dépression des
années 1930 et son cortège de misères, nombreux sont ceux, politiciens, clercs
et membres de diverses professions, qui croient en la nécessité d’une prise en
charge accrue par l’État de certains problèmes sociaux (Joyal et Chatillon,
1994). Faisant siennes les positions soutenues par les tenants de ce courant
moderniste, le rapport de la Commission d’assurance-maladie de Québec
propose un avant-projet de loi de protection de l’enfance qui est présenté
comme projet de loi à l’Assemblée législative le 10 mai 1944.
La nomenclature des enfants concernés par ce texte législatif rejoint
sensiblement celle que l’on retrouve à l’époque dans la Loi des écoles
d’industrie 16 telle qu’elle a été modifiée au fil du temps. Mais le projet de loi se
démarque de la législation antérieure surtout sur le plan des structures
proposées. Il prévoit, au niveau local, la création de sociétés de protection de
l’enfance ayant pour fonction de conduire devant un juge tout enfant visé par la
loi et, le cas échéant, de voir à l’exécution de l’ordonnance rendue par le
tribunal. Ces sociétés sont supervisées par un Conseil supérieur de la
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L’évolution des modes de contrôle de l’autorité parentale
protection de l’enfance, composé de douze membres, dont dix de religion
catholique romaine et deux de religion protestante. L’ensemble du système est
sous la responsabilité d’un directeur de la protection de l’enfance agissant sous
l’autorité d’un ministre.
Les décisions rendues par le tribunal à l’égard d’un enfant peuvent être de
plusieurs ordres : remise de l’enfant à ses parents sous la surveillance d’une
société de protection de l’enfance, attribution temporaire ou permanente de la
garde de l’enfant à une telle société, qui en devient alors la tutrice et peut le
placer dans un foyer nourricier, dans une institution ou encore en
apprentissage ou en service domestique.
Ce projet législatif, qui conférait de larges pouvoirs à des sociétés de protection
de l’enfance placées sous le contrôle de l’État, qui élargissait l’éventail des
mesures applicables à un enfant touché par la loi et qui limitait l’exercice de la
puissance paternelle, n’allait pas manquer de soulever de vives protestations.
Au moment de la présentation de ce projet de loi, la plupart des institutions
recevant des enfants étaient dirigées par le clergé ou des communautés
religieuses (Bourgeois, 1947, p. 240). Plusieurs représentants du milieu
clérical et les politiciens conservateurs qui y étaient associés ne pouvaient
manquer de voir l’adoption de cette loi comme une menace aux institutions
religieuses et à la famille patriarcale traditionnelle. La composition « mixte »
du Conseil supérieur de la protection de l’enfance était également loin
d’emporter leur assentiment (Joyal et Chatillon, 1994). Malgré ce fort courant
d’opposition, la Loi de la protection de l’enfance est adoptée par l’Assemblée,
le 3 juin 1944, sous le gouvernement libéral et réformiste d’Adélard Godbout.
Toutefois, quelques mois plus tard, ce gouvernement est défait et le retour au
pouvoir de Maurice Duplessis, en août 1944, suspend à jamais la mise en
application de ce texte législatif.
Le domaine de la protection de l’enfance en demeure donc au statu quo.
L’idéologie conservatrice triomphe et la Loi des écoles d’industrie continue de
s’appliquer. Il faut toutefois se garder de croire que la réflexion sociale
entreprise autour de la Loi de 1944 n’aura eu aucune retombée. Il est vrai qu’à
court terme, le seul changement à intervenir en la matière est la création, en
1946, du ministère du Bien-être social et de la Jeunesse 17 , dont le rôle, au
départ, semble avoir été limité à la gestion des allocations sociales
(Vaillancourt, 1988, p. 132). Cependant, une nouvelle loi et surtout de
nouvelles pratiques devaient bientôt voir le jour en la matière et contribuer à
l’effacement progressif des institutions religieuses au profit de l’État dans ce
domaine névralgique.
L’inéluctable avancée de l’État (1945-1977)
En 1950, une nouvelle législation est adoptée. À défaut de s’inspirer du
courant moderniste à l’origine de la Loi de la protection de l’enfance de 1944,
elle pave cependant la voie à des changements notables. Dans les années qui
suivent, le cadre social traditionnel éclate en même temps que s’affirment les
nouveaux professionnels de l’intervention sociale. Cette effervescence atteint
son paroxysme dans les années 1960; c’est également à ce moment que se
développe la théorie des droits. La Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse de 1977
sera le fruit de ces profondes mutations.
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Une législation de type paternaliste
La Loi relative aux écoles de protection de la jeunesse 18 , adoptée en 1950,
étend la protection de l’État à tout enfant de plus de six ans et de moins de dixhuit
ans « particulièrement exposé à des dangers moraux ou physiques, en
raison de son milieu ou d’autres circonstances spéciales ». Les termes très
généraux de cette formulation ouvrent la porte à un contrôle accru, et
potentiellement arbitraire, de la puissance paternelle, jusque là peu menacée
par les pouvoirs publics. Le nouveau texte législatif ménage cependant les
appréhensions des gens d’Église, puisqu’il demeure centré sur le placement
des enfants concernés dans les écoles spéciales qu’ils dirigent. Le magistrat
présidant l’enquête doit, s’il est satisfait de la preuve qui lui est présentée,
adresser au Ministre du Bien-être social et de la Jeunesse un rapport
recommandant le placement de l’enfant. Il revient au ministre d’ordonner ce
placement, de le prolonger et, le cas échéant, de donner son congé à l’enfant.
La Loi des tribunaux judiciaires est modifiée la même année par la Loi
instituant la Cour de bien-être social 19 . À partir de cette date, les magistrats
appelés à présider les enquêtes relatives aux cas de protection appartiendront
progressivement à ce tribunal spécialisé.
L’année suivante, la Loi des écoles de protection de la jeunesse est modifiée de
manière à s’appliquer à tous les enfants de moins de dix-huit ans; l’éventail des
mesures applicables à ceux-ci est en outre élargi. « Le magistrat peut alors,
suivant les circonstances et après consultation, s’il y a lieu, avec une agence
sociale reconnue par le ministre, laisser l’enfant en liberté surveillée, le confier
à toute agence sociale, société, institution, recommander son placement dans
une école, ou prendre toute autre décision dans le meilleur intérêt de
l’enfant ». 20 Ce changement n’est pas négligeable, puisqu’il entraîne la
reconnaissance légale des divers organismes qui oeuvrent dans le domaine de
la protection de l’enfance. Cependant ces organismes sont, pour la plupart,
formés sur une base diocésaine et assujettis à l’autorité ecclésiastique, du
moins en milieu canadien-français (D’Amours, 1982, p. 22). Si elle autorise
l’intrusion de l’État dans la vie privée de l’enfant et de sa famille, l’ouverture
législative ainsi effectuée ne heurte cependant pas de front les intérêts du
milieu clérical.
Sans établir un véritable système intégré de protection de l’enfance, les lois de
1950 et de 1951 assurent la diversification des mesures susceptibles d’être
recommandées ou ordonnées à l’égard des enfants visés par la loi et font une
place officielle aux organismes de protection de l’enfance. La Cour de bienêtre
social est créée, quoique, dans bien des cas, ce tribunal n’ait qu’un pouvoir
de recommandation au ministre. Le cadre de procédure dans lequel il
intervient manque de formalisme et de rigueur; les droits de l’enfant et de ses
parents ne sont nulle part explicitement énoncés. Les agences sociales
reconnues par le texte législatif à partir de 1951 seront toutefois le ferment
d’une approche renouvelée de la protection de l’enfance.
La conjonction de nombreux facteurs de changement
À la forte croissance économique de l’après-guerre s’ajoute, pour le Québec,
une importante poussée démographique. En 1961, la population atteint cinq
millions d’habitants et est urbaine à près de 75 p. 100 (Linteau, Durocher...,
1986, pp. 187 et 256). Malgré le conservatisme politique caractérisant le
gouvernement de Maurice Duplessis, au pouvoir de 1944 à 1959, de puissants
courants réformistes se manifestent, souvent véhiculés par les nouvelles élites
78

L’évolution des modes de contrôle de l’autorité parentale
que sont les professeurs, journalistes, économistes et spécialistes en sciences
humaines. La vague d’immigration de l’après-guerre et l’ouverture sur le
monde que favorisent les médias, notamment la télévision, contribuent à
l’effondrement des valeurs toutes faites de la société québécoise traditionnelle.
En 1960, le parti libéral de Jean Lesage arrache le pouvoir à l’Union nationale
de Maurice Duplessis, décédé en 1959. Le Québec est mûr pour un grand
changement : la Révolution tranquille. Cette expression désigne aussi bien le
bouleversement des valeurs et des mentalités qui se fait jour à cette époque que
les grandes réformes politiques et structurelles entreprises à partir de 1960 par
le gouvernement de Jean Lesage et ceux qui lui ont succédé. Ce processus, qui
implique la prise en charge par l’État d’institutions jusqu’alors dominées par
des groupes privés, notamment l’Église catholique, vise prioritairement les
secteurs de l’éducation, de la santé et des affaires sociales. (Linteau,
Durocher..., 1986, p. 394).
Dans le domaine de la protection de l’enfance, le milieu francophone a
diversifié ses modes d’intervention, puisque, à partir de 1950, des agences
diocésaines de services sociaux sont rapidement mises sur pied dans
l’ensemble du territoire du Québec (D’Amours, 1982, p. 22). En plus d’assurer
la distribution de certaines allocations sociales, ces agences visent la
protection de l’enfance et la solution des problèmes de la famille. En 1963,
elles se regroupent pour former la Fédération des services sociaux à la famille
du Québec. Elles recrutent en partie leur personnel parmi les diplômés des
Écoles de service social fondées à l’Université de Montréal et à l’Université
Laval dans les années 1940 (Joyal et Chatillon, 1994). Ces nouveaux
professionnels contribuent sans conteste à renouveler l’approche des
problèmes sociaux et sont partie prenante aux réformes entreprises à cet égard
dans la foulée de la Révolution tranquille.
C’est également durant les années 1960 que s’accentue l’affirmation
collective des femmes et que sont mis sur pied d’importants groupes de
pression. La Fédération des femmes du Québec et l’Association féminine pour
l’éducation et l’action sociale voient respectivement le jour en 1965 et en 1966
(Dumont, Jean..., 1982, pp. 449 et ss.). Ce mouvement d’émancipation aura
des répercussions sur le plan législatif. Il y aura d’abord, en 1964, l’adoption
par l’Assemblée législative du bill 16 21 , qui consacre l’égalité juridique des
époux; puis, en 1969, le bill 10 22 est adopté, qui fait de la société d’acquêts le
régime matrimonial légal, en lieu et place de l’ancienne communauté de
meubles et acquêts, laquelle, dirigée par le mari, était difficilement compatible
avec le principe d’égalité consacré en 1964.
La transformation des rapports hommes-femmes, l’avènement du pluralisme
et l’émergence de nouvelles élites, entre autres éléments déterminants, rendent
nécessaire la révision des lois alors en vigueur en matière de protection de
l’enfance et contribuent à façonner le nouvel ensemble législatif qui prend
corps durant les années 1970.
L’enfant, les parents et l’État : une nouvelle dynamique
L’une des premières préoccupations de l’État à l’époque consiste en
l’élaboration d’un cadre qui permette une meilleure planification et une
coordination plus efficace des services sociaux. La diversification ethnique et
religieuse de la population s’accommode par ailleurs difficilement d’un
système qui relève en grande partie des autorités ecclésiastiques. À la suite du
Rapport de la Commission d’enquête sur la santé et le bien-être social,
79

IJCS / RIÉC
l’Assemblée nationale adopte la Loi sur les services de santé et les services
sociaux 23 . Cette loi a pour effet de créer des Centres de services sociaux
régionaux, qui assument alors les fonctions des anciennes agences. Le réseau
est désormais étatisé.
Au même moment, la Loi de la protection de la jeunesse est vivement
critiquée. On lui reproche notamment de recourir au système judiciaire
exclusivement, alors que plusieurs interventions sur une base volontaire
auprès de l’enfant et de sa famille pourraient relever des services sociaux.
Plusieurs personnes et groupes déplorent aussi l’absence de reconnaissance
explicite des droits de l’enfant dans la législation alors applicable. C’est dans
ce contexte que s’ouvre un débat social de cinq ans autour d’une réforme
législative en la matière. Le processus, amorcé en 1972, voit le dépôt successif
à l’Assemblée nationale de trois propositions législatives qui font l’objet
d’autant de commissions parlementaires au cours desquelles citoyens et
organismes s’expriment abondamment sur la question (Joyal et Provost,
1993).
Dès 1974, l’Assemblée nationale décide de légiférer sur un aspect particulier
de cette problématique et adopte la Loi concernant la protection des enfants
soumis à des mauvais traitements 24 . Il s’agit d’une solution d’urgence
destinée à calmer une opinion publique en alerte à la suite de la médiatisation
de plusieurs cas d’enfants battus. Le système mis en place par cette loi sert en
même temps de projet-pilote pour la réforme globale en cours. Celle-ci aboutit
à l’adoption, en 1977, d’une nouvelle Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse 25 qui
énumère les situations dans lesquelles l’État s’estime fondé à intervenir dans la
sphère familiale pour la protection d’un enfant; le nouveau texte législatif
favorise le règlement volontaire de ces situations et le respect des droits des
enfants concernés, tout en établissant de nouvelles structures d’intervention
dans le domaine (Joyal et Provost, 1993).
Chaque Centre de services sociaux 26 est en effet doté d’un D.P.J.,
fonctionnaire responsable de services de réception et d’orientation des
situations de protection énumérées par la Loi 27 . Des mesures volontaires
peuvent être proposées à l’enfant et à ses parents en vue de mettre fin à la
situation constatée; cependant, seul le tribunal est habilité à trancher les
conflits susceptibles de survenir entre l’enfant, ses parents et le D.P.J. C’est à
celui-ci qu’est par ailleurs confiée l’exécution des décisions rendues par le
tribunal. Un organisme provincial, le Comité de la protection de la jeunesse 28 ,
assure le respect des droits des enfants reconnus à la Loi.
À partir d’un signalement qui peut être effectué par toute personne, mais qui
émane le plus souvent de professionnels dont les activités les amènent à
travailler auprès des enfants, l’État dispose donc désormais, à travers l’action
concertée de ses appareils administratif et judiciaire, de puissants outils de
contrôle de l’exercice de l’autorité parentale.
La même année, cette réforme trouve son écho dans le Code civil, où la
puissance paternelle est remplacée par l’autorité parentale, qui comporte le
droit et le devoir de garde, de surveillance et d’éducation 29 . Désormais, le père
et la mère exercent conjointement ces responsabilités; le législateur consacrant
ainsi le principe d’égalité reconnu par ailleurs dans les rapports entre époux.
L’autorité parentale peut faire l’objet d’une déchéance, pour motifs graves et
dans l’intérêt de l’enfant. Ce mode de contrôle de l’autorité parentale s’ajoute à
ceux prévus à la Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse. Produisant des effets
majeurs sur la relation parents-enfant et pouvant même conduire dans certains
80

L’évolution des modes de contrôle de l’autorité parentale
casàl’adoptiondecelui-cipardestiers,ladéchéanceneseraprononcéequ’en
dernier ressort.
* * * * *
Àpartir de la Révolution tranquille se dessinent donc des rapports différents
entre les citoyens et l’État. Une nouvelle culture laïque et bureaucratique
s’impose. La famille se replie sur elle-même dans l’anonymat des grandes
villes. La communauté environnante n’existe plus comme instance de
régulationdescomportementsetstructuredesoutiendanslesépreuves.L’État
apris le relais de l’Église dans les secteurs de l’éducation, de la santé et des
services sociaux. La théorie des droits connaît un développement sans
précédent qui marque toutes les nouvelles législations :droit des femmes à
l’égalité; droit des enfants àla sécurité et au développement ainsi qu’à des
services adéquats; et droit de tous les citoyens àla protection contre les
interventions arbitraires ou abusives de l’État.
La puissance paternelle pouvait jadis compter sur l’appui de l’État et du
systèmejudiciaire;désormaisl’autoritéparentalepasseaucribledesnouvelles
normes sociales et les parents exercent leurs responsabilités sous l’oeil de
l’AdministrationautantquedelaJustice.Autrefoiscentréessurl’autoritédes
parents, notamment celle du père de famille, les politiques législatives sont
maintenantaxéessurlaprotectiondel’enfant.L’émergencedelathéoriedes
droitsafaitdetouslesmembresdelafamilledeségauxfaceàl’Étatetàses
appareils de régulation (Durant-Brault,1991, p. 136).
Àlafamillepatriarcalesoumiseàl’autoritédupèreetsujetteàdesmodesde
régulationinstitutionnelsetcommunautairesasuccédélafamilleégalitaire,où
les enfants sont assujettis àl’autorité conjointe de leurs père et mère, et où
parents et enfants, àleur tour, sont assujettis àl’État, organe suprême de
normalisation et de contrôle. La fonction parentale, dans un tel contexte,
devientpérilleuse,d’autantplusquelespouvoirspublics,enprenantlerelais
des anciennes instances normatives, n’ont pas su jusqu’à maintenant
remplacer les structures de soutien d’antan.
Notes
* Ce texte aété élaboré et rédigé dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche subventionné par le
ConseilderecherchesenscienceshumainesduCanadaetdirigéparRenéeJoyal;M e Carole
Chatillon, M me Louise Chauvette et M e Mario Provost ont largement contribué àla
recherche documentaire.
1. Loi modifiant le Code civil, L.Q. 1977, c. 72.
2. Loisurlaprotectiondelajeunesse,L.Q.1977,c.20.Cetteloin’estentréeenvigueurdanssa
totalité que le 15 janvier 1979.
3. Loi modifiant le Code civil, préc., note 1.
4. Voir, par exemple, en matière de vagabondage: Acte pour remédier plus efficacement à
divers abus préjudiciables àl’amélioration de l’Agriculture, et àl’industrie dans cette
Province,etpourd’autresobjets,StatutsprovinciauxduBas-Canada,1824,c.33,art.30;en
matière de délinquance juvénile: Acte concernant les prisons pour les jeunes délinquants,
Statuts du Canada, 1858, c. 88.
5. Acte concernant les écoles d’industrie, S.Q. 1869, c. 17.
6. Préc., note 5.
7. Débats de l’Assemblée législative, 1867-1870 (reconstitution), pp. 171, 192, 204 et 211.
8 Idem, p. 218.
9. Idem, p. 176.
81

IJCS / RIÉC
10. Acte concernant les école de réforme, S.Q. 1869, c. 18. L’Angleterre s’était en effet dotée,
durant les années 1850, d’un système d’éducation correctionnelle pour les personnes
mineures délinquantes ou sujettes à le devenir. Voir, à ce sujet, Mario PROVOST, Le
mauvais traitement de l’enfant: Perspectives historiques et comparatives de la législation
sur la protection de la jeunesse, (1991) 22 Revue de Droit, p. 1.
11. Voir, à ce sujet, l’Acte pour amender l’Acte 32 Victoria, c. 17, concernant les écoles
d’industrie, S.Q. 1884, c. 23. Cette loi avait également pour objet d’abaisser l’âge des
enfants visés de quatorze à douze ans. L’âge de quatorze ans a été rétabli en 1894.
12. Voir, à ce sujet, Loi amendant les Statuts refondus, 1909, concernant les jeunes délinquants,
S.Q. 1912, c. 39. Le titre de cette loi illustre une fois de plus l’association qui est encore faite
à cette époque entre les jeunes délinquants et les jeunes placés en école d’industrie.
13. Loi concernant la protection de l’enfance, S.Q. 1944, c. 33.
14. Commission d’assurance-maladie de Québec, 1 er Rapport. Cette commission est issue de la
Loi instituant une Commission d’assurance-maladie, S.Q. 1943, c. 32.
15. Les commissaires reçoivent en outre les mémoires de dix-neuf autres personnes ou
organismes qui préfèrent ne pas témoigner devant la Commission: Commission
d’assurance-maladie de Québec, 1 er Rapport, p. 3.
16. Loi concernant les écoles d’industrie, S.R.Q. 1941, c. 39.
17. Loi constituant le département de bien-être social et de la jeunesse, S.Q. 1946, c. 22.
18. Loi relative aux écoles de protection de la jeunesse, S.Q. 1950, c. 11.
19. Loi instituant la Cour de bien-être social, S.Q. 1950, c. 10.
20. Loi modifiant la Loi des écoles de protection de la jeunesse, S.Q. 1950-51, c. 56.
21. Loi sur la capacité juridique de la femme mariée, L.Q. 1964, c. 66.
22. Loi concernant les régimes matrimoniaux, L.Q. 1969, c. 77.
23. Loi sur les services de santé et les services sociaux, L.Q. 1971, c. 48.
24. Loi concernant la protection des enfants soumis à des mauvais traitements, L.Q. 1974, c. 59.
25. Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse, L.Q. 1977, c. 20.
26. Depuis la récente réforme des services de santé et des services sociaux, ces Centres
n’existent plus. Une grande partie de leur mission est maintenant exercée par les Centres de
protection de l’enfance et de la jeunesse.
27. Les articles 38 et 38.1 de la Loi actuelle énumèrent de façon limitative les situations pouvant
donner lieu à l’intervention publique.
28. Le nom de cet organisme a été modifié en 1989 pour celui de Commission de protection des
droits de la jeunesse.
29. Loi modifiant le Code civil, L.Q. 1977, c. 72.
Bibliographie
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Éditions du bien public, 1947.
D’AMOURS, Oscar, Survol historique de la protection de l’enfance au Québec de 1608 à 1977,
annexe au Rapport de la commission parlementaire spéciale sur la protection de la jeunesse,
Éditeur officiel du Québec, 1982; texte également publié à la Revue Service social, 1986,
vol. 35, p. 386.
DELEURY, Édith, Michèle RIVET et Jean-Marc NAULT, « De la puissance paternelle à
l’autorité parentale, une institution en voie de trouver sa vraie finalité », (1974) 15, Les
Cahiers de Droit, p. 779.
DELEURY, Édith et Michèle RIVET, « La protection de l’enfant en droit social québécois »,
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1971.
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83

Denise Lemieux et Léon Bernier
La transmission intergénérationnelle dans les
projets de procréation : une approche qualitative
et subjective des changements démographiques au
Québec
Résumé
Les études démographiques ont établi la convergence des comportements
sociodémographiques et les tendances à la baisse de la fécondité dans les pays
occidentaux au cours des dernières décennies. Si ces phénomènes renvoient à
des facteurs conjoncturels plus ou moins analogues des économies
contemporaines, qui se répercutent sur les modes de vie et en particulier sur
l’entrée dans la vie adulte, l’analyse de récits de vie permet de situer dans les
expériences vécues dans la famille d’origine, la transmission ou le rejet d’un
héritage familial dont certains éléments sont redéfinis dans les contextes
nouveaux où s’actualisent les projets de procréation. Les données analysées
sont tirées d’une enquête par récits de vie sur Le désir d’enfant: du projet à la
réalisation*, chez des femmes et des hommes du Québec contemporain.
Abstract
Demographic studies have established a convergence between
sociodemographic behaviour and a trend towards low fertility in western
countries over the past decades. In part, this phenomenon reflects the impact
of current economic conditions which in turn affect life styles and especially
entry into the adult world. However, an analysis of the stories reported in this
study helps to show how events experienced in the family of origin affect the
transmission or the non-transmission of a family heritage, certain elements of
which are redefined given the new contexts in which procreation projects are
realized. The data analyzed in this article is drawn from a survey of stories of
life experience as told by women and men of contemporary Quebec regarding
their desire to have children.
Un peu partout dans les sociétés occidentales, les trois dernières décennies ont
donné lieu à une accélération du long déclin de la fécondité amorcé au cours du
XIX e siècle dans le sillage de l’industrialisation. Dans la conjugaison des
facteurs associés au déclin du nombre d’enfants par famille, on évoque les
transformations des structures familiales en rapport avec les changements de
l’organisation du travail et les phénomènes culturels qui y sont associés. Avec
l’industrialisation, le salariat s’est généralisé, ce qui suscite une division des
rôles familiaux selon un modèle pourvoyeur-ménagère et un nouveau statut de
l’enfant dans la famille par l’entremise de sa mise à l’écart du travail et de son
assignation à l’univers scolaire. Ce modèle, apparu à la fin du XIX e siècle,
s’est peu à peu diffusé dans la plupart des milieux, et la famille moderne
semble avoir connu son apogée après la Deuxième Guerre mondiale.
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
Les changements rapides des dernières décennies découlent de phénomènes
analogues liés au contexte économique de l’ère postindustrielle, où figurent au
premier rang l’accroissement du travail des femmes et leur scolarisation plus
poussée. En outre, certains changements techniques ont modifié les modes de
vie, en particulier l’apparition de moyens contraceptifs efficaces qui rendent
possibles une entière liberté face aux grossesses et l’émergence de nouveaux
styles de vie personnels et familiaux. La cohabitation hors mariage, les
maternités de plus en plus tardives en certains milieux, les ruptures conjugales
plus fréquentes et les formes diversifiées de familles qui en résultent sont les
caractéristiques les plus visibles d’une mutation des comportements
familiaux. Celle-ci renvoie également aux changements des normes et des
valeurs dans le nouveau contexte : nouvelles significations de l’enfant et du
couple; idéal égalitaire concernant la division des tâches domestiques et
éducatives; et nouveaux modèles de parentalité (Dandurand, 1988, Lapierre-
Adamcyk, 1987, Lemieux et Mercier, 1990).
Les portraits sociodémographiques de la fécondité des années 1980-1990
permettent d’établir à quelles caractéristiques des individus et de leurs modes
de vie renvoient les variations du nombre d’enfants par famille, qui oscille
désormais autour de un ou deux enfants ou plus rarement trois (Peron et al.
1987; Rochon, 1989, 1990). Ces changements s’inscrivent dans des tendances
plus ou moins semblables des pays occidentaux et se traduisent par une
diminution des indices synthétiques de la fécondité (Henripin, 1989; Lapierre-
Adamcyk, 1988; Romaniuc, 1984). Au Québec, de l’indice 4 au cours des
années 1950, on est passé à 1,5 en 1983. (Romaniuc, p. 17). Les analyses et les
explications de ces changements demeurent, de l’avis de tous, insuffisamment
développées. Si la recherche s’est attardée davantage aux aspects
conjoncturels et personnels qui entourent la prise de décision, certains
chercheurs dirigent l’attention vers le phénomène du changement des modèles
culturels avec l’arrivée des générations, issues des familles d’après-guerre, qui
accèdent à l’âge adulte dans une conjoncture moins favorable à leur
établissement. Étudiant la modification des modèles parentaux sous l’angle
des ruptures et des continuités, Vern L. Bengston (1987) attribue à l’écart entre
les modèles et les valeurs élaborés au cours de l’après-guerre et les
particularités de la conjoncture des années 1960-1970, l’émergence de
plusieurs mouvements sociaux qui contribueront à définir des enjeux
normatifs appropriés au nouveau contexte, qu’il s’agisse de l’écologisme, du
pacifisme, de la libération sexuelle ou du féminisme. Dans La famille
incertaine (1989), Louis Roussel élabore une explication du même genre au
sujet des changements de la fécondité en Europe et en Amérique. Dans cette
version sociologique des explications cycliques de la fécondité, l’accent est
mis sur la privatisation du couple et la remise en question de l’institution
matrimoniale.
À partir des données concernant la fécondité au Québec, le démographe
Jacques Henripin examine tour à tour dans Naître ou ne pas être (1989) les
explications économiques des cycles de la fécondité depuis la guerre et les
interprétations sociologiques de N. Keyfitz et L. Roussel, qui font place au
travail des femmes et aux transformations des rapports de sexe. Il évoque
l’outillage meilleur de la contraception (Marcil-Gratton, 1987, 1988) et son
incidence sur la définition du couple et de la maternité. Selon Henripin, les
explications du changement démographique des dernières décennies
demeurent mal étayées empiriquement, et le cas québécois, sans être bien
différent de celui des autres sociétés occidentales, présente des
86

La transmission intergénérationnelle dans les projets
de procréation
caractéristiques qui demandent à être expliquées et semblent renvoyer à des
composantes culturelles. La résistance au changement jusqu’aux années 1960
fait ressortir, pour le Québec, la rapidité du déclin qui s’ensuit et où se devine
peut-être aussi une amplification de la réaction au traditionalisme de la période
précédente.
Des données partielles d’une enquête qualitative et rétrospective réalisée au
Québec dans les années 1991-1992, nous permettront d’explorer l’influence
des phénomènes intergénérationnels vécus dans la famille sur le désir d’enfant
et sur les projets de procréation. Sans écarter l’incidence des facteurs
techniques ou économiques propres aux conjonctures récentes sur les
comportements conjugaux et reproducteurs des jeunes adultes, nous avons
voulu examiner ces phénomènes au niveau microsociologique, à partir des
expériences subjectives et des interprétations qu’en donnent les acteurs.
Quelle place occupent les projets de procréation ou leur absence dans
l’ensemble des projets de vie personnels d’hommes et de femmes confrontés
aux nouveaux contextes d’existence? Quels en sont les antécédents et les
conséquents? Tel est l’objet de la recherche sur Le désir d’enfant: du projet à la
réalisation d’où sont tirées les données de cet article.
Une centaine de récits de vie ont été recueillis auprès d’hommes et de femmes
dans la vingtaine et dans la trentaine, récits où les acteurs livrent
l’interprétation de leurs cheminements et de leurs décisions. L’approche du
récit de vie (Bertaux, 1981; Bertaux et Kohli, 1984; Desmarais et Grell, 1986)
permet de situer les processus et les stratégies des acteurs dans les diverses
séquences de vie évoquées rétrospectivement, mais elle permet aussi
d’explorer les trajectoires en tenant compte de la dynamique des rapports
interpersonnels et des relations intergénérationnelles dans les familles.
L’enquête ne vise pas à dégager des observations généralisables à toute une
population mais, à partir de l’analyse attentive de cas particuliers, à mieux
examiner le faisceau enchevêtré des éléments mentionnés comme ayant joué
sur les trajectoires individuelles, pour en dégager quelques interprétations. Le
présent article ne porte que sur les femmes et étudie principalement l’influence
des expériences familiales vécues dans la famille d’orientation sur les projets
et comportements des individus. Certes, la démographie n’a pas ignoré la
composante générationnelle des comportements de fécondité, dont elle suit
attentivement l’évolution pour des cohortes de naissances ou des promotions
de mariages successives. Fréquemment citée, la théorie d’Easterlin (1978),
axée sur les effets économiques des niveaux de fécondité, postule des
ajustements cycliques des comportements reproducteurs, la forte fécondité
d’une période produisant, par un effet de saturation des places sur le marché du
travail, le malthusianisme d’une période ultérieure. La démonstration s’appuie
sur des données à l’échelle macrosociale.
Notre analyse explore plutôt l’existence de tels phénomènes au niveau
microsociologique en examinant, dans les discours, les traces d’une
transmission de certains aspects des cultures familiales de la génération des
parents (parfois des grands-parents) à la génération des filles interviewées. Il
s’agit donc de comprendre à partir d’une série de cas particuliers, comment et
par quels mécanismes psychosociologiques, le modèle familial tel qu’il a été
vécu dans l’enfance (rapports conjugaux et parentaux; dimension de la fratrie;
climat et densité des échanges intra et extrafamiliaux) a pu se transmettre et
servir de modèle ou de contre-modèle dans le projet familial des personnes
rencontrées. Les sujets sélectionnés (53 répondantes dans la vingtaine ou la
trentaine rencontrées au cours de 1991-1992 soit à Montréal et sa banlieue, soit
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dans une région limitrophe et dans une région périphérique) illustrent bien par
leurs récits qu’elles sont enfants de leur époque et donc de conjonctures socioéconomiques
spécifiques, mais aussi que leurs destins s’imbriquent, par des
ramifications économiques, sociales et psychologiques complexes, dans ceux
de leurs parents. Ceux-ci sont urbains de première ou de seconde génération,
ouvriers, employés, professionnels et petits entrepreneurs de grande ville ou
de petites villes; quelques-uns sont des villageois ou des agriculteurs. Leurs
âges varient énormément de même que les modèles familiaux qu’ils ont mis en
oeuvre. Ces modèles familiaux, tirés des récits rétrospectifs sur l’enfance et
l’adolescence, serviront à retracer certains traits de l’héritage familial des
répondantes. Le découpage retenu distingue a posteriori des modèles de
familles enracinés dans des milieux sociaux et des périodes historiques
différentes; le nombre d’enfants y apparaît comme une caractéristique
significative, sans en être l’élément principal de définition.
À travers des histoires individuelles et familiales, c’est donc une page
d’histoire de la famille québécoise qui se manifeste, histoire faite de
continuités et de ruptures, ainsi qu’on peut l’observer par ailleurs à travers les
statistiques récentes. Il s’agit aussi d’histoires singulières d’héritages,
acceptés ou refusés, toujours remaniés au sein d’adaptations et d’échanges
réciproques entre générations, qu’on ne peut saisir et analyser qu’en faisant
appel aux témoignages, (Sévigny, 1979; Ferrand, 1991; Bertaux-Wiame,
1991; Gaulejac et Aubert, 1990). Nous sommes particulièrement redevables
aux personnes interrogées d’avoir entrouvert la porte sur l’univers secret des
phénomènes de reproduction dans la société actuelle. Les cas évoqués seront
présentés avec de légères modifications de détails pour assurer l’anonymat.
Des femmes bien de leur temps : désir d’enfant et faible fécondité
Les personnes rencontrées pour les fins de cette enquête ont été choisies selon
un mode non aléatoire, au sein de deux cohortes correspondant aux groupes
d’âge où se concentrent principalement les naissances, soit la vingtaine et la
trentaine. Chaque cohorte comprenait une proportion égale de personnes ayant
déjà un ou plusieurs enfants et de personnes n’en ayant pas. Outre la
provenance géographique relevant de trois régions dont un grand centre, les
critères de sélection visaient une diversité de professions, de niveaux de
scolarité et de conditions de vie. Les origines sociales et familiales des sujets
nous étaient révélées au cours de l’entrevue. Ce thème constituait un volet du
récit de vie, suivi de l’histoire scolaire, professionnelle, de l’histoire
amoureuse, conjugale, contraceptive et, le cas échéant, reproductrice et
parentale. Puisque cet article ne traite que des femmes, soulignons que la
plupart d’entre elles exprimaient le désir d’avoir un jour un enfant, bien que ce
désir, faible ou intense selon les individus, et parfois tout nouveau dans leur
existence, ne se traduisait pas dans tous les cas par un projet précis à court ou à
long terme, ou, ce qui découle de toute façon de l’échantillonnage, par une
procréation déjà réalisée. Malgré des situations personnelles fort variées, les
récits des mères comme ceux des non-mères se rejoignent singulièrement pour
tracer les paramètres assez similaires du contexte qu’elles jugent idéal, voire
nécessaire, pour envisager de mettre un enfant au monde, aujourd’hui.
La plupart des répondantes subordonnent en effet leur projet de procréation à
la réalisation d’un certain nombre d’objectifs personnels, qui leur permettent
de vivre d’abord leur jeunesse : études, voyages, établissement de relations
affectives et sexuelles heureuses, et sortie de la famille d’orientation. Elles
évoquent aussi, comme préalables essentiels, la rencontre de critères qui
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touchent l’établissement dans la vie adulte et les conditions jugées nécessaires
à l’actualisation d’un projet parental : création d’une relation conjugale
suffisamment stable, avec un conjoint capable d’accepter la paternité, d’en
assumer les responsabilités et de partager les tâches de la vie quotidienne et de
la parentalité Ces préalables supposent, pour les femmes autant que pour les
hommes, un emploi qui leur permette de faire vivre une famille et de
manifester qu’elles ne sont pas « juste une mère ». À l’intérieur de ce portrait
idéal, relativement uniforme, de la vie familiale (qui reflète,
vraisemblablement, à la fois l’effet de contraintes situationnelles et « l’esprit
du temps », deux aspects conjoncturels importants), les projets de fécondité
demeurent peu élevés, n’allant jamais au delà de deux ou trois. Un certain
nombre de femmes optent même pour un seul enfant, hésitent ou se résignent à
ne pas enfanter, puisque l’une ou l’autre des exigences qu’elles posent ne sont
pas réalisées. Aux extrêmes de cette variation des projets de procréation (soit
l’expression d’un désir d’enfant fortement ressenti et accompagné de 2 ou 3
enfants projetés, ou au contraire un désir très faible ou absent, accompagné
parfois d’un enfant imprévu, accepté ou non), on décèle pour les deux
cohortes, l’influence très nette de l’héritage familial. Cet héritage désigne non
pas le simple nombre d’enfants dans la famille d’origine, bien que ce nombre
semble une composante de l’héritage, mais surtout l’expérience d’enfance, le
climat affectif perçu au sein du couple parental, le rapport à la parenté et les
relations parents-enfants remémorées avec leur dominante de bonheur ou de
malheur, d’antagonisme poussé ou de conflits normaux aux phases
d’individuation de l’adolescence. Un examen plus attentif à partir d’un certain
nombre de cas situera ces dimensions de l’héritage symbolique dans leur
retentissement sur une trajectoire individuelle où se manifestent tout autant,
bien sûr, des effets de conjonctures et de maturation peu traités dans le présent
article (Bernier, 1980; Attias-Donfut, 1988).
Les générations familiales en présence : deux cohortes de filles,
plusieurs cohortes de parents
Si les femmes rencontrées appartiennent à deux cohortes d’âge ayant vécu leur
enfance dans les années 1950 et 1960, et leur adolescence dans les années 1970
ou 1980 environ, leurs parents n’appartiennent pas seulement à deux cohortes
de naissance. À titre d’exemple, parmi les femmes dans la trentaine, on trouve
une mère née en 1919, une autre en 1940. Ces différences d’âge dans la
génération des parents se traduisent aussi par une diversité des modèles
familiaux d’où proviennent les répondantes. Certaines sont issues de familles
qu’on peut caractériser de « traditionnelles », tant par le nombre d’enfants que
par la prégnance des valeurs religieuses et le mode de vie. D’autres, surtout
parmi celles de la cohorte des femmes dans la vingtaine, ont vécu leur enfance
ou leur adolescence dans un milieu familial qui offrait déjà les caractéristiques
de ce que l’on a par la suite appelé les « nouvelles familles»:laréduction du
nombre d’enfants, la dissociation plus grande du conjugal et du parental, et une
certaine symétrie des rôles parentaux. Entre les « familles traditionnelles »
tardives et les « familles nouvelles » en émergence, s’intercale un troisième
modèle, celui des « familles modernes », qui s’est développé au Québec
surtout dans la période de croissance de l’après- guerre et du baby boom,
consacrant la spécialisation des rôles de pourvoyeur et de ménagère et
constituant l’enfance en un mythe moderne et la maternité en une occupation
spécialisée et exercée à plein temps au profit d’un nombre moyen d’enfants
(Lemieux et Mercier 1989; Houle et Hurtubise, 1991; Ricard, 1992).
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Même si, dans leur complexité et leur singularité, les portraits de famille tracés
par les répondantes peuvent parfois chevaucher plus d’un modèle, la
répartition des différentes histoires familiales entre ces trois catégories met en
évidence certains aspects des processus de transmission et leur influence sur
les projets de procréation.
À travers les souvenirs qu’elles en gardent, qu’elles remanient ou
réinterprètent à la lumière des normes des années 1990 et de leurs étapes de vie
actuelles, les portraits de famille de la génération des parents sont souvent
explicitement reliés, dans l’entrevue, aux projets familiaux et procréateurs des
informatrices et, en certains cas, au refus de procréer. L’évocation de ces
phénomènes de transmission n’a pas pour objet de faire de la transmission du
modèle familial d’origine un déterminisme des destins personnels. Il s’agit
plutôt de saisir, au moyen de l’approche biographique, quelques bribes
d’explication de ce qu’on a appelé la « seconde transition démographique »
(Léridon, 1987) qui, au delà du déclin de la fécondité, renvoie aux
significations de la parentalité et à la place de l’enfant dans les projets de vie.
Dans l’ombre des familles nombreuses du Québec traditionnel
La recherche historique féministe a modifié le portrait des familles
québécoises du début du XX e siècle en rappelant l’existence, derrière les
moyennes de six enfants et plus par mère, de femmes sans enfants ou de mères
de petites familles (Lavigne, 1983). Dès la seconde moitié du XIX e siècle, des
familles bourgeoises, et même quelques familles ouvrières avaient commencé
à limiter leur descendance (Lemieux et Mercier, 1989; Bradburry, 1993). À
toutes les époques cependant, les familles nombreuses ont produit beaucoup
plus que leur part de l’ensemble des enfants, d’où les proportions relativement
élevées d’individus qui ont vécu dans une nombreuse fratrie. Notre étude
révèle les traces, à côté de familles de cinq enfants ou moins, parmi les familles
d’origine, de plusieurs familles de six enfants et plus (pour des résultats
similaires voir Carmel, 1990). Cette catégorie de familles avait constitué le
cadre de l’enfance de presque la moitié des femmes dans la trentaine, mais de
seulement trois des 24 femmes dans la vingtaine. Sur ces trois cas, deux
familles provenaient de l’extérieur du Québec et l’autre appartenait à une secte
traditionnaliste qui favorisait la natalité. Les femmes nées dans les années
1950 comptaient donc souvent une nombreuse fratrie, alors que le phénomène
semble tout à fait exceptionnel dans les années 1960. Dans la cohorte née dans
les années 1960, on trouve davantage de petites familles et de familles
d’enfants uniques, quoique les quatre ou cinq enfants y existent également.
Les familles très nombreuses proviennent pour la plupart de régions rurales ou
périphériques, mais des familles de six ou sept enfants vivaient aussi en milieu
urbain. Peu importe les milieux de vie, les souvenirs qu’en gardent nos témoins
révèlent un modèle familial basé sur l’entraide (on y observe des mères qui
travaillent, soit sur la ferme, soit dans l’entreprise familiale), modèle devenu
difficile à maintenir sur le plan économique, alors que son cadre de
développement initial s’était modifié. Vivre dans une famille de douze enfants
dans les années 1960 peut même sembler un anachronisme. Il n’est pas
étonnant que l’une des femmes ayant connu cette situation soit une des
dernières-nées d’une famille villageoise et qu’elle soit aussi la plus âgée des
femmes rencontrées. Cette femme raconte que sa mère départageait sa vie et sa
famille en deux, désignant les six premiers enfants comme « les enfants de
l’amour » et les six derniers comme « les enfants de la religion ». Pour
compléter le revenu de son conjoint, tiré d’une petite entreprise artisanale,
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cette mère tenait un petit commerce, et sa fille la désigne comme le « patron »
de la famille. Tous les enfants ont travaillé dans l’une ou l’autre des entreprises
familiales, et diverses stratégies furent mises en oeuvre pour assurer la
scolarisation de chacun. Gardienne des enfants de sa soeur pendant son
enfance et scolarisée dans une profession traditionnellement féminine,
l’informatrice dit avoir accueilli bien facilement des bébés qu’elle savait
soigner et « brasser » depuis longtemps. Elle eut trois enfants sans trop
d’interruption, ce qui s’avéra difficile quand le premier manifesta des retards
graves de développement. Malgré une transmission des valeurs de maternage,
des conflits mère-fille au niveau des valeurs religieuses transparaissent et se
manifestent en particulier lors du divorce de la répondante.
L’histoire d’une autre famille de douze enfants apparaît particulièrement
dramatique. La mère, suite à une maladie du père, est obligée d’assumer la
direction des travaux de la ferme où vit la famille et de retourner travailler à
l’extérieur. Une des dernières nées, l’informatrice conserve le souvenir de la
longue maladie, puis du décès de son père, survenu alors qu’elle était
adolescente. Les parents, surtout la mère, possédaient une éducation au-dessus
de la moyenne et la parentèle comprenait plusieurs religieux, religieuses et
monseigneurs. La transmission du capital scolaire a pu se réaliser avec un
succès impressionnant. Financée par le travail des aînés et les bourses
d’études, la scolarisation de la génération suivante a pu être assurée par
l’austérité du mode de vie, une forte discipline, le travail précoce des enfants et
les pratiques d’entraide. Quant à la fécondité, vraisemblablement maintenue à
un niveau élevé par les valeurs religieuses dans la génération des parents, elle
périclite à la génération suivante. L’informatrice souligne que parmi les douze
enfants de sa fratrie, la seule à s’être rendue à trois rejetons « passe pour
l’héroïne de la famille ». Elle-même dit avoir développé une forte aversion
pour la vie grégaire de son enfance au sein de « la tribu » et avoir entretenu avec
sa mère un rapport teinté de conflits profonds et d’admiration secrète. Après un
cheminement difficile et des réalisations professionnelles, elle devient mère à
son tour, d’abord par accident, puis par choix. Abandonnée alors qu’elle est
enceinte, elle précise que son amour des enfants a joué sur sa décision de
poursuivre une grossesse survenue dans une situation de couple en crise. Sa
condition actuelle de célibataire, s’ajoutant à une vie professionnelle aux
horaires difficiles et au revenu précaire, ne lui permet pas cependant, pour
l’instant, de s’imaginer donnant à nouveau la vie.
Le modèle de la famille nombreuse est plus explicitement rejeté quand les
femmes perçoivent leur mère comme ayant été dominée ou rendue malade par
ses grossesses. Un témoignage fait état d’une famille de neuf enfants où la
mère attendit que les enfants les plus jeunes aient grandi pour demander le
divorce. Gardant le souvenir d’une « famille unie sauf le père », l’informatrice
raconte avoir quitté très jeune la maison familiale et abandonné ses études en
pleine révolte. Cependant, à vingt ans, ayant épousé un homme plus âgé
qu’elle, elle accepte, gagnée par le désir de paternité de celui-ci, de mettre au
monde un enfant sans vraiment l’avoir elle-même désiré. Grâce à la présence
du père, qui assure également le bien-être matériel du couple, cette maternité
ne l’empêche pas de retourner aux études et de terminer son cégep.
Contrairement à sa mère, le fait d’avoir un enfant en bas âge ne l’empêche pas
non plus de divorcer quelques années plus tard, alors qu’elle poursuit des
études universitaires. Tout en ayant rompu avec le modèle de stabilité du
couple tel que l’a vécu la génération de sa mère, elle reproduit néanmoins dans
le rapport avec sa fille, l’héritage d’un fort sentiment d’obligation parentale
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qui, s’il ne l’a pas empêchée de divorcer, a néanmoins contribué à subordonner
sa vie amoureuse à son rôle de mère.
Dans un autre témoignage, une jeune femme d’origine européenne raconte
avoir repoussé pendant dix ans après son mariage la décision d’avoir un enfant.
Pour expliquer ce report, qui répondait aux difficultés d’établissement de ce
couple d’immigrants, elle précise avoir voulu aussi signifier à son père sa
liberté de procréer, lui reprochant d’avoir imposé une série de cinq grossesses
rapprochées à sa mère. L’expression d’une opposition aussi manifeste est
cependant assez exceptionnelle parmi les témoignages entendus. C’est
davantage par allusions que les informatrices d’origine québécoise évoquent
les grossesses successives de leur mère, son travail sans fin, certaines
exprimant leur désaccord par une insistance sur le dévouement excessif de leur
mère et sa consécration trop exclusive à son rôle maternel. Pour demeurer
implicites, ces jugements transparaissent néanmoins par rapport au désir
d’enfant. Ainsi, deux informatrices, une provenant d’une famille de sept
enfants dont le père était fréquemment en chômage et buvait, et une autre d’une
famille de neuf dont le père s’est suicidé à la suite de difficultés financières,
disent n’avoir jamais éprouvé de désir d’enfant. Les deux sont toutefois
devenues enceintes « par accident » et, pour des raisons bien différentes, ont
gardé l’enfant inattendu, qu’elles ont « découvert » ensuite avec
émerveillememt. Dans les deux cas, se révèle, par ailleurs une admiration
secrète pour la mère et une expérience vécue de prise en charge par la
communauté au moment de l’enfance, l’une ayant été élevée par sa grandmère,
l’autre souvent confiée à ses soeurs. De cet héritage provient leur modèle
actuel de maternage, reformulé cependant dans une version bien
contemporaine voulant qu’on ne soit pas « juste une mère ».
Sans doute pourrait-on nuancer ces portraits des familles très nombreuses,
pour ainsi dire attardées dans les années 1960-1970, en y joignant quelques
familles davantage favorisées au plan socio-économique et qui sont arrivées à
maintenir une vie familiale plus agréable aux yeux de la génération qui en est
issue. Des variantes urbaines d’un modèle qualifié de « traditionnel » et surtout
défini par les rapports intensifs de sociabilité au sein des parentés ont été
observées dans les milieux montréalais par Nicole Gagnon au début des années
1960 (Fortin, 1987). Les cas cités jusqu’ici permettent d’entrevoir qu’un
modèle familial qui comportait les mécanismes traditionnels de transmission
de l’amour des enfants, entre autres l’apprentissage précoce du maternage, se
répercutait à la baisse sur le nombre d’enfants « désirés » s’il était perçu
comme problématique pour la mère ou contraignant pour les membres de la
fratrie. Plusieurs familles très nombreuses de notre corpus semblent avoir
suscité un faible désir d’enfants chez les filles, qui en rejettent le mode de vie;
si elles deviennent enceintes par accident, elles puisent cependant dans cette
culture familiale traditionnelle, parfois même dans le soutien direct des
parents, des dispositions ou « habitus » (Bourdieu, 1980) qui facilitent la
maternité.
Dans la foulée des familles modernes d’après-guerre
Les souvenirs que certaines femmes gardent d’une vie familiale au sein d’une
fratrie relativement importante, mais de dimension plus compatible avec les
conditions de vie prévalentes à partir des années 1950, semblent évoquer des
situations plus propices à l’émergence du désir d’enfant et à l’établissement
d’une norme idéale autour de deux ou trois enfants. Dans les récits, l’évocation
de la génération des parents relève davantage ici des rôles de pourvoyeur-
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ménagère, qui consacrent la présence de la mère à la maison dans l’enfance et
connotent souvent l’absence du père reliée à ses activités professionnelles. La
division sexuelle des rôles parentaux, présente depuis le début du siècle,
s’accentue dans le modèle de la famille d’après-guerre. Il comporte une
spécialisation plus marquée de la mère autour de ses activités éducatives et
domestiques, et met davantage l’accent sur le lien mère-enfant qui, selon les
normes sociales appuyant ce modèle, requiert sa présence à la maison. Dans ce
type de famille, il y a peu de mères qui travaillent et celles qui le font par
nécessité économique essaient de n’en laisser rien paraître. Une des
informatrices dit ne pas s’être rendue compte que sa mère travaillait parce
qu’elle était toujours présente à son retour de l’école. Habituellement critiques
de ce modèle de spécialisation des rôles selon les genres, modèle peu conforme
aux normes actuelles de conjugalité et aux insertions des femmes dans le
marché du travail, plusieurs informatrices parlent avec plaisir des fêtes
d’enfants et des vacances en famille, mais aussi d’un climat de surprotection à
l’égard des enfants jugé parfois étouffant.
Voyons d’abord certains cas un peu mitoyens entre la famille traditionnelle et
la famille d’après-guerre. Les parents d’une jeune femme, dont le père était
petit fonctionnaire en région, ont élevé sept enfants tout en gardant une grandmère
à domicile. Ici, le modèle familial, accompagné d’une valorisation forte
de l’entraide et d’une sociabilité intensive à l’égard de la parenté, s’est
transmis à la génération actuelle qui modifie cependant les rôles conjugaux
pour faire place à des rapports de compagnonnage et au nouveau modèle de
paternité active des années 1990. L’informatrice, après avoir fait le récit du
monde chaleureux de son enfance, ajoute qu’elle occupe maintenant la maison
bâtie par son père où elle vit à son tour dans le voisinage immédiat de ses
parents à la retraite, qui partagent l’éducation de leurs petits-enfants. Mariée,
elle ne travaille pas et son conjoint exerce aujourd’hui le même emploi
qu’occupait son beau-père. Trois enfants sont déjà nés et, malgré un idéal de
quatre enfants, ce couple a eu recours à la stérilisation en raison de leur
situation économique. Sous-jacents à ce cas plutôt exceptionnel de
transmission d’un héritage non seulement symbolique mais matériel se
devinent des apprentissages précoces : dès l’âge de 12 ans, la répondante avait
pris en charge un petit frère, faisant l’apprentissage d’un rôle où elle se
reconnaît aujourd’hui comme une véritable réplique de sa mère.
Une transmission de l’héritage familial peut s’effectuer dans un contexte de
redéfinition des modèles beaucoup plus poussée (Bengston, 1987). « J’ai une
famille nombreuse, je suis née dans une famille nombreuse et eux sont nés dans
une famille nombreuse », dit une professionnelle du secteur culturel soulignant
que le fait d’avoir vécu dans une famille unie de six enfants lui a donné le goût
d’avoir une famille. Elle établit un lien entre le couple de ses parents mariés,
peu scolarisés mais ouverts à l’éducation, et son propre couple non marié qui a
vécu l’époque et les valeurs de la contre-culture. Comme ses parents qui,
chaque été, les emmenaient au bord de la mer, eux-mêmes ont le goût de
l’étude et des voyages et veillent à ne pas exclure les enfants de leurs activités.
Une conception très libre, à la fois personnelle et communautaire, de
l’éducation des enfants, qu’elle accepte de partager avec d’autres adultes,
renvoie explicitement à l’éducation reçue des parents. L’héritage parental a été
considérablement remodelé, non sans conflits des générations, mais le
nouveau modèle est présenté dans la continuité avec celui qu’on a vécu dans
l’enfance.
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De petits entrepreneurs, des employés et des ouvriers arrivaient tant bien que
mal dans les années 1960-1970 à faire vivre six ou sept enfants. Des familles de
quatre ou cinq enfants sont sans doute plus fréquentes, mais certaines
répondantes se définissent encore comme faisant partie d’une famille
nombreuse. C’est le cas d’une famille de quatre enfants vivant en banlieue de
Montréal, dans un « village » où logent les oncles et tantes, ainsi qu’une grandmère
qui occupe toujours l’ancienne demeure. La fratrie des parents des deux
lignées est nombreuse, et cet environnement communautaire de l’enfance,
doublé de liens étroits dans la fratrie actuelle, semble transmettre un ethos
familial qui fait de l’enfant un acteur intégré à la vie familiale. Malgré ce climat
favorable à la présence d’enfants, le temps que cette jeune femme a mis à
s’établir, à voyager et à parfaire sa formation, des exigences très élevées,
partagées avec son conjoint, quant à la présence des parents auprès de l’enfant
ont résulté en une maternité tardive et ne laissent prévoir qu’une famille de
deux, bien que trois enfants soit jugé le nombre idéal pour une famille.
Pour d’autres, en dépit d’une enfance très heureuse dans une famille à l’aise de
six enfants, on semble incapable de se résoudre à quitter la liberté et les
agréments d’une vie de couple sans enfant. Mariée après une longue
cohabitation, une femme dit aimer les enfants et entretenir des liens étroits
avec des neveux et nièces, dont elle s’est beaucoup occupée. Ici, l’engagement
professionnel semble avoir retardé la réalisation de projets plus personnels
vers lesquels elle se tourne par le loisir. Arrivée au milieu de la trentaine, elle
hésite toujours à procréer dans un contexte où il est difficile d’être une mère
aussi parfaite que l’était sa mère, sereine et calme au milieu de ses enfants,
image qu’elle oppose aux jeunes mères essoufflées qu’elle observe parmi ses
compagnes de travail.
Dans un contexte de changements touchant aussi la génération des parents, les
mères de certaines de nos répondantes n’ont pas été sans remettre en question
leur confinement au rôle de mère au foyer. Par exemple, une mère de cinq
enfants a précipité le départ de trois de ses filles pour ne garder auprès d’elle
que les deux plus jeunes, en menaçant de quitter la maison, si la répondante y
demeurait, comme elle en avait exprimé le désir. Le rejet ressenti par celle-ci
enclenche un itinéraire chaotique qui l’entraîne dans la marginalité : pensées
suicidaires, drogue et promiscuité sexuelle. Elle est rescapée du désespoir et de
la pauvreté par un oncle qui la soutient dans la réalisation d’un projet de travail
et par une soeur qui la reçoit temporairement chez elle. Après des
cheminements qui la rapprochent de ses études et d’un choix professionnel peu
éloigné de la profession de son père, elle connaît aussi une vie de couple plus
heureuse. Dans cette situation meilleure, elle accepte une grossesse imprévue;
un deuxième enfant viendra, un peu plus tard, pour procurer un compagnon au
premier.
Même évoquée avec un brin de nostalgie, l’enfance heureuse au sein des
familles modernes des années cinquante, qui dans l’ensemble apparaît propice
à l’émergence du désir d’enfant et s’affirme à l’arrière plan de la norme idéale
des trois enfants, peut aussi sembler impossible à reproduire dans le contexte
actuel, où les femmes mariées travaillent. Par ailleurs, certaines filles
perçoivent comme étouffante, leur enfance bien surveillée quand la mère se
dévouait, sans être elle-même satisfaite de son rôle. Une dépression de la mère
révélant son insatisfaction à l’égard de la maternité, l’alcoolisme ou l’infidélité
de leur père, en incitent quelques-unes, malgré une enfance heureuse, à
craindre les difficultés conjugales et à reporter longuement ou indéfiniment
des projets de maternité.
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Dans le contexte des familles en transformation
Au cours des années 1950, mais encore plus au cours des années 1960, les
familles ouvrières, de classe moyenne ou bourgeoise, auront davantage
recours à une contraception désormais un peu plus acceptée et réduiront ainsi
les naissances. Certes, plusieurs de nos répondantes sont nées avant 1965 et
donc avant l’apparition de contraceptifs efficaces. Ce facteur a cependant pu
contribuer à limiter la descendance finale de leurs parents. Par ailleurs, les
changements normatifs concernant l’institution du mariage s’amorcent vers
cette période (Dandurand, 1988; Lemieux et Mercier, 1992) et modifient le
cours de certains mariages de la génération des parents.
On décèle peu de cohabitations hors mariage dans la génération des parents,
mais quelques situations de conceptions prénuptiales se devinent chez des
mères mariées à vingt ans, à dix-huit ans et, pour l’une d’entre elles, à quinze
ans. Dans chaque cohorte se retrouve aussi une mère qui choisit de garder son
enfant tout en étant célibataire. Situation difficile à vivre dans les années 1960,
la monoparentalité célibataire devient relativement acceptée dans les années
1970. Ces différences révèlent une évolution dans l’acceptation des maternités
célibataires vers la fin des années 1960 (Massé et al., 1981). Dans la génération
des parents, l’abandon du conjoint et le divorce interrompent la constitution de
quelques familles. Les divorces des parents sont relativement fréquents dans la
cohorte née dans les années 1960, (9 sur 23 familles des femmes dans la
vingtaine et 4 sur 29 familles pour la cohorte dans la trentaine).
Bien qu’il soit encore peu répandu, ce troisième type de familles d’origine
révèle un modèle de conjugalité qui fait davantage place à l’expression des
sentiments, à une libéralisation de la sexualité et au partage des tâches
domestiques. Des formes plus démocratiques d’éducation des enfants se
dessinent et, à l’adolescence, la transmission de savoirs de la mère à la fille à
travers l’éducation sexuelle est parfois une occasion d’établir des rapports plus
égalitaires, bien que la vie amoureuse de l’une ou de l’autre génération puisse
occasionner des conflits.
Une plus grande participation de la part des mères dans des activités
professionnelles semble caractériser ces familles plus petites. Il est toutefois
difficile d’y départager l’effet des facteurs économiques, familiaux
(monoparentalité) ou culturels (changements de valeurs) qui s’y trouvent sans
doute plus ou moins amalgamés. À mesure qu’on s’approche des années 1970,
donc parmi les familles des répondantes dans la vingtaine, on trouve davantage
de mères qui travaillent dès le temps de l’enfance des informatrices. Cette
situation est évoquée par une femme qui, venant d’une famille de trois enfants,
a passé son enfance dans une banlieue. Sa mère travaillait comme infirmière,
tandis que son père exerçait un emploi peu lucratif et plutôt pénible, d’où son
désir de promouvoir l’instruction des enfants. Une grande tante, habitant la
même maison, prolongeait en quelque sorte la surveillance attentive des
parents pendant leur absence au travail. Poussée aux études par ses parents et
sa tante, cette jeune femme s’est d’abord tournée vers la réussite
professionnelle, se permettant de vivre en secret des aventures et prenant ainsi
distance d’une éducation très encadrée et du modèle de conjugalité des
parents. Après des déceptions vécues au travail et dans sa vie amoureuse, elle
envisage un mode de vie et un type d’emploi qui lui permettront de concilier
succès professionnel et vie familiale.
Un second récit dépeint un mode de vie où les deux parents travaillent dans la
même entreprise. Le père, d’abord employé, en devient copropriétaire; la mère
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y travaille comme collaboratrice. Enfant unique, l’informatrice évoque sa
grand-mère qui la gardait et qu’elle préférait à sa mère au point de refuser de
voir cette dernière. Ensuite, elle décrit son goût de la solitude, mais aussi ses
activités avec ses parents, faisant ses devoirs tandis que ceux-ci rangeaient les
factures de la journée. Elle évoque aussi les sorties agréables de fin de semaine
et son plaisir d’être avec des adultes plutôt que des enfants. Malgré le désir de
ses parents de la voir poursuivre des études, elle va plutôt choisir un travail de
même type que celui de ses parents (Ferrand, 1991, Bernier, 1986). Ce récit de
reproduction familiale des aptitudes au travail des parents plutôt que de leurs
aspirations scolaires fait état d’un parcours extrêmement précoce d’insertion
suivie de postes de gérance obtenus avant la vingtaine. À vingt ans, cette jeune
femme cohabite avec son conjoint au sous-sol de la maison familiale et prépare
son mariage en envisageant la venue d’enfants.
Des mères exerçant des professions traditionnellement féminines,
enseignantes, secrétaires ou infirmières, orientent leurs filles vers des
professions plus récemment accessibles aux femmes. Des pères encouragent
aussi ces choix professionnels. Les nouveaux projets de carrières, dont
témoigne la féminisation de la formation universitaire menant aux professions
libérales telles que le droit, la médecine et la comptabilité (Dandurand, 1990)
ou l’accès à des métiers traditionnellement masculins, semblent s’enraciner
dans la transmission d’un modèle de mère au travail ou des aspirations à la
mobilité transmises de mère en fille ou de père en fille (Attias-Donfut, 1988).
Les choix de carrière des filles peuvent parfois s’éloigner des aspirations
parentales, à mesure qu’elles découvrent leurs goûts et aptitudes personnelles.
Une artiste, qui se demande encore comment elle s’était retrouvée dans un
secteur scientifique, effectue dans un second temps un choix de carrière plus
conforme à ses goûts et qui s’apparente à la profession d’oncles et tantes
proches d’elle. Son projet de plusieurs enfants, inspiré d’une enfance heureuse
et d’une situation d’enfant unique qu’elle ne veut pas reproduire, l’amène à
écarter pour un temps l’exercice d’une carrière bien engagée mais difficile à
concilier, estime-t-elle, avec l’éducation des enfants.
D’autres cas de mères au travail dans la génération des parents semblent
favoriser une activité professionnelle qu’on envisage de mener de concert avec
les études et la procréation, tandis que des complicités se tissent entre mère et
fille autour de liens d’emploi. Il arrive par ailleurs qu’on critique des parents
accaparés par leur travail qui délaissent leurs rôles familiaux; un père qui sait
seulement donner de l’argent pour exprimer son affection; ou une mère qui
n’assume pas ses responsabilités et reporte sur sa fille des travaux
domestiques, l’élevage des plus petits et les confidences de ses déboires
conjugaux. Ces récits témoignent cependant d’une compassion et d’une
admiration pour les mères au travail qui, dans une situation de
monoparentalité, ont dû jouer le rôle du père et de la mère, une situation que
personne n’envisage de reproduire.
L’alcoolisme du père ou de la mère, la mésentente des parents, parfois la
violence, se répercutent presque toujours négativement sur les projets de
procréation de plusieurs jeunes femmes qui portent sur les épaules le poids du
désarroi de la génération précédente et parfois celui de leurs frères et soeurs. Si
le refus d’enfant, donnant parfois lieu à des avortements, se retrouve presque
toujours dans le sillage des situations familiales marquées de désorganisation,
peu importe le nombre d’enfants dans la famille d’origine, la reconstruction
d’une famille éclatée autour d’une fratrie est un phénomène assez fréquent.
Une jeune femme issue d’une famille violente et désunie dira que ses deux
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soeurs sont devenues les piliers de la famille, quand ses parents se sont séparés.
Rejetant pour elle-même les unions stables et engagée dans une longue série
d’aventures, elle refuse la maternité au point d’envisager de donner l’enfant en
adoption si une erreur de contraception survenait. À l’horizon, persiste l’image
de la famille de sa soeur, présentée comme la réalisation d’un véritable conte
de fée.
Un autre récit expose une situation où se chevauchent en quelque sorte des
expériences de vie familiale relevant de modèles familiaux qui appartiennent à
des périodes fort diverses, car la transmission d’un héritage familial fait le saut
d’une génération. Le récit d’une enfance en milieu rural au début des années
1960 raconte d’abord l’adoption de la première-née par les grands-parents
paternels, sous l’influence d’un jeune père qui considérait sa femme de dixhuit
ans trop jeune pour élever l’enfant. Ayant eu ensuite deux autres filles, les
parents, qui migrent à Montréal, les confient pour des périodes assez longues
aux grands-parents maternels. Suivant en cela des modèles déjà pratiqués au
début du siècle par les ruraux en migration, ils effectuent avec des aller-retour
et des délégations de leurs rôles parentaux à leurs propres parents, une
transition au milieu urbain où tous deux s’insèrent dans le marché du travail.
Comme promis, dès l’achat d’une maison, ils reviennent chercher leurs trois
filles qui vont vivre le reste de leur enfance et leur adolescence à Montréal.
Dans ce récit, la période vécue à la campagne renvoie à une enfance heureuse
et choyée, sous la surveillance des grands-parents indulgents, à laquelle
succède une tout autre expérience de vie familiale, auprès de parents
alcooliques qui se querellent durant les fins de semaines et travaillent
beaucoup le reste du temps. C’est dans ce contexte que les trois soeurs
apprendront à se débrouiller en l’absence d’une mère qui sait leur imposer des
règles de surveillance strictes et à développer une solidarité à toute épreuve qui
leur permettra de vivre le divorce de leurs parents comme un repos et de
traverser l’enfance et l’adolescence sans problème majeur. Devenues adultes,
leur projet familial procède d’un désir d’enfants conditionnel à la présence
d’un « nouveau père » et où se profile un modèle de vie familiale ayant peu en
commun avec celui de leurs parents. Ici, le lien de transmission n’est pas
intergénérationnel, mais transgénérationnel. Passant par le relais d’une
solidarité fraternelle compensatoire, l’héritage familial transmis et reçu n’est
pas celui des parents, mais des grands-parents.
Reproduction, rejet et réinvention de l’héritage familial : vers une
explication partielle des changements de la fécondité
Notre analyse d’une cinquantaine de cas, non représentatifs mais diversifiés,
d’itinéraires de femmes âgées, en 1990, entre vingt et quarante ans, livre
quelques pistes d’interprétation sur les processus intergénérationnels et
personnels qui ont mené aux comportements procréatifs observés au Québec
au cours des dernières décennies. Il va sans dire que cette analyse, axée sur
l’intergénérationnel dans les familles, met entre parenthèses la dimension
conjoncturelle du modèle de conjugalité et de parentalité qui prévaut en 1990,
ainsi que les conditions présentes ou non de sa réalisation, deux dimensions
également révélées dans ces discours. Si nos informatrices, de quelque milieu
qu’elles proviennent, s’entendent sur un modèle idéal de couple et de parent et
sur un nombre idéal d’enfant qui converge autour de deux ou trois enfants,
mais qui aboutit pour l’instant à un peu moins pour nombre d’entre elles, elles
n’y arrivent pas par de semblables chemins. En examinant leur parcours
familiaux depuis l’enfance, tels qu’elles en gardent le souvenir, nous avons
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cherché à dégager des portraits d’enfance et d’adolescence vécues dans les
années 1950-1960 et 1970-1980 qui se rattachent à des sous-périodes
historiques différentes et révèlent des situations familiales multiples.
Ces situations, regroupées a posteriori pour en dégager une typologie, relèvent
en partie de conjonctures historiques révolues mais toujours présentes dans les
choix des jeunes femmes d’aujourd’hui; elles n’en sont pas le déterminant
unique, puisque l’étude retrace les étapes de cheminements personnels et
conjugaux en constante évolution. Familles nombreuses en des versions
exceptionnelles et un peu attardées d’un modèle « traditionnel » surtout
présents dans les régions rurales et périphériques du Québec. Familles encore
relativement nombreuses en des versions adaptées d’un modèle d’aprèsguerre,
où survit une culture de l’entraide et familles moyennes de la seconde
décennie du baby boom exaltant la mère au foyer et auxquelles sont venues
s’ajouter de nouvelles normes médicopsychologiques relatives au maternage.
Petites familles en mutation, formées à une époque d’accessibilité plus grande
de la contraception et d’accès croissant des femmes au marché du travail.
Toutes ces familles se sont engagées en même temps dans une période qui,
sous plusieurs aspects, remettait en question les balises de l’univers culturel
autour du mariage et de la condition féminine. Ce qui s’est passé au Québec,
avec comme résultante un déclin rapide de la fécondité, correspond dans son
ensemble à des tendances similaires observées dans d’autres pays. Il est
possible cependant de saisir certains des processus socioculturels au sein
desquels de nouvelles normes et de nouvelles pratiques ont été forgées; la
famille, mettant en présence diverses générations, se situe au coeur de ces
changements qui, par ailleurs, n’ont pas été vécus semblablement par les
femmes et par les hommes. À partir du concept de générations sexuées, Attias-
Donfut (1988) met en relief que les changements sociaux et en particulier les
changements des rapports de sexe amorcés au cours des années 1960 ont eu des
répercussions sur les rapports intergénérationnels vécus dans les familles et
dans les milieux de travail. Dans les sociétés anciennes, la relation mère-fille,
lieu d’ancrage des identités sexuelles primaires et relais important des
identités sociales de genre, assurait la reproduction du maternage et la division
sociale du travail selon les sexes. Dans le nouveau contexte, « il y a décrochage
entre les identifications sexuelles précoces et les identifications sexuelles
sociales, par brouillages de ces dernières » (Attias-Donfut, p. 123). Dans notre
corpus, ce rapport mère-fille s’affirme singulièrement et semble au coeur des
processus psychosociologiques qui mènent aux choix de procréation. Il est
modelé différemment selon le type de famille et les expériences de chacune.
L’expérience d’une enfance dans une « famille traditionnelle », lorsque vécue
dans une conjoncture inadaptée à ce type de famille, comme ce fut le cas des
familles très nombreuses, semble avoir été propice à l’intériorisation des
normes de maternage et à la reproduction de l’« esprit de famille », en même
temps qu’inhibitrice du désir d’enfant.
La « famille moderne », centrée sur le couple pourvoyeur-éducatrice, a été au
contraire un modèle générateur du désir d’enfant en plus d’avoir contribué à
l’établissement d’une norme qui a fixé la dimension idéale de la famille à deux
ou trois enfants. Dans le contexte de la famille moderne, se sont opérées
certaines ruptures intergénérationnelles par rapport notamment à la division
sexuelle des rôles. Tout en ayant hérité du désir d’enfanter, les femmes issues
de ces familles affirment presque toutes leur refus de reproduire le modèle de
la femme au foyer.
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La « famille postmoderne », conjuguant de multiples changements
concernant, en particulier, l’insertion des mères dans le marché du travail, la
dissociation de la conjugalité et de la parentalité, et parfois l’instabilité du
couple parental, introduit une grande diversité des conditions de transmission
tant matérielles que symboliques entre les générations. Le travail des mères
n’est pas sans incidence sur les projets professionnels des filles et
l’allongement de la scolarisation de ces dernières. L’impact du modèle
familial d’origine sur les projets de procréation peut être à la fois direct et
indirect. L’héritage des jeunes femmes issues des « nouvelles familles »
comprend par ailleurs le recours largement accepté à la contraception et une
définition du projet d’enfant comme une dimension parmi d’autres d’un projet
de vie qui comprend également la carrière, la vie de couple et
l’épanouissement personnel. La transmission ou non du désir d’enfant à la
nouvelle génération semble plus directement fonction du climat familial et
plus particulièrement de la nature harmonieuse ou conflictuelle des relations
dans le couple parental. Concernant la transmission symbolique d’une identité
familiale, le rôle des grand-parents ou des membres de la fratrie peut parfois
compenser les difficultés associées à la mouvance du couple parental.
Les données présentées ne prétendent pas épuiser la diversité des itinéraires
possibles qui ont mené à la situation démographique et familiale
contemporaine, mais elles permettent d’explorer le déroulement de ces
changements par l’examen des relations entre les générations et leurs échanges
et, en certains cas, leurs affrontements dans les familles. Les éléments hérités
ne représentent qu’une partie des modèles et savoirs à partir desquels les
couples, à chaque génération, réécrivent les scénarios de la geste familiale. Si
les données rétrospectives analysées laissent apparaître des éléments de
transmission, qui se ramènent le plus souvent à un climat familial, à une
présence acceptée des enfants dans le milieu environnant et à des activités
précoces de maternage nécessitées par la présence de nombreux enfants,
beaucoup d’obstacles à la transmission se dessinent aussi dans ces entrevues et
en particulier le contraste entre le modèle idéal de la famille actuelle et les
situations et modèles observés au cours de l’enfance.
Notes
* Étude subventionnée par le CQRS et réalisée à l’Institut québécois de recherche sur la
culture par Renée Dandurand, Léon Bernier, Denise Lemieux et Germain Dulac.
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trajectoires types, Montréal, Les Éditions Saint-Martin, 1986, 180 p.
R.A. Easterlin, « What Will 1984 Be Like? Socio-economic Implications of Recent Trends in Age
Structure », Demography, vol. 15, n o 4, novembre 1978.
Michèle Ferrand, « Le goût de l’école : la transmission des “dispositions scolaires” dans des récits
biographiques », Bernadette Bawin-Legros et Jean Kellerhals, Relations intergénérationnelles.
Parenté-Transmission-Mémoire, actes du colloque de Liège, 1990, Liège, Étienne
Riga, 1991, p. 175-184.
Andrée Fortin, « La famille ouvrière d’autrefois », Recherches sociographiques, vol. XXVIII, n o
2-3, 1987, p. 273-294.
Vincent de Gaulejac et Nicole Aubert, Femmes au singulier ou la parentalité solitaire, Paris,
Éditions Klincksieck, 1990.
Jacques Henripin et al., Les enfants qu’on n’a plus au Québec. Montréal, Presses de l’Université
de Montréal, 1981, 412 p.
Jacques Henripin, Naître ou ne pas être. Québec, IQRC, 1989, 140 p. (Coll. « Diagnostic », n o 10).
Gilles Houle et Roch Hurtubise, « Parler de faire des enfants, une question vitale », Recherches
sociographiques. Femmes et reproduction, 32, 3 (sept.-déc. 1991): 385-414.
Évelyne Lapierre-Adamcyk, « Les “causes” de la sous-fécondité des sociétés industrialisées »,
L’Action nationale, 78, 5 (mai 1988): 239-247.
Évelyne Lapierre-Adamcyk, « La cohabitation au Québec, prélude ou substitut au mariage? Les
attitudes des jeunes Québécoises », Couples et parents des années quatre-vingt, sous la
direction de Renée B. Dandurand, Québec, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture,
1987, p. 27-46.
Marie Lavigne, « Réflexions féministes autour de la fertilité des Québécoises », Nadia Fahmy-Eid
et Micheline Dumont (sous la direction de), Maîtresses de maison, maîtresses d’école,
Montréal, Boréal Express, (1983): 319-338.
Henri Léridon, La seconde révolution contraceptive. La régulation des naissances en France de
1950 à 1985, INED, Paris, PUF, 1987, 378 p.
Denise Lemieux et Lucie Mercier, « Les relations familiales dans une perspective temporelle:
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Denise Lemieux et Lucie Mercier, « La formation du couple et ses rituels: l’analyse des
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sous la direction de Gilles Pronovost, Québec, Les Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1992,
p. 53-70.
Denise Lemieux et Lucie Mercier, Les femmes au tournant du siècle, âges de la vie, maternité et
quotidien, Québec, IQRC, 1989, 398 p.
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indésirables? », Sociologie et sociétés, 19, 1 (avril 1987): 83-96.
Nicole Marcil-Gratton, « Vingt ans de révolution contraceptive au Québec: de l’aléatoire à
l’irréversible », L’Action nationale, 78, 5 (mai 1988): 248-257.
Jacqueline C. Massé, Micheline St-Arnaud et Marie-Marthe T. Brault. Les jeunes mères
célibataires. Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1981, 150 p.
Anne Muxel, « Mémoire familiale et projet de socialisation de l’enfant, des obstinations durables
», Dialogue, p. 46-78.
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Madeleine Rochon, « La fécondité dans le Québec d’aujourd’hui », Denise Lemieux (sous la
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coopératives Albert Saint-Martin, 1979, 278 p.
101

