‘Quiet revolutionary’ Guy Rocher was an architect of modern Quebec



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Guy Rocