Norbert Rodrigue, this name probably does not mean much to many of you. He was, since Gérard Picard in 1946, the only president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) not to come from a university background. At 14, he was already working in a logging camp in La Tuque and had not completed his sixth year of school.
Less spectacular trade unionist than Michel Chartrand and less theatrical than Marcel Pepin, whom he succeeded as director of the CSN from 1976 to 1982, he nevertheless deserves to be known. He is one of those who often go unnoticed, but who we could not do without.
Norbert Rodrigue was born in Beauce during the Second World War. In the Rodrigue family, we don’t roll on gold and everyone has to get their hands dirty to try to get by. The dough that allows the family to get by has a strong smell, that of fir tree gum. At the time, this gum, considered a medicine, was very popular, including among neighbors to the south. It is even sold in pharmacies. This is how young Norbert takes the destiny of the family into his own hands and becomes “gummy”, dropping out of school without finishing sixth grade. He no doubt feels invested with a noble mission, that of “being at the heart of others”.
Norbert, the eldest of nine children, will inherit from his father this taste and this need to defend the widow and the orphan. But for his mother, other feelings drive him. All the Rodrigue children agree that their mother was angry, severe and not very inclined to conciliation. As in many other families of the time, the mother was in charge, while the father went away to work. It is for this reason that at 14, Norbert left home. He leaves for construction sites with his uncles, abandoning school and his job as a gummy bear. For him, it’s liberation, even if life in the construction sites is not easy. It was among these humble jobbers that he discovered the meaning of the word “solidarity” and the motto “all for one, one for all”. This camaraderie will mark him for life.
It was also very young, at 15, that he became a sovereigntist. He was then a fishing guide for wealthy American tourists in Gaspésie.
“I met them there, the masters of the world,” says the fiery Beauceron. It’s sickening… I was guiding them to the salmon rivers, the trout, the best lake, the best river, etc. It was theirs… theirs! In the Gaspé, they paid Gaspesian wardens to shoot Gaspesians who came to fish illegally in their area. The rest of them, I hated them so much. »
An Immutable Ideal
One day – we are at the beginning of the Quiet Revolution – he leaves his native Beauce, tempted by the Montreal adventure. He finds himself at Sainte-Justine Hospital, not as a patient, but as an apprentice radiology technician. Quite a change. He swaps his checkered shirt for the white smock. But his ideal of helping his fellow men did not change and he founded his first union.
“The era of the nuns hospitallers is coming to an end. Remuneration in the form of thanks and plenary indulgences lapses,” the authors plead.
Little by little, the shy technician rose through the ranks until his election as president of the CSN, succeeding Marcel Pepin and winning over the candidacy of Michel Chartrand. He, the autodidact without a diploma, will have to rub shoulders with educated militants who handle theory more than practice, especially the ruthless Marxist-Leninists. Even the young minister Claude Charron, in 1979, in an interview with Denise Bombardier, found fault with the so-called “lack of education” of the no less young union leader, affirming that “if things were going badly in Quebec, it was because we let uneducated people like Rodrigue occupy important positions”. But Rodrigue was trained in the harsh school of life and he has a tough skin.
Through this touching portrait of a union leader with an atypical career, we rediscover the whole of Quebec in turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s, when it was still possible to dream of a better world without being considered old-fashioned. .
DELIVER US FROM THE LECLERC PRISON!/A TESTIMONY FROM THE INSIDE
In 2012, the federal government closed the Leclerc penitentiary, a medium-security institution, due to dilapidation. Four years later, the government of Quebec, which administers sentences of two years less a day, closes the Tanguay house where women sentenced to short sentences are detained and transfers them to Leclerc, which has been idle for all this time. More than 150 women are now held there in degrading and humiliating conditions, worthy of another era. Author Louise Henry, a woman in her 50s, stayed there for 11 months, so she speaks with knowledge. “This story is not easy to tell for me, she says in the preface, but I must denounce the situation experienced by women in Leclerc prison so that we become aware of the human rights violations that are taking place in this Laval prison and which sometimes push some inmates to commit irreparable acts. »
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