Marta Dvorak
Nino Ricci’s “Lives of the Saints”: Walking Down
Both Sides of the Street at the Same Time
Abstract
A large part of the writing produced in Canada today is being done by
immigrants and by the children of immigrants. Torn between the dominant
culture and the history and traditions of their parents, to whom they desire to
pay hommage, these writers adopt modes of representation ranging from the
elegiac to the ironic. Although Canadian-born, in Lives of the Saints, Nino
Ricci chooses to focus on the ethnic roots of the work’s child narrator. His
work is stamped with the fluctuation and paradox of a double allegiance. He
first sets up a world of duality, a solid, dichotomous structure organized
around the juxtaposition of binary opposites, but then subjects them to a
shifting perspective, a paradoxical double positioning. His treatment of
history, myth, time and space, and his complex negotiations between different
planes of meaning, prove him a master of ambivalence and paradox.
Résumé
Une grande partie de la littérature canadienne d’aujourd’hui est produite par
des immigrés ou par des enfants d’immigrés. Déchirés entre la culture
dominante dans laquelle ils évoluent, et l’histoire et les traditions de leurs
parents à qui ils éprouvent le besoin de rendre hommage, ces écrivains
adoptent un éventail de modes de représentation allant de l’élégiaque à
l’ironique. Bien que né au Canada, Nino Ricci choisit de centrer son roman
Lives of the Saints (L’Oeil bleu et le serpent en traduction française) sur les
racines ethniques de son jeune narrateur. Son oeuvre est faite de paradoxes et
de fluctuations. Il met en place un univers dichotomique, une structure solide
organisée autour de juxtapositions d’oppositions binaires, mais il les soumet
ensuite à un glissement de perspective, un positionnement paradoxal et
double. Sa manière de traiter l’histoire et le mythe, le temps et l’espace, ses
négociations complexes entre dimensions différentes du sens, font de lui un
maître de l’ambivalence.
It is now commonplace that a large part of the writing produced in Englishspeaking
Canada is being done by immigrants and by the children of
immigrants. This phenomenon is qualitatively different from that experienced
by past generations. From Susannah Moody to Frederick Philip Grove, newlyarrived
immigrants to Canada wrote principally to record their experience of
pioneering; the groups they represented and gave a voice to were primarily the
dominant Anglo-Saxon and Germanic cultural communities. It was not until
1957, with John Marlyn’s Under the Ribs of Death, that a novel confronted the
public with the hardships of a more recently-arrived immigrant population (in
this case Hungarian) and gave a voice to ethnic cultures outside the Canadian
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IJCS / RIÉC
“mainstream.” Not until the seventies did a writer of South Asian descent
(Michael Ondaatje) attain official, critical acclaim in the form of the Governor
General’s Award.
The past decade has witnessed an explosion in publishing of multiple voices
trying to come to terms with their past, with the generations of their parents and
grandparents, and with the lands they left behind. A number of these artists of
foreign origin choose to continue to write in the language of their parents, and
are only then published in English translation. 1 Writers from all corners of the
globe, 2 belonging to both visible and invisible minorities, have forged for
themselves a wide and loyal reading public.
The postmodern assessment valuing diversity and plurality is undoubtedly
linked to the visible role that ethnic and racial minorities play in Canadian
culture today. From a centralizing culture identifying the concept of centre
with that of the universal and the eternal, there has been a shift to reassert the
local, the regional, the non-totalizing, through a flux of contextualized
identities, defined in terms of difference and specificity. 3 Since ethnic and
racial minorities can neither totally assimilate nor entirely separate from the
dominant culture, torn between the old generations and the new, they resort to
complex, creative cultural negotiations designed to confront that dominant
force with the history and traditions of their parents. For these writers, working
within minoritized groups, Janice Kulyk Keefer suggests that Janus, the
Roman deity with two heads looking in opposite directions, would be a
particularly appropriate daemon 4 .
A Literature of Exile
In Splitting Images, Linda Hutcheon observes that the modes of representation
of these writers range from the elegiac to the ironic, from nostalgic yearning
devoid of any distance, to ambivalence and paradox, and beyond to the
distance and separation an ironic mode implies. 5 Joseph Pivato points out that
Canadian writers of Italian origin who continue to write in their native
language generate a literature of exile, tending to focus less on the contrast of
the two cultures than their nostalgia for the homeland they left behind. 6 Filippo
Salvatore goes further to claim that Italian-Canadian writing belongs to the
elegiac mode of loss and mourning whether the writing be in the old language
or in the new:
Whether the language is in English, French, or Italian, these writers
of Italian origin feel the need to speak of their mothers and fathers in
their works. This is our generation’s confession of love and affection
to our parents, and a way of remaining faithful to our roots. 7
However, in Lives of the Saints, which focuses on the ethnic roots of its child
narrator, particularly on his attachment to his mother, Canadian-born Nino
Ricci does take sufficient distance to stamp his work with ambivalence and
paradox. In a process he continues in the sequel, A Glass House, he first sets up
a world of duality, a solid dichotomous structure organized around the
juxtaposition of binary oppositions, but then subjects them to a shifting
perspective, a paradoxical double positioning.
The text is based on an accumulation of opposites that set immigrant
generations in Canada against the ancestors that have been left behind. We find
the juxtapositions : east/west, town/country, medieval/modern, agricultural/
industrial, public/private, saint/sinner. But the major oppositions seem to be
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those concerning space and time. The Old World/New World contrast
corresponds to the past/present juxtaposition. The hot July day in the year
1960 8 corresponding to the narrator’s childhood and the beginning of the
narrated events contrasts with the implicit narratorial present. The narrator as
voice, an older voice (as opposed to the narrator as character), is made explicit
through tense only rarely: in the first line of the first chapter: If this story has a
beginning , or in the first paragraph of the last chapter: I made a face to make it
laugh, but its small grey eyes– they were not yet the vivid blue they would
become–seemed to stare right through me 9 . But the narrator’s discoursive
practice often fluctuates from the deliberately limited point of view of the
naïve narrator to the perspective of an older, wiser speaker, as illustrated by the
use of religious imagery among the sophisticated metaphors and similes in his
lyrical descriptions of the land of his fathers:
The sun was just rising over Colle di Papa, round and scarlet, sucking
in dawn’s darkness like God’s forgiveness, the mountain slopes
slowly changing from a colourless grey to rich green and gold. (58)
This shifting back and forth on the axe of temporality occurs again and again in
the narrative itself, both on a historical plane and a mythical one, in order to
depict and magnify a common generational experience. The narrator abounds
with tales of past migrations to America, his grandfather’s own father leaving
Italy and his family, wandering through Africa, then Argentina before heading
on to North America, where he promptly disappeared. Those left behind can
but muse on the new generations that may be multiplying on the other side of
the ocean: a brood of creamy-brown cousins who prayed in African but swore
in Italian (160). On the historical plane, a distinction is made between the
migration before World War II, when after an absence of months or years the
father would come back home with his foreign earnings, and the subsequent
one-way departures:
The men left, and a few years later wives and children and sometimes
ageing parents followed, land and livestock sold off, clothes and old
pots packed up in wooden trunks made by the village carpenter,
houses left abandoned, their doors and windows boarded up. (161)
Although the new Americans are still attached to their roots, sending back
money to their families, financing projects in their community (made possible
by money from America is a recurrent leitmotif in the novel), and even come
back to visit on special occasions such as the annual festival of their village’s
patron saint, it is evident that the attraction of the New World implies the death
of the Old. Allusions abound to what amounts to an exodus to the west, the
new, the future, leaving behind images of decline, decay and rot:
Some of the houses were deserted, their owners gone to America, the
shutters nailed closed and the doors boarded up, walls beginning to
crumble, roofs caved in from rot and termites. (85)
Paradise Lost
The historical decline finds its parallel in the mythical dimension the narrator
creates for the land of his ancestors. As Claude Lévi-Strauss points out in his
Anthropologie structurale, 10 all myth refers to past events (before the creation
of the world, or at the dawn of humanity: in any case, “a long time ago”). But
the intrinsic value attributed to myth derives from the fact that these events,
that allegedly occurred at some moment in time, form a permanent structure
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that refers simultaneously to the past, the present and the future. Myth, like
political ideology, actually has a double structure: both historical and a-
historical, as demonstrated by the reaction of the first-generation English
Romantics to the French Revolution, both the event and promise of
regeneration (best illustrated by Wordsworth’s famous line, Bliss was it in that
dawn to be alive 11 ).
Nino Ricci’s use of myth, as we shall see, performs this double function,
allowing generations of children listening to tales at their grandfather’s knee to
connect with their remote ancestors, allowing generations of immigrants to
bridge the gap with those removed in space, and operating for both groups in an
anticipatory and prophetic fusion that attempts to make sense of both old- and
new-land experience, the better to confront their respective futures:
Once, my grandfather had told me, long before the time of Christ, the
land around Valle del Sole had all been flat, unpeopled jungle, rich
and fertile, the trees a mile high and the river a mile wide. At last a
giant named Gambelunghe had come down from the north and
cleared the land with his two great oxen, then planted his crops – a
thousand hectares of grain, a thousand hectares of vineyards, a
thousand hectares of olives, a thousand hectares of vegetables, and a
thousand hectares of pasture for his sheep. But in the winter, when
Gambelunghe was asleep, wolves came and broke into his stores,
then fell finally on Gambelunghe himself and tore him apart, his head
dropped into the river, where it floated down to the sea, and his limbs
scattered pell-mell across the countryside.
In the spring, a strange thing happened – the fingers on
Gambelunghe’s severed hands began to grow, those on the left
growing into five women, those on the right into five men. When they
were fully grown the men married the women and began to farm
Gambelunghe’s land, one couple for each field.(52-3)
The double dimension, historical and a-historical, can be perceived in the
references to a historical/chronological temporality, that of a pre-Christian era,
events occurring even during specific seasons, the historicity reinforced by the
geographical precisions (from the north). Yet simultaneously, we are
confronted with an a-historical lexis evoking a vague past (once, long before),
a pre-Adamic Eden characterized by dimensions larger than life (the trees a
mile high, the river a mile wide), an age of giant beings equal to the task of
creating a culture commensurate with the superlatively bounteous nature.
With its incantatory repetition of a thousand hectares of (sign of unlimited
plenty rather than numerical precision), the pentad of variations (grain,
vineyards, olives, vegetables, pasture) signalling opulence, the legend, in fact,
relates the creation of the Garden. It differs from the Biblical account in that
there are five Adams and five Eves in an Eden that has already known violence
and death, and no longer offers all that is desirable:
But soon jealousy broke out among them: the one with the sheep was
jealous of the one with the grain, for though he had meat and wool, he
had no bread; the one with the grain was jealous of the one with the
vineyards, for though he had bread, he had no wine (53)
and so on throughout the pentad. The legend is in effect the story of Paradise
Lost, a paradise that is actually lost twice: lost a first time through external
agents (wolves), then rebuilt, but already less than perfect, unity having given
way to division and deprivation, and the extraordinary to the ordinary (one
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Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints: Walking Down
Both Sides of the Street at the Same Time
giant replaced by ten humans); then lost a second time through an internal
agent (invidia). The fighting that follows results in divine intervention, but
rather than expelling Adam from Eden, God destroys the Garden itself:
to punish them He caused mountains and rocks to grow up out of the
ground, and made the soil tired and weak. (53)
The myth actually structures the perspective that the narrator gives us of the
country of his parents, providing the framework for lyricism, a nostalgic
yearning for a golden past, a complaint for a society that is at once timeless and
yet a pale shadow of its former splendor. If Ricci’s work does belong to the
elegiac mode of Italian-Canadian writing, as claimed by Salvatore, the
mourning over the loss of roots, the sorrow for the distance now separating two
irrevocably different generational experiences, is magnified to include
mourning for a different loss: sorrow for the tarnishing of archetype, caused by
the new perspective of his adopted land. Double allegiance? Lucidity of the
immigrant gaze? We cannot help but remark the omnipresence of decline and
degradation.
The mythical dimension finds its historical equivalent in the narrator’s
“factual” description of the neighbouring town of Rocca Secca, which had
once been a great centre, renowned for its goldsmiths and bronzeworks. But in
recent times its fortunes had declined. The a-historical has given way to the
historical, with its economic and political lexis: the wolves have been replaced
by tax-collectors, law-makers and industries. It is because people now want to
buy things made in the city by machines rather than things made by hand that
whole sections of the town stood abandoned (60). Ricci once more depicts a
particular, generational experience by relating the “true” story (reinforced
through historical details: in the 1890s, during the war in Abyssinia, after the
Italian defeat, just after the first war) of the last member of the Giardini family,
a powerful landowner who served as an officer in the war in Abyssinia,
wandered home as a beggar (the Odyssean parallel is nonetheless striking),
then proceeded to remodel the grounds of his estate
in the image of a primal paradise, importing tropical trees, flowers,
shrubs and building a great conservatory to house them in winter,
beginning next on the fauna, monkeys, gazelles, strange tropical
birds, until he had turned his hill into a small piece of Africa, the air at
night resounding with strange jungle sounds. (61)
As to be expected, the primal paradise, having been rebuilt through human,
not divine intervention, is lost again, and at Giardini’s death, the property falls
into decay. The contrast between the present participles enumerating human
acts, the various steps in “setting up” the paradise (remaking, importing,
building, beginning), and the subsequent accumulation of past participles to
form passives (abandoned, left to ruin, overgrown, left to warp, allowed to
grow unchecked) suggests that striving is vain, since there is no future
generation to carry on. The estate functions as a synecdoche, representing
Italy, a nation in decline because she is losing her children to the New World,
but representing as well a mythical Golden Age and a world of traditional
values doomed to a process of degradation, yet always just tantalizingly out of
reach.
Our narrator, we learn at the end of the novel, is relating his story from that part
of the New World his village calls the Sun Parlour, i.e. a new part of America
called Canada (162). The term is ironic for a landscape that reveals itself to be
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rather barren as our hero rides off into the sunset with his new-found father in a
coal-dust-filled train, rolling across a desolate landscape , bleak and snowcovered
as far as the eye could see (234). A whole ocean now separates him
from the land of his birth, the enormity of distance explaining the undercurrent
of the elegiac mode throughout the novel. There is a constant dialectic between
the lyricism of the pastoral descriptions of the homeland as garden, with its
allusions to fertility: spring day, thick carpets of green, river swollen from the
rains, wet translucent skirt clinging to thighs, cave with mouth receding into
darkness, small stream flowing out of it, etc.(32), and the matter-of-fact
references to the slums, sooty factories and bug-infested shacks (162) of
America. On the one hand the sublime, the natural, on the other the trivial, the
artificial. The outside, the world of scarlet suns and golden wheat (food in its
natural state), is contrasted with the inside, the world with telephones in every
room, whose greatest gift to mankind is houses so warm you can walk around
in your socks even in the middle of winter (163), where the bread (food
transformed by the manufacturing process), tasteless and so further
adulterated by the addition of sugar, sticks in your mouth like glue (163). The
lyrical tone applied to the Old World, the world of his parents, associates
female sexuality with water, at times allusively:
At the river, which was swollen from the rains, we waded for a while
along the shore, the hem of my mother’s skirt catching the water and
clinging to her thighs, translucent (32)
at times simply and naturally, the warm water of the hot spring gushing out of
the entrails of the earth evoking simultaneously the womb and the origins of
primeval life:
My mother and I bathed together in the pool, my mother letting her
dress fall casually to the cave floor and standing above me for a
moment utterly naked, smooth and sleek, as if she had just peeled
back an old layer of skin, before climbing into the water beside me
(33).
What a contrast between this private bathing scene in a natural setting, and the
public, even perverse, situation of the modern North American bathroom:
Fabrizio, ready with facts on any subject, had told me once that in
America everyone lived in houses of glass.
`When you’re taking a bath anyone can come by and look at you. You
can see all the women in their underwear. People look at each other all
the time, over there, because nobody believes in God.’ (163)
And what a contrast between the narrator’s mother, another Eve, mother of
mankind, naked, smooth, and sleek, her womb swollen with life, and the
women in America, all walking around in underwear and socks! (No wonder
the author has to kill her off during the voyage to Canada and have her buried at
sea – her element – for he can not reconcile the antithesis.)
The frequent use of pathos in the novel, the passage from poetic diction to
prosaic terminology, from the sublime to the trivial, derives from the narrator’s
double allegiance and thus double positioning. The pathetic process can be at
the expense of his adopted land or of the land of his fathers. Ricci generally sets
up a dichotomy, but then blurs the borders. There is constant shifting of
perspective, resulting in ambivalence and paradox. The narrator’s village, for
example, has still not been endowed with electricity. But thanks to money that
American relatives have donated to make the annual festival a triumph, the
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Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints: Walking Down
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village has obtained a rock band with electrical equipment. When they turn on
the lights, Valle del Sole’s medieval square is transformed into a pocket of rich
modernity (99). The villagers, in shock, speak of la luce (term with Biblical
resonances) as magic,amiracle,anoracle. The author chooses to deflate the
exalted description through the use of the rhetorical figure of anti-climax,
parallel to a shift in point of view. It is Cristina, the narrator’s mother who,
standing out from the beginning with her superior education and cosmopolitan
world view, deflates the effect with her remark: As if no one has ever seen a
light bulb before (99). What indeed can be more trivial and lowly than a light
bulb, and what could be more ridiculous than a society that elevates it to the
rank of the divine?
Throughout the novel, the explicit message of the discourse is that Italy is the
land of the marvellous, the magical, the miraculous. The cult of the saints is but
one such manifestation, the schoolteacher affirming to her pupils that:
the saints were not merely the ghosts of some mythical past but an
ever-present possibility, the mundane and everyday verging always
on the miraculous – ‘Who knows,’ she’d said once, ‘if there isn’t a
saint among us right now?’ (40)
It is on this plane that the reader is to receive the parallels drawn between the
narrator’s mother (whose name Cristina, particularly the diminutive Cristi,
already suggests a female Christ figure 12 ), and Saint Cristina, who was
persecuted for breaking the conventions and defying the superstitions of her
time, proving herself as defiant and irrepressible as our heroine. To reinforce
this dimension, parallels are suggested by a figure of supreme religious
authority, the bishop, who points out the shame Mary must have endured on
account of her extramarital pregnancy, the hardships she had to undergo, and
the mother’s pain she must have felt when her first-born son was maltreated. 13
The comparison becomes explicit in an ironic remark that the narrator
“overhears”:
‘Still holding her nose up like a queen,’ I overheard Maria Maiale say
at Di Lucci’s. ‘Quella Maria ! Maybe it’s a virgin birth.’
‘Maybe it’s the other Mary, Magdalena, you’re thinking about,’ Di
Lucci said. 14
The irony is a double one, for the verbal irony deliberately intended by the
speaker is counteracted by the dramatic irony of the narrative discourse,
perceived only by the reader: who knows, indeed, if this is not the incarnation
of the ever-present possibility, the saint among us now.
Constant Flux
The opposition made between saint and sinner, yet the simultaneous blurring
of borders, the constant flux, is part of the continuous interplay of text and
countertext. On an explicit plane, the narrator’s grandfather and community
set themselves up in opposition to the generations that have exiled themselves
in godless America. Yet on the undercurrent, implicit level, we can remark that
their relationship with their patron saints is a purely commercial one. We learn
that
the villagers, jealous that Castilucci’s patron, St. Joseph, had been
more powerful than their Michael, had applied to Rome for a change
of saints. As their replacement they chose the Virgin, who had a long
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IJCS / RIÉC
history of successful intercessions with a God who was sometimes
distant and unapproachable; and though Rome had denied their
request, they had finally made the change on their own authority (73).
A saint is but a consumer product: if you are dissatisfied, you exchange it for a
better model.
In the same way, the society of the narrator’s birth seems on the surface to be
permeated with religious values. Religion functions even as a measurement of
time. Events are referred to, not according to the calendar, but according to
saints’ days: the narrator’s father’s father, we learn, dropped stone dead on la
festa di San Giuseppe (26); when the narrator challenges a friend to tell him
what day it is, the latter answers It’s the feast of St. Bartholomew (64).
Language is studded with invocations to the Deity (per l’amore di Cristo, per
l’amore di Dio), sermons (I swear by God,orby Jesus, Joseph and Mary or I
pray to God that). Even the swearing is of a blasphemous nature (Gesù Crist’e
Maria, orGesù bambino!); in other words, it is a violation of the Biblical
prohibition against pronouncing the name of God. 15 Breaking the linguistic
taboo, which is acknowledged in the act of defiance, in itself demonstrates a
preoccupation with the sacred. But let us look more closely at the
circumstances in which God is invoked. As Benveniste points out, society
requires the name of God to be invoked in solemn circumstances – this is the
sermon:
CAR LE SERMENT EST UN SACRAMENTUM, UN APPEL AU
DIEU, TÉMOIN SUPRÊME DE VÉRITÉ, ET UNE DÉVOTION AU
CHÂTIMENT DIVIN EN CAS DE MENSONGE OU PARJURE. C’EST LE
PLUS GRAVE ENGAGEMENT QUE L’HOMME PUISSE CONTRACTER
ET LE PLUS GRAVE MANQUEMENT QU’IL PUISSE COMMETTRE, CAR
LE PARJURE RELÈVE NON DE LA JUSTICE DES HOMMES, MAIS DE LA
SANCTION DIVINE. 16
How odd then, that this most serious commitment that a human being can
make, this most solemn sacred promise, should be so consistently linked to
violence:
I swear by God I’ll throttle you with my bare hands (182)
so help me God, I’ll pray every day of my life that you rot in hell (182)
I swear I’ll kill her, even if I have to rot in hell for it (109)
I pray to God that he wipes this town and all its stupidities off the face
of the earth (184)
If we pierce through the religious veneer, we find that the world of the
ancestors is not a paradise, but a world of superstition, ignorance, bribery and
corruption, poverty, hatred and envy, a world of violence. Violence is present
at all levels of society, present within the family, within the community and
among communities. Husbands beat and mutilate their wives, fathers routinely
whip their sons, neighbours do not hesitate to shoot a fellow citizen’s hand off
in a quarrel over a chicken, mothers come to blows over the quarrels of their
children, children brutalize their schoolmates to the point of driving them to
self-violence (one boy, bullied over his one green eye and one brown one,
takes a stick and puts out his own eye). The community attacks nonconformists,
those who, like Cristina, transgress the social code (they like to
see a person destroyed (56)). When they learn electricity will be brought to
another town but not extended to them, townspeople go on the rampage and set
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Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints: Walking Down
Both Sides of the Street at the Same Time
fire to all the machinery. Even their God is violent: the grandfather’s death is
described as an act of God : some invisible fist strikes him down just as he is
about to strike his wife with a fire-poker (26-7).
In the narrative discourse, we can notice the abundant recurrence of a lexis
based on the verb “to kill,” with all possible variations: break heads, throttle,
crack skulls, slit throats, cut out eyes, destroy, etc. The greatest concentration,
ironically enough, is to be found in the stories of the lives of the saints, who are
systematically mutilated, their breasts cut off and their tongues torn out,
skinned alive, beheaded, pounded to death in a marble mortar, torn to pieces
with iron hooks, or thrown into tubs of boiling oil. This is Nino Ricci’s
countertext at work, counterbalancing the paradise of the elegiac mode of
representation with the depiction of a violent, repressive society, a hell. The
latent theme becomes explicit when Cristina sets off with her son for Canada,
crying defiantly, The only mistake I made was that I didn’t leave this hell a
dozen years ago, when I had the chance (184). It is reinforced when the
focalization shifts to the child narrator at the moment of departure:
At last the people on the pier had become a single undulating wave,
their shouts barely audible, and as the ship slipped away from them I
felt a tremendous unexpected relief, as if all that could ever cause
pain or do harm was being left behind on the receding shore, and my
mother and I would melt now into an endless freedom as broad and as
blue as the sea. (200-201)
A NEW EDEN
The place where Cristina has decided to take her son and unborn child is not
only an Eden before the Fall (an unfallen world without mountains or rocky
earth (162)), but an Eden that extends into the future, an Eden that will never
know a Cain and Abel. Canada is a land where violence actually abates: the
narrator’s father, whose only method of communication in Italy was with the
back of his hand (95), has been transformed – the black-haired ogre has
become a tired-eyed man (234). That Canada, the Sun Parlour, is a land where
people learn to live together in peace and harmony, is illustrated by an
allegorical little anecdote:
Before the war two men from our region, Salvatore Mancini of Valle
del Sole and Umberto Longo of Castilucci, had smuggled themselves
across the ocean and settled there – and it was the first time in history,
people said, that a man from Valle del Sole and one from Castilucci
had been able to work together without slitting each other’s throats –
and now one by one their relatives had begun to join them, every year
the tide increasing (161-62)
Canada, throughout the years, drew into her fold people of different
allegiances, different generations. Do these people cohabitate here in peace
because they share a bond, the courage of having left behind the familiar
comfort of family and village for an uncertain destiny across the sea (163)? Or
is it because they, like the narrator, accept paradox, are capable of double
positioning, acknowledge that there are two Americas: the first a world of hard
work and economic realities, the other more a state of mind than a place, a
paradise that shimmered just beneath the surface of the seen, never entered
into but always looming around as a possibility (162). For the generations of
immigrants having arrived and still to arrive, as well as for their children, the
New World, not the Old, is the true place of myth. America, independently of
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IJCS / RIÉC
its national components Canada or USA, is a word that conjures up a world like
a name uttered at the dawn of creation (160), a world that belongs to yet
transcends history. It evokes a mythical past with all of eternity in front of it
(Genesis), and a glorious future (Corinthians)17. Its double structure,
historical and a-historical, the seen and the unseen, the surface and the depths,
that allows the past, the present and the future to coexist, is what makes it an
“always potential” paradise for future generations. What could be more natural
than that such a land should produce a writer master of ambivalence and
paradox, yearning yet rejecting, adept at shifting modes of representation and
bridging states, who actually manages to walk down both sides of the street at
the same time?
NOTES
1. Josef Skvorecky, who emigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia in 1968, has his own
Czech-language publishing house in Toronto.
2. To name but a few of these well-known figures: Nino Ricci, Mary di Michele, Pier Giorgio di
Cicco (Italy), Neil Bissoondath, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke (the Caribbean), Andrew
Suknaski, George Faludy, Josef Skvorecky (Central and Eastern Europe), Rienzi Crusz,
Michael Ondaatje, Ven Begamudre, and Bharati Mukherji (South Asia), Joy Kogawa, Roy
Miki, Fred Wah (Japan and China).
3. Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, Routledge, New
York, 1988, pp. 57-73.
4. Janice Kulyk Keefer, From Mosaic to Kaleidoscope,inBooks in Canada, XX:6, Sept. 1991.
5. Linda Hutcheon, Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies, Toronto, Oxford
University Press, 1991, pp. 53-4.
6. Joseph Pivato, A Literature of Exile: Italian Language Writing in Canada, in Pivato, ed.
Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian Canadian Writing, Montreal, Guernica, 1985, pp.
169-88.
7. Filippo Salvatore, The Italian Writer of Quebec: Language, Culture, and Politics, trans.
David Homel, in Contrasts, p. 201. In Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints, the author’s
dedication For my parents bears witness to this statement.
8. Nino Ricci, Lives of the Saints, Dunvegan, Cormorant Books, 1991, p. 7. All subsequent
quotations refer to this edition.
9. L.S. pp. 7 and 236 respectively.
10. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, Paris, Éditions Plon, 1958, p. 231.
11. William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book Eleventh, line 108 in English Romantic Writers,
ed. by David Perkins, Harvard University, Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., 1967.
12. One amusing illustration is Nino Ricci’s use of the mirror image (which by definition is the
same but opposite), when the narrator’s description of his mother in the hospital evokes
Christ on his cross flanked by the two thieves: she stood out like a flower in a bleak
landscape, and flanking my mother’s bed on either side were two old women with grey,
wrinkled skin. The equivalent (albeit reversal in female form) of the “good” thief was lost in
prayers, her hand fingering the beads of a rosary, the other lay with eyes closed and mouth
half-open (31)
13. It is interesting to note that the key elements of comparison are emphasized by italics in the
text (p. 81)
14. The italics are in the text (p. 156)
15. As the linguist É. Benveniste points out, l’interdit du nom de Dieu (ou l’adjuration inversée
où “Dieu” peut être remplacé par un de ses parèdres “Madone, Vierge”, etc) refrène un des
désirs les plus intenses de l’homme: celui de profaner le sacré... On blasphème le nom de
Dieu, car tout ce qu’on possède de Dieu est son nom. Par là seulement on peut l’atteindre,
pour l’émouvoir ou pour le blesser: en prononçant son nom. Émile Benveniste, Problèmes
de linguistique générale II, Paris, Gallimard, 1974, pp. 255-57.
16. É. Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale II, p. 255-56.
17. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: I Corinthians 13:12.
112

Bibliography
Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints: Walking Down
Both Sides of the Street at the Same Time
Benveniste, Émile, Problèmes de linguistique générale I, Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
Benveniste, Émile, Problèmes de linguistique générale II, Paris, Gallimard, 1974.
Genette, Gérard, Figures III, Paris, Éd. du Seuil, 1972.
Greimas, A.J., Sémantique structurale, Paris, Larousse,1966.
Greimas, A.J., Du Sens, Paris, Éd. du Seuil, 1970.
Hutcheon, Linda, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, New York, Routledge,
1988.
Hutcheon, Linda, Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies, Toronto, Oxford University
Press, 1991.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Anthropologie structurale, Paris, Éditions Plon, 1958.
113

