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The flesh-eating biography The Antagonist gets under Bouchard's skin, but doesn't nail him by JULIET WATERS It took me a while to figure out the weird sense of déjà vu I had when the first reports of Princess Di's car accident started coming in. I'm too young to remember the Kennedy assassinations, but I knew the vaguely familiar event was more political than Elvis or John Lennon. Then it hit me that the last time I'd heard the same desperation in the media to say nice things was when Lucien Bouchard was fighting off the flesh-eating disease.
Then Jan Brown walked across parliament and placed a yellow rose on his empty seat. When he returned he was given three standing ovations, and everyone was fighting back the tears of love. And if there was any lesson that the media should have taken from this experience, it's that Bouchard's status in Canadian and Quebec politics is closer to icon than mere politician. So what bothers me about The Antagonist: Lucien Bouchard and the Politics of Delusion isn't just that Lawrence Martin's publicity campaign has all the subtlety of a skin virus. What bothers me is Martin's claim that the psychological profile by Dr. Vivian Rakoff, which forms the centrepiece of Martin's book, is serving the cause of national unity. And worse, that because Martin confesses at the outset that he's a strong federalist (read: Liberal Party supporter), we should pay special attention to how neutral he is in this book. These are annoying claims, not because I believe that all biographies should be fair and neutral. The most interesting ones rarely are, and I'll acknowledge that Martin's book is a page-turner. But, sadly, what Canada needs now is not a fun but obviously biased, ultimately meaningless psychological or emotional profile of Bouchard. What it needs is an incisive political biography that will give us a sense of whether Bouchard's very bright political star is rising or falling. The key relationship that needs to be examined to make such a prediction is the long erratic affair between Bouchard and the Parti Québécois. Sure his deeply repressed antagonism to his overly strict mother is worth contemplating for five seconds, as is his deep love for his saintly, idealistic father. Or his rarely talked about 25-year-long marriage to Jocelyne Côté. And of course his deep friendship with Brian Mulroney is central to understanding Bouchard's political career. But this is where the book seriously digresses. Much space is devoted to Bouchard's years in the Progressive Conservative party and to the friendships and associations he ostensibly betrayed during the Meech Lake negotiations. In fact, roughly a third of the book is reserved just for Bouchard's years serving under Mulroney. This isn't surprising, since Ottawa is filled with old PC party hacks who have nothing better to do these days than happily slag Bouchard in great detail. But if Martin wanted to write a truly useful political biography he should have spent more time in Quebec City. Martin tells us that Bouchard turned down three offers to run for the PQ before he chose to run for the Conservative party, that Bouchard was almost as close and beholden to René Lévesque and Pierre-Marc Johnson before he went into federal politics as he ever was to Mulroney and that for decades he's been disliked and feared by Parizeau. Martin does relatively little exploration of these aspects of Bouchard's past. As a result, he has nothing to tell Canada about how this shaky relationship currently affects Bouchard's present status in the PQ, a status which by some reports may be increasingly threatened. So, in the the final assessment, The Antagonist provides all the drama of the flesh-eating disease, without its penetration. The Antagonist: Lucien Bouchard and The Politics of Delusion by Lawrence Martin, Viking, hc, 356 pp. $35 |
Randomly and out of nowhere came this sudden outpouring of not just genuine sympathy, but something that almost sounded like authentic respect. Pundits were claiming that Bouchard, despite his politics, had always been well liked in Ottawa, that no one could ever doubt his sincerity, brilliance and hard work and that no one could ever deny he was the best ambassador to France that Canada had ever had.