Mark T. Cameron
Justice and the New Generation Gap
“Or for that matter, do you really think we enjoy hearing about your
brand new million dollar home when we can barely afford to eat Kraft
Dinner sandwiches in our grimy little shoe boxes and we’re pushing
thirty? A home won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly by dint of
having been born at the right time in history? You’d last about ten
minutes if you were my age these days, Martin. And I have to endure
pinheads like you rusting above me for the rest of my life, always
grabbing the best piece of cake and putting barbed wire fence around
the rest. You really make me sick.” 1
Abstract
The question of justice between generations is a particularly important one in
Canada because of the ongoing legal debates around section 15 of the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the demographic phenomena
of the baby boom and baby bust, which have upset many traditional
expectations around employment and income security. Starting with a review
of the existing debate over mandatory retirement, the author suggests that
liberal justice does permit a policy of mandatory retirement, as a liberal
approach to justice requires one to consider how policies affect one’s life as a
whole, not at an isolated moment in time. Expanding on this point, the author
introduces what he calls a “Lifespan Neutral Discrimination Principle”
(LNDP) as a means to assess whether a policy which discriminates on the
basis of age is unjust, in light of one’s prospects over one’s lifespan. The
author criticizes current public policy, which tries to solve the problem of
transfers between age groups but ignores the often more serious problem of
transfers between birth cohorts, as inconsistent with the LNDP. Public
pensions in Canada and the United States are singled out as a particularly
discriminatory example of a public policy which hurts certain birth cohorts.
Résumé
La question de la justice entre les générations est particulièrement importante
au Canada à cause des débats concernant l’article 15 de la Charte canadienne
des droits et libertés et à cause du phénomène démographique des « baby
boomers » et des « baby busters » qui a perturbé les attentes traditionnelles
relatives à la sécurité d’emploi et de revenu. Dans la première partie de
l’article, l’auteur passe en revue la question de la retraite obligatoire pour
ensuite suggérer qu’une justice « libérale » permet une politique de retraite
obligatoire, puisqu’une approche libérale nécessite un examen de la façon
dont les politiques influent sur toutes les étapes d’une vie et non sur un moment
précis dans une vie. L’auteur élargit cette perspective en avançant un principe
qu’il nomme le « Lifespan Neutral Discrimination Principle » (LNDP)
[Principe de discrimination neutraliste basé sur la durée d’une vie] comme
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
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IJCS / RIÉC
moyen d’évaluer si une politique établit une discrimination basée sur l’âge qui
est injuste compte tenu des perspectives d’avenir d’une personne durant toute
sa vie. L’auteur critique les politiques gouvernementales actuelles, qui tentent
de solutionner le problème du transfert entre groupe d’âge mais laissent de
côté le problème plus sérieux du transfert entre cohortes, en soulignant que
ces politiques sont incompatibles avec le « LNDP ». Les régimes de retraites
publics au Canada et aux États-Unis servent d’exemples de politiques
gouvernementales discriminatoires qui portent atteinte à certaines cohortes.
What does it mean to speak of justice between generations in the design and
implementation of government policy? This question is raised with particular
acuteness in Canada for two reasons. First, Canada is in the midst of an
ongoing effort to bring its laws into conformity with the right of equality
before and under the law without discrimination, including discrimination
based on age, guaranteed under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights
and Freedoms. Second, Canada has an unusual demographic distribution of
age groups within its society, which means much of the conventional wisdom
regarding appropriate policies for different age groups may have to be reevaluated
in light of changing demographic realities. Specifically, the socioeconomic
consequences of an aging population, with a very large bulge of
people currently in the middle age brackets (the Baby Boomers) and a much
smaller group in the younger age brackets (Generation X), must be explored.
In this paper, I will examine both of these aspects of intergenerational justice in
Canada. I will attempt to define precisely what conditions constitute
unjustified age discrimination that should be prohibited under the Charter, and
I will examine whether, in light of Canada’s demography, some current
policies may in fact be unjust and discriminatory between generations
according to this definition.
Towards a Definition of Age Discrimination
Much of the legal and academic debate over age discrimination in Canada has
focused on the question of whether mandatory retirement policies are a type of
unjustified age discrimination. While this is an important and interesting
aspect of the age discrimination debate, it is only a small part of the question of
justice between generations. To answer the question of what constitutes
unjustified age discrimination, we must look at fundamental questions of
justice and equality. The question of mandatory retirement will be discussed,
but a successful definition of age discrimination must extrapolate from this
example to reach broader conclusions.
Discrimination has been defined as when “someone’s preference is defeated in
a given case... In such a case we shall say that the discriminatory policy
‘decides against’ that person.” 2 Obviously, if defined this broadly, no form of
discrimination per se can be inherently unjust or forbidden by the Charter.
Most political decision making involves discriminating for or against certain
individuals or groups, although one hopes in relatively benign ways. For
instance, governments establish subsidies for farmers, and tax preferences for
certain businesses and not others. In these cases, governments are making
prudential decisions against certain economic practices and practitioners in
favour of others in hopes that society as a whole will benefit. Similarly,
criminal law discriminates against criminals. On the individual level, when
two or more persons are competing for a job, the employer will generally hire
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Justice and the New Generation Gap
the most qualified candidate, despite the fact that in doing so the employer
discriminates against less qualified candidates.
Generally, what is taken to distinguish justifiable from unjustifiable
discrimination is the moral relevance or merit of the criteria used to
discriminate. Whether or not characteristics are morally relevant depends on
context. For example, in trying to decide whether or not to hire a teacher, sex or
religion should generally not be considered morally relevant factors, and merit
in terms of teaching ability, academic competence and experience should
prevail. However, if a school board is looking to hire a boys’ physical
education teacher, or if a Catholic school board wishes to hire a religious
education teacher, sex or religion may become relevant considerations.
Some would argue that, in order to count as discrimination, in addition to
deciding against a person’s preference on morally irrelevant grounds, a policy
must cause harm or deny benefit to a person in a real sense, and thus some
forms of age discrimination that do not cause harm are justifiable. For
example, parental discipline, and many laws, deny children’s preferences for
the sake of children’s long-term benefit. According to Wedeking:
“Paternalistic treatment of children includes a large class of cases where no
harm results from age discrimination,” such as compulsory schooling laws,
and minimum driving and drinking ages. “Discrimination of this sort, though
based on age, cannot be considered unfair; since the child is not harmed, there
is not even a prima facie case that equity is denied.” 3 Others would deny that
paternalistic policies based solely on age, even benevolent ones, are ever
justifiable. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, argues with respect to
children’s rights that “the first thing to be done is to reverse the presumption of
incompetency and instead assume that all individuals are incompetent until
proven otherwise,” but laments that “...the law basically treats all...children, at
their dissimilar stages of life, as incompetent.” 4
Just as some laws in previous centuries which discriminated on the basis of
race or sex were not motivated by malice but by a benevolent paternalism
towards “inferior” women or slaves, many would argue that paternalistic laws
designed to “protect” children or the very old (say, by denying drivers licenses
to people under sixteen or over seventy-five) are similarly misguided.
Paternalistic laws based on age, race or sex, even if putatively beneficial,
offend the deeply held value acknowledged by Wedeking of “the importance
of autonomy, the role of agency in our conception of the good life.” 5
If even benevolent paternalism seems unacceptable as a rationale for age
discrimination, can there be any justification for laws which are clearly not
intended for the good of the person the policy decides against, such as
mandatory retirement at age sixty-five or the denial of certain expensive
medical treatments to older persons? Many feel that mandatory retirement
laws are precisely analogous to a discriminatory policy denying employment
on the basis of race or sex. If a worker is still capable of performing a job,
perhaps more capable than a newcomer because of years of valuable
experience, then to terminate that worker’s employment simply because he or
she has turned sixty five seems morally arbitrary. It is a policy based on what
Justice Brennan of the United States Supreme Court described as an
“immutable characteristic determined solely by accident of birth which bears
no relationship to the individual’s ability to perform or contribute to society.” 6
One way in which the apparent violation of the individual right not to be
discriminated against on the basis of age might be justified is in reference to the
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collective rights of younger generations. As Samuel LaSelva points out, most
people accept that the principle of merit implies that “an employee who
performs his job satisfactorily deserves (merits) to keep it....” 7 He further
argues that in addition to this explicit assumption, there is an implicit
assumption in arguments against mandatory retirement that such policies
“raise only questions of individual justice” 8 as opposed to collective rights.
The individual’s right to keep his or her job must be balanced against the
collective right of a generation to have fair opportunities for employment
compared to other generations.
While La Selva makes a strong moral argument for upholding mandatory
retirement in the name of intergenerational justice, he defines
intergenerational justice in terms of collective rights. While the debate
between the claims of individual versus collective rights is an important one, it
is beyond the scope of this paper. For better or for worse, the language of
individual rights is the predominant currency in both legal and academic
debates over equality and discrimination. Robert Drummond objects to the
ascription of collective rights to generations. “If intergenerational justice
requires collective, rather than individual rights, it creates more problems than
it solves. Jobs are sought and held by individuals, not generations. Liberal
rights generally inhere in individuals, not collectivities.” 9 To Drummond, the
correct question to ask is not one of collective but rather of comparative justice.
In this case, “birth cohort or generation is not a collective attribute, but a
characteristic of individuals, not unlike age.” 10 The claims of a person denied
employment because he or she reaches retirement age must be balanced with
the competing claims of a member of a younger generation denied
employment because he or she is entering the workforce at a time when jobs
are scarce due to members of older generations holding most of the available
jobs.
It seems wise to treat generation as an individual characteristic like age, rather
than as a collective right, for several reasons. For analytic clarity, it is easier to
compare two similar rights claims, and individual rights are more easily
discussed within the framework of liberal justice than claims to collective
rights. Furthermore, section 15(1) of the Charter only protects individuals
from discrimination, thus generations could not claim illegal discrimination as
a whole, but only as individual members of generations.
Drummond’s approach also reveals another important distinction for
discussions of intergenerational justice and age discrimination: the distinction
between age group and birth cohort. Norman Daniels makes this distinction
even more explicit. An age group refers to “people who fall within a certain age
range or are at a certain stage of life.” 11 Children, teenagers, and senior citizens
are all examples of age groups. A birth cohort is a group born during the same
time period, and forms “a distinct group of people with a distinctive history and
composition.” 12 The Lost Generation of the 1920s, the Baby Boomers and
Generation X are all different birth cohorts. While the court cases and public
discussion of age discrimination have generally been concerned with laws
differentiating between age groups, birth cohorts raise separate claims which
may be even more troubling. As Daniels notes, in matters of intergenerational
justice, age group and birth cohort must be carefully distinguished:
For example, special questions of fairness may arise because of
particular facts about the socioeconomic history and composition of
particular birth cohorts. The notion of an age group abstracts from the
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Justice and the New Generation Gap
distinctiveness of birth cohorts and considers people solely by
reference to their place in the lifespan. 13
Drummond analyses the claims of age groups and birth cohorts with regards to
employment, and concludes that “liberal justice requires no more than an equal
opportunity to compete for available jobs, and does not provide a right to have
jobs vacated (on the basis of age) so that one can compete for them.” 14 But
beyond ensuring this neutrality in competition for available jobs, liberal justice
seems unable to interfere. Mandatory retirement does not simply allow equal
competition for available jobs, it violates one person’s right based on merit to
continuing employment as long as performance is satisfactory. The younger
worker who takes the job does not have a right to that job, but only the right to
compete on an equal footing for any available jobs, not a right to a particular
job already held by someone else on the basis of merit. Drummond’s reasoning
seems airtight given his premise that individual rights to continuing
employment based on merit cannot be trumped by the collective rights of less
privileged generations.
Drummond’s reasoning is revealed as flawed, however, even on liberal rights
grounds, when one considers his failure to regard persons as beings with longterm
interests and goals. Rather than examining the fairness of mandatory
retirement as a social policy from the perspective of an individual’s entire
lifetime in the context of intergenerational competition, Drummond opts to
“select a single point in time at which to assess the treatment of generations.” 15
A liberal theory of justice, however, cannot be limited to the immediate desires
of a given individual at a particular time. Instead, it must consider the rights of
a person qua person, which Rawls defines “as a human life lived according to a
plan.” 16 In Rawls’ account, the principles of justice which would be agreed to
in his original position would be neutral with regards to time preference, for
“rationality implies an impartial concern for all parts of our life.” 17
A liberal approach to intergenerational justice cannot simply examine
relations between generations at a given point in time to determine their
fairness. It must inquire what policies individuals would choose in a neutral
bargaining situation, like the original position, given the data of competition
for scarce resources (such as jobs) between generations and an impartial
concern for all parts of each person’s life. Drummond implies, without
providing justification, that the only rational choice of principle would be what
Rawls calls “natural liberty”: the principle that careers should be open
according to talents. 18 Leslie Jacobs has called this the principle of formal
equality of opportunity. 19 Rawls argues, however, that bargainers in the
original position would choose the principle of fair equality of opportunity,
which implies that “those with similar abilities and skills should have similar
life chances.” 20 Given Rawls’ constraint that bargainers in the original
position “have no information as to which generation they belong,” 21 they are
more likely out of prudence to choose the fair over the formal principle. This
probability is heightened if we follow Brian Barry’s suggestion and envision
the original position not merely as a contracting situation between
contemporaries of an unknown generation, but between anonymous members
of different generations. 22 Even without the device of the original position, it
seems probable that, in designing principles of liberal justice which take
seriously the existence of persons over a lifespan and the competition of
generations within the lifespan of each birth cohort, the principle of natural
liberty would be rejected as arbitrary without at least some version of Locke’s
spoilage principle (that as much and as good be left for others) or Rawls’ just
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savings principle (that each generation has the responsibility to save for future
generations), which Drummond does not seriously entertain.
Norman Daniels develops an account of intergenerational justice from a
Rawlsian perspective employing what he calls a “Prudential Lifespan
Account.” The central intuition of the Prudential Lifespan Account is that age
differs fundamentally from sex or race as a category for the simple reason that
persons age. “Age is different. Remember the banal fact: We grow older, but
we do not change our race or sex.” 23 Since each person usually passes through
each age group and stage of life, prudent bargainers in the original position will
wish to design social institutions that protect their interest in basic goods
equally at all stages of life. People may agree to be treated unequally at
different stages of life in order to achieve more equal treatment over their
entire lifespan. Seen in this way, programs that treat the young and the old
differently should not be interpreted as transfers of wealth between persons,
but transfers within the lifespan of a single person which are mediated by
social institutions. From the perspective of the original position, designing
institutions like public schooling and retirement pensions is essentially the
same as deciding to subsidize youth and the elderly out of the surplus they earn
during their highly productive middle years. In this way, policies which
differentiate by age may be fundamentally different from policies which
differentiate by race or sex. As Daniels says,
If we treat people differently by race or sex, then we risk violating the
principles governing equality among persons. Treating the young
and old differently, however, may not mean treating people
unequally. Over a lifetime, such differential treatment may still result
in our treating people equally. 24
Mandatory retirement may be a just policy from this lifespan perspective, if
persons feel that they will benefit from such a policy over their entire lifespan.
Laws that restrict the liberty of children may also be justifiable, as those laws
may now be understood as the long-term choice of an individual over the
course of one’s lifespan, not simply a paternalistic denial of the rights of one
person by others. What makes such restrictions permissible is not, as
Wedeking suggests, that the policies prevent harm from coming to children,
but that the children themselves, if they were in a position to consider their
whole lives as persons, would choose them. Thus, the principle of autonomy
that would make paternalistic laws to protect women or aboriginals
unacceptable is not denied.
There are possible objections to a time neutral consideration of the life of a
person, on the grounds that the concept of persons as ongoing beings with
coherent life plans and an equal interest in all parts of their lives is a
metaphysical abstraction, whereas in reality one only experiences persons as
the subjects of immediate desires. If the person is not conceived of as a unified
being over a lifespan, but only a bundle of immediate and contingent desires,
then as Hume said, “is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the
whole world to the scratching of my finger.” 25 A recent, sophisticated version
of this reductionist claim—that one not ought to regard persons as unified
wholes over their lifespan—has been presented by Derek Parfit. 26 But if one
adopts Hume’s or Parfit’s view of the person, then the language of rights will
have little meaning. The idea of rights seems to imply a strong sense of the
person: it is hard to see how a mere concatenation of contingent desires could
possess genuine rights. Furthermore, even if the reductionist view of persons is
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metaphysically true, Daniels offers compelling reasons why the view of
persons as beings unified over time ought to be adopted as a prudential
principle to allow for social co-operation in the planning of institutions. 27 It
seems that for Drummond or others to adopt the language of rights implies an
acceptance that principles of justice ought to be selected in a way that is neutral
as to time preference over a person’s lifespan.
We are now in a position to provisionally define what would count as age
discrimination under principles of liberal justice. A policy should only be
considered unjustified age discrimination if it violates what may be called a
Lifespan Neutral Discrimination Principle (LNDP), which may be defined as:
Any policy that defeats a person’s preference solely on the basis of a
person’s age, that a person would not rationally select in a neutral
bargaining situation as likely to improve his or her past and future life
prospects if considered over the course of that person’s lifespan
constitutes unjustified age discrimination.
Using this rule of the LNDP, mandatory retirement could be considered to be
perfectly acceptable as public policy, at least in the weak sense that it would be
permissible as a means to solve intergenerational inequity, if not positively
required by justice. This approach to age discrimination, by considering
institutions that transfer between age groups from the perspective of a person’s
entire lifespan, would also imply different treatment for age discrimination
cases under the Charter. In the mandatory retirement cases that have gone
before the court so far, both sides have accepted that requiring people to retire
at age sixty-five is discriminatory under section 15, but governments have
argued that mandatory retirement laws may be permitted under the
“reasonable limits” provisions of section 1. However, if the LNDP was
accepted as a tool for assessing age discrimination, mandatory retirement
would not be seen as a violation of equality rights in the first place.
The Problem of Birth Cohorts
While Daniels’ Prudential Lifespan Account gives us a way of
conceptualizing transfers between age groups as actually being transfers
within lives, and the proposed Lifespan Neutral Discrimination Principle
allows us to redefine discrimination to account for this idea, both concepts still
leave open the question of justice between birth cohorts. The very institutions
that allow for transfers within lives are threatened if some birth cohorts receive
disproportionately more or less of the planned transfers over their lifespans
due to demographic changes or historical contingencies like war or depression.
Some critics of existing social security and health care policies have argued
that they have benefited certain birth cohorts disproportionately. For example,
current retirees receive far more pension benefits than they paid for in taxes,
and are supported by the large Baby Boomer cohorts currently in the
workforce. The Baby Boomers, when they retire, will likely receive far less in
benefits than they contributed in taxes, and will have to rely for support on the
contributions of much smaller birth cohorts. This has led for calls in the
countries that have experienced dramatic baby boom and bust phenomena
(especially Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand) for public
pension programs to be either radically reformed or even scrapped in the name
of intergenerational equity.
Daniels argues that the problem of justice between birth cohorts is secondary
to the problem of transfers between age groups, because all birth cohorts are
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held to have a strong interest in solving the problem of economic transfers
within their lifespans. All cohorts have an interest in distributing scarce
resources, like income, employment opportunities and health care, in a way
that will benefit them at all stages of their lives. Daniels argues that the interest
of all cohorts in solving the age group problem implies a willingness to share
risks in the case of unforeseen circumstances. While equal benefit from social
security programs should be the target of public policy, “Since, however,
different cohorts must be willing to share risks, they must also tolerate errors,
or departures from approximate equality.” 28
This approach seems problematic, however, because the inequity caused by
the problem of birth cohorts threatens to undermine the justification for
differential treatment of age groups. Policies that discriminate on the basis of
age—student loan programs, conscription, mandatory retirement, restrictions
on health care for the aged, economic benefits for retired persons—can be
justified under the LNDP if they may be expected to benefit all persons
approximately equally over their lifespans. However,if unanticipated
problems affect particular birth cohorts, they may not receive the expected
benefit of the policy. Why, then, should they accept unequal treatment
according to age group in the knowledge that such unequal treatment will not
benefit them over their lifespans? What would have been a tolerable age
differentiation reverts to unjustified age discrimination if it hurts a particular
birth cohort disproportionately. A utilitarian argument that, over the long run,
transfers between age groups will provide the greatest benefit to the greatest
number will not suffice according to the Rawlsian principles inherent in the
LNDP, and which Daniels claims underlie his own Prudential Lifespan
Account. As Rawls’ states:
The principles of justice apply to the basic structure of the social
system and to the determination of life prospects. What the principle
of utility asks is precisely a sacrifice of these prospects. We are to
accept the greater advantages of others as a sufficient reason for
lower expectations over the whole course of our life. This is surely an
extreme demand. 29
In Daniels’ Prudential Lifespan Account, differential treatment of age groups
is transformed conceptually from a transfer between persons to transfers
within the lives of individuals. If this is true, then institutions designed to solve
the age group problem are not institutions designed to achieve justice, but to
maximize utility over a person’s individual life. Policies mandating transfers
of goods between age groups are founded on utility, not justice. Serious issues
of justice may still arise between birth cohorts if one particular cohort benefits
or suffers unduly from utilitarian policies meant to solve the universal age
group problem. Surely, under the LNDP, the theoretical interest of all cohorts
in finding a stable, utilitarian solution to the age group problem does not
overrule the genuine injustice that results from differential treatment of birth
cohorts.
Given the threat which the problem of birth cohorts poses to the Prudential
Lifespan Account solution for the problem of age groups, there seems to be
two possible solutions which would restore justice among different cohorts.
The first solution is a libertarian approach, in which governments do not act as
aggregators of prudential lifespan decisions, and where age-specific benefits
like health insurance and pensions are left to individual planning and
discretion, while age-discriminatory laws like mandatory retirement are also
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eliminated. This approach would follow Drummond’s suggestion of
abolishing mandatory retirement and would be acceptable under the LNDP as
it would also require the abolition of all other age-specific laws and programs.
Under these circumstances, few people would agree that mandatory retirement
was likely to benefit them over their lifespan, as they would have no guarantee
of any income after retirement. The second approach is to acknowledge with
Daniels that the institutions established to solve the age group problem are
valuable to all persons and birth cohorts; they would not be considered
untouchable features of the social contract, but as pragmatic, flexible
instruments for solving the problem of age groups and possibly in need of
frequent adjustment to account for the prior problem of justice between birth
cohorts. Daniels’ approach of treating the age group problem as prior to the
birth cohort problem does not meet the requirements of justice. The priority of
the age group problem may still be said to exist in the sense that a general, longterm
strategy for dealing with transfers between age groups must be developed
prior to its application in specific situations. That strategy, however, must be
flexible enough in practice to adjust to the specific situations of different birth
cohorts to prevent injustice.
The first approach to solving the inequity between birth cohorts would be to
privatize the system. Economist Rita Campbell demonstrated in a 1978 study
that under the American social security system, “healthy young persons
entering the system today and who are taxed under today’s legislation may,
depending on relative increases in wage rates and in the cost of living, find that
they can buy an annuity of the same amount for less than they now pay in social
security taxes.” 30 With subsequent increases in pension contribution levels in
Canada and the U.S., Campbell’s observation is even more justified today. Yet
the libertarian approach, while possibly more equitable to younger cohorts,
may lead to other problems. Libertarian policies would mean that people
would select private insurance plans during their early adulthood, which might
lead to people overly discounting the interests of childhood which is behind
them and of old age in a distant future to protect the interests of their younger
and middle aged selves. The age group policy would worsen, without any
guarantee of compensatory solutions for the birth cohort problem, which
would be left to market forces. The only advantage would be to avoid
government discrimination against birth cohorts, but at the cost of losing all
government assistance in solving the age group problem. From the point of
view of justice, however, it is probably preferable that people be allowed to
take their own risks rather than be forced to risk sacrificing their individual
welfare to the public good by an inflexible government program. While not
ideal, the libertarian approach would still be more just under the LNDP than
interventionist government policies oriented solely towards solving the
problem of transfers between age groups.
A superior solution than either the libertarian or the pure age group transfer
approach, however, would be a flexible policy approach that weighs both the
age group and birth cohort problems. Policies governing mandatory retirement
ages, health care regulations for different age groups, and pension benefit and
contribution levels should be adjusted frequently to ensure that all cohorts
benefit to roughly the same extent from government programs. To implement
this policy, the government might review all programs designed to transfer
income and social benefits between age groups and calculate whether all
cohorts presently living and projected cohorts for the next fifty years or so will
benefit with approximate equality from the programs. If not, adjustments
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should be made to equalize the programs as much as possible, without taking
retroactive measures or causing major losses in income levels to particular
groups (say, changes causing more than a five percent loss in anticipated
income to a particular cohort in any one year). This kind of periodic review
would probably enhance the credibility of government programs like the
Canada/Quebec Pension Plan and Medicare, because younger contributors
and taxpayers would be confident that they and their children would stand to
benefit from the programs as much as current recipients, making taxation or
contribution increases more acceptable. This policy would recognize
everyone’s common interest in distributing benefits over a lifespan, without
risking injustice to particular cohorts.
Generational Justice and the Baby Boom
In the argument advanced so far, policies that are sometimes considered to be
unjust age discrimination, like mandatory retirement, may in fact be justified if
one considers the Lifespan Neutral Discrimination Principle (LNDP). But, in
order for particular policies to be justified under the LNDP, they must not only
aim to equalize life prospects over the course of one’s lifespan, but also be
relatively equal in their effects on existing and projected birth cohorts. As will
be demonstrated, contemporary Canadian policy aimed at different age
groups, while attempting to solve the lifespan problem by means of transfers
between age groups, has not adequately adjusted itself for the effects of
different birth cohorts on those policies. While it has not yet aroused as much
public concern in Canada as in the United States, it is a dormant issue that may
cause a serious loss of faith in Canada’s social institutions in the longer term if
not dealt with in the next few years.
Canada experienced the post-war baby boom and baby bust cycle in an even
more dramatic fashion than the United States. Canada’s fertility rate peaked at
3.85 births per woman in 1959, compared to the American high of 3.71 in
1957. Among industrialized nations, only New Zealand and Ireland had higher
post-war fertility peaks, while other industrialized countries experienced little
or no increase in the fertility rate in the 1950s and 1960s. But Canada also
experienced an even more dramatic drop in fertility rates during the late 1960s
than the United States and most other countries, falling to a fertility rate of 2.26
in Canada in 1970 compared to only 2.46 31 in the United States. This
difference between the American and Canadian baby boom phenomenon is
probably the result of higher initial fertility rates in Quebec and the sharp and
rapid decline in that province after the Quiet Revolution.
Regardless of cause, Canada is obviously faced with all of the socioeconomic
problems caused by a large population bulge in an even more stark fashion
than the United States. In addition, Canada has a much more generous system
of social benefits than the United States, including the fully indexed Canada/
Quebec Pension Plan and Old Age Security Pensions and a universal Medicare
system which primarily benefits the elderly. Even based on optimistic fertility
projections, however, the proportion of people over sixty-five in Canada can
be expected to nearly double over the next forty years. While there are almost
six working age Canadians between twenty and sixty-four today for every
retired person, this will drop to a three to one ratio by 2031. 32 Those three
workers will have to find the resources to support their own children as well.
While a vigorous debate has raged in the United States over the solvency of its
Social Security pension fund and the appropriate limits to public support for
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health care, in Canada, debate has too often been limited to platitudinous
assurances from right and left that pensions and Medicare are “sacred trusts.”
While there were some efforts toward pension reform in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, there remains an apparent assumption in Canada that generous
pension and medical benefits for the elderly will continue to be paid for by
increased taxation on those in the workforce for the foreseeable future. But a
blanket assumption of this sort imposes a huge potential tax burden on cohorts
just entering the workforce and those still to come. For example, under the U.S.
Social Security system, “Under a strict pay-as-you-go system, the children and
grandchildren of the baby-boom generation would therefore face tax rates
more than half again above those faced by the baby-boom generation itself.” 33
The Canada/Quebec Pension Plan is a parallel case. While many Canadians
think of the C/QPP as the public equivalent of a privately funded pension or
insurance scheme, it is in fact very different as it is partially operated on a payas-you-go
basis. Rather than pooling contributions into an investment fund to
pay for future benefits, the government pays for current benefits primarily
from current payroll deductions. Some surpluses were accumulated in the
early years of the program, but the surplus fund is projected to disappear at
current contribution and benefit levels, requiring increases in C/QPP payments
if the system is to remain solvent. Payments were initially 3.6% of covered
earnings in 1969. That has risen to 4.85% today, and is expected to rise to
6.85% by 2001 and 10.1% by 2016. 34 This means that, as the population ages,
those still in the workforce will be expected to pay proportionately far more in
pension contributions than their elders did, although they will not receive more
benefits. When the baby boom aged cohorts retire, the ability to pay may
become so stretched that benefits may actually have to be cut if the government
is to remain solvent. 35 Here we see a prime example of how programs meant to
solve the problem of equalizing income over a lifespan can lead to massive
inequities between specific cohorts. Actuarial analyst William Hamilton
observes that “Social Security benefits rely on massive intergenerational
transfers. Our claim to social security rests first and foremost on our ability to
tax our children.” 36 This is only acceptable under the LNDP if each birth
cohort can expect similar treatment at various stages of life. To the Baby
Boomers who face an uncertain retirement, and Generation Xers who face a
rising taxation burden to pay for benefits for the aging population, the current
Canada/Quebec Pension Plan constitutes unjust age discrimination.
In overall terms, Canada has seen its social expenditures massively skewed in
the direction of older Canadians. While medicare and pensions are “sacred
trusts” not to be tampered with, programs designed for the benefit of younger
Canadians are among the most vulnerable to government cutbacks. The budget
restraint of the 1980s hit hardest at universities, education, home ownership
plans and job training programs—programs designed to benefit youth and
younger workers—while programs aimed at the elderly went largely
untouched. The attempt to deindex OAS Pensions in 1985 was met with a wall
of resistance from older Canadians, while the Family Allowance Act was
quietly buried in 1992 with little fanfare. The results of these policies have
been dramatic. Over the past ten years, while the proportion of seniors living in
poverty has dropped from 28% to 15%, the proportion of children living in
poverty has climbed 15% to 17%. 37 While there are still a great many poor
seniors, their numbers are roughly in line with the national average. The rate of
poverty among children, however, is climbing, with government taking little
action to prevent it.
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The effects of the severe recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s were
also borne primarily by younger workers. For example, a Statistics Canada
study showed that while workers aged twenty- to twenty-four saw their real
wages decline by 17.59% between 1981 and 1986, workers between the ages
of 45 and 64 saw real increases of 2.96%. 38 These results, along with other
figures demonstrating higher rates of youth unemployment and part-time
work, led the authors to conclude that the much discussed “decline of the
middle class” in Canada is especially acute in younger age groups.
It seems that Canada’s `declining middle’ (or lower middle) is not a
pervasive phenomenon affecting all groups equally. Rather, for this
period at least, it was largely created by dramatic shifts in the
distribution of wages paid to workers in different age groups—
downward movement in the relative wages of youth and some
upward movement in the relative wages of older workers. 39
Today, families with a head of household under 25 years old are 7.5% poorer in
real dollar terms than their counterparts were in 1971. That cohort which was
under 25 in 1971, by contrast, now earns 21.3% more in real terms than their
opposites in the 35- to 44- year old bracket did in 1971. Of course, from the
perspective of the LNDP such effects could well be tolerable if they were
compensated by higher wages as the cohorts entering the job market in the
1980s caught up later. But as we have seen, they will face higher taxation
throughout their working lives, with most of that revenue going to fund
programs for the retired. The economic trend of the Baby Boomers (a
sociological group which only includes the late 1940s and 1950s cohorts of the
post-war baby boom, which demographers count from 1946 to 1964 in the
United States, and 1947 to 1966 in Canada 40 ) enjoying unprecedented wealth,
while the Generation Xers (roughly those born between 1960 and 1970) are
becoming the first generation in North American history to do worse
materially than their parents, partly as a result of government policy, stands in
sharp contrast to the Rawlsian principle of fair equality of opportunity.
One solution to these inequities would be to increase taxes on capital gains,
which mainly accrue to wealthy older workers and retirees. The trend,
however, is the opposite: from progressive taxes on capital to regressive taxes
on consumption. European countries, which did not experience a baby boom
and thus have had older populations historically, have led the way in this
regard. Finlayson comments on this phenomenon:
Aging populations do demand more public spending on social
support services. At the same time their growing numbers at the
ballot box make it difficult for governments to raise extra money by
taxing capital income to pay for these services. As many European
countries have discovered in recent years, older voters are perfectly
capable of exercising their political power to ensure that capital taxes
are minimized. This in turn has forced governments to introduce
consumption taxes, in the form of retail sales taxes, value added taxes
or expenditure taxes, to raise the extra money they need. 41
Canada has repeated this history with the introduction of a $150,000 lifetime
exemption from capital gains taxation in 1985, a revenue shortfall that was
partly compensated by the introduction of the regressive Goods and Services
Tax in 1989.
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Justice and the New Generation Gap
Despite these inequities, it is hard to generate political concern for
generational justice. The root of the problem is built into the political system
itself. Older persons vote in higher numbers than any other citizens, while
younger people vote the least, and children not at all. According to American
sociologist Samuel Preston, “Enlightened self-interest has simply become self
interest—looking out for number one—with particularly devastating effects
for children... Americans have never had any strong sense of collective
responsibility for other people’s children, only private responsibility for their
own.” 42 Support for the elderly, on the other hand, has a universal appeal. “The
elderly are a very peculiar type of interest group, quite unlike the Teamsters or
Southerners or the National Rifle Association. They are a group that almost all
of us can confidently expect to belong to one day.” 43
Even commentators concerned with social justice in public policy are reluctant
to address the issue of justice in stark generational terms, however. Finlayson,
having documented the demographic, economic, and political trends caused
by the baby boom and bust phenomenon on Canada’s pension system still calls
for governments to dramatically increase government support for pensions
and to mandate improvements in corporate pension plans. According to
Finlayson, the argument that an aging population requires increased
contribution rates and limited benefits is “Partly bunk.” 44 She argued that the
demographic trends have been exaggerated by “harbingers of doom and
gloom,” and suggests that increased pension benefits for the elderly will
reduce their demands on the health care system, which seems unlikely as long
as human beings remain subject to eventual illness and death. Daniels, faced
with the argument that expensive pension programs have taken resources from
other groups, like poor children, argues that they are separate, distributive
justice claims that should be viewed apart from the issue of pension programs.
The issue is miscast if it is portrayed as competition between children
and the elderly. Rather, programs aimed at distributive justice in
general—redistributive transfers from the rich to the poor—have all
taken a back seat...
Our concern about increased poverty among children and our
legitimate worries about the stability of transfer systems that will
soon encounter the baby boom cohort should not tempt us to
undermine what is valuable in our collective solution to the age group
problem. 45
The problems with Daniels’ and Finlayson’s arguments is that they imply
maintaining (and improving) the obvious social asset of a generous scheme of
retirement pensions as an important part of the solution for the universal
problem of age groups, and transfers within lifespans remain the top social
priority, even when the resources used for this utilitarian purpose distort
justice. Yet, as Rawls argues, “Justice is the first virtue of social
institutions.” 46 Programs such as U.S. Social Security and the Canada/Quebec
Pension Plan, while having some redistributive effect, do not tax as
progressively as regular income tax, and do not distribute benefit according to
need as effectively as welfare or guaranteed income programs. The political
popularity of such programs should not be allowed to obscure their limited
progressivity. If such programs are to be maintained on the grounds that they
better distribute resources within lives, and provide a modest redistribution
within cohorts, the massive and unjust redistribution of benefits between
cohorts must be eliminated. Practically speaking, this would require larger
increases in C/QPP contributions immediately, rather than phased increases
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that hurt younger cohorts more, with the increases to be used to more fully fund
future benefits through investment, rather than simply paying for current
deficits or government expenditure. Another alternative might be to examine,
within the context of the LNDP, increasing the age at which C/QPP benefits
may be collected. To redress the inequities already done without reducing the
income of the elderly poor, higher capital gains or succession duties might be
contemplated. But simply maintaining the current system on a pay-as-you-go
basis will perpetuate a massive injustice to younger cohorts, and will risk the
future stability of social security and medicare.
Conclusions
If what I have argued above is correct, then age discrimination is not simply the
result of policies that differentiate by age that have a negative impact over
one’s entire lifespan. Under this definition, which I have rendered explicitly in
the Lifetime Neutral Discrimination Principle, mandatory retirement may be
an acceptable policy if considered as part of a system of institutions designed
to improve one’s overall life prospects. The current Canada/Quebec Pension
Plan, and other public policies which sacrifice distributive justice for younger
cohorts to provide utilitarian benefits which benefit older cohorts, would
appear to constitute unjustified age discrimination under the LNDP. This
contradicts popular perception, which sees the obvious discrimination of
forcing somebody to retire or refusing somebody a heart transplant simply
because they have turned sixty-five as unjust, while the more subtle, genuinely
unjust forms of discrimination built into tax systems and demographic trends
escape public notice. The courts and academic commentators on
discrimination must radically alter their perspective on age discrimination to
account for the twin facts that differential treatment of persons according to
age group may be justified because all persons age, while systemic
discrimination against particular cohorts is a grave injustice because people
remain part of the same cohort at whatever stage of life they are at. As the next
decades progress, with increased life expectancies, rising health care costs,
and the aging of the baby boom population, these forms of discrimination will
come to far outweigh possible explicit acts of legislative age differentiation in
their potential social impact. These trends will give rise to new claims from the
left that the collective rights of younger and future generations should override
the rights of (older) individuals, while those on the right will call for a
libertarian slashing of social programs to prevent generational inequity. Given
a court system and political culture that is based on the principles of liberal
equality, and the threat such collectivist or libertarian claims would pose to it,
demonstrating and rectifying systemic discrimination against birth cohorts
that violate fair equality of opportunity will be crucial to preserving the
stability of our social system.
Notes
1. Douglas Coupland, Generation X (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 21.
2. Gary Wedeking, “Is Mandatory Retirement Unfair Age Discrimination?” Canadian Journal
of Philosophy 20:3 (September, 1990), p. 323.
3. Ibid., p. 323.
4. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Children’s Rights: A Legal Perspective,” in Patricia A. Vardin
and Ilene N. Brody, eds., Children’s Rights: Contemporary Perspectives (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1979), p. 104.
5. Wedeking, p. 424.
6. Brennan J. Frontiero v. Richardson 411 U.S. 677 (1973) at 686.
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Justice and the New Generation Gap
7. Samuel La Selva, “Mandatory Retirement: Intergenerational Justice and the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 20:1 (March,
1987), p. 153.
8. Ibid., p. 153.
9. Robert J. Drummond, “Commentary on `Mandatory Retirement: Intergenerational Justice
and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ by Samuel LaSelva,” Canadian Journal
of Political Science 21:3 (September, 1988), p. 587.
10. Ibid., p. 587.
11. Norman Daniels, Am I My Parents’ Keeper? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988),
p. 12.
12. Ibid., p. 13.
13. Ibid., p. 13.
14. Drummond, p. 595.
15. Ibid., p. 588.
16. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 408.
17. Ibid., p. 293.
18. Ibid., p. 66.
19. Leslie A. Jacobs, “Employment Equity, Pay Equity, and Equality of Opportunity,” in
François-Pierre Gingras, ed., Gender and Politics in Contemporary Canada (forthcoming),
p. 7.
20. Rawls, p. 73.
21. Ibid., 137.
22. B.M. Barry, “Justice Between Generations,” in P.M.S. Hacker, ed., Law, Morality, and
Society: Essays in Honour of H.L.A. Hart (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), p. 278.
23. Daniels, p. 41.
24. Ibid., p. 63.
25. David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, II, iii, 3.
26. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Person, Pt. III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
27. Daniels, pp. 174-176.
28. Ibid., p. 130.
29. Rawls, p. 178.
30. Rita Campbell, “The Problems of Fairness,” in Michael J. Boskin, ed., The Crisis of Social
Security: Problems and Prospects (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies,
1978), p. 131.
31. A. Romaniuc, Current Demographic Analysis: Fertility in Canada From Baby Boom to
Baby Bust (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1984), p. 124.
32. Ann Finlayson, Whose Money Is It Anyway? The Showdown on Pensions (Toronto: Viking,
1988), pp. 59-60.
33. Henry J. Aaron, Barry P. Bosworth, and Gary Burtless, Can America Afford to Grow Old?
(Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989), p. 48.
34. “Income Shifts Pose New Problems,” Financial Post, August 10, 1992, p. 7.
35. This presents something of a dilemma for mandatory retirement, however. Earlier, it was
argued that mandatory retirement could be justified under the LNDP as protecting one’s
interest as a young person. The prospect of a large cohort retiring too rapidly presents the
opposite problem — not that younger workers will not have access to jobs, but that they will
face too high a tax burden to pay for the retired. Thus, it will be seen that the LNDP only
allows for what Drummond calls the “weaker” argument that liberal justice may allow
mandatory retirement, not that mandatory retirement is necessarily required for liberal
justice. Again, we see the importance of periodic reviews of policies (such as retirement age
and its voluntary or mandatory nature) for cohort relative effects.
36. “Income Shifts Pose New Problems,” p. 7.
37. Ibid., p. 7.
38. J. Myles, G. Picot, and T. Warnell, “Wages and Jobs in the 1980s: Changing Youth Wages
and the Declining Middle,” Statistics Canada Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper
Series (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1988), p. 144.
39. Ibid., p. 89.
40. David K. Foot, Canada’s Population Outlook (Toronto: Lorimer, 1982), p. 45-56.
41. Finlayson, p. 200.
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42. Samuel H. Preston, “Children and the Elderly: Divergent paths for America’s Dependents,”
Demography 21:4 (November, 1984), pp. 447-448.
43. Ibid., p. 446.
44. Finlayson, p. 200.
45. Daniels, pp. 137-138.
46. Rawls, p. 3.
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Rights and Freedoms.” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 20:1 (1987), pp. 149-162.
————. “Reply: Rethinking Equal Opportunity.” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 21:3
(1988), pp. 597-598.
Longman, P. “Justice Between Generations.” The Atlantic Monthly, 255:6 (1985), pp. 73-81.
Myles, J., Picot, G., and Wannell, T. “Wages and Jobs in the 1980s: Changing Youth Wages and
the Declining Middle.” Statistics Canada Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series,
No. 17. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1988.
Pesando, J.E., and Rea, S.A. Public and Private Pensions in Canada: An Economic Analysis.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.
Preston, Samuel H. “Children and the Elderly: Divergent Paths for America’s Dependents,”
Demography, 21:4 (1984), pp. 435-456.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Romaniuc, A. Current Demographic Analysis – Fertility in Canada: From Baby-boom to Babybust.
Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1984.
Russell, Louise B. The Baby Boom Generation and the Economy. Washington: Brookings
Institution, 1982.
Wedeking, Gary. “Is Mandatory Retirement Unfair Age Discrimination?” Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 20:3 (1990), pp. 321-334.
130

Robert Drummond
Rejoinder to “Justice and the New Generation
Gap” by Mark T. Cameron
The author makes a valuable and interesting contribution to the debate over
intergenerational justice, expanding consideration of the concept beyond the
question of mandatory retirement (where he/she rightly observes much of the
debate has up to now taken place). The most important contribution the article
makes however is to argue the desirability of employing what the author calls a
“life span neutral discrimination principle” to assess the justifiability of
apparently discriminatory policies. By such a principle, a policy that
discriminated on the basis of age would be justified if the person whose
preference is defeated (the person discriminated against) would rationally
prefer such a policy “in a neutral bargaining situation as likely to improve
his/her past and future life prospects if considered over the course of his/her
life span.” Such a rational preference necessarily relies on a calculation about
the likelihood of a policy’s improving one’s life prospects, and while that
calculation is easy if one is being asked in a particular moment to choose
employment or unemployment, it is more difficult when one is being asked
over one’s life span to accept a policy of mandatory retirement as likely to
make employment in earlier life stages more certain. What if the empirical
premise on which the calculation rests is flawed? What if the number of jobs
available for young workers is largely unrelated to the number of jobs
currently held by older workers? Intuitively of course, such a finding seems
absurd, but since the volume and quality of available work fluctuates widely in
response to a number of factors, it is not difficult to envision an economic
scenario in which jobs for persons entering the labour force increase without
anyone retiring at the upper end of the age scale, or (perhaps more easily
envisioned in the present economic climate) a scenario in which jobs for young
workers contract despite substantial retirements at later ages. One could even
construct a scenario in which the quality of work and contribution to the
economy of older workers might be such that the very act of removing them
from the workforce could actually reduce the number of jobs available overall.
What are the rights of younger and older workers then: “What policy is just in
that event!” Would it be rational to prefer, in a neutral bargaining situation, a
policy of mandatory retirement if it did not seem likely to improve one’s life
prospects, given all the other factors that will have effect? If not, would it be
just to introduce such a policy?
The author correctly observes that age is not like race or sex as a ground of
distinction/discrimination, since “each person usually passes through each age
group and stage of life,” and thus “[p]eople may agree to be treated unequally
at different stages of life in order to achieve more equal treatment over their
entire life span.” Of course, one’s entire life span must be viewed either
prospectively or retrospectively, and the aim of just policy should be to
provide conditions that would rationally be chosen if one could look at ones
whole life, in all directions as it were. When we address policies affecting the
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later life stages of course, we have the opportunity of hindsight and could
conceivably tailor policies for different cohorts (or individuals) to take
account of their life experiences. Such variation could be seen as just by some
accounts but would undoubtedly raise questions of fairness in the minds of
those at earlier life stages who would be uncertain what policies would
eventually be applied to them. Is it just, however, to impose the same
requirements to retire on two groups of people, one of whom may have
experienced involuntarily delayed entry to the labour force (either by systemic
sex discrimination of an earlier era, or economic circumstance like the great
Depression) and the other of whom may have benefited from a post-war
economic boom and largely uninterrupted employment? We would be assisted
in answering this question if there were empirical evidence to show whether
different age cohorts could expect to experience roughly the same number of
years of employment availability, but I suspect such evidence is not easy to
come by.
Finally, the author addresses pension plans and the baby boom and rightly
observes that the contributory part of the Canadian pension system—the
Canada Pension Plan—operates not as a funded pension but on a pay-as-yougo
basis. It therefore results in an intergenerational transfer that is hard indeed
to justify. Few would object, I believe, if the money raised by government
pension plan contributions were actuarially set, so as to be sufficient when
invested to fund completely the pension obligations thereby created—as
would be the case with a private pension scheme. However, again we would be
helped in assessing the desirability of this policy (and maybe its justice) if we
had the answer to an empirical question. In order fully to fund Canada
Pensions, the government would have to raise from currently employed
persons (including the bulk of the post-war baby boom) enormous sums of
money which it would then have to invest. Since the agency involved is
government, it is prudent to recognize this as a large to increase, the proceeds
of which would either be invested in private securities, or in public capital
works. In the latter cast, the pension contributions would in a sense turn from a
tax into a kind of government debenture, since the pension fund obligations
could be met only if the money realized a return that allowed the fund to grow.
Indeed this is the way Canada Pension funds were employed (usually as loans
to provincial governments) in the period before the plan’s obligations began to
match, and then outstrip, its income. Now suppose it were determined that the
growth of the economy, and thus the income of the society,could be increased
more rapidly if contributions to Government pensions were not increased (to
be invested by government), but instead were left in private hands for a variety
of private investment and consumption decisions, with taxes to be collected
later as needed from a larger, wealthier economy? (Of course, the taxes would
still be needed; it is a question of when. Moreover the opposite proposition
about the effects of government investment pools could also be argued.) In any
case, the decision whether a pay-as-you-go pension plan is the cause of an
unjust intergenerational transfer of wealth relies, I believe, on the answer to an
empirical research question—is a generation better off if it is taxed to fund the
pensions of those who have retired, or taxed to fund its own pensions, when the
latter option might adversely affect economic performance? This is a difficult
and thorny problem to be sure, but in principle one capable of having evidence
brought to bear on its solution. Of course the problem is in part related to the
different sizes of age cohorts—and the changing old-age dependency ratio.
However there is nothing an individual can do to affect the size of his own birth
cohort, so it is a complicated matter to serve justice while taking account of
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Rejoinder
those size differences. Again however it is a matter well-served, I think, by the
application of empirical data.
In short, a major part of my argument in response to Samuel LaSelva on
intergenerational justice was the contention that our answers to these
normative questions would be much assisted by some empirical research. I feel
that this argument retains validity, even in the face of the present author’s
improved analysis of the intergenerational justice issue.
135

Mark T. Cameron
Reply to Rejoinder
Professor Drummond questions the Lifespan Neutral Discrimination Principle
as it would apply in two situations: mandatory retirement, and full funding of
public pensions. In both cases, he questions the empirical premises on which
mandatory retirement and full funding might be made acceptable under the
LNDP. First, he questions whether a policy of mandatory retirement would in
fact increase job opportunities for younger workers, suggesting that there may
be no relationship between jobs held by older workers and the availability of
work to the young. If this were in fact the case, mandatory retirement would not
be an acceptable public policy, as it would not be likely to enhance anyone’s
overall life prospects. Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience,
however, I suspect that the larger scale empirical research which Drummond
calls for (and which is fully consistent with the approach to public policy
which I have advocated) would confirm that there is a relationship between
jobs held by older workers and the availability of employment to the young.
On the question of pensions, Drummond does raise a troubling problem: the
full funding of pensions would lead to the creation of a massive capital pool in
government hands which would undoubtedly distort the market economy and
could, if poorly managed, lead to worsened economic performance which may
result in reduced pension benefits for all recipients. For that reason, a fully
funded pension plan may not be prudent, but some thought should be given to
creating a pension fund surplus large enough to keep the fund solvent despite
demographic shifts. Given the already low rates of savings and public
investment in North America, I suspect that such a fund could be put to
effective use, although I share Drummond’s fear that government may not be
the best manager of such large amounts of money. I would suggest that perhaps
a number of competitive, privately managed investment funds analogous to
union pension funds be established with the revenues collected, rather than the
money simply going into government coffers along with general revenues.
The fact that the debate over mandatory retirement and pension funding levels
has been narrowed to questions of economic utility, however, suggests that on
grounds of justice, there are no principled objections to something like the
LNDP being used to assess public policy decisions or to the concept of
differential treatment by age group if the net result will improve the life
prospects of all birth cohorts.
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Caterina Pizanias
Re-viewing Modernist Painting and Criticism in
the Canadian Prairies: A Case Study from
Edmonton*
Abstract
The basic theoretical assumption of this paper is that art is socially
constructed; the methodological schema upon which its diachronic and
synchronic discussion of modernism in the prairies is based relates to Pierre
Bourdieu’s notions of “fields.” The first part of the paper provides a historical
overview of the various generations of painters and critics—those born and
trained abroad as well as those born and trained on the prairies. The second
half focuses on the intertwined careers of Douglas Haynes (a painter) and
Karen Wilkin (a critic). The modernism discussed is that of Clement
Greenberg and “generation” is understood as the distillation of mainstream
values at any given time. The final part provides support to the thesis that the
prairie, as physical and social environment, has affected and is affecting both
the art produced and its reception.
Résumé
L’auteure se base sur l’hypothèse que l’art est une construction sociale. Le
schéma méthodologique sur lequel repose son examen diachronique et
synchronique du modernisme dans les provinces de la Prairie se rattache à la
notion de « champs » élaborée par Pierre Bourdieu. La première partie du
texte fait l’historique des diverses générations de peintres et critiques, tant
celles nées et formées à l’extérieur que celles nées et formées dans la Prairie.
La deuxième partie se penche sur l’entrelacement des carrières de Douglas
Haynes (peintre) et Karen Wilkin (critique). Le modernisme à l’examen est
celui de Clement Greenberg, et on entend par le terme « génération » la
distillation des valeurs prépondérantes à n’importe quel moment donné. La
dernière partie vient soutenir la thèse que la Prairie, en tant que lieu physique
et social, a influencé et influence l’art et la réception de celui-ci.
Painting was not always a commodity. In earlier times, it was closely
associated with the functional needs of the community. Increasing
industrialization brought about changes in the production and consumption of
art that made painting not only a means of expression or enjoyment, but also an
instrument of power for the church and the nobility. The turning point came
with the privatization of this power. When painters began using easels, they
produced small, portable objects that lent themselves to ownership by, and
transference between, individuals. Paintings thus became commodities not
unlike others traded in open markets. From medieval times to the present, the
production and distribution of paintings was controlled first by the guilds, then
by the academies, and finally—inextricably implicating aesthetic value and
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commercial success—by the art market. Increasingly identifying paintings
with their monetary counterpart, this market has become ever more
speculative and monopolistic in its practices. One notable by-product is its
concomitantly increasing vulnerability to the “boom and bust” cycles of the
broader, capitalist economy. The most common way to explain this
phenomenon has been in economic terms. But does this suffice? Was it only
economy that determined the boom and bust of Edmonton modernism? To
understand fully, I think we have to give more consideration to the specific
context.
Art, removed from its everyday praxis, came to Canada via French and English
settlers; 1 art as a separate and autonomous institution was established after
Confederation as the result of efforts by a number of Canada’s viceroys to
create a “national culture,” 2 in which they were assisted by the Canadian
Pacific Railway. 3 Modernist art in the form of abstract expressionism came to
the prairies because a number of artists in Saskatchewan felt totally left out of
the central Canadian art discourse. As John O’Brian has documented, it was
“anti-eastern” rather than “pro-American” sentiments that brought the New
Yorkers to Saskatchewan at the by now famous Emma Lake workshops, 4
which began in 1955, took place annually, and managed to not invite any
central Canadians until the early 1970s. Clement Greenberg came to Canada
also by invitation, of the editors of Canadian Art in 1963 to provide a critical
review of the artistic scene on the prairies, presumably because the artistic
establishment needed the validation of a critic from south of the border; the
habit of going south for validation has continued unabated to this date. Arthur
McKay, a painter from Saskatchewan, wrote in 1964 in Canadian Art
regarding some opposition that arose as a result of American dominance at the
Emma Lake workshops: “Curiously enough, we accept political coercion,
economic domination, Coca-Cola, and pre-digested mass communication,
while we resist exposure to the more human and civilized arts from the
U.S.A.” 5 Greenbergian modernism came to the prairies via Regina and
Saskatoon, but has found a welcome home in Edmonton’s art world.
The first part of this paper provides a historical overview of the various
generations of painters and critics who have left their mark on the prairies,
beginning with the foreign-born and -trained who came to Canada looking for
adventure, and those who stayed as teachers; the next generation is then
examined, those who were born and trained in Canada and became
professional painters, teachers and gatekeepers. The second half of the paper
focuses on Edmonton and the career of Douglas Haynes, an abstract painter
who was born and raised in Regina, educated at the Alberta College of Art in
Calgary, and is now established as a senior painter (third generation) in
Edmonton’s art world of painting, a world seen by most as a historical anomaly
for remaining a stronghold of modernist artistic practices well into the 1990s.
The discussion will offer some re-visionist explanation of the “route” of
modernism on the prairies, its successes and failures. My basic theoretical
assumption is that art is socially constructed, 6 and the methodological schema
on which my diachronic and synchronic discussion of the art world is based
relates to Pierre Bourdieu’s “intellectual field.” 7 I use the term “generation” as
do Randy Rosen and Catherine Brawer, in Making Their Mark, to refer to “the
distillation of the values of the mainstream” at any given time, when the
mainstream is understood as “a filtering mechanism—identifying,
legitimizing, and propagating certain styles, world views, and interests.” 8 The
modernism discussed is that of Clement Greenberg and his many epigoni who
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have found a permanent or temporary home in the art world of Edmonton; the
fundamental tenets of Greenbergian modernism are (a) that criticism can and
ought to be value-free, removed from the urgencies of everyday life and (b)
that it is based solely on the inherent qualities of the medium, such as colour,
flatness, scale, edge—anything else is totally irrelevant.
I have chosen to focus on Douglas Haynes—a third-generation artist—and his
career for a number of reasons. First, because of his thorough prairie
provenance: born in Regina, trained in Calgary, making Edmonton his artistic
home (as opposed to Jock MacDonald, foreign-born and -trained settler, first
generation; Illingworth Kerr, prairie-born, domestically trained by foreign
teachers, second generation). Secondly, because of his lengthy exhibition and
critical interpretation record within local, national and international settings;
and thirdly, and most importantly, because of the early and less than
enthusiastic reception of his work by both Clement Greenberg and Karen
Wilkin and their subsequent change of mind regarding Haynes’ work, a
change of mind which best exemplifies and unmasks the purported a-political
position of Greenbergian criticism, a rather politically committed position to
suppress the personal and social in art. The manifest position of orthodox
modernist criticism—that great art is but a succesion of great stylistic ideas
exhibited by a roster of great masters—masks “the unexplored meanings,
silent contradictions, unseen conflicts, and inarticulate ironies....the truly
fascinating questions surrounding the social ground of art, the psychological
text of artistic subjectivity, and the ideological manufacturing of an aesthetic
school’s attributes get totally lost in the rhetorical fog.” 9 In other words, the
prairie as physical and social environment is left out for the benefit of the tenets
of modernist criticism that should remain uncontaminated by the exigencies of
everyday life.
In writing about modernism’s route through the prairies and its effects on
Edmonton’s art in particular, one cannot escape the critical influence and
itinerant presence of Clement Greenberg and Karen Wilkin. It is Karen Wilkin,
the critic/author whose professional provenance (U.S. Ivy League trained and
close associate of Greenberg) allowed her the “authority” to consecrate/
valorize local artists/art objects for a national and international audience, who
has become more closely associated with prairie modernism in general and
Douglas Haynes in particular. And it is the same provenance that kept Wilkin
from accepting the role of “place” in the work of Haynes in her writing
(although instinctively she must have recognized it since her valorization of
his work became greater the more he allowed his sense of “place” in his work);
her itinerant life as a writer/critic/curator forced her to adapt her views,
according to her new audiences/readers in U.S. , Central Canada and England
thus precluding her from becoming a mentor to other local artists/writers/
curators.
Taking my theoretical cues from Pierre Bourdieu, and art critical temperament
from writers such as Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Timothy Luke, Brian
O’Doherty and David Carrier, 10 I will attempt in the pages that follow to re-tell
the passage of modernism through Edmonton, focusing on the peculiarities of
experience among some of the members of its art world of painting. It is my
intent to show that art worlds are ripe with contradictions enforced upon their
members through the uneasy alliance of aesthetic idealism and commercial
success. In telling this story, I will be introducing many voices and points of
view in a polyvocal narrative, a narrative that will not be appropriating these
voices through “summaries,” since these same voices have not had the
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opportunity to critically contextualize their discourse bases: they are voices
from personal interviews, excerpts from art reviews, published conversations,
personal correspondence and other such anecdotal, un-theorized sources. This
essay may be seen both as a document and an analysis of an ethnographic case
study contributing to the development of this genre within contemporary
artistic discourses. I have made frequent use of long quotes in order to write the
ethnography as conversation and social practice between the subjects as
opposed to the traditional descriptions of the subjects’ reality and opinions
written compendiously through the privileged “I/eye” of the objective
ethnographer. There are no final truths to this story, or any other story; but its
“telling” might reveal something new about art, the Canadian prairie and its
creative temperament.
A Historical Overview
Alberta had its own economic boom years in the period from 1978 to 1983.
Especially in Edmonton, the art community benefited from this boom as much
as the oil barons. Many new galleries opened their doors, and many new artists
emerged, albeit momentarily, from obscurity. The mode of preference was
New York-style abstract art. Sales were brisk, with collectors coming from
across Canada and the United States to buy paintings from local artists. This
process of embourgeoisification was not unlike many rags-to-riches stories:
the railroad brought progress, oil brought capitalism, capitalism brought
optimism and prosperity, prosperity brought Americanization,
Americanization brought peddlers, mercenaries, and promoters of all things
American, including ways to make and sell art. And like many rags-to-riches
stories, what went up came down: when the Arab states lowered oil prices,
Alberta’s oil became unprofitable, and so all the specialists and mercenaries
left the province. Things went bust in Alberta, and Edmonton’s art world was
no exception. Abstract painters moved from gallery to gallery in futile pursuit
of dwindling sales, and by the mid 1980s, many of the new galleries had gone
out of business. With the change of climate, the once almost monolithic New
York influence began to wane, being replaced by more personal modes of
painting.
Alberta has a short history—it became a province only in 1905; before that it
was part of the Northwest Territories. It was first “discovered” by white
explorers in quest of a “Northwest Passage” during the second half of the
eighteenth century. The Hudson Bay Company quickly followed, and by 1754
had established a flourishing trade with the Plains Indians. Things continued in
much the same vein for two hundred years: the white presence in Alberta
consisted of adventurers, explorers, fur traders, wolf hunters, prospectors,
fugitives, surveyors and missionaries. In time, they were joined by the North-
West Mounted Police and, after 1873, government functionaries and railroad
engineers. The one thing all these groups had in common was that they were
“short-timers,” there for specific, limited purposes, rather than permanent
settlers. 11
“Real” settlers—Anglo- and French-Canadians, with a leavening of
Americans—began to filter into the region once the railroad was established.
They found an empty, inhospitable land, full of tangled bush, unyielding
muskeg, treacherous rivers and wild, wind-swept, open spaces. Their reactions
ranged from disappointment to trepidation. Rebuffed if not openly threatened
by the land and its inhabitants, these early pioneers responded by withdrawing
into self. Practical exigencies aside, they developed a surprising facility for
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“seeing” only the view from the fort, a garrison mentality they kept long after
the land was cleared and the fences put up. 12
Towards the end of the century, a different breed of immigrant began to settle
in Alberta. The newcomers were not of English, American or French descent,
but from the rural areas of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. Having fled
from regimes that were politically, religiously and economically oppressive,
they bypassed the urban centres of Toronto and Montreal and headed directly
for the West. 13 These second-wave settlers were not sustained by the same
notions of individual liberty that had motivated their predecessors, especially
American. They left old worlds not out of a burning need to create new ones,
but in order to salvage old ways in a new environment. This orientation to the
past, of course, made the encounter trauma all the more severe. The
environment on the prairie was nothing like home in either its climate or its
scale. They reacted to the vast, flat, empty landscape, the long and harsh
winters, and the sterilizing light the same way as those who came before them,
travellers and settlers, artists and laymen alike: they were repelled. 14
The propensity of the prairie “to enter into almost everything” 15 has been well
documented in the literature, as have the effects of its visual tyranny on its
beholders. Geographer Ronald Rees has been particularly astute in analyzing
the psychology of western settlement. Canadians, he writes, moved west not to
escape from civilization but to (re)establish one. 16 The prairie was nothing like
what they had experienced before; it engulfed them in total isolation and
forced them, out of fear, to recoil into what they knew best: the ways of the old
world. “They were physically in one world and spiritually in another.” 17 In
response to this disquieting situation, they immediately busied themselves
clearing the land and surrounding themselves with shelter belts of tall trees.
These trees not only protected them from the harshness of the weather, but—
almost more important—defined “their” space in the barren land. Inside the
shelter belts, houses were built and decorated, gardens planted, and rituals
enacted to remind them of the life and place they had left behind. This pattern
of first responses was reinforced by ongoing demographic trends. The prairie,
because of its unforgiving nature, and its distance from the industrial and
political/cultural centre of Canada, created small outcroppings of population,
communities without much contact with each other, and inhabitants who felt
inferior to the land. The precariousness of their position ensured that each new
group of arrivals would inherit a defensive stance toward the landscape,
uniquely Canadian. 18
According to available data, 19 the first person to paint professionally in
Edmonton was Paul Kane, an Englishman who lived in Toronto. Kane’s
artistic education was very limited aside from an extended trip to Europe,
where he spent most of his time viewing continental art and copying the Italian
masters. What was ultimately more important, during a visit to England he had
the opportunity to view George Catlin’s famous exhibition of Indian paintings.
Inspired by the American, Kane determined to make it his life’s goal to record
the folkways of the Natives of North America.
Kane did not, however, emulate Catlin’s relatively spontaneous style of
working. 20 He preferred to make only quick sketches on the spot during his
travels and then return to Toronto, where he turned them into polished studio
paintings. Not surprisingly, the overall impression given by this oeuvre is not
of the Canadian West, but of nineteenth-century Europe. Kane painted the
landscape according to the standards not of nature but of culture: that is, as wild
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but picturesque. In this, Kane was typical of painters who came through
Alberta during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If conventions
changed, the tendency to be conventional did not. In 1880, when the Royal
Academy was established, its annual exhibition was dominated by renditions
of the Rocky Mountains in the fashionable, sublime style. Part of the reason for
this homogeneity—again—was economic. With the railway completed, an
increasing number of artists were commissioned to paint pictures of the terrain
it traversed. Because the primary purpose of these productions was
propaganda (the CPR wanted to encourage tourists; the government and its
developers wanted to settle the area as quickly as possible), it was imperative
that they show the landscape as enticing, and that meant repackaging it
according to current aesthetic norms. Considering its continuity with earlier
and later trends, however, the preference for distancing through technique—
the preference, even more, for “full” rather than “empty” scenery—was
probably inspired as much by the overwhelming impact of the land itself as by
the interests of patrons.
Like the first settlers, then, the first painters arrived in the West with their
values pre-formed. Like the settlers, the only way they could assimilate the
unassimilable prairies was to clutter it with “things,” or focus on the near-tohand.
Almost without exception they used imported idioms; the duplication of
the old cultural standards made them feel less alien in their new and strange
land. (Even the later, putatively revolutionary Group of Seven were strongly
predisposed by European influences like Art Nouveau and the Scandinavian
school.) It was easier to ignore nature than to face it; by transforming the
strange into the familiar, they were not simply taking artistic shortcuts but
practising a kind of “mental self-protection.” 21
Alberta began to change around the turn of the century. With the establishment
of cities, the permanent population expanded rapidly. The first farming and
ranching communities developed close to the American border. With the
railroads, new ideas began to arrive from central Canada. The easterners
brought with them notions of “mechanization” and “agribusiness” ways of
subdividing the landscape into rural and urban. This was only the beginning. In
1947—before even the first generation of settlers had died—the discovery of
oil in Leduc was to change the prairie look and prairie life beyond recognition.
To this point, the economy had been largely agricultural. Within a mere
handful of years, a massive influx of speculators, engineers and foreign capital
would lay the ground for an oil and gas industry that rapidly became Alberta’s
economic mainstay. Oil brought capitalism; capitalism ushered in an
economic boom. The general euphoria swept Edmonton into a new role as the
gateway to a North rich in resources and wealth.
Beguiled by the apparently limitless generosity of a suddenly beneficent
nature, Albertans embraced not only an American style of industry and
management, but also a uniquely American vision of unlimited economic
expansion. In the 1970s, an increasingly urban middle class of educated
professionals—corporate lawyers, geologists, engineers, landsmen,
consultants, accountants and the like—gave Peter Lougheed’s Progressive
Conservative party a mandate to transform the province from an economic
satellite into a centre of power, wealth and cosmopolitan culture. 22 Caught up
in the excitement, Edmonton’s art world began to identify with New York’s
post-war rags-to-riches success story. “Edmonton does not have to look to
Toronto or Montreal for inspiration and/or legitimation,” was the cry.
“Edmonton can go directly to New York—and vice-versa.”
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The Arab oil embargo of 1973 put the final touches to this inflation. In the
wake of unprecedented prosperity, Edmonton’s population increased, monies
were poured into its cultural institutions, and many young art professionals
came to settle from places as close as Calgary and as far away as New York and
London. The newcomers were quickly absorbed by the university, the
museum and the commercial galleries, creating an even more inviting
environment for both working and would-be artists. The results were not long
in appearing: the city’s thriving art community began to attract attention from
such internationally known artists and critics as Anthony Caro, Michael
Steiner, Kenworth Moffett, not to mention, of course, the ever-present
Clement Greenberg. The best and most visible of the galleries were those that
showed and supported abstract works; the news got around quickly that
Edmonton was the place to “buy good and cheap modern art.” 23
It is perhaps useful here to backtrack a little. If modernism came to Edmonton
with Americanization and prosperity, it came to America in the first place with
capitalism. In Europe, modernism as ideology and practice in art became
firmly entrenched during the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the
bourgeoisie became the keepers of knowledge and bearers of standards. In its
historical progression, this class gained control, first, of the academies, then of
the secondary institutions: the salons, art schools, galleries, journals. Dealers
and critics became increasingly influential throughout the twentieth century
by setting the standards of excellence and by controlling the entrance and
progress (success or failure) of both artists and artistic styles. During the 1940s
and 1950s, an expanded (i.e. more aggressively commercial) version of
modernism appeared in New York, the new centre of late capitalism. It was
this version that was adopted by Edmonton, an art community whose majority
of artists still clung to the canons of the late nineteenth century. 24 One of the
most important of these was the belief that art was “created” rather than
“produced”—that it arose, as it were, as an unfettered, unmeditated emanation
of the individual imagination.
The one person most directly responsible for introducing abstract
expressionism to western Canada was Jock Macdonald, a Scottish-born
abstractionist (and disciple of Kandinsky) who had worked with New Yorker
Hans Hoffman. In 1946, Macdonald taught at the Provincial Institute of
Technology and Art in Calgary; among those who fell under his influence were
Marion Nicoll, Roy Kiyooka, Arthur McKay, Ronald Bloore and Illingworth
Kerr. The following year, the latter was appointed director of the Art Institute
in Calgary, making 1947 notable in the history of painting in Alberta for more
than the discovery of oil. Kerr’s open enthusiasm for the current New-York
style of abstraction was to critically influence the post-war generation of
students. Maturing artistically during the very height of the oil boom, these
young modernists were well placed—by virtue of both age and idiom—to “get
in on” the market expansion, thus ensuring that the Edmonton art scene was
dominated during this critical period by artists whose major interests departed
radically from the erstwhile dominance of landscape and naturalism. 25
In 1956, at the annual American Abstract Painters Exhibition in New York, the
art critic Clement Greenberg saw and expressed an interest in the work of
William Ronald and Jock Macdonald; within a year he made his first visit to
Canada. He was invited to lead the 1962 Emma Lake Workshop in
Saskatchewan, as a result of a recommendation and proding by Barnett
Newman, Herman Cherry and other New York artists, a meeting which was
attended by many prairie artists. Regina had been the first of the western cities
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to develop an active and creative art community. The “Regina Five”—Arthur
McKay, Ronald Bloore, Roy Kiyooka, Douglas Morton and Ted Godwin—led
the way in breaking the grip of the region’s geographic and artistic isolation. A
product of their commitment, the Emma Lake workshops changed not only the
preferred style of participating artists, but also their outlook. The 1959 session
was to prove critical for Alberta. That year McKay, Kiyooka and Bloore
invited Barnett Newman for a visit, thus ushering in the real advent of western
Canadian abstract expressionism. One of the participants in the 1965
workshop was a young art student from Regina by the name of Terry Fenton
who was later, by a circuitous route, to become the catalyst for abstract
painting in Edmonton. From 1965 to 1971, Fenton worked at the Norman
Mackenzie Gallery in Regina. During this period he met and struck up a strong
and lasting friendship with Greenberg. 26 When he was appointed director of
the Edmonton Art Gallery in 1972 (Karen Wilkin, an American, had already
opened the door to abstract expressionism as the gallery’s chief curator), he
brought to bear not only his own influence, but that of one of the most widely
proclaimed prophets of modernism. Greenberg began visiting the Edmonton
art community on a regular basis, which visits have continued ever since.
At first, Greenberg was not really impressed with what he saw in Edmonton.
His response was far from unequivocally negative, however. He attributed the
lack of coherence in the art community to the fact that Edmonton was rapidly
expanding. And he was struck by the fact that if Edmonton painting was
“manneristic,” it was also aggressive. Aggressiveness and control were
qualities much appreciated by Greenberg. During the 1940s he had touted “the
greater vitality, virility and brutality of the American artist” as a means of
breaking the hold of Europe. This new visual ideology, he said, according to
Serge Guilbaut would:
transform the provincialism of American art into inter- nationalism
by replacing Parisian standards that had until then defined the notion
of quality in art (grace, craft, finish) with American ones (violence,
spontaneity, incompleteness). Brutality and vulgarity were signs of
the direct, uncorrupted communication that contemporary life
demands. 27
These and similar theoretical claims provided much of the force behind the
merchandising of modernism in post-war New York: on the analogue of
commodity capitalism (the paradigm for institutionalized aggressiveness),
commercial success equalled—indeed, proved—aesthetic success. Small
wonder that western Canadian painters fell under the spell of Greenberg’s
rhetoric. For once, an idiom came their way that seemed equal to the job at
hand. Empowering them with a larger-than-life confidence commensurate
with a larger-than-life landscape, it not only gave them at least symbolic
control and mastery over their feared environment, it could make them rich in
the process!
Girded with American optimism, Edmonton very quickly developed the
largest per capita community of abstract painters in the country. More to the
point, those within this community developed the conviction that they were
sitting on a gold mine. In the heady decades of the 1960s and 1970s.
Edmonton’s artists received constant encouragement from the city’s
gatekeepers that they were on the right track; that art was international, and that
if they persevered long enough they would triumph—critically and
financially—like their New York cousins. Just as economic realities put a
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quick end to Lougheed’s grandiose dreams of an independent Alberta,
however, they also did in the notion of a bottomless market for art.
In some ways at least, the fall was a “fortunate” one. Relieved of the pressures
of keeping up with (emulating) New York, the reluctantly dispossessed
Edmonton abstractionists began experimenting with less derivative styles.
Some of them began to modify their practice by introducing delimiting devices
such as drawing, to play with surface, texture and light, that would have
incurred the wrath of the New York deities. These new paintings looked quite
different from what was being produced elsewhere on the continent. They
were individualized; they told a story of being-in-the-world, especially in the
world of the Alberta prairie, with its unending horizon, geometrical flatness
and sterilizing light. Judging by both the quality and the particulars of these
renditions, it seems plausible to speculate that the loosening of the grip of the
American paradigm allowed/encouraged some of Edmonton’s abstract
painters to develop, for the first time, a vernacular that expressed their sense of
groundedness, their sense (not unlike the existential anxiety evinced by their
predecessors) of being surrounded and diminished by an illimitable space. One
of the most successful of these new prairie storytellers is Douglas Haynes.
The Making of an Artistic Career
Douglas Haynes was born in 1936 in Regina, Saskatchewan. He recalls that he
made a conscious decision to study drawing in third grade; a friend’s brother
taught him how to draw cartoons, and he was totally fascinated with the
process and his ability. He decided that when he grew up he wanted to study
drawing, or maybe architecture. When the time came, he enrolled at the
Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary (now the Alberta
College of Art), graduating in 1958 with a commercial art diploma. He says,
“Once I got to art school and got into painting classes, I realized, as bad as I
was, I really liked it.” 28 He worked briefly as a commercial artist but very
quickly realized that he “couldn’t stand the people I had to work with, and so I
got a job in an architect’s office, thinking that’s an option—and it took about a
week to realize that was not an option either!” Eventually, when it was
discovered that he was a graduate of an art school, he was promoted to
architectural renderer (as opposed to draftsman); all the while he continued
painting on his own time.
In 1960, someone showed Haynes a newspaper clipping advertising
scholarships for Canadians to study in Holland. He applied, won the
scholarship, and spent 1960-61 studying part-time at the Royal Academy of
Art in the Hague. Besides the obvious opportunity to study the Dutch masters,
Haynes was exposed to a different social organization of artistic occupations:
in Holland, professional artists were getting a monthly allowance to paint,
whereas Haynes, in Edmonton, had to keep a day job to feed his family. With
or without public allowance, Haynes kept painting because he really wanted
to: “You can find the way by trying to be on the dole, get grants, starve, or—I
was never the romantic—I found a way by making sure I got a job that would
feed me and my family, that would allow me to do what I want. Some people
think that was safety, I don’t. It was just a choice that I made. I want to paint and
I don’t want to starve my wife and kids.” He became involved in a cooperative
gallery where the artists and their families mounted exhibits and sold art. He
sold quite a few small pieces “for fifteen bucks a piece, and that was nice extra
money.”
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In 1962, Russell Harper from the National Gallery of Canada was travelling
across the country choosing works for the Fifth Biennial Exhibit. John
McGillvray, director of the EAG, asked local artists, including Doug Haynes,
to bring some work to the Edmonton Art Gallery. One of Haynes’ works was
sent to the Biennial: “Getting into that Biennial was a real big thing because it
made me realize that I was part of the national scene. It didn’t so much go to my
head as to my heart, I guess.” Haynes also went to the Sixth Biennial in 1964
and was appointed to an associate membership in the Royal Canadian
Academy of Arts in 1968.
In 1962, something happened that would ultimately mean a lot to Doug
Haynes—and to the rest of the Edmonton art community. In that year the
editors of Canadian Art asked Clement Greenberg to visit the prairies and
report on the state of the visual arts there; he published his findings in the
Spring 1963 issue of the magazine:
Abstract art in Edmonton, which was the first place I visited in
Alberta, was more provincial than in Saskatchewan. Art in Edmonton
has the benefit of a municipal supported art centre whose collection is
not to be sniffed at, and whose director, John McGillvray, is active as
well as informed. And Edmonton has an artists’ co-operative, the
Focus Gallery. But the art being produced there seemed to me to lack
the élan of art in Saskatchewan, nor did I get as vivid a sense of a
coherent artists’ community. Maybe this was because Edmonton is in
such a rapid state of expansion. It reminded me that the abstract art
showed the highest influence of New York that I had seen in prairie
Canada. The pictures of Ethel Christensen and Les Graff were not
only soaked in Tenth Street mannerisms, they were also brash and
expressive in a Tenth Street way. This is no verdict on the
potentialities of these two artists; but it does reflect very much on
their taste. In Douglas Haynes’ touched-up prints, I was even more
surprised to see the lay-out of Adolph Gottlieb’s “Burst” paintings
unabashedly present (though Gottlieb’s is the antipodes of Tenth
Street). This lay-out was handled, all the same, with a certain felicity,
that I had to conclude that Haynes had added something of his own to
the idea by reducing it in size. 29
Elsewhere in the same essay, Clement Greenberg, in discussing
representational painters, spoke of their treatment of the prairie:
In Saskatoon, however, the prairie seemed into almost everything
(and for an easterner like me the prairie was a far stranger sight than
the “bush,” which you can see in Maine and Quebec, too). The
problem was how to master the prairie’s lack of feature, and the most
usual solution was to find a town on it, or a clump of trees, or a
conspicuous slope. 30
Regardless of how strange the prairie might have looked to an easterner like
Greenberg, within a few years of that first visit, Edmonton was to become a
destination site (permanent, semi-permanent or transitory) to many persons
from Regina, New York and London, with training stops at Calgary and the
ACA or Saskatoon and the Emma Lake workshops. Haynes, as mentioned,
was born and raised in Regina, which in the 1960s was a hotbed of avant-garde
visual arts. Although he is younger than the Regina Five, he was in contact with
some of them and was aware of their artistic and political stands. In 1967,
Karen Wilkin, a New Yorker, came to Edmonton and got a job teaching art
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history at the University of Alberta, where she remained until 1971 when she
moved to the Edmonton Art Gallery as its chief curator until 1978. In 1972,
another Regina native who had there met and befriended Clement Greenberg
became the new director at the EAG: Terry Fenton. How the art of the prairies
—painting and sculpture—was made known to the outside world, how it was
rated and received, is intertwined with the careers, positions and positionings
of these three persons: Clement Greenberg, Terry Fenton and Karen Wilkin;
and the work of Douglas Haynes is no exception.
Haynes had continued working to support his family, selling small pieces for
extra cash and exhibiting not only at the biennials, but at the Focus Gallery
(1962), the Edmonton Art Gallery (1964) and the Allied Arts Centre in
Calgary (1969), among other places. Virgil Hammock, who organized
Haynes’ 1970 solo exhibit at the EAG, wrote of his work: “Doug Haynes’ only
subject is the Canadian Prairie…. He has surrendered to his environment but
has lost nothing in the battle. I don’t want to give the idea that Doug is a
backwoods regionalist or an artistic isolationist…. Doug is not an artist who is
fashionable or avant garde, but he is an artist whose work will grow on you if
you give it a chance. In an age where `mind blowing’ is the norm, the quiet
contemplative art of Doug Haynes is a pleasure.” 31 Elsewhere Hammock
wrote, “[Haynes’] paintings should, if there is any justice in this world, outlive
the fads that come and go in the art world and survive to take their place in
Canadian art history.” 32
In 1972, Karen Wilkin sent a report on the Canadian West to Art in America.
She began her essay by referring to an episode in Brendan Behan’s play The
Quare Fellow, where an Irishman is boasting for doing his time in an English
prison, a fact that carried high political currency among Irish dissidents but
only bemuses the warden, causing him to reflect on his prisoner’s “national
inferiority complex.” Wilkin, I presume placing herself in the warden’s
position, wrote: “Western Canadian artists suffer from a similar complaint;
already defensive about being Canadian, not American, they are doubly so
about being Western. Ironically, much art produced in the prairie provinces
and British Columbia is heavily influenced by New York and West Coast
trends, but the current emphasis here is on Canadian content in the arts.” 33 She
was actually reporting on an exhibit mounted in 1971 by the Edmonton Art
Gallery and subsequently toured to Calgary, Saskatoon and Victoria. Before I
report on what she had to say about Haynes’ work in the exhibit, it is important
that we read more about Wilkin’s understanding of Canada’s art world in the
early 1970s:
C.A.R., or Canadian Artists Representation, is a new and, at the
moment, loosely organized artists’ union. It urges galleries and
museums to pay exhibition fees and to encourage local talent.
Unofficially C.A.R. insists that member artists be aware of their
identity as Canadians, but it admits members who are merely
Canadian residents. The fact that the U.S., particularly New York,
has dominated that art world for the past twenty years is resented, and
has somehow been confused with economic and political
considerations. One suspects that if Paris were still the centre of the
art world, C.A.R. would be less nervous about outside influence….
The recent government statements urging both Canadian national
awareness and multi-culturalism have done nothing to lessen the
confusion, but Canadian content in the arts is the catch phrase, and a
sense of identity is emerging. 34
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And the sort of identity that was emerging, at least in the Canadian West,
according to Karen Wilkin, was the artists’ coming to terms with the
environment—physical and social—of the prairie:
The northern prairies are a unique landscape: enormous space, a
brilliant sky with spectacular cloud formations, clear and slanting
light. In winter, it is still more dramatic, with sparse calligraphic rows
of trees against the unrelenting whiteness…. Some western artists are
making use of their experiences with this environment, and their
work stands quite apart from the local interpretation of the current
New York idiom. 35
She singles out Haynes and Ihor Dmytruk as successfully responding to their
environment through their paintings:
Doug Haynes’ equally austere canvases seem chilled by the northern
winter, thawing occasionally to suggest the bare brown landscape of
early spring. Thick impasto, applied string and plaster form rich
texture. The paintings are tonal: luminous white, cool gray, browns
and beiges like dead grasses. Rough surfaces and bleached colours
suggest things weathered and aged; the canvas is often physically
split or grooved…. Texture gives way to tone, complexity to essential
shape. One can only guess at what is coming. 36
Compare Clyde McConnell, reviewing the same exhibit:
It is notable that few of the artists represented in “West ’71” are
concerned with developing an interpretation of their environment.
Without trying to project a particular value, I think this fact relates to
something in the character of life in the prairies, and to a lack of
intensity of communication between artists which operates
independently of style—concepts. 37
While the two eastern reviewers were finding the work done on the prairies
“exotic”-nice Wilkin and “exotic”-sombre McConnell art continued to be
produced there, more particularly by Haynes, who in the meantime was hired
by Ron Davey, then chair of the Fine Arts Department, first in a sessional and
later in a tenure-track position at the University of Alberta. In 1970, he joined
the faculty, and by mid-1971 he has abandoned the relief methods used in his
painting for the better part of the previous decade. He wanted to adopt “a more
direct painting process, one which would allow me a more organic and freer
way of working. This was unavoidable if I wished to stretch the boundaries of
personal imagery and expression established to that point.” 38 J. A. Forbes,
who wrote the catalogue of Haynes’ exhibit at the Glenbow, described the
changes in his work:
The first works in this series reveal a new concern for the totality of
the painted surface. There are no longer the mounds and channels of
earlier paintings. The relief, so far as it exists, is entirely the result of
impasto and the symbolic circles and lines are now almost casually
suggested with paint rather than built up or grouted out…. Haynes
has introduced a U-shaped form near the bottom of the painting but
gives it a completely different quality from the canals of earlier year
which were dug into the surface…. It would be interesting to
speculate on the sign itself and its possible significance, for it appears
with greater or lesser prominence in the first eight paintings in the
show…. 39
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A year after the above exhibit, Karen Wilkin wrote another essay on the
prairies and the art produced there for Canadian Forum. Again, she began with
a reference to a writer, André Malraux this time, quoting from his The Voices of
Silence: “What makes an artist is that in his youth he was more deeply moved
by his visual experience of works of art than by that of the things they
represent—and perhaps of Nature as a whole.” 40 Regardless of whether
Malraux is correct or not in his assertions, Wilkin continues with the following
claim about the prairie artist (always, for Wilkin, male):
He must be able to withstand isolation and lack of encouragement
from his community to a greater degree than his peers in a large urban
centres; he must tolerate the indifference or at best condescension of
the rest of Canada. If Malraux is right, he faces another grave
problem: the small number of serious galleries in the Prairies not only
makes it hard for him to exhibit his work, but makes it hard for him to
see the works of art of high quality. 41
Douglas Haynes miraculously survived intact in this rather bleak
environment; his work, like that of Otto Rogers of Saskatoon and D. T. Chester
of Regina, exhibited a slyness with colour, “sombre or close-valued colour,
often stressing surface or texture.” 42 Haynes’ work continued to be received
positively through its many evolutions, but Karen Wilkin’s beliefs concerning
the effects of the prairie as social and physical environment in art changed
abruptly and without explanation:
Statements relating the open spaces and big skies of the Prairies to the
openness and scale of Prairie artists’ work are probably meaningless.
Any artist is in some way affected by the time and place in which he
lives, which is why French art is different from Italian art, and 17th
century art different from 16th century. It seems fashionable lately to
accuse Canadian abstract artists of catering to New York taste,
ignoring the fact that an increasing degree of abstraction is a
characteristic of the development of 20th century art. (Why
abstraction should be labelled as New York and suspect, while work
deriving patently from California funk should be acclaimed as
grassroots regionalism, remains a mystery to me, but that is a subject
for another discussion.) The only common factors shared by the
Prairie artists I have discussed are a desire to make major art and a
willingness to take risks in their work in order to come closer to
fulfilling that desire. For artists working in an environment which
provides only minimal encouragement, those are impressive
ambitions. 43
A month after this statement was published, Haynes had a solo exhibit at the
Latitude 53 Gallery; the above claims appeared in the catalogue
accompanying “The Canadian Canvas,” an exhibit initiated and sponsored by
Time Canada Limited and curated regionally. Karen Wilkin curated the
prairies; the Alberta painters included were Harold Feist, Haynes and Ann
Clarke Darrah. From J.A. Forbes’s review of the Latitude exhibit for
ArtsCanada, we read:
The present exhibition finds Haynes continuing with the large
format, richer colour and seductive surfaces, but he has brought back
a convention from his earlier paintings—the frame within a frame. In
the light of this it is interesting to see his title for the show (From the
Interior) and to read his own notes where he says, “The title has
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multiple meanings.… as well as describing the process by which the
paintings are constructed, in formal terms it describes the
compositional device used, the frame within a frame, or the window
concept.” Later he (Haynes) points out that he will accept a reading of
From the Interior as relating to a geographical or regional concern.
He makes no secret of the fact that the prairie environment, i.e., the
interior, “plays an important role in terms of my response to the
images created through the medium of paint….” Although Haynes
acknowledges his debts to Gottlieb, Reinhart and Olitski, there is
much that is regional in his work. He has never rejected the
environment as a factor in his development and, although he is not a
referential as is, for example, Otto Rogers of Saskatoon, at times he
seems to be a prairie landscapist. 44
Forbes went on to discuss some classical European influences on the work of
Douglas Haynes, painters like Rubens and Vermeer, a fact that he thought
might surprise some viewers. He reconciled these two seemingly disparate
influences: prairie geography and classical European painters really
represented two aspects of “Haynes’ artistic personality—on the one hand the
classical ordering of space and, on the other, the lush and sensuous surface.” 45
Haynes by his own admission was influenced also by Poussin, Goya, El Greco,
Rembrandt and many others to whom he was introduced during his
transatlantic visits. But if one listens to Terry Fenton—“Painters don’t
necessarily observe historical processes—they usually just paint. Living
amidst the art of the present and unguided by their experience of it, they try to
make art of their own” 46— Haynes appears as deviant. One might come to
believe that painters go through their present, oblivious to their art-historical
past, but somehow critics, at least those like Fenton, are able to discern that “in
Western civilization, quality has accompanied formal innovation and that ... in
our century, it has belonged to abstract painting. ”47 Paintings are mere
products of images; it takes critics like Fenton to discover quality and
innovation.
In 1978, the Commonwealth Games were held in Edmonton and a special
exhibition was organized by the Edmonton Art Gallery and the British
Council. The idea for the exhibition, suggested by Karen Wilkin, was one that
Fenton, then director of the EAG, found provocative because, as he stated in
the catalogue:
For centuries, Great Britain exerted a strong influence on Canadian
art. Although that influence hasn’t entirely ceased, today Canadian
artists have begun to influence some artists in Great Britain. At the
moment, and perhaps for the first time, parallel, interrelated
traditions exist in the two countries…. The exhibition doesn’t purport
to be regional or democratic. It doesn’t speak for Canada or for Great
Britain. It speaks for certain traditions which exist today in these two
countries. 48
The art that was shown was produced in the Canadian West, Toronto and
London. Muriel Wilson, exhibition officer, Fine Arts Department of the
British Council, organized and wrote about the British half of the show; Karen
Wilkin did the same for the Canadian half. The introduction to her “Canadian
Point of View” seemed hopeful once again: more Canadians travel, more cities
are becoming increasingly urban, new funding conditions and decentralization
make it easier for artists to survive and thrive in isolation, “the division
between English and French culture plays its part in maintaining Canada’s
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multiplicity, as do variables of economic development and climate and
geography.” 49 It appears that the more civilized Canada became, the more
“oddly pictorial” or “curiously animate, [with] suggestive images” became the
paintings of Canadians:
This new pictorialism is conditioned by modern assumptions about
the painting as an object with a continuous surface. These
assumptions, in fact, prevented artists from producing self-indulgent
notations or unresolved representations. At the same time as they are
concerned with creating a personal vocabulary of images or shapes
which become protagonists in obscure dramas, they are absorbed
with making different kinds of marks, with producing a variety of
surfaces, and with spreading elements across the canvas. No matter
how complex or associative the imagery, the pictures remain
disembodied and abstract. 50
Once again Haynes was invited to participate in this exhibit (as well as a
number of others in Montreal, Hamilton and Ottawa). Of his participation
Wilkin said: “Haynes has given himself up to colour, spread across
eccentrically divided canvasses. His suggestive diamonds are sliced and
knocked out, while vigorously worked paint and smaller quirky shapes enliven
the pictures.” 51 After this show, Karen Wilkin left the EAG and became a
freelance curator/critic/art historian, working for a while in Toronto and later
moving back to New York, where she continues to live and freelance. Many of
her assignments bring her back to Edmonton, and she always returns to write
the catalogues for Haynes’ exhibits. In 1979, she wrote an essay on the
Canadian prairies for ARTnews in which she again discusses the first-rate art
produced by prairie artists, their efforts to keep together and in touch:
“Populist-isolationists claim their art is uniquely western Canadian, owing
nothing to anyone. Internationalists insist on being reckoned with as artists, not
as Prairie artists…. Abstract artists are frequently denounced as dominated by
New York (American imperialist) taste, more particularly by Clement
Greenberg.” 52 Alberta, characterized by Wilkin as an oil-rich province that
boomed in 1947 and continues to attract “immigrants” to a “middle-class
Kuwait,” and especially Edmonton where young painters like Ann Clarke,
Robert Scott and Douglas Haynes are all committed to abstraction; we learn of
Haynes that he:
surprised everyone a few years ago by becoming one of the boldest
and most inventive colourists in Canada. A split diamond image
allows him to apply large areas of colour with a variety of surfaces,
and to oppose them with centralized colours of “drawing.” Haynes’
admiration for Bush, Motherwell and Gottlieb comes through,
usually in quotations in the stacked drawing, but Haynes’ own
personality comes through more powerfully. He is even beginning to
eliminate the quotations. 53
In the same month, February 1979, another article appeared on Haynes by Ken
Carpenter for artsmagazine; Carpenter quotes Haynes talking about his art of
the mid-1970s, the same art that Wilkin spoke about in the previous excerpt.
Said Haynes:
While influences can be traced (Motherwell, Gottlieb, Miro, Bush,
etc.) the prime sources are my previous work. The layout and its
emphatic and emblematic quality comes from the circa 1967/68
series of split ovals; the centre forms from previous use of circles,
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verticals, etc.—most obviously seen perhaps in the drawing elements
of some of the 1975/76 black pictures; the use of the over painting and
luminosity from the series titled “From the Interior,” which came
directly from my studying of the painting methods of Rubens, etc. 54
Carpenter found antecedents to Haynes’ glazing in Rembrandt, an insight that
Haynes agreed with; also, Carpenter found the recent paintings (those
produced during the second half of the 1970s) to have benefited from Haynes’
past career as an architectural renderer—with respect to his range of colour,
“since in the renderings it was appropriate for him to work with changes of
value as well as line and chroma.” 55 Carpenter again quotes Haynes on his
preoccupations as an artist: “Painting always seems to be a series of
transcending, or working through. Working from chaos to order, darkness to
light, influences to assimilation, liking to understanding and—perhaps the
most difficult—intellect to feeling.” 56
In 1978, Haynes had a solo exhibit at Gallery One, one of the most successful
galleries in Toronto. That first show was a success, and Gallery One continues
to represent Haynes’ work. The show was reviewed by Ken Carpenter for Art
in America, where he wrote: “This is an art always in the service of feeling,
never subordinate to considerations of technique or to formal problemsolving,
and Haynes has—at the age of 42—a new maturity that is all his
own.” 57 Kay Woods, writing about the same show for artscanada, said: “Doug
Haynes already has a considerable reputation in the Prairie Province. It is
surprising considering the high calibre of his work, that no Toronto gallery has
exhibited it until now.” 58 Haynes continues to have shows/exhibits in Alberta,
Saskatchewan, and Ontario as well as teaching at the university. An exhibit
mounted by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge in 1980 brought
Karen Wilkin back from Toronto to write the catalogue. By then, two years
away from Edmonton, Wilkin reminisced:
When I first arrived in western Canada in the late 60s I was introduced
to the work of a young Edmonton painter named Doug Haynes. He
was something of a local celebrity: a prairie boy with talent and the
opportunity to develop it…. Haynes’ pictures from the 60s were
encrustations of thick paint, plaster, burlap, string or anything else
which could add yet another texture…. Doug Haynes seemed to hit
his stride about 1977. The split diamonds and the cross pictures
establish his reputation as a painter to be reckoned with, not simply as
a regional phenomenon. The pattern of his evolution proves his
willingness to reevaluate even his most successful work, in order to
challenge himself further, and this attitude, together with his evident
creative gifts, make almost certain that the promise of the “prairie boy
with talent” will be richly fulfilled by the career of the mature artist. 59
A month later, the work of Doug Haynes received an underhandedly positive
review by Art Perry, the art critic for Vancouver’s Province. The exhibit was at
the Kenneth G. Heffel Gallery. That review was really a historical and critical
review of abstraction’s “generational” route through the prairies and its
reception outside Edmonton/Regina/Saskatoon as well as a review of Haynes’
work—it is well worth looking it up. 60
In 1983, “the prairie boy with talent” went back to his hometown, Regina, with
a solo exhibit at the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery, a retrospective of his
work produced in the 1980s. Curators Norman Zepp and Michael Parke-
Taylor wrote about the continuity and change that have always characterized
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Haynes’ work: “[His] entire career is the presence of an image which gives a
sense of purpose, and reason for the act of painting, which keeps his work,
unlike that of many of his contemporaries, from becoming a mere colourist
exercise in the manipulation and application of paint.” 61 During the 1980s,
Haynes took his split diamond images and made them one with his canvases’
edges. He would crop the canvas to fit the image—irregular “cropping” was in
at that time in Edmonton. But Haynes did not stay long with the pack. He again
took control of the process: he brought forward from the 1960s the oval and
diamond and returned to a rectangular canvas/frame—Little Keeper is an
example of this resolution. The oval shape acted as a container and a ground
that allowed “passage” for Haynes into a reinvented cubism.
But before the passage was complete, Haynes’s work was due for another
detour via London, and an exhibit, “Abstraction X 4,” proposed, organized and
written about by Karen Wilkin. Three other artists were included: Harold Feist,
Joseph Drapell and Leopold Plotek. Six years after Wilkin left Edmonton we
learn in the foreword to the catalogue that she “had lived for a while in
Edmonton,” was curator at the Edmonton Art Gallery, and has had a “long
standing interest in [abstraction].” And Karen Wilkin in her own text makes no
further reference to the prairie and its talented boys, the wildness of nature and
the ruggedness of character; now she talks to a different audience, away from
the prairie, away from Toronto; now she is trying to make a place for herself
back in New York. She opens the essay not by quoting Brendan Behan or
André Malraux, but with an oblique reference to the new artists and critics of
post-modernity that have by now totally dominated the art world of New York
and of all other major, art-producing centres:
These days it is fashionable to speak of the demise of abstract
painting, to see abstraction as the exhausted offshoot of an outmoded
tradition. We have come very nearly full circle from the days when
painters purged their art of anything recognizable as an act of faith, a
declaration of modernism. It now happens that even the most hamfisted
bit of representation is taken as a work of seriousness and upto-date
thinking, and recent interest in figuration among young
painters is offered as evidence that abstraction has lost its strength.
This is nonsense, of course. No single kind of art has a monopoly on
excellence. The overwhelming question is not whether the work is
figurative or abstract or anything else, but whether it is any good. 62
The artists are written about in this essay in alphabetical order—first Drapell,
then Feist of Toronto, then Haynes of Edmonton and finally Plotek of
Montreal.
Their polyglot histories are, I suppose, some sort of testimony to
Canada’s much vaunted multiculturalism. Born in four different
countries on two continents, trained in Canada, the U.S.A., England
and the Netherlands, Drapell, Feist, Haynes and Plotek now live in
widely divergent regions: French Canada, urban English-speaking
Ontario (is there any other Ontario?) and the Prairies. It would be
surprising if their work failed to reflect their internationalism and
peripatetic lives: what is more surprising is that it also reflects some
regional characteristics. 63 [italics mine]
Of the four, Haynes has been the least peripatetic—with the exception of
forays abroad to look at art or take part in workshops—and so, one might
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assume, in his work we would find a bit more of the “surprising regional
characteristics.” Here is Wilkin on Haynes’ work:
Haynes’ most recent pictures are haunted by the memory of the
Cubist studio: guitars, tables, still life objects. More importantly,
however, they are informed by the flux of cubist space, the pulsating,
shifting planes of 1911, translated into 1980 terms. Scale is crucial to
these pictures. Each of Haynes’ “planes” comes out of a large gesture,
a single manipulation of his materials. Unlike their Cubist
antecedents, which are meticulous facsimiles of non-existent things,
Haynes’ planes are momentary accumulations of paints. They
represent nothing but themselves, and they seem to happen as we
look. Their subtle shifts in colour and the transparency are not
illusions achieved by shading, as in Cubist pictures, but instead are
the result of changes in the density of paint. This simultaneous
likeness and unlikeness to their Cubist inheritance is part of the
pleasure and strength of Haynes’ recent paintings. 64
In discussing Haynes’ cubist paintings, Wilkin painstakingly ignores their
titles, all making references to actual locations in Alberta or real persons’
names: Mercoal Swing, Carlisle Lady, Geoffrey’s Oval or Beast, a painting so
aggressive and animate that it was aptly named. In 1985, Haynes had another
solo exhibit at the Edmonton Art Gallery, “Cubism Revisited: The Paintings of
Douglas Haynes,” with curation and the text of the catalogue by Russell
Bingham, another modernist practitioner who sees good art as art that is
“emphatically post-cubist.” 65 Bingham seems amazed at the “emphatic
cubism” of Haynes’ work and almost apologetically writes: “Haynes’
emphasis on drawing and adjustments of value in his new works seem to run at
cross-currents with modern attitudes and methods and this is what at first
makes them look so remarkable…. It becomes apparent after a time that these
Cubist pictures aren’t aberrant—or mannered either. Ultimately, they look
modern—and this says something important about their originality.” 66 Liz
Wylie, reviewing the same exhibit, wrote for Canadian Art: “But it would be
misleading to suggest Haynes is doing pastiches of cubist paintings: these
recent abstracts only echo some cubists’ concerns, they don’t replicate the
works. Haynes’ new pictures are quirky but startlingly successful…. The
unique qualities of these new paintings set Haynes apart from his Edmonton
peers, as does his profound understanding of the artistic process.” 67 And
Haynes, interviewed by Phylis Matousek for the Edmonton Journal said, “I
don’t think of myself as a cubist—but cubism has been an influence.” 68 In an
article published in the Update subsequent to his cubist exhibit, Haynes wrote
of influences and inspirations from art and artists of the past:
The artists that become favourites are the ones that inspire me to get
into the studio and start painting—to compete. Other artists, such as
Titian, I hold in awe, but not as personal favourites because they do
not give me that sense of urgency and excitement to get to work—
yet. I say yet, because I never know who will speak to me next. I have
found over the years that whenever the opportunity is presented to
visit some of the great museums and see works in any sort of depth,
there will always be someone new waiting for me. The masters of the
past just seem to wait until I am ready for them; then they reach out
and shake me by the collar. Most often artists that do this are
unexpected; artists that I never thought I particularly even liked, let
alone admired. This past spring, while visiting some of the famous
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museums, I found what may well be my biggest surprise of all—
Poussin. [When] I visited the Prado Museum in Madrid, I was
particularly drawn to a painting by Velásquez, The Cardinal Infante
Do Fernando as a Hunter, and the way in which it was painted…. I
understood so clearly as a painter what Velásquez was thinking when
he laid in those whites, that for a short while the three-hundred-year
time span simply vanished, and I was in the company of a
colleague. 69
After the “cubist experiment,” Haynes continued to change as a painter and to
be shown in solo or group exhibits in Alberta, throughout Canada, and abroad
…in London, at the Alberta House in the spring of 1988, the exhibit, “Douglas
Haynes: Recent Paintings” was mounted and later toured to Edmonton and
Calgary. The catalogue was written by Peggy McDougall, organizer of the
exhibit, who wrote:
Haynes’ paintings are a skilful blend of his knowledge of art history,
his desire to find his own solutions and his ability to break new
ground. Haynes often borrows from art history in terms of colour or
themes or action, yet produces work different from anything painted
then or now. He alludes to dances and battles, candies and stories,
honky tonks and jives; but whatever the matrix, his paintings savour
of his experience. 70
In another of Haynes’ visits to Europe, and specifically to the Toledo
Cathedral, Spain, he became attached to and fascinated by El Greco’s El
Espolio (the disrobing of Christ) and Los Apostolados (the portraits of Christ’s
apostles). He says about that encounter:
The reaction to El Greco was certainly not for a reason of looking for
an idea, nor for the use of a style, nor was it appropriation. It was the
recognition that concerns I had for a long time, combined with all the
explorations, technical and formal, found a forebear in El Greco. He
had patiently been waiting for me to catch up…. My gravitation
toward Poussin and El Greco is a reflection of my needs. They point
the way along a path that I am already on. I didn’t go looking for them.
They found me and hollered to me from across the room, and time for
that matter. It is not a case of a programmed plan of development, but
rather a response to a feeling of what I seem to be searching for, both
in form and content. 71
He improvised around El Espolio during an Emma Lake workshop, and upon
his return from Saskatoon realized the enormity of his project, the time that it
would take to visit at length with El Greco. He decided to apply for a McCalla
Professorship at the University of Alberta—recipients get a year’s leave from
teaching duties with pay in order to pursue a research project of their choice.
The competition is university- wide and the proposals are juried by an
interdisciplinary Committee. Douglas Haynes became a recipient in 1988 and
retired to his studio to work on The Toledo Series, which was exhibited at the
Edmonton Art Gallery three years later, 6 April - 16 June 1991.
Karen Wilkin once again wrote the essay for the catalogue, and although she
found Haynes’ inspiration/discovery in El Greco “quite improbable,” she
reminds the viewer that in the past Haynes was usually inspired by “less overt
expressionism than that of El Greco. Adolph Gottlieb has been one of his
heroes.” 72 In an effort to legitimate this improbable fascination, she tells an
anecdote about Jack Bush: “Bush, after his first European trip, spoke of how
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impressed he was by Matisse’s work, especially by the late, monumental
papiers coupés. `What he really wanted to do in his own work, he said, was hit
Matisse’s ball out of the park.’ (The friend to whom he confided this told him,
`Go ahead, Matisse won’t mind at all.’)” 73 Having secured Haynes’ “correct”
genealogy within modernism, Wilkin continued to place him in the “correct”
art-critical category:
These days, many artists lean increasingly on their predecessors, but
their relation to their chosen archetype is quite different than Van
Gogh’s—say—to Delacroix. In 1991, a description of a project like
Haynes’ Toledo Series could lead us to expect that El Greco’s
imagery had been used as a springboard for ironic improvisation or
that it had been fragmented and forced into new, improbable
contexts. Some artists of the 1970s or 1980s might have quoted Los
Apostolados verbatim, analyzed them for political, sociological, or
sexual subtexts, or reduced El Espolio to a schematic quantification.
But Haynes has neither swallowed whole the works he found so
fascinating in the sacristy of the Toledo Cathedral, nor has he
subjected them to a modish deconstruction, parody, or simulation.
Neither has he rendered a traditional act of homage to a chosen
exemplar. Peculiar as the notion may sound, he seems instead to have
striven to acknowledge some sort of kinship with El Greco. I
described Haynes’ prolonged involvement with his Toledo Series as
a commentary on El Greco’s paintings; it would be truer to have
called it an extended, albeit imagined, dialogue with the Spanish
Mannerist. 74
In the rest of the essay we get more discussion aimed at the readers of Wilkin’s
The New Criterion; she feels compelled to expunge any emotional/existential
aspects from Haynes’ paintings, his past or present. The main text is really an
apology for writing about a painter who might have aspirations that are not
purely modernist:
Rather, they [The Toledo Series paintings] are new inventions that
aspire to achieve the emotional impact of earlier art within the formal
and technical language of the late twentieth century. These pictures
bear eloquent witness to the history of their making. They are, after
all, not depictions of imagined persons or events, but material objects
whose meaning resides in inflections of surface, clashes and accords
of color, tensions between parts. The physical character of each
block—its transparency or opacity, its color and relative size, its foursquareness
or deformation—helps to create the sense of personality
and animation that dominates each canvas, not any presumed echo of
one of El Greco’s images of high drama. 75
In the same essay, Wilkin quotes an excerpt from a letter Haynes wrote to a
friend, Harold Feist, where he describes his encounter with El Greco’s works
at the Prado Museum in Madrid:
There is very little reference to the real world, no buildings or vistalike
landscape stretching out behind and across. Hence you don’t feel
you are looking at a cropped event from the real world, but rather at a
dream-like abstracted world complete unto itself. The pictures really
are remarkable. Most of the space described is the negative space,
such as that described between the outstretched hands of one of the
figures, as though he was holding an invisible balloon, or the space
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captured between the wings of the angels. At times, the clouds are
like rocks and the figures like wraiths, a curious turning of things
inside out that keeps the whole space forever turning back on itself. 76
And, in case this statement of Haynes’ reminds one of Wilkin’s earlier
description of The Toledo Series as “after all, not depictions of imagined
persons or events, but material objects whose meaning resides in inflections of
surface,” she states right after Haynes’ quoted statement: “Substitute ‘color
blocks’ or ‘planes’ for ‘figures’ or ‘clouds’ and you have a useful description
of how Haynes’ apostle pictures function.” 77 Later on in the same essay she
writes, “It is as if Haynes had found a way of making visible the excitement he
felt when making his pictures, substituting the exhilaration, doubt,
puzzlement, and pleasure of the act of making art for the religious dogma of El
Greco’s day. Haynes’ Toledo Series can be read as a modern day pantheon, an
apostolados of the act of painting.” 78 Following on this statement, the final
paragraph goes to Haynes, who presumably describes this modern-day
pantheon: “I find myself reaching to pictures like Titian’s and El Greco’s as if
they are angels revisiting, messengers bearing truth, virtue, and equality—
what painting can be.” 79 A summary of this most contradictory essay, or the
moral of this story, would be: you can take the prairie boy out of the prairie, but
you cannot take the prairie out of the boy. Later, in the same catalogue, there is
a commentary by Harold Feist, a long-time friend of Douglas Haynes, a
successful painter in his own right who lives in Toronto and whose exhibition
catalogues Karen Wilkin is also summoned back to Canada to write. Here is an
excerpt of his writing on The Toledo Series:
Is it arrogance to follow after a master, trying to do something of the
kind? Any work of art requires something akin to arrogance on the
part of the artist since it is made within a tradition and, therefore, has
to fly in the face of the best that has been produced…. All artists must
come to terms with this and most must be pitied for it. The wise thing
to do would be not to try… But some see, then want to do, orare
compelled to do—and to do it as well as they have seen it done….
Doug’s paintings are in homage to an old master but are, as well, a
reiteration of pictorial devices and concerns—narrative, figuration,
angels—that have not, so far as I know, been dealt with in such a
head-on manner and to such a great extent as in The Toledo Series.
This kind of intent is new to abstraction. It is a hybrid of nonobjective
painting and the kind of painting that makes use of subject
matter. Shapes flutter and dance as if they are putty or angels or
ascending and floating figures in a shallow, dished-in space—within
a stage set or niche in the wall. There is a richness and intensity of
colour, and a deeper, more sonorous surface than there was before in
Doug’s work. The same hand is there, but has more of a Midas touch
now—opulent, sensuous. Doug has managed to tap into a new
resonance by following the lead of this experience of looking at El
Greco, his El Greco. That is, finally, what we are looking at—his
vision. 80
Discussion
I have traced Douglas Haynes’ career as a painter by framing it within Pierre
Bourdieu’s account of the artistic field of painting, paying particular attention
to Haynes’ strategies for producing works for artistic legitimation within the
field of painting in Edmonton—a historically generated field—and the
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gatekeeping obstacles he had to negotiate, obstacles that the field itself has
created in order to facilitate the reception and legitimation of paintings.
Haynes’ artistic habitus can be characterized as a restless exploration of the
received art of the past, tempered by the improvisational (polythetic) practices
of a “prairie boy.”
The painting style of Douglas Haynes has undergone quite a few
transformations, but regardless of these transformations it has been received
favourably by various legitimators of the art world of Edmonton and abroad.
Haynes has been exhibited, recognized and written about more than any other
painter from Edmonton’s art world, from Clement Greenberg’s underhanded
support (“felicitous appropriation of Gottlieb”) to Karen Wilkin’s initial
disappointing reaction:
The first artist whose work I was introduced to was Doug Haynes and
at that time, I thought he was a very competent craftsman-like painter.
I was convinced he was never going to go anywhere. Those works
were reliefs—he was collaging onto the canvas—they were plaster,
symmetrical, very competent, very, very boring. But I had enormous
respect for him as a person, as a thinker and was convinced he was
never going to be an earthshaking artist, and then about 1974, those
split diamonds happened and there has been no looking back, 81
to Virgil Hammock’s 1970 prophetic remark, “[Haynes’] paintings should, if
there is any justice in this world, outlive the fads that come and go in the art
world and survive to take their place in Canadian art history.” 82
Even though Haynes has received a lot of favourable notice, there has been
variation in the degree of favour: Norman Yates, J. A. Forbes, Ken Carpenter,
Virgil Hammock, Harold Feist and Peggy McDougall have written about
Haynes differently from Karen Wilkin, Terry Fenton, Russell Bingham and,
say, Lelde Muehlenbachs, who opened her review of The Toledo Series this
way: “Although some may claim that as a series, Absolut Vodka ads display
more invention and contemporary meaning, Douglas Haynes’ The Toledo
Series has elicited its fair share of enthusiasm and pride.” 83 The first group of
writers/reviewers were regional painters, art historians and occasional art
reviewers for the local dailies and have centred Haynes’ uniqueness and
success on his being a westerner, a prairie boy, whereas the second, a group
that sees itself primarily as critics/curators with various degrees of abstraction,
wrote about his works as if they were illustrations of their modernist aesthetic
stand—devoid of any personal history. If the reader was to go back to the
beginning of this essay and reread Wilkin’s telling of the story of Haynes’
career, he or she would clearly see reflections of the telling changes within the
changing career of Karen Wilkin—modernism at all costs—which in turn
changed with the fortunes of modernism within North America (including
New York) and Europe.
In the 1960s, when it was in vogue for New Yorkers to be enthralled with the
eccentric artists of Canada’s West, the prairie, the isolation and the toughness
of characters, both Greenberg and Wilkin recognized the prairie—as a
physical and social environment—as a factor in the art produced here. Wilkin
did so more than Greenberg, successfully “converting” the Edmonton of her
experience into an art-critical capital of “distinction.” When she first arrived in
Edmonton, she was just beginning—first, sessional work at the university,
later, curating at the EAG. The late 1960s and early 1970s were good years,
financially, for someone to forge ahead with an aesthetic that was thought of as
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international, that is, modernism. But as soon as Wilkin left the EAG and
Edmonton, art talk about the prairie became “ludicrous,” her associative
memories of Edmonton only “fleeting”; the only thing of value for her was the
work of Douglas Haynes, Harold Feist and Ann Clarke—and her discussion of
their work from then on was always concerned with style, the surface. She
consistently marginalized—as is the case with all orthodox
modernists—aspects of artistic motivation, implicitly denying that art works
as well as critiques of them are bound up with the personal and social networks
that make up the art exhibition system. Yet it is the same system with its
colonized habits that allows her the role of “validator,” brought back time and
time again to create the cultural record of a modernism that never really was. If
Douglas Haynes occasionally spoke of his experience, Karen Wilkin was
always there to expunge any residue of everyday life, any residue of a painter
who has a habit of thinking of El Greco, Goya or Poussin as visiting with him in
his studio. Increasingly, Wilkin used Haynes’ work to make a case against the
new art that had taken over New York, an art that spoke of life and questioned
the modernist structures and ideologies of the art world, which Wilkin, Fenton,
Bingham and company were trying against all odds to defend. But if Karen
Wilkin is the person that translates Haynes’ art to the rest of the art world
agents, and if she is involved in what appears to be a losing battle, then how
come Doug Haynes’ work keeps being shown, enjoyed and bought? If
references to specific locations and particular persons have lost their currency
in the artistic capital exchanges of abstract expressionism, post-modern reevaluations
have made the personal and the specific central to all explanation
and evaluation. Douglas Haynes’ inherited artistic disposition does not begin
with Matisse and end with Jack Bush; it goes further back and is always
tempered by his prairie roots. The prairie has been the clearing house, the
unconscious and subversive source of his success. Haynes does make use of
the grammar of modernism, but in order to tell his own story, by-passing the
limits set by Greenbergian modernism. If Haynes were inclined to spew theory
he could have made a pretty good case for himself as a post-modern artist:
witness his selective “dips” into the inherited aesthetic tradition, his personal
“quotes” extracted from his intimate and reflective talks with Rubens, Poussin,
El Greco, or his exhuberant expressionistic use of color, his “localism,” and so
on. But theory-bound he is not, and so his work is being bound up in (or out of)
the current theoretical straight-jackets of an artistic critical discourse that
knows only the sites of other texts and almost never their intersection with
specific historical and social institutional contexts.
If we were to “do a Bourdieu” on Karen Wilkin, following Bourdieu’s
discussion of honour (substitute “prairie”) in the society of Kabyle in his
Outline of a Theory of Practice, Wilkin would be the foreign observer who can
see the prairie only in abstract/rhetorical terms and (as Bourdieu would claim)
not as “a disposition inculcated in the earliest years of life and constantly
reinforced by calls to order from the group.” 84 He later describes those
inherited dispositions as
embedded in the agents’ very bodies in the form of mental
dispositions, schemes of perception and thought, extremely general
in their application, such as those which divide up the world in
accordance with the appositions between the male and female, east
and west, future and past, top and bottom, right and left, etc., and also,
at a deeper level, in the form of bodily postures and stances, ways of
standing, sitting, looking, speaking, or walking. 85
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One might object that my application of Bourdieu’s notion of inherited
disposition to Douglas Haynes’ work imposes an explanation that is tenuous at
best; but there is enough Canadian literature to substantiate the prairie’s
playing an important subversive role in the psyche of Canadians. 86
Looking back, Haynes claims that “when abstraction hit western Canada it
made complete sense” because it allowed one to paint the “straightforward
clarity of the prairie light.” 87 His own early paintings, as we have seen, were
mixed-media works, almost sculptural in mood, and compositionally
preoccupied with the centre of the canvas. In the 1970s, however, Haynes
abandoned overt physicality; his work became less “tangled,” favouring
geometrical shapes such as circles, rectangles, ovals and diamonds split into
subzones by columns of colour or bare canvas. Of that time the artist says, “My
mentors [were] finished with me, remaining … as only dear and close
friends.” 88 In the shadow of Edmonton’s economic bust, he moved
progressively towards bolder drawing and more exuberant colours, as if telling
everyone, “I have finally come home!” Translated, this meant that he had
succeeded in cutting up the vastness of his particular given—called the prairie
—into smaller, more manageable, human-sized parts. It meant that he had
learned to catch the light in portions and angles that would be not blinding, but
illuminating. It meant, in short, that he had begun constructing metaphorical
shelter belts, claiming his place, exorcising and delimiting the illimitable
space.
In the early 1980s, having worked through his particular obstacles, Haynes
succeeded in coming to terms with the existential aspects of a particular
situation. He developed an abstraction that speaks not only of art history, but of
the life and history of the western prairie, with its vastness, its unnerving light,
the lack of “thingness” it exhibits to the insensitive eye, the eye not trained or
capable of seeing the rich surface that becomes even richer when the light
strikes it a certain way, the way that Haynes has learned to catch it. His
archetypal diamonds, crosses, ovals, circles and rectangles are imaginative
and metaphorical ways of coming to terms with—indeed, celebrating—this
reality. Like the shelter-belts used to frame the “real” prairie homestead, they
serve not merely as protective devices, escape routes, but as routes to
redefining the relations between self and other—easy paths for visiting back
and forth. Even the names of many of his paintings attest to his preoccupation
with “his” landscape: Coal Spur, Cadomin, Mercoal Swing, all names of
locations in Alberta. Conventional affiliations aside, there are unmistakable
tokens of place in this artist’s attention to surface, the openness of the works,
the light contrasts in the foreground, the construction of metaphorical shelterbelts
through drawing or framing. Much of this oeuvre, in fact, can be seen as
providing homologues for the “box” in which, according to McGregor,
“Canadians reside a structure of consciousness that is paradoxically, both
existential and arbitrary, natural and self-created, container and frame.” 89
Modernism has found a home on the prairies, and it is not of the theoretically
“correct” kind.
Douglas Haynes and the generation of artists before him, such as Illingworth
Kerr, Ronald Spikett and the “Regina Five,” accepted modernism not only as a
style of art making but as a way of making sense of the place where they were
born and lived. They saw in abstraction not only a matrix of aesthetic devices
that could possibly connect them with the larger art scene south of the border
but also as a movement that might give them a negotiable position vis-à-vis the
eastern Canadian art establishment. But because of the propensity of
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Canadians to look elsewhere for legitimation, and through their decision to
bring on board so many modernist New Yorkers, they inadvertently precluded
the formation of any future generations of art writer/critics. As Brian
O’Doherty so aptly stated about the contemporary art scene in New York:
“Visual art does not progress by having a good memory. And New York is the
locus of some radical forgetting. You can reinvent the past, suitably disguised,
if no one remembers it. Thus is originality, that patented fetish of the self,
defined.” 90 New York became the locus of so much forgetting because there
was no other way for it to claim the radical re-writing of the book of artistic
Genesis: “In the begining was the Word (Greenberg’s) and the Word became
painting (abstract expressionism)...” But this story has already been told by
Tom Wolfe. 91 What needs to be told more widely is the role that art writing has
played in the establishment and marketing of the “mainstream” art styles
and/or artists at any given time in North America and Europe. What needs to
become more clear is the role that art criticism has been playing since the
1960s, when the writers of “distinction” began treating their writing as an art
form, a form serving only the display of self or theory. 92 This selectivity of
memory and the display of self or theory we saw demonstrated in Karen
Wilkin’s recorded passage through the prairies.
From its earliest years, Alberta attracted painters who brought with them
European artistic sensibilities, some of which they retained and others learned
here; they were attracted to the possibilities that the Canadian West had to
offer, they called Alberta home, they worked and taught the next generation of
artists who were to populate the universities and art schools to be established
after the discovery of oil in Leduc in 1947. Depending on their age, education
and training at immigration time, place of employment and choice of
residence, they have reacted to the prairie as a physical and/or social
environment in varied degrees. It is not only the limitless horizon and the
reflection of light that enters their work, it is also how that work is received by
Central Canada. Canada’s historical regionalism—geographic, economic,
social and political—directly or indirectly has played an interesting role in the
development of generations of modernist painters, whose prairie temperment
has been at times a welcome and refreshing change to the established art scenes
in eastern centers which managed to have become “necropolis[es] of styles and
artists, a columbarium visited and studied by critics, historians, collectors.” 93
Critics, writers and collectors (who mostly “look”) descend upon Edmonton
on a regular basis from New York and London for refreshing short stops and
then return to the great necropolises where they came from: and herein lies the
paradox of these great art centres, although they are dead, they can generate
employment for modernist art historians and critics. Because contemporary art
worlds during the last century or so in Europe and North America have been
product-driven and dependent on art writing for their products’ ultimate
destination, the museum and art history: “[these products are], filtered through
galleries, offered to Collectors and public institutions written about in
magazines partially supported by the galleries and drifting towards the
academic apparatus that stabilizes History—certifying, much as banks do, the
holding of its major repository, the museum. History in art is, ultimately, worth
money. Thus do we get not the art we deserve but the art we pay for.” 94 One
may conceivably say that since Edmonton never developed the class that
needed to pay for art to legitimate itself, then Edmonton got the art it
aesthetically deserved: modernism’s aesthetic success in Edmonton might
appear to be a historical abberation within Canadian painting history if it is
seen through the eyes of an orthodox a-historical modernism. But it does make
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sense (and history) though, if seen from a regional, grounded sociohistorical
perspective.
Postscript
During the fall of 1993, abstraction seemed to be the order of the day in Alberta
especially Calgary: at the Glenbow, one would see the National Gallery’s “The
Crisis of Abstraction in Canada: the Fifties; at the ACA’s Illingworth Kerr
Gallery, one could see “Dark Decor” another abstract show; at the Canada
Trust building, a third abstract retrospective curated by the University of
Lethbridge’s Jeff Spalding; finally two commercial galleries, the Canadian Art
Gallery and the Newzones Gallery of Contemporary Art, also showed abstract
work. As for Edmonton, things were quieter: at the Edmonton Art Gallery, one
could see an exhibit of Montreal’s renowned abstractionist Charles Gagnon,
and across the city square in the CityCentre building, The Edmonton
Contemporary Artists Society had its inaugural exhibit, curated by Russell
Bingham. The society was established according to Mitch Smith, one of its
founding members, because “we felt that there was a lot of good art that was
not shown, especially in a group context.... For my own part I think that it is
important for me to see my paintings in exhibition against the work of artists
who I respect.” 95 Almost all abstract painters those who follow orthodox
modernism joined the Society, with the notable exception of Douglas Haynes.
Among those who joined are Robert Scott, Terrance Keller, Philip Darrah,
Graham Peacock, Gerald Faulder, Guiseppe Albi, Mitchel Smith and, from
Saskatoon, Robert Christie. They see themselves as the “forgotten”
generation, the one that has fallen through the artistic cracks of Edmonton’s art
world ever since Terry Fenton’s departure in 1987. Lelde Muehlenbacks, in
her review of the Society’s inaugural exhibit, summed it up best: “Edmonton’s
first art love-in took place Friday night. The Edmonton Contemporary Artists
Society premiered in a cavernous retail space in City Centre with the best
opening in years. In part a walk down Memory Lane, in part brothers and
sisters doing it for themselves, the community rallied for a big, laid-back, selfcongratulatory
evening. And the schmooching between young and old art
upstarts and aficionados never stopped.” 96 There was no catalogue and no-one
was brought from New York to consecrate the event—these are hard economic
times. But the aesthetic fascination of prairie artists and their viewers
continues with modernism—of the orthodox or revisionist type—despite the
economic downturn and the art world intelligentsia’s fascination with
postmodern and interventionist art. Having a tenured position in the various
post-secondary institutions does a lot to foster eccentric painterly choices; the
same cannot be said for itinerant critics.
Notes
* I would like to thank The Calgary Institute for the Humanities for its continuing support.
1. Books on Canadian painting are a scarce commodity. The most comprehensive work is R.
Harper’s Painting in Canada (1966), which most other publications refer to as a source; it
contains very few references to prairie painting as, at the time of its publication, not much
had happened in the western provinces. Western Canadian painting is discussed more
extensively in B. Lord’s Painting in Alberta: An Historical Survey (1974), a highly partisan
examination of Canadian painting as colonial painting, first under French, then English and
now American influence. Finally, there is K. Wilkin’s Painting in Alberta: An Historical
Survey (Edmonton: EAG, 1980), published in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of
the Province of Alberta.
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Canadian Prairies
2. M. Tippett, Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey
Commission (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).
3. E.J. Hart, The Selling of Canada: The CPR and the Beginnings of Canadian Tourism (Banff:
Altitude Publishing, 1983), pp. 31-40.
4. J. O’Brian, “Where the Hell is Saskatchewan and Who is Emma Lake?” in The Flat Side of
the Landscape: The Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops, exhibit catalogue, (Saskatoon: Mendel
Art Gallery, 1989), pp. 29-38.
5. Arthur McKay, quoted in O’Brian, ibid. p. 33.
6. J. Wolff, The Social Production of Art (London: Macmillan, 1982), chapter 2.
7. P. Bourdieu, “The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 46, 1987-88, pp. 201-10; “The Field of Cultural Production, or The Economic
World Reversed,” Poetics 12, 1983, pp. 311-56; “The Market of Symbolic Goods,” Poetics
14, 1985, pp. 13-44; “Flaubert’s Point of View,” Critical Inquiry 14, 1988, pp. 539-62. The
gist of Bourdieu’s treatment of fields: “The artistic field is populated by agents (artists,
actors, authors, writers, dealers, critics, directors, publishers, etc.) and institutions (galleries,
museums, academies, etc.): it is a site of artistic prise de position (position takings or stances)
that are possible at any given period in any given art world/artistic field (genres, schools,
styles, subjects, manners, etc.); the position takings or stances arise from the encounter
between particular agents’ dispositions, i.e., their habitus which refers to a system of
acquired schemes that become practically effective as categories of perception and
evaluation: as principles of classification, and also as principles of organizing social action.
The artistic field is a field of forces, but also a field of struggles, between the two principles of
hierarchization: the heteronomous principle favourable to those who dominate the field, and
the autonomous favourable to those least endowed with specific capital (symbolic,
economic, cultural or social). The artistic field is then a space of contestation for distinction,
i.e., there are constant efforts to (a) define position, (b) to defend against it and (c) to
distinguish it from those below. In order to understand the practices of artists and their
products, one needs to understand that they are the result of the meeting of two histories: the
history of the positions they occupy and the history of their dispositions. In order for that to
be accomplished one must understand the strategies employed by the agents of the artistic
field; strategies are understood as the orientation of practice which is neither conscious, nor
calculative, nor mechanically determined, but rather the product of a “sense” for this
particular game (the production and consumption of art). Finally, the art object is both
merchandise and meaning, the latter being necessarily collective and existing solely by
virtue of the collective belief which knows and acknowledges it as a work of art.” Note #4,
from C. Pizanias, “Making Art in the Global Village,” Canadian Themes, Vol. 14 1992, p.
125.
8. R. Rosen and C.C. Brawer, Making Their Mark: Women Artists Move into the Mainstream,
1970-85 (New York: Abbeville, 1989), p. 7.
9. T.W. Luke, Shows of Force: Power, Politics and Ideology in Art Exhibits, Durham: Duke
University Press, 1992, p. 228-232.
10. See “Re-viewing Modernist Criticism” in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation,
ed. by Brian Wallis, New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art in association with
D.R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. Boston, 1984, pp. 87-103; in same volume see Martha Rosler,
“Lookers, Buyers, Dealers, and Makers: Thoughts on Audience”, pp. 311-340; Brian
O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of Gallery Space, Santa Monica: Lapis
Press, 1986; and David Carrier, “Art and its Market” in R. Hertz Theories of Contemporary
Art, Englewood Cliff: Prentice Hall, 1985.
11. H. Fryer, The Pioneer Years (Langley: State Coach Publishing, 1907), pp. 8-45; J.W. Hogan,
West, Nor’West: A History of Alberta (Edmonton: Northgate, 1945), pp. 1-34.
12. For a discussion of this phenomenon see N. Frye, “Conclusion” in C.F. Klinck, ed., Literary
History of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), pp. 821-49; see also G.
McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome: Explorations in the Canadian Langscape (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 3-25. For a different interpretation see R. Shields,
Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1991),
chapter 4.
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13. R. Rees, “Nostalgic Reaction and the Canadian Prairie Landscape,” Great Plains Quarterly,
1982, pp. 157-67.
14. R. Rees, “In a Strange Land … Homesick Pioneers in the Canadian Prairie,” Landscape 26,
1982, pp. 1-9.
15. C. Greenberg, “Painting and Sculpture in Prairie Canada Today,” Canadian Art, 1963,
p. 103.
16. Rees, “In a Strange Land,” pp. 26-32.
17. Rees, “Nostalgic Reaction,” pp. 162-65.
18. See McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome, chap. 3.
19. K. Wilkin, Painting in Alberta, p. 1. (See note 1 above).
20. There is a good discussion of this comparison in A. Davis, A Distant Harmony: Comparisons
in the Painting of Canada and the United States of America, exhibition catalogue, Winnipeg
Art Gallery, 1982, chap. 2.
21. G. Woodcock, “Nationalism and the Canadian Genius,” artscanada 5, 1978, p. 5.
22. J. Richards and L. Pratt, Prairie Capitalism: Power and Influence in the West (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1979), pp. 148-849.
23. T. Fenton, interview with author, March 4, 1984.
24. See M. Baldwin, “Art History, Art Criticism and Exploration,” pp. 202-6, and S. Guilbault,
“The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America,” pp. 153-66, both in F. Fransin, ed.,
Pollock and After: The Theoretical Debate, (London: Harper and Row, 1985). See also M.
Byrstyn, “Art Galleries as Gatekeepers: The case of Abstract Expressionism,” Social Forces
45, 1978, pp. 391-408.
25. Historical and anecdotal information about the earlier years of painting in Alberta draws on
material I collected while developing a series of portraits of older painters in Alberta for the
ACCESS Educational Television Network in 1980-81. The participating artists were Ron
Spickett, Luke Lindoe, Stan Perrot, Janet Mitchell, Illingworth Kerr, Stan Blodgett, and
Marion and Jim Nicoll.
26. T. Fenton, with author, March 4, 1984.
27. S. Guilbaut, “New Adventures,” pp. 202-206.
28. D. Haynes interview with author at his studio, 28 September, 1990; all subsequent
quotations from Haynes, unless otherwise indicated, are from the same interview.
29. Greenberg, “Painting and Sculpture,” pp. 94-95.
30. Ibid., p. 103.
31. V. Hammock, Doug Haynes, exhibit catalogue, EAG, 1970, unpaginated.
32. V. Hammock, quoted in Update 6, no. 4, 1985, p. 9.
33. K. Wilkin, “A Report from the West: Canada,” Art in America, May-June 1972, p. 102.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., p. 103.
37. C. McConnell, “West ’71, The Edmonton Art Gallery,” artscanada, December
1971/January 1972, p. 143.
38. D. Haynes, statement for his solo exhibit at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, unpaginated.
39. J. A. Forbes, foreword to the catalogue for the Haynes exhibit at the Glenbow Museum, ibid.
40. K. Wilkin, “The Prairies: A Limited View,” Canadian Forum, summary, p. 37.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., p. 39.
43. K. Wilkin, The Canadian Canvas, exhibit catalogue, travelling exhibition initiated and
sponsored by Time Canada Ltd., p. 32.
44. J. A. Forbes, “Edmonton — Doug Haynes,” artscanada, June 1975, pp. 101-2.
45. Ibid., p. 102.
46. T. Fenton, from a catalogue of an EAG exhibit on recent abstract painting and sculpture in
Canada and eastern U.S., June 1977, unpaginated.
47. Ibid.
48. T. Fenton, “Certain Traditions: Recent British and Canadian Art,” exhibit catalogue, EAG
1978, unpaginated.
49. K. Wilkin, “Rugged Individualists with No Urge to Draw,” ARTnews, February 1979, p. 84.
50. Ibid., p. 87.
51. Ibid.
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52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. D. Haynes, quoted in K. Carpenter, “Douglas Haynes: Recent Paintings,” artsmagazine 10,
1979, p. 31.
55. Ibid., p. 31.
56. Ibid., p. 31.
57. K. Carpenter, “Douglas Haynes at Gallery One,” Art in America, March/April, 1979, p. 157-
61.
58. K. Woods, “The September Openings,” artscanada, December 1978/January 1979, p. 68.
59. K. Wilkin, “Douglas Haynes: Paintings,” exhibition catalogue, Southern Alberta Art
Gallery, Lethbridge 1980, unpaginated.
60. A. Perry, “Lost in an Artistic Time Warp,” The Province, November 18, 1980, p. B8.
61. N. Zepp and M. Parke-Taylor, catalogue for “Doug Haynes: Painting in the Eighties,”
Norman Mackenzie Gallery, Regina, unpaginated.
62. K. Wilkin, catalogue for “Abstraction X 4,” Canada House Cultural Centre Gallery, London,
England, unpaginated.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. R. Bingham, catalogue for Cubism Revisited: The Paintings of Douglas Haynes, Edmonton
Art Gallery, unpaginated.
66. Ibid.
67. L. Wylie, Cubism Revisited: The Paintings of Douglas Haynes, Edmonton Art Gallery,
Edmonton, unpaginated.
68. D. Haynes, quoted in Phylis Matousek, “Experiment in Cubism,” Edmonton Journal,
January 26, 1985, p. H2.
69. D. Haynes, “Inspiration from Unexpected Sources,” Update 7, no. 2, 1986, p. 19.
70. P. McDougall, catalogue for Douglas Haynes: Recent Paintings, Alberta House, London,
England, 1988, unpaginated.
71. Haynes, quoted in McDougall, Ibid.
72. K. Wilkin, for exhibit catalogue The Toledo Series, EAG, 1991, p. 6.
73. Ibid., p. 3.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., p. 5.
76. Ibid., p. 6.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid., p. 7.
79. Ibid.
80. H. Feist, “Commentary by Harold Feist,” published in the catalogue for the Toledo Series,
op. cit. p. 21.
81. K. Wilkin interview with the author, 25 March, 1987.
82. V. Hammock, quoted in Update 6, no. 4, 1985, p. 9.
83. L. Muehlenbachs, “On the Walls: Did Christ Pick the First 12, and Other Interesting
Observations,” The Edmonton Bullet, June 19, 1991, p. 11.
84. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), p. 14.
85. Ibid., p. 15.
86. For discussion of this phenomenon see McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome, esp. pp. 3-25;
Frye, “Conclusion,” pp. 821-49; and R. Rees, Land of Earth and Sky: Landscape Painting of
Western Canada (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1984).
87. D. Haynes, interview with the author at his studio, 28 March, 1987.
88. D. Haynes, quoted in Carpenter, “Douglas Haynes: Recent Paintings,” p. 32.
89. McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome, p. 124.
90. D. O’Doherty, “Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Santa Monica
and San Francisco: The Lapis Press, 1986), p. 87.
91. T. Wolfe, The Painted Word, (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1975).
92. T. Lawson, “Last Exit: Painting,” Artforum, October 1981, p. 45.
93. O’Doherty, op. cit. 87.
94. Ibid., p. 91.
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95. Press release, The Edmonton Contemporary Artists Society, Summer, 1993.
96. L. Muehlenbachs, “Two must-see art shows,” Pique, October 7, 1993, p. 13. See also the
following: A. Kellogg, “Abstract artists uniting to help construct a better future: New group
organizing its own show,” The Edmonton Journal, September 24, 1993, C3; C. Mandel,
“Contemporary artists offer a sexual exercise,” The Edmonton Journal, October 2, 1993, F5.
168

Michel Tousignant,
Emmanuel Habimana,
Mathilde Brault,
Naïma Bendris et
Esther Sidoli-Leblanc
Les rapports entre générations dans les familles de
réfugiés au Québec 1
Résumé
Les rapports entre générations au sein des familles de réfugiés sont déterminés
par une dynamique différente de celle qui existe dans les familles québécoises
ou canadiennes de souche. C’est le constat qui ressort d’une série de 210
entrevues réalisées auprès d’adolescents issus de familles de réfugiés de
diverses communautés culturelles du Québec. Les entrevues font ressortir
trois caractéristiques : la grande part de responsabilités de ces jeunes et le
renversement des rôles avec les parents; la grande discrétion des parents à
l’égard de leur passé avant l’exil et les stratégies de contrôle exercées par les
parents. De telles situations produisent davantage de rébellion et de conduites
déviantes que de crises suicidaires, et l’adolescent recherche plus son
indépendance que son autonomie. Du côté positif, l’esprit de débrouillardise
exigé pourra donner lieu à un esprit d’entrepreneur ou d’innovateur.
Abstract
Relationships between generations among refugee families differ from those
existing in Quebec- or Canadian-born families. This conclusion follows an
analysis of 210 interviews with adolescents from refugee families belonging to
various cultural groups in Quebec. The data show three main characterictics:
the role inversion with parents and the large responsibilities of children, the
parents’ secrecy about their pre-exile life, and the parents’ controlling
behaviour. These situations produce more rebellion and deviant behaviour
than suicidal tendencies, and adolescents strive more for independence than
for autonomy. On the positive side, the coping required to face adversity may
produce a spirit of enterprise and innovation.
Le présent article analyse les relations entre les adolescents et leurs parents au
sein des familles de réfugiés. Cette recherche s’inscrit à l’origine dans le cadre
d’une étude plus large en épidémiologie psychiatrique dont l’objectif est de
prédire la présence de diagnostics psychopathologiques à partir de l’histoire
familiale. Nous n’aborderons cependant dans cet article que des éléments plus
descriptifs des rapports entre les générations.
La reproduction sociale des générations nécessite des ajustements profonds en
situation de migration. La socialisation des enfants, en plus de tenir compte des
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
changements culturels d’un monde en mutation rapide, s’inscrit dans un
processus de polarisation entre la culture d’origine et celle du pays d’accueil. Il
y a malheureusement une pénurie de recherches empiriques dans ce domaine
(Groupe d’étude sur la santé mentale des immigrants et des régufiés, 1988;
Aronowitz, 1984; et Ben-Porath, 1987). La probabilité que les problèmes
ressortent plus en situation d’exil, à cause de décision rapide de sortir de son
pays, nous a amenés à arrêter notre choix sur cette population particulière.
Nous supposons cependant que l’écart entre les réfugiés et les groupes
immigrants pauvres d’arrivée récente n’est pas considérable. Les facteurs qui
caractérisent davantage les vagues récentes de réfugiés sont les suivantes :
provenance du Tiers-Monde et des régions peu industrialisées; dislocation
temporaire ou même définitive de la cellule familiale; absence d’une masse
démographique critique de plusieurs nationalités de réfugiés dans la société
canadienne (Murphy, 1977).
Il existe peu d’observations systématiques des rapports entre les parents
immigrants et réfugiés et leurs enfants à la période de l’adolescence. Elles sont
davantage centrées sur la petite enfance (Sabatier, 1991). L’ensemble de ces
recherches porte principalement sur les modes d’interaction mère-enfant, sur
la stimulation sociale et cognitive, ainsi que sur la perception du tempérament.
Les travaux sur les adolescents se concentrent davantage sur la construction de
l’identité culturelle et fait peu de place aux rapports avec les parents.
Cadre de la recherche
Échantillon
L’échantillon couvre une grande partie du territoire québécois, soit une école
de l’ouest de Montréal, deux écoles de la région nord-est ainsi que les écoles de
la Commission Scolaire Ste-Croix (Outremont, Ville-Mont-Royal et Ville St-
Laurent). Les autres territoires couverts comprennent les régions de Longueil,
Trois-Rivières, Bois-Francs, Québec et Sherbrooke. L’échantillon est
construit essentiellement à partir des listes des écoles. Quelques noms ont été
rajoutés grâce à l’intermédiaire des associations culturelles. Les listes
scolaires indiquent le pays d’origine du père et nous retenions les pays d’où la
majorité des migrants sont venus au Canada à titre de réfugiés au cours des
dernières années. Cette sélection excluait, par exemple Haïti, le Liban et le
Maroc. Une lettre décrivant les grandes lignes du projet est envoyé au domicile
et une brève entrevue téléphonique permet ensuite de vérifier si des motifs
politiques ou de sécurité sont à la source de la décision de la famille de migrer.
L’échantillon total comprend 210 jeunes issus de 38 pays différents. Les pays
les plus représentés dans cet échantillon sont par ordre d’importance le
Salvador (33), le Cambodge (24), le Laos (19), l’Iran (17), la Pologne (17) et le
Vietnam (16). À l’autre extrême, il ya10nations avec seulement un sujet
parmi lesquels Cuba, les Seychelles, la Palestine, l’Érithrée et l’Irak. L’âge
varie entre 12 et 19 ans, et l’âge médian est de 16 ans. La répartition entre les
sexes est relativement équilibrée avec un léger surplus de filles, soit 109 pour
101 garçons. Le taux d’acceptation pour la grande région de Montréal se situe à
66,7 p. 100 (161/255), ce qui est légèrement supérieur à des recherches
antérieures utilisant une procédure similaire auprès d’une population étudiante
francophone de la population générale. Les principaux motifs de refus sont le
manque d’intérêt (54), le manque de temps (19) et l’absence de permission des
parents (11). À de rares exceptions, tous les sujets ont séjourné au moins trois
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Les rapports entre générations dans les familles de
réfugiés au Québec
ans au Canada et devaient très bien s’exprimer en français. Néanmoins, plus
des trois quarts sont nés à l’extérieur du Canada.
La plupart des sujets de la région de Montréal ont été rencontrés dans les
laboratoires de l’université suite à la difficulté d’obtenir un endroit discret dans
le domicile familial. En région, ces entrevues se déroulaient principalement
dans des locaux empruntés à des organismes communautaires. Les entretiens
duraient en moyenne trois heures. Plusieurs instruments, dont il ne sera pas fait
mention dans cet article, ont été utilisés lors des entrevues. Une somme de 15 $
était offerte au sujet pour le dédommager de son temps et de ses frais de
transport.
Instrument
L’essentiel des données provient d’une entrevue semi-structurée dont
l’objectif à l’origine est d’identifier les facteurs familiaux qui augmentent la
vulnérabilité à un état psychopathologique. Ces facteurs comprennent la
privation de soins parentaux, la supervision et la discipline, l’antipathie des
parents, le renversement des rôles ainsi que les tensions et discordes dans la
famille (Bifulco, Brown et Harris, 1986). L’administration de cet instrument
dure en moyenne une demi-heure et se déroule en français. Les répondants
doivent décrire, à partir d’exemples concrets, leur relation avec leurs parents,
ou substituts, au cours de toute leur vie et préciser le degré de chronicité et la
période des comportements problématiques rapportés. Les questions sont
posées séparément pour le père et la mère ou pour tout substitut.
Bref portrait économique et social
La plupart des réfugiés proviennent de pays peu industrialisés. La culture, dans
des modes différents et à divers degrés, sanctionne l’intégrité de la famille et
son insertion dans un réseau étendu où le statut est lié à l’appartenance à un
lignage. Ces loyautés sont mises à rude épreuve dès l’arrivée au Canada, et
parfois même durant la période qui précède l’exil, lorsque la famille se
confronte aux conditions de vie d’une société industrielle avancée.
De fait, la famille exilée passe par les mêmes épreuves que la famille
québécoise et sa cohésion en subit des effets similaires. Les données tirées
d’un sous-échantillon de 41 sujets démontrent que 12 d’entre eux, soit 29 p.
100, ne vivent pas actuellement avec leurs deux parents biologiques 2 . Ces
données correspondent de près au même pourcentage que celui des familles
québécoises. Cependant, les raisons diffèrent puisque le décès du père est plus
fréquent chez les réfugiés et que la séparation des parents résulte parfois de
l’exil. Il est difficile dans ce cas de faire la part entre le désir des parents de ne
plus vivre ensemble et les circonstances externes.
La séparation entre les parents lors de la période de l’exil rend la vie de couple
plus difficile par la suite. Des 13 couples séparés lors de l’exil, seulement 7
vivent encore ensemble à la période de l’entrevue 3 . Par contre, seulement 3 des
24 couples non séparés lors de l’exil ne vivent plus ensemble maintenant (X 2 =
3,91, p 0,05).
Les enfants sont aussi souvent séparés de leur parents lors de l’exil. Des 35
adolescents de ce sous-groupe nés en dehors du Canada, 14 ou 40 p. 100 ont
été séparés d’au moins un de leurs parents durant cette période. Quatre l’ont été
de leur mère pendant plus d’un an, soit 12 p. 100. La période de séparation dure
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rarement moins d’une année et peut s’étendre jusqu’à six ans. On se représente
aisément la difficulté de l’enfant à reprendre alors son lien de filiation.
La famille exilée accorde une grande importance à la famille étendue,
particulièrement aux grands-parents ainsi qu’aux frères et soeurs des parents.
Malgré tout, l’unité résidentielle de la famille nucléaire demeure très solide.
Seulement 8 des 41 familles logent un membre de la famille étendue. L’oncle
est aussi représenté que le grand-parent, de telle sorte que les familles de trois
générations sont exceptionnelles. Le nombre moyen de personnes par ménage
s’élève à 4,78, c’est-à-dire près de trois enfants en plus des parents. Ce chiffre
dépasse celui des familles québécoises de souche dont la progéniture n’atteint
pas le taux de reproduction.
Les familles analysées oeuvrent dans des conditions financières difficiles, et
ce plusieurs années après leur arrivée au Canada. Elles ont généralement le
minimum vital au niveau de la nourriture, du logement et du vêtement. Les
revenus supplémentaires de la mère ou des enfants permettent de boucler le
budget, et l’endettement est rarement élevé ou prolongé. Mais la stabilité
d’emploi du père est généralement précaire. Onze sur 38 sont sans travail au
moment de l’entrevue, dont trois suite à une invalidité. Le taux de chômage
s’élève donc à 21 p. 100. En comparaison, nos recherches précédentes révèlent
un taux de chômage de5à8 p.100auprès des pères d’adolescents québécois.
La venue dans un pays industrialisé ne chambarde pas autant que par le passé la
position de la femme en regard du marché de l’emploi. Il yaenfait plus de
mères (24) qui comptaient sur un emploi rémunéré dans leur pays d’origine
que ce n’est le cas maintenant au Canada (19). La décision de se consacrer
entièrement à l’éducation des enfants pourrait expliquer cette différence. Ces
femmes sont aussi relativement isolées, qu’elles soient employées ou non.
Plus de la moitié (21/41) reçoivent en moyenne de la visite à la maison
seulement une fois ou moins par semaine.
Rapports entre générations
Nous avons choisi de diviser en fonction de trois domaines l’analyse de la
relation entre l’adolescent et ses parents : le renversement des rôles, le silence
sur les secrets de famille et la difficulté des parents d’assumer le contrôle dans
un milieu éducatif ouvert. Ces domaines ont particulièrement attiré notre
attention lors de la lecture des notes d’entrevue. Dans la mesure du possible,
nous tenterons d’établir une comparaison avec la population québécoise en
général.
Renversement des rôles
L’enfant de parents réfugiés entre très vite, trop parfois, dans l’univers adulte.
Dans les cas extrêmes, la guerre civile le plonge dans des responsabilités
rarement affrontées par des enfants ou même des adultes occidentaux.
Heureusement, la plupart des enfants sont épargnés du contact direct avec les
hostilités. Une fois au Canada, d’autres situations feront appel cependant à
leurs ressources psychologiques. Les parents sont en effet souvent incapables,
à cause principalement du manque de maîtrise de la langue française ou
anglaise, de mener de façon autonome leurs affaires, et les enfants les aideront
non seulement à traduire, mais encore à prendre des décisions importantes.
Dans d’autres cas, c’est un parent, plus souvent la mère, qui se sent esseulée et
coupée de communications significatives avec son mari, ou simplement en
situation monoparentale. Elle aura alors besoin de prendre l’un de ses enfants
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réfugiés au Québec
comme confident ou comme appui pour traverser son épreuve. Ces situations
surviennent probablement moins fréquemment dans les familles canadiennes
de souche où l’étendue des contacts de la mère lui permet de prendre un autre
adulte comme cible de ses confidences.
Le cas d’Amina sert d’exemple de fardeau fort lourd à porter. Il est
certainement exceptionnel, mais il illustre comment certains enfants sont
brutalement projetés du stade de l’enfance à celui d’adulte :
À huit ans, Amina habitait son pays d’origine au Moyen-Orient
quand son père a dû soudainement s’exiler suite à sa participation à
une opération de propagande antigouvernementale. Elle partageait
alors sa chambre avec ses grands-parents. Le grand-père fut
interpellé par la police secrète deux jours après la désertion du père.
Après une torture en règle, il est ramené chez lui presque sans vie, ne
pouvant ni parler, ni manger, ni marcher. Il meurt deux semaines plus
tard des séquelles des mauvais traitements. La famille décide alors de
partir rejoindre le père et demeurera deux années dans un camp de
réfugiés avant de parvenir au Canada en 1989. Elle est encore en
attente d’un statut de réfugié puisque celui-ci leur a été refusé en
juillet 1991. La famille n’a aucun contact personnel au Québec. Il
incombe donc à Amina de préparer la défense de ses parents pour en
appeler de la décision. Cette responsabilité l’affecte beaucoup.
Même si elle fait preuve d’intelligence et qu’elle a su rapidement
apprendre le français, Amina est angoissée parce que la décision du
juge, dont peut dépendre la vie de la famille, repose en grande partie
sur la dextérité avec laquelle elle pourra présenter le cas avec le
concours du nouvel avocat. Ces démarches la touchent également
dans sa vie scolaire parce qu’elle doit s’absenter de l’école de quatre à
cinq fois par mois. Heureusement, son professeur, compréhensif,
l’aide à reprendre le temps perdu durant la période du midi. La grande
inquiétude des parents face à leur sort est difficile à supporter, car il
retombe sur elle de les réconforter. De plus, comme elle a quatre
petits frères âgés entre 1 et 11 ans et que la mère travaille très tôt le
matin, Amina est constamment occupée par les travaux domestiques,
préparant le petit déjeuner, faisant le ménage et donnant le bain aux
enfants en soirée. C’est également elle qui aide les petits avec leurs
travaux scolaires.
Les enfants des familles exilées ressentent un poids très lourd lorsque les
parents n’arrivent pas à s’exprimer dans l’une des deux langues du pays.
L’exemple suivant donne une idée de la façon dont l’adolescent se substitue à
ses parents autant pour les tractations courantes que pour des situations plus
délicates.
Omar est un adolescent de 14 ans du Moyen-Orient. À 12 ans, soit
seulement un an et demi après son arrivée au pays, il a dû se faire
l’interprète de son père auprès du médecin de celui-ci avant une
opération délicate. Cette situation nécessitait qu’un enfant, encore
jeune, aide un parent à prendre une décision pénible et angoissante.
Par ailleurs, Omar achète, avec les sous économisés d’un travail à
temps partiel, une voiture d’occasion à ses parents. C’est lui aussi qui
s’occupe de la négociation du bail du logement, qui accompagne son
père pour chercher du travail auprès des employeurs et, lorsque sa
mère doit à son tour être hospitalisée, qui prend l’initiative des
démarches. Un autre incident, survenu un soir du Ramadan, illustre
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bien de telles substitutions. Comme la famille faisait un peu de bruit,
un voisin est venu leur faire des menaces d’agression physique et a
ensuite appelé les gendarmes. Omar ne craignait pas les menaces car
il suivait des cours d’arts martiaux et il a tranquillement expliqué aux
policiers la nature des festivités. Le voisin a finalement entendu
raison et s’est excusé de sa saute d’humeur.
Des jeunes comme Amina et Omar sont en même temps très fiers d’exercer
leur débrouillardise et savent que ces responsabilités leur confèrent un statut et
une autonomie qu’ils n’auraient jamais pu acquérir dans des circonstances
ordinaires. Il faut dire que leurs parents, face à leurs limites linguistiques,
expriment leur soutien et leur témoigne une grande estime.
La situation s’avère plus difficile dans les familles monoparentales. La mère,
isolée, se confie parfois à l’adolescent quant à ses malheurs et ses problèmes
antérieurs avec le père, ou quant à la nostalgie chronique de son pays natal.
L’adolescent est alors mal en point pour consoler sa mère. D’autres fois, il
s’inquiète du fait que sa mère ne puisse maîtriser le français ou l’anglais.
Qu’arrivera-t-il si elle se perd ou si elle est victime d’un accident? Un sujet
rapporte qu’il écrivait d’avance des billets pour chaque éventualité d’une
urgence et qu’il informait sa mère de tous les lieux où il pouvait se trouver au
long de la journée. Un tel adolescent ne peut évidemment compter que sur luimême
pour se débrouiller s’il tombe malade ou s’il est victime d’accident.
Ces prises de responsabilité ont généralement des conséquences positives sur
la consolidation de l’estime de soi. Cette entraide contribue aussi à resserrer les
liens familiaux. La participation très active aux tâches domestiques augmente
le sens d’appartenance, et cela même chez les garçons.
Le secret de famille
Les migrants opèrent souvent une coupure avec leur passé et n’y réfèrent
parfois qu’avec réticence. Si le passé peut être fortement idéalisé, il est
rarement raconté dans sa version plus prosaïque. La tendance semble encore
plus accentuée chez les exilés. Les enfants connaissent en général peu de
choses sur la situation de leurs parents avant l’exil. Ils identifient difficilement
à l’occasion le métier de leurs parents dans le pays d’origine et ne savent
souvent pas par quels moyens ceux-ci ont fui. Des adolescents vietnamiens
n’ont pu confirmer si leurs parents avaient quitté leur pays par avion ou par
bateau de fortune. Pourtant, ils pouvaient décrire des scènes très troublantes de
leur vie familiale, ce qui témoigne qu’ils ne pêchaient pas par discrétion.
L’observation la plus dramatique de cette dynamique est survenue lorsque le
deuxième auteur s’est rendu au domicile d’une famille et s’est entretenu dans
un premier temps avec la mère en présence des enfants. Il s’agit d’une veuve
originaire du sud-est asiatique. Elle s’est alors mise à raconter spontanément
les misères vécues durant la guerre civile et son exil, les habitants du village
assassinés et les scènes de pillage. Elle a récupéré ses enfants qui étaient encore
vivants sous un tas de cadavres et elle a traversé le pays miné de toutes parts
jusqu’en Thaïlande. Les enfants, stupéfiés, apprenaient, dix années plus tard et
en même temps que notre collègue, l’effroyable odyssée de leur mère.
Nous pouvons présumer qu’un certain nombre d’enfants continuent d’ignorer
à peu près tout du passé de leurs parents qui, n’ayant pu faire le deuil de leurs
pertes ou désirant reconstruire une vie entièrement nouvelle pour leurs enfants,
font tout pour occulter leurs expériences. Les enfants doivent quand même se
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réfugiés au Québec
douter à travers les bribes d’information provenant des médias ou des films de
ce qui s’est passé. Par exemple, beaucoup de femmes et de jeunes filles sont
violées et agressées sexuellement soit pendant la guerre, soit dans une moindre
mesure dans les camps de réfugiés. Ces expériences continuent de jeter un
voile de honte entre le mari et la femme sans que rien ne soit su des enfants.
Ce repli des parents engendre occasionnellement des tensions aiguës. Une
jeune Cambodgienne, dont le père a été enlevé par les Khmers rouges et qui est
disparu lorsqu’elle avait cinq ans, harcèle sa mère pour obtenir des
renseignements sur son histoire. La mère évite les questions ou n’y répond
qu’après une forte insistance. Les rapport sont d’ailleurs très négatifs entre les
deux, et la fille rend sa mère responsable de son problème de filiation avec le
père en le projetant sur elle et lui disant : « Je ne veux plus être ta fille ».
Le contrôle parental
L’ensemble des parents, peu importe la région d’origine (Amérique latine,
Asie ou Europe de l’est) exercent un contrôle assez strict sur leurs enfants
quoique avec des variantes prononcées dans les modalités. L’instrument
utilisé dans cette recherche permet d’assigner une cote « élevé » dans les cas
de contrôle très prononcés qui, d’après les cliniciens, augmenteraient la
vulnérabilité à certaines formes de psychopathologie. Les jugements sont
basés sur les exemples rapportés et leur persistance et non sur la perception des
sujets. Le contrôle des parents s’étend donc généralement sur plusieurs années
et prend des formes variées dont les plus sévères sont l’utilisation de punitions
physiques répétées; l’interdiction de sorties à l’extérieur de la maison après 18
heures même durant la fin de semaine et l’été; l’interdiction de recevoir des
téléphones ou des visites personnelles; fouiller l’espace personnel de l’enfant
sans son consentement pour obtenir des preuves de désobéissance; et critiquer
quotidiennement et avec véhémence, sans raison sérieuse, les moindres écarts
de comportement.
Un calcul opéré sur la première moitié de notre échantillon (N = 102) indique
que 17 sujets, soit 16,7 p. 100, décrivent une situation de contrôle élevé. Les
filles sont nettement surreprésentées puisqu’elles comptent 13 des 17 cas. Une
autre étude menée en milieu montréalais par notre équipe relève, pour la
tranche d’âge entre 14 et 24 ans, des taux de contrôle élevé qui se situent autour
de 8 p. 100 pour toute la période entre 0 et 17 ans 4 . Le contrôle exagéré des
parents de familles de réfugiés ne s’exerce donc pas universellement, mais
cible davantage les filles que les garçons. Par ailleurs, ce rapport du simple au
double serait plus grand si nous tenions compte des situations où une
surveillance forte est exercée par les parents sans pour autant être déviante et
pouvoir nuire à la socialisation de l’enfant.
Ce contrôle peut prendre la forme de mesures disciplinaires sévères dont les
punitions physiques jusqu’au seuil de l’adolescence, voire jusqu’à la période
de jeune adulte chez les filles, ou de règles rigides concernant les sorties. Ces
comportements parentaux continuent généralement ceux transmis par la
culture d’origine. Ils provoquent bien sûr des conflits parfois aigus auprès des
adolescents dans un contexte canadien.
Les filles sont plus sujettes à ces mesures et l’étau peut même se resserrer
quand la menace des sorties avec les garçons commence à poindre. Pour
certains parents, la crainte de la promiscuité cache mal l’angoisse de perdre du
pouvoir; pour d’autres, c’est le refus de voir leur fille s’engager avec un garçon
d’un autre groupe culturel ou d’une autre religion. Il est arrivé de voir un père
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accompagner sa fille en entrevue ou une adolescente être obligée de téléphoner
à la maison aux demi-heures pendant l’entrevue pour assurer qu’elle se
trouvait toujours dans nos locaux. Le plan original de mener les entrevues à la
maison a été très tôt abandonné en raison du manque de discrétion de la part des
parents. Certains sujets du sud-est asiatique ont révélé que même si leurs
parents se tenaient dans une pièce attenante, et que la porte était fermée, il y
avait danger qu’ils écoutent tout.
Les exemples de punition physique sont monnaie courante dans presque tous
les groupes suffisamment représentatifs. Le degré d’accord de l’enfant avec le
comportement des parents varie grandement, allant de la légitimation à des
actes de rébellion. Ainsi, un garçon raconte avec une certaine fierté comment
sa mère, lorsqu’il eut dit des mots sales dans son pays d’origine vers l’âge de
huit ans, prit une allumette et lui brûla légèrement les lèvres.
À côté des exemples de contrôle culturellement sanctionnés, il existe des
conduites de contrôle sévère perçues très négativement, du moins en
rétrospective, par l’adolescent. Une adolescente latino-américaine rappelle
avoir été élevée de façon très stricte par sa mère. Dans son pays d’origine, et
cela jusqu’à l’âge de 13 ans, elle ne pouvait se rendre que chez la voisine et ne
pouvait pas rentrer plus tard que 19 heures 30 au risque d’être battue. Sa mère
allait la conduire et la chercher tous les jours à l’école. Une fois, la mère ne se
présenta pas à l’heure habituelle et la fille, alors âgée de 7-8 ans, rentra avec sa
gardienne. La mère, enragée par cette inconduite, lui mit la tête dans la cuvette
des toilettes. Cette jeune fille a maintenant 16 ans et habite Montréal avec sa
tante, également très stricte. Elle a pu arracher la permission de voir son ami de
coeur une fois par semaine. Une autre adolescente du sud-est asiatique
rapporte ne pas avoir eu le droit de sortir de la maison après souper jusqu’à
l’âge de 15 ans. Ce contrôle des filles est aussi extrêmement serré dans les
familles musulmanes.
Cette démarche des parents souffre souvent d’un manque de légitimité sociale
dans une société postindustrielle avancée. Les enfants devenus adolescents et
désormais bien conscients des valeurs d’égalitarisme et d’autonomie
véhiculées à la fois à l’école et dans les média n’intériorisent pas toujours ces
attitudes de contrainte et, à moins que les parents aient pu valider leur mode
d’agir, ils se rebellent contre ce qu’ils perçoivent comme une atteinte à leurs
libertés fondamentales et un frein à leur intégration dans la société libérale. À
ce point, les parents vacilleront entre des bouffées d’autoritarisme et un
abandon de leurs responsabilités. Ils se sentent de plus en plus dépassés et ils
abdiquent graduellement.
Les garçons sont particulièrement victimes de ces situations d’ambivalence
parentale. Notre recherche a relevé un nombre assez élevé de comportements
antisociaux tels que les vols, les batailles de rue et, occasionnellement, la
promiscuité sexuelle. Ce syndrome est souvent généré en partie par des
dynamiques familiales où les parents manifestent une incompétence à gérer le
devenir de leurs enfants après avoir tenté par tous les moyens de les contenir.
Chez les 30 premiers sujets masculins, nous avons relevé cinq cas avec au
moins quatre symptômes de conduite antisociale. Trois des adolescents
rapportent avoir été battus par leur père. Un quatrième, sans être battu, est la
cible de scènes de colère disgracieuses connues de tout l’étage de l’immeuble.
Ces enfants disent tous avoir eu très peur de leur père au cours de leur enfance.
Maintenant, il existe une dynamique de défi à l’égard de cette répression
paternelle au moment où la peur s’amenuise.
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réfugiés au Québec
Dans d’autres circonstances, et cela est plus remarquable chez les filles en
provenance du Moyen-Orient, il existe une soumission consentie au contrôle
des parents. Le milieu très protégé interdit une socialisation avec l’ensemble
des adolescents, sans que ce soit pour elles source de malheur. Cet équilibre ne
pourra durer qu’en autant que la vie future de ces adolescentes reproduise la
situation vécue au foyer. Comme plusieurs de ces groupes ne possèdent pas
une densité démographique très élevée au Québec, la transition risque d’être
difficile. Encore est-il qu’il ne faille pas sous-estimer la capacité de la famille à
gérer entièrement la vie intime de leurs enfants. Ainsi, une jeune fille
musulmane qui approche de la majorité attend avec soumission d’aller vivre
l’an prochain dans son pays d’origine avec un mari encore inconnu que son
père ira lui procurer.
Conclusion
Il va sans dire que, sans être meilleure ou pire, la dynamique qui préside aux
relations intergénérationnelles diffère considérablement dans cet échantillon
de familles d’exilés vivant au Québec que dans les familles francophones de
souche (Tousignant, Hamel et Bastien, 1988). Rappelons brièvement les
observations faites antérieurement au sujet de ce dernier groupe. Les familles
québécoises accordent évidemment beaucoup plus de liberté à leurs enfants,
conscientes que ceux-ci doivent prendre graduellement en main leur destinée.
Ces adolescents se préoccupent alors moins de leur indépendance que de leur
capacité d’autonomie qui s’exerce non seulement envers les parents, mais
aussi envers leurs amis, leurs camarades et même leurs amis de coeur. Les
écarts de la norme, quand ils surviennent dans ces familles, prennent alors la
coloration d’un laisser-aller ou d’un désistement de la part des parents. Les
jeunes se plaignent aussi du manque de contribution émotive de la part du père,
et cela même dans les familles sans problèmes graves. Les parents sont parfois
eux aussi obsédés par leur désir d’autonomie et se distancient des enfants pour
investir dans leur carrière ou leurs loisirs. Quand il y a détresse psychologique
chez les adolescents, elle emprunte alors la voie de la crise suicidaire, quand ce
n’est pas de la tentative elle-même dont la fréquence est de 6 p. 100 entre 14 et
17 ans. Dans les cas plus heureux, les adolescents sont en mesure de prendre
rapidement des décisions importantes, de s’exprimer ouvertement sur leurs
états psychologiques et de faire confiance aux autres. Ils auront de la
reconnaissance envers leurs parents, mais leur générosité s’orientera
également vers l’extérieur de la famille au sein de leur groupe de pairs ou dans
des engagements sociaux.
Les familles de réfugiés semblent revivre sous une autre forme le choc des
valeurs vécu au Québec durant la période de la Révolution tranquille. C’est le
passage d’une société traditionnelle à une société libérale. La civilisation nordaméricaine
exerçe un attrait certain sur les parents qui sont moins assurés dans
leurs valeurs, et on observe souvent une cassure du contrôle avec les années.
La communauté culturelle d’appartenance n’est pas suffisamment nombreuse
dans la plupart des cas au Québec pour assurer un support aux parents dans leur
démarche éducative. On assiste donc davantage à une espèce de guerre de
tranchée où le jeune tente d’accaparer de plus en plus de terrain. Cependant, il
ne sait plus trop comment utiliser le pouvoir nouvellement acquis qui se
traduira gauchement en rébellion et en conduites déviantes. Chez les filles,
cela se traduira davantage par des sentiments d’anxiété et des conduites
phobiques parce qu’elles sentiront que les parents ne peuvent plus leur
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IJCS / RIÉC
apporter la protection promise. Les conduites suicidaires, bien que présentes,
sont aussi moins prononcées que chez les jeunes Québécoises.
L’aspect positif est l’empreinte plus forte laissée par la famille chez les exilés.
Les parents investissent beaucoup dans leurs enfants, probablement parce
qu’ils ont perdu tellement de liens d’attachement en s’exilant. De plus, le
racisme vécu par les deux générations — en provenance aussi bien de
Québécois de souche que d’autres groupes migrants — à l’école et sur le
marché du travail resserre nécessairement les liens d’appartenance. Mais le
point le plus saillant s’avère la participation prononcée de ces jeunes dans le
monde adulte et dans l’espace domestique. Ils ont de nombreuses occasions de
surmonter des défis, de se battre et de se sentir importants. Cela contraste
sûrement avec la situation des Québécois de souche qui affrontent aussi des
défis, mais davantage sur le mode du jeu, soit dans les sports ou les associations
de jeunes. Il y a aussi chez le groupe de réfugiés ce sentiment que l’on part de
rien et qu’il faut foncer dans la vie, cette contrainte de ne pouvoir regarder en
arrière, cette conviction qu’il y va de l’honneur de sa culture. Il faudra attendre
encore quelques années pour savoir si les grands entrepreneurs et innovateurs
de demain proviendront davantage de ces familles d’exilés.
La nature de notre échantillon nous force à limiter nos conclusions à la
population des réfugiés. La tentation est forte cependant de les étendre aux
autres groupes d’immigrants. Lors de la présentation de ces résultats
préliminaires en conférence, nous avons entendu quelques témoignages de
représentants d’autres groupes culturels qui voyaient dans nos données un
reflet de leur expérience familiale d’immigrants. Nous ne pouvons qu’espérer
que d’autres recherches viennent enrichir ce protrait initial.
Notes
1. Cette recherche a été rendue possible grâce à des subventions du CRSH, du FCAR et du
Fonds FODAR de l’Université du Québec. Nous tenons à remercier les personnes suivantes
qui ont contribué à ce texte : Claire Malo etx Francine Perrault.
2. Les données de cette recherche ne sont pas encore informatisées et ne pourront l’être avant
plusieurs mois. Les statistiques présentées reposent donc sur une fraction de l’échantillon.
3. Il ne s’agit pas dans ces cas de familles en attente de réunification.
4. Ces résultats n’ont pas encore été publiés. Pour d’autres détails sur cette étude voir
Tousignant, M., Hamel, S., Bastien, M.F. (1988). Structure familiale, relations parentsenfants
et conduites suicidaires à l’école secondaire. Santé Mentale au Québec, 13, 79-93.
Bibliographie
Aronowitz, M. (1984). The social and emotional adjustment of immigrant children: A review of
the literature. International Migration Review, 18, 237-257.
Ben-Porath, Y. S. (1987). Issues in the psycho-social adjustment of refugees. Texte préparé pour
le National Institute of Mental Health’s Refugee Assistance Program. Mental
Health/Technical Assistance Center of the University of Minnesota (Contract No. 278-85-
0024 CH).
Bifulco, A.T., Brown, G.W. et Harris, T.O. (1986). Childhood loss of parent, lack of adequate
parental care and adult depression: a replication. Journal of Affective Disorders, 12, 115-
128.
Groupe d’étude sur la santé mentale des immigrants et des réfugiés (1988). Review of Literature
on Migrant Mental Health/Revue de littérature sur la santé mentale des migrants. Santé,
Culture, Health, 5(1), 5-74.
Murphy, H.B.M. (1977). Migration, culture and mental health. Psychological Medicine, 7(4),
677-684.
Sabatier, C. (1991). Les relations parents-enfants dans un contexte d’immigration. Ce que nous
savons et ce que nous devrions savoir. Santé Mentale au Québec, 16, 165-190.
180

Les rapports entre générations dans les familles de
réfugiés au Québec
Tousignant, M., Hamel, S., Bastien, M.F. (1988). Structure familiale, relations parents-enfants et
conduites suicidaires à l’école secondaire. Santé Mentale au Québec, 13, 79-93.
181

Claire Harris
A Grammar of the Heart
As earth lives the bodies of the dead 1 she lived
language at first she examined each word skin
peeled back green flesh squeezed between thumb
and forefinger till she tasted sentences rolled them
in her curious mouth swirled them around the sides
and back of her tongue waited for the aftertaste
thin sound grew in her as if she hummed as if
humming she sang
in here i
hereiamin
herein i am in and am
indifference
i differ in here
am different her and
in indifference am
within difference
am difference no
defence with
out herein
iamin
in this monotony and as if she had absorbed the
word into her blood thus it began to flower in
silence
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Special issue / Numéro hors série, Winter/hiver 1993

IJCS / RIÉC
Consider her my mother in her awful moment
my father’s hand cupped in her brown one
his fingers blue at nails and tips
begun their slow fading
while she sits staring at that face
so suddenly frozen
into its final dignity
without a word she lays down
that hand and as if she can
and slice through thick air to trap the core
of things she closes his window
on the dense music of bees of cicadas
of nameless life she draws his blinds
straightens his riotous blue brown sheets
pulls the heavy counterpane up over his shoulders
then leaves him in half open contemplation
of what ever lay seized in his dark eyes
and shuts the door
184

A Grammar of the Heart
How here to say the unsayable
when she was eight death wheeling over her house
a great flight of corbeaux of darkness snatched
sisters a brother now deathbeds have become her
womb from her first husband’s at twenty she
birthed grief in black veils and in honey then her
father died she drew from the hollow of that death
the modern bread winner & so fashionable she
laughed often was young her mother died she shed
the daughter became wife once more and finally
If death knocked again she wouldn’t answer
*
And yet believing in her own immortality
In something that is no more than nothing
Ravelling and ravelling her silences
Against death against offspring against
darkness with the soft crumpling of days
laying goodmornings and goodnights
one on one on one a haven a fastness
185

IJCS / RIÉC
Thus she turned away from us all
retired to her own womb its slow
gestations
she lay curled
drank only when her body newly parched cried
out and there
under the stigmata of her woman’s life
she paced the deliberate the walled moment
its love affair once tended as one
tends a garden... naming
and with a certain ruthlessness
a certain awe...
now shattered as by earthquake
For days she wandered among beaten
branches among amputations and boulders
gouging herself among the thorns of hope
and strewn petals till as if driven
from or by a spade flaming into sword
she rose a stranger
the thing splintered in her mended
to a new shape
out of her clear eyes something distant
surprised looked on us
186

A Grammar of the Heart
Now
through my writing window
the late summer sun flares
briefly
before his going down
(death here his wail still
somewhat in poor taste a turning away
as from shabby defeat) now
not silence but the city’s quiet
settles over the Bow
187

IJCS / RIÉC
To sketch
one who discarded
words
with words
she was a woman
born in the dawn
her girlhood startled
by the first world war
she loved
she married
she buried
she loved again married in rose lace and promise
then calm eye of the storm
she mothered
she cooked
she taught
she baked
she nursed
she danced and played and fussed over bruises
and laughed and prayed
and loved
and read
and baked cared made wonderful punch
and yet
she was a woman who thought herself unwatched her
heart secret around the first grief she moved
through her life as if she wasn’t there
188

A Grammar of the Heart
Through the plate glass windows a
lone plane floats soundlessly
Calgary’s midnight wash of sky
no stars never stars
a moon like a parenthesis
and still
i remember
how she filled the house with such quiet gaiety
gathering us all around her in the huge bed in the
hot afternoons after the day’s teaching to laugh at
our stories
and yet
she wrapped herself around him my father like a
second skin and she fit in the suppressed laughter
in the chatter those sudden teasing silences from
her room there was no space for any child
and yet
she was so gentle we rose each morning at five to be
almost alone with her climbing the hill to mass in
the deep hibiscus dawn
and still fired ebony at the core or bronze i
remember rosary beads clicking like an abacus in
tapered fingers and how cool she could be how
adamant in the face of certain griefs and yet
189

IJCS / RIÉC
She was a spell
a plot
i could not be like her
it was something
i could not learn the way
i learnt
to make buljol
stuff cucumbers
match patterns
the way i learnt
a woman must have a profession
that way you aren’t dependent on any man
and yet
now sometimes
i come upon her suddenly
and in shadow
now perhaps my grave’s clarity
resolving itself
i understand
what passion forged the cool smile
190

A Grammar of the Heart
Caught in the light of her infinite surprise in that
silence growing longer than days we panicked
doctors/nurses/sea air will do her good forced to
Mayaro she gestured away the days
our frantic whisperings
distanced even the clash of currents
at her ankles we argued ways
means
how to live out a life refused
taking the matter from her gently
and as if it were ours
but she rocked the sandy verandahs
prepared bits of meals
as if these things mattered
and each day at high noon she stood
in the spent sibilance of sea
at wind wave’s edge and day after day
191

IJCS / RIÉC
I remembered my father his sudden rising from
driftwood a shout in trunks he strode into raw sea
without a word steadily without distraction until
the waves break over his shoulders he now begins
to swim further and still further into brilliant
sunstricken ocean beyond swell and far breakers
his head a black dot dances where that heavy pool of
light becomes Atlantic his head grows smaller
while our thin cries scratch and the gulls’ cries
strain above the waves
small crabs scuttle flocks of chip-chip work in
aeons of sand as if the world unspoken were still
there
How she stands never takes her eyes from his head the
curve of his arm rising never calling him back how
he turns finally and many years later how the world
comes back and he pounds towards shore and she
how before he can touch ground turns away as if
the coconut palms thrashing about her were the
whips of scorpions
192

A Grammar of the Heart
And wind flares
from that ocean
strips from those palms
from these river-green
poplars the world’s
wild fiery
breath
now lean and dark he
whistles
beneath my balcony
Where i have seen her a wet snow falling
arms wrapped around her shoulders
rocking as she may once have rocked away noonday
sun
And i have seen her make from the space
between a new world of snow
and difficult daughters
Once she said a woman’s choice limited
must be quick and sure
her silences grew baroque
Still she wrote letters to the lawyers:
I decide not these children
in the windows
dark waters of the Bow
drown a city
193

IJCS / RIÉC
I phone my brother
the air
waves taut
with loss he
says she was so
gracious
did i ever tell you
he hesitates
suddenly gruff
are you writing this down
of course
194

A Grammar of the Heart
In the end twice married rich
with experience of dark men
she turned to her third
seduction
death seeing himself invited
begins a slow flirtatious dance
and she with him
now like a young bride soft
with hope and mystery
And the present deserts her
as if the burden of grief had shunted her into past
tense she began to blur
i arched found claws spat at death at fear
Eventually cottonwoods stripped of their leaves
the Bow wearing thin frills of ice
she returned to that room
where everything was out of proportion
And there where even memory was too highly
polished the curtains too heavy
she lay
195

IJCS / RIÉC
And she was gone from us slowly so slowly like a
sequence of gaunt ferryman loved face growing
smaller and smaller till only the hulk drifting over
the horizon tip of a sail For years
She wandered in a bright haunted wood the dead
leaving victorian graves to call her name small
sisters father husbands she answered them all her
voice its words are a herd of douen clinging to her
skirts their dead backward footprints
The adult gone from her in messy details
poured out as water through a basket
woman
She ceased to be the wall between me and the grave yet
a cool gravity an inquiring eyebrow
As transparent as an embryo
I would abort but lack the courage of saline or
solutions
And years
As if or whether stabat mater were intrinsic to
the mother
Dolorosa
and already infinite
Impossible to say her pain or whether for us a
wracking a slow burning at the stake
i wanted her to answer once
196

A Grammar of the Heart
She lay my mother without speech
before a headboard too tall too tightly
carved my visits brought no softening
of that resistance i joined you
i lay in silence only your eyes moved
refusing recognition
and the shedding of your flesh was speech
when you had poured out all you could
i lay fat unwrinkled
your skin hooked tight over bone i lay full
looselimbed puppet on your string
eyes stretched on some inner play you
were marble an effigy before your own tomb
i gave up i gave in
Now in the mango wind drifting
from island backyards in the purpling of lilacs
on Memorial at bridge hands in country lamplight
i remember you your earlier times
young and laughing i remember how silence
rewarded you my father storming around
your stillness then giving in
197

IJCS / RIÉC
EPILOGUE
Rushing home from Calgary my mother
dying the forest roads lined with lilies
I see them mad fluent orange
and stop to capture this for her later
in a mud green hospital room though
gathered in huge bunches dumped raw
in great stone jars in the awesome
victorious silence suddenly wildly
obscene and stricken like this verse
extinguishing what is left of her
that is wild and full of grace
Note
1. Luis Rosales “The Root”, Roots & Wings, Hardie St. Martin, Harper & Row
198

Review Essays
Essais critiques

Simon Langlois
Trois regards sur les générations
François Ricard, La génération lyrique, Montréal, Boréal, 1993.
Douglas Coupland, Generation X. Tales for an Accelerated Culture, New
York, St. Martin’s Press, 1991.
Reginald Bibby et Donald Posterski, Teen Trends. A Nation in Motion,
Toronto, Stoddart, 1992.
La génération à laquelle on appartient est à la fois le point d’ancrage d’une
définition du monde, mais aussi un critère de positionnement objectif par
rapport aux autres dans une société donnée. La première perspective renvoie
aux façons différentes dont les générations définissent le monde, les valeurs,
les façons de vivre, l’exercice de l’autorité, le respect de la tradition ou
l’ouverture au changement. Les générations peuvent s’affronter violemment
ou se succéder dans une certaine harmonie, selon les époques et les cultures,
tout comme elles peuvent aussi coexister dans l’indifférence ainsi que le
donnent à penser les analyses de E. Shorter (Naissance de la famille moderne,
Paris, 1977). Mais l’appartenance à une génération peut aussi être considérée,
dans une seconde perspective, comme un critère d’allocation des ressources
disponibles dans une société, au même titre que la classe sociale, la langue, le
sexe ou l’ethnie. On parlera d’effet de genération — et non plus seulement
d’effet d’âge — lorsque l’équilibre relatif des rapports entre groupes d’âge est
rompu d’une cohorte à l’autre.
Dans ses Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse, Renan écrit : « J’aime le passé,
mais je porte envie à l’avenir. Il y aura eu de l’avantage à passer sur cette
planète le plus tard possible ». Les jeunes d’aujourd’hui auront peut-être
quelques hésitations à se reconnaître spontanément dans ce discours qui leur
paraîtra pécher par excès d’optimisme. Il est vrai que la situation socioéconomique
de la majorité s’est améliorée au fil des ans, dans la foulée du
développement économique considérable qu’ont connu les sociétés
industrielles. Mais il est également vrai que cette tendance s’est en quelque
sorte arrêtée depuis plus de quinze ans. Ce temps d’arrêt a affecté les jeunes
plus durement que tout autre groupe. Ainsi, la situation relative des jeunes
familles et des personnes âgées s’est-elle considérablement modifiée en
Amérique du Nord durant les années 1980 : globalement, les jeunes ont perdu
du terrain par rapport aux jeunes des générations précédentes, et les personnes
plus âgées ont réussi quant à elles à améliorer leurs acquis par rapport aux
cohortes passées.
Les deux aspects de l’analyse des générations que nous venons d’identifier
sont présents, à des degrés divers, dans les trois ouvrages analysés ici. Lus l’un
après l’autre, ces livres sont autant de regards différents sur l’un des
phénomènes sociaux les plus importants de la fin du siècle : la remise en cause
et la redéfinition des rapports entre les genérations dans les societés
développées.
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
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IJCS / RIÉC
La génération lyrique
L’ouvrage de François Ricard, La génération lyrique, est à la fois un essai —
un essai d’abord littéraire, se plaît à rappeler l’auteur — et un portrait qui
s’attarde à dégager la mentalité des premiers-nés de la génération du babyboom
au Québec. Voilà aussi une sorte de biographie collective et de
confession critique qui s’attache à suivre le déroulement de l’existence de cette
génération que Ricard divise en trois périodes : l’enfance et l’adolescence (les
années 1960), la jeunesse et l’entrée dans le monde (les années 1970) et l’âge
du réel ou l’âge de la prise en main de la société (qui va jusqu’à la fin des années
1980). Portrait particulièrement bien réussi qui intéressera d’abord les lecteurs
par ses qualités littéraires. La langue est alerte et vive et le style, incisif.
L’auteur a le don de la formule qui sait ramasser en peu de mots une idée, un
diagnostic, une interprétation. L’ouvrage est à lire, d’abord pour le plaisir que
sait donner tout livre bien écrit.
Ricard a trouvé chez un littéraire — Milan Kundera qui est non seulement un
écrivain remarquable mais aussi un fin observateur du monde contemporain
— le fil conducteur de son essai qui l’a amené à qualifier de génération lyrique,
les premiers-nés du baby-boom, cette crète d’une vague démographique qui a
déferlé en Amérique du Nord après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. « Dans le
vocabulaire de Milan Kundera, l’une des composantes essentielles du lyrisme
est justement cette attitude qui consiste à voir le monde comme un immense
champ ouvert, comme une matière vierge où l’être ne rencontre aucun obstacle
et qu’il peut donc défaire et refaire à sa guise pour s’y projeter et s’y accomplir
sans réserve ni confusion » (p. 25-26).
La première partie de l’essai dresse un portrait quelque peu idéalisé de
l’enfance de cette génération. Conçue avec amour par des parents ayant
confiance en l’avenir, la génération lyrique n’a pas connu les drames des
générations précédentes. Ses membres ont été insoumis bien plus que révoltés.
« L’insoumission, en un mot, n’était pas d’abord une revendication de liberté
mais bien le signe de cette liberté même » (p. 147). La contestation des années
1960 n’a pas été seulement un moyen collectif de promotion des intérêts d’un
groupement, elle a été d’abord une fête, une agitation lyrique; elle a été moins
une révolte que l’expression d’une assurance. L’auteur tranche ici avec
quelques interprétations acceptées sur les idéologies étudiantes de l’époque.
Habitée par le sentiment de la légèreté du monde propre à son époque —
toujours Kundera — la jeune génération lyrique n’a pas eu à lutter contre la
contrainte. Celle-ci s’était en quelque sorte évanouie d’elle-même dans une
société mobile se modernisant et s’enrichissant rapidement. L’auteur montre
bien ici la place unique de cette génération. Celles qui l’ont précédé ont fait
face à des contraintes lourdes que n’ont pas connues les jeunes appartenant à la
génération lyrique. Celle-ci n’a pas eu seulement devant elle un monde marqué
par la légèreté; elle a affirmé avec force sa présence par le nombre, telle une
grosse vague qui s’avance lourdement, bousculant tout. D’où trois traits que
lui attribue Ricard : « foi en sa propre puissance, habitude de se reconnaître
dans le groupe, affirmation narcissique de sa différence » (p. 161).
La troisième partie de l’ouvrage — l’âge du réel — analyse la prise de contrôle
de la société par la génération lyrique parvenue à l’âge adulte. Ici, l’auteur se
fait plus cynique, plus mordant même, montrant comment cette génération
s’est comportée en maître du monde, se donnant un État pour soutenir ses
intérêts et le contestant, quelques années plus tard, toujours dans le même but.
Le chapitre le plus important de l’ouvrage est peut-être celui sur les idéologies
202

Trois regards sur les générations
lyriques. Idéologies de la société, du moi, de la culture, sans oublier le
féminisme, les discours élaborés par la génération lyrique sur elle-même et sur
la société globale ont été marqués par l’absence d’originalité, le ton
péremptoire, une espèce de terrorisme idéologique. Emportées dans une
grande agitation, ces constructions du monde n’ont guère inventé mais elles
ont beaucoup détruit. Seul point positif que l’auteur concède : le désir
d’innover, surtout présent en littérature. Nous voyons bien aujourd’hui que
tout cela n’était que des mots conclut Ricard, avec laconisme et un regard
quelque peu désabusé. « Sous couvert de changer la société, la vie ou la culture,
la subversion n’avait d’autre but en realité que de faire place nette, de
disqualifier l’héritage des générations précédentes, afin que les nouveaux
maîtres n’aient aucun compte à rendre ni aucune continuité à assumer » (p.
217). Ce chapitre sur les idéologies décevra sans doute le chercheur en analyse
du discours parce qu’on n’y trouve pas d’étude serrée des différents corpus.
Mais si on accepte de le lire comme la reconstitution d’un climat intellectuel,
alors il prend toute sa force et sa pertinence. L’auteur suggère au passage
l’existence d’une alliance objective entre la génération lyrique et les élements
progressifs des générations aînées, avides de changement et de modernisation.
L’hypothèse est à peine développée et elle mériterait sans doute d’être
réexaminée de plus près.
Il est difficile d’évaluer la portée de l’ouvrage de Ricard. Livre qui se situe à la
frontière de plusieurs genres, à la fois essai, analyse sociologique et portrait
littéraire d’une génération et de ses rapports aux autres, il est en quelque sorte
inclassable. Sa grande qualité est sans aucun doute de parvenir à traduire le
climat social d’une époque.
Cet essai, qui puise largement dans l’expérience québécoise, s’applique-t-il
aussi aux autres sociétés comparables, notamment au reste du Canada, aux
États-Unis et à la France? L’auteur tente de le faire croire et présente le cas
québécois comme une sorte de cas typique susceptible d’être généralisé. Cette
perspective est probablement l’aspect le plus contestable du livre, car il est loin
d’être sûr que cette analyse puisse être aussi facilement étendue à d’autres
sociétés. Deux raisons expliquent cette réserve. Tout d’abord, le baby-boom
n’a pas eu la même importance en Europe qu’en Amérique et les traits typiques
de la génération lyrique n’ont pas pu s’y déployer avec autant de facilité, ne
serait-ce qu’à cause du poids des institutions et du contexte historique différent
d’après-guerre. Aux États-Unis, la modernisation de la société s’était imposée
bien avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, alors qu’au Québec elle a en quelque
sorte accompagné la vague du baby-boom de l’après-guerre. Ricard soutient
que la géneration lyrique a trouvé, avec l’avènement de la modernité, le climat
social et moral qui lui convenait parfaitement. Il a probablement raison dans le
cas québécois. Mais cette correspondance semble plus difficilement
observable ailleurs, d’où l’interrogation sur la portée de l’analyse.
La génération sans nom
Après la description d’un monde marqué par la légèreté, voici celle d’un
monde dénudé. Quel contraste entre la génération lyrique et la génération X,
entre la vie des premiers-nés et la vie des derniers-nés du baby-boom, qui sont
venus au monde à la fin des années 1950 et durant les années 1960. Generation
X. Tales for an Acceleratcd Culture est le premier roman d’un jeune auteur
originaire de la Colombie-Britannique qui peint la vie quotidienne de trois
amis — Andy, Claire et Dag — et les histoires qu’ils se racontent. Ce roman est
en fait le portrait sociologique de la génération qui a eu vingt ou trente ans et
203

IJCS / RIÉC
des poussières au tournant des années 1990. On y découvre l’envers du décor
planté par François Ricard : le monde n’apparaît plus ouvert, mais il est au
contraire fermé, hermétique; l’élaboration de grands projets globaux a été
remplacée par la navigation à vue; l’abondance a cédé la place à un certain
épuisement. Après la génération lyrique, la génératron sans nom. « We have
the same group over here and its just as large, but it doesn’t have a name — an
X generation — purposefully hiding itself » (p. 56). Andy, Dag et Claire sont
suréduqués et sous-employés, isolés les uns des autres malgré l’amitié qui les
lie, cherchant désespérément à tomber en amour. Ils regardent le monde avec
cynisme. Il se contentent de petits boulots et de McJobs, d’abord parce que le
marché ne peut pas le plus souvent leur offrir autre chose, mais aussi parce
qu’eu-mêmes refusent d’accepter ce que les bons boulots ont à offrir. Occuper
ces bons emplois signifierait souvent accepter d’arrêter de vivre à vingt-cinq
ans. « Many want to work for IBM when their lives end at the age of twentyfive.
(Excuse me, but can you tell me more about your pension plan?) » (p.
106).
Coupland émaille son récit d’un lexique, sorte de clé de lecture de la situation
de cette génération sans nom. Voici quelques exemples de définition.
• Poor buoyancy : the realization that one was a better person when one
had less money (p. 82).
• Lessness: a philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with
diminishing expectations of material wealth (p. 54).
• Boomer envy: Envy of material wealth and long-range material
security accrued by older members of the baby-boom generation by
virtue of fortunate births (p. 21).
• Historical underclosing: to live in a period of time when nothing
seems to happen (p. 7).
Bien évidemment, ces définitions ont de faibles chances de se retrouver un jour
dans de sérieuses encyclopédies de sociologie. Elles ont cependant l’intérêt
d’appuyer une description vivante, bien écrite et avec beaucoup d’humour,
d’un monde et d’une société dans lesquels les critères de classement et
d’allocation des places ne sont pas seulement la classe sociale, l’ethnie, la
langue ou le sexe, mais aussi la date de sa naissance et la génération à laquelle
on appartient.
La jeunesse en mutation
L’ouvrage de R. Bibby et de D. Posterski est d’une facture toute différente des
deux précédents. Les auteurs analysent les résultats d’un sondage mené en
1992 auprès de 4 000 jeunes adolescents, sondage comparable à celui qu’ils
avaient effectué en 1984 et dont les résultats avaient été présentés dans The
Emerging Generation (1985). Ils disposent donc d’un point de comparaison
dans le temps qui leur permet de tracer le portrait de deux générations
différentes. Non seulement les jeunes des années 1990 s’opposent-ils aux
adultes, mais encore s’opposent-ils aussi à la génération des jeunes qui les a
immédiatement précédés. Les deux auteurs identifient cinq configurations de
traits passés qui sont en mutation dans la génération des jeunes des années
1990 et cinq configurations de traits nouveaux qui leur paraissent en
émergence.
204

Trois regards sur les générations
Premier trait en mutation, la valorisation des relations sociales semble quelque
peu décliner en importance, même si celles-ci restent élevées. Cette
observation est importante, car elle va à l’encontre de la thèse connue de
Edward Shorter qui posait, dans son histoire de la famille, que les relations
entre jeunes et parents étaient marquées, dans la société postmoderne, par
l’avènement d’une sorte d’indifférence. Or, tel n’est pas encore le cas d’après
les données des deux auteurs canadiens. Ceux-ci prennent cependant soin de
souligner que leurs observations vont dans cette direction, qu’ils préfèrent
identifier sous la tendance d’un individualisme accru de la vie canadienne.
Bibby et Posterski remettent en question le fait que les valeurs centrées sur le
moi et les valeurs matérialistes soient en régression. En fait, ils ont découvert
plutôt le contraire d’après leurs données. Le mariage et la maternité/paternité
restent importants pour les jeunes, mais ils s’inscrivent parmi un ensemble de
choix différents, qui laissent place à une grande combinaison de possibilités.
Les jeunes profitent aussi des acquis de la révolution sexuelle des années 1960.
Ils remettent à plus tard le mariage, tout en étant sexuellement actifs plus
jeunes. La vie religieuse de son côté a été l’objet d’une transformation
paradoxale. Les auteurs notent à la fois un regain d’intérêt pour la spiritualité
parallèlement à une désaffection plus marquée vis-à-vis les institutions
religieuses. En fait, c’est moins la spiritualité au sens strict qui gagne du terrain
qu’un certain ésotérisme, fortement influencé par les médias, et entre autres
teinté par la pensée Nouvel Âge.
La configuration des traits nouveaux ou en voie de s’accentuer révèle
l’appartenance des jeunes à un monde élargi, aux horizons plus étendus. Tout
d’abord, ceux-ci sont mieux informés que jamais et le champ de leurs
connaissances est probablement plus étendu qu’il ne l’a jamais été, grâce aux
progrès de la scolarisation, mais surtout grâce à l’omniprésence de la
télévision, et en particulier de la télévision américaine. Celle-ci apparaît
comme le filtre quasi-exclusif des images qui atteignent les jeunes, à
l’exception des jeunes du Québec, moins consommateurs d’images
américaines. Mieux informés, les jeunes sont-ils mieux formés? À cette
question posée maintes fois ces dernières années et qui a donné lieu à bien des
discours alarmistes sur le déclin de la formation fondamentale, les deux
auteurs apportent une réponse qui va quelque peu à contre courant : les trois R
(reading, arithmetic, writing) ne sont peut-être plus aussi essentiels dans le
monde contemporain. De nos jours, même les professeurs de mathématiques
ne font-ils pas leurs comptes personnels avec l’aide d’une calculatrice? En fait,
c’est la réflexion qui semble faire défaut aux deux auteurs de l’ouvrage, c’està-dire
la capacité de faire des choix dans la masse des informations
disponibles. Ce quatrième R leur paraît ainsi devoir prédominer sur les trois
autres.
Second trait manquant : les jeunes voient des problèmes partout.
L’environnement, la violence, la discrimination, sans oublier les questions
personnelles (l’argent, l’école, le sexe) préoccupent les jeunes, sans aucun
doute avec raison, mais ceux-ci sont enclins à voir tout ce qui se passe dans la
société comme problématique. Ici encore, les médias ont joué un rôle clé dans
cette construction du monde comme problème.
Le troisième trait est peut-être l’un des plus marquants : les jeunes n’ont jamais
eu autant de choix. Choix étendu et élargi en matière de consommation
marchande, de modèles de vie, de carrières, de valeurs, de produits culturels.
L’ouvrage reprend un thème favori de l’un des deux co-auteurs (Bibby) : le
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monde s’offre aux jeunes comme une immense mosaïque. « We now have not
only a cultural mosaic but also a moral mosaic, a meaning-system mosaic, a
family-structure mosaic, and a sexual mosaic, to mention just a few. Pluralism
has come to provide Canadian minds and Canadian institutions » (p. 100). R.
Bibby avait déjà critiqué dans un autre ouvrage la politique canadienne de
multiculturalisme; voilà maintenant qu’il étend cette critique à l’ensemble de
la société. La possibilité de choisir dans tous les domaines est à la fois positive
— l’espace des contraintes sociales recule — mais elle est aussi porteuse
d’insécurité et elle peut même conduire à une certaine déconstruction sociale.
Les jeunes sont davantage attachés aux valeurs de justice sociale et d’équité.
Ils sont en fait une sorte de « Charter generation », élevée dans l’esprit du
respect et de l’importance des droits individuels, ce qui est un aspect nouveau
de la culture politique du Canada. Le racisme et le sexisme en particulier sont
chez eux l’objet de vives critiques.
Enfin, les attentes et les aspirations n’ont jamais été aussi élevées que dans le
groupe des jeunes interrogés en 1992. C’est un fait connu que les aspirations
croissent plus vite que les possibilités objectives qu’offrent la société. Ayant
des attentes plus élevées, les jeunes d’aujourd’hui ont aussi à faire face à bien
des difficultés qui les forceront peut-être à recevoir moins que les générations
passées. D’où d’importantes désillusions qui les guettent au tournant de leur
entrée dans la vie active.
Ces tendances d’ensemble prennent des configurations quelque peu
différentes dans deux sous-groupes : les jeunes du Québec et les jeunes
femmes. Les auteurs reprennent la thèse que le Québec forme une société
distincte par un certain nombre de traits. Les jeunes s’y marient moins, ils ont
leurs enfants plus fréquemment en dehors du mariage, la religion à la carte y est
plus marquée qu’ailleurs au Canada. Les jeunes du Québec valorisent aussi
davantage la vie familiale, ils sont moins consommateurs de médias
américains et ils ont moins voyagé ailleurs au Canada. L’on pourrait ainsi
allonger la liste des traits distincts. Cette énumération d’aspects sur lesquels
les jeunes du Québec se différencient des jeunes du reste du Canada ne va pas
sans soulever un problème important, peu abordé dans le livre : suffit-il
d’aligner ainsi des aspects différents pour conclure que le Québec est une
société distincte? En fait, la distinction n’est-elle pas d’abord à rechercher dans
la construction de soi qui s’oppose à un autrui significatif dont on cherche à se
démarquer, bien plus que dans la recherche de caractéristiques typiques
différentes?
Les jeunes hommes et les jeunes femmes se différencient sur un grand nombre
d’aspects. Les jeunes femmes valorisent davantage les relations humaines et
elles se montrent plus préoccupées par la violence et l’insécurité que les jeunes
hommes. L’aspiration à l’égalité est à toute fin pratique la même chez les deux
sexes, même si certains stéréotypes persistent encore, notamment à propos de
l’image que l’on se fait de la femme qui semble aux auteurs encore marquée
par les représentations dominantes dans l’ensemble de la société,
représentations qui jugent les femmes inférieures sur plusieurs plans. Cet
aspect est sans doute trop rapidement esquissé dans l’ouvrage et il aurait gagné
à être mieux analysé.
La seconde partie du livre scrute le rôle des différentes institutions dans la vie
des jeunes : la famille, le système d’éducation, les institutions religieuses, les
medias. La référence au rôle des médias mérite qu’on s’y attarde davantage.
Ici, il nous paraît nécessaire de revenir à l’analyse que Ricard propose dans son
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ouvrage sur la génération lyrique. La télévision exerce une fascination naïve
d’abord parce qu’elle est un instrument de communication pure. Elle accroche
et montre, elle digère et simplifie. Le monde est découpé en clips qui sont
autant d’instantanés sur le réel. Ricard évoque l’hypothèse de Enzensberger
pour caractériser la place de la télévision : plus la télévision étend son empire,
plus le sens, plus le besoin de sens diminue. Or les jeunes, peut-être plus que
tout autre groupe ou toute autre génération, paraissent particulièrement
marqués par la télevision. Celle-ci constitue non seulement un nouveau mode
de socialisation qui vient en concurrence avec l’école ou la famille, mais
encore elle paraît structurer leur façon de connaître et de percevoir le monde.
L’exposition continue aux problèmes qu’elle met en scène, tant dans les
dramatiques que dans les émissions d’information — rappelons-nous l’adage
No news is good news — n’est sans doute pas étrangère au fait que la jeune
génération ait une perception du monde marquée par l’étendue des problèmes.
Bibby et Posterski insistent enfin sur un certain nombre de contradictions qui
leur semblent caractériser la vie des jeunes. Ainsi, ils ont devant eux plus de
choix à faire, mais les critères pour prendre des décisions sont devenus plus
flous, notamment à cause du déclin de l’autorité institutionnelle. Autre
exemple : les jeunes valorisent les relations sociales, mais parviennent plus
difficilement à avoir de bonnes relations avec les adultes.
Cet ouvrage dresse un portrait de la jeunesse canadienne bien construit et bien
documenté. Des extraits d’entrevues menées auprès des jeunes complètent
bien les analyses statistiques, qui restent cependant à un niveau assez
sommaires. Lss diagnostics portés sur l’ensemble de la société canadienne,
vue à travers sa jeunesse, restent malgré tout peu développés.
L’individualisation accrue ou la remise en cause du multiculturalisme auraient
mérité d’être plus développées. De même, les auteurs parlent de la culture
canadienne sans trop définir ce qu’ils entendent par là. En d’autres termes,
voilà un portrait réussi de la jeunesse canadienne des annéss 1990; reste à
esquisser plus clairement comment celle-ci s’inscrit dans les traits du Canada
en profonde mutation.
* * *
Ces trois livres que nous venons de commenter sont bien sûr fort différents et
ils appartiennent aussi à des genres littéraires bien démarqués. Mais du roman
à l’essai à l’étude sociologique, un même constat ressort : l’appartenance à une
génération ne peut plus être négligée dans l’analyse des phénomènes sociaux
contemporains.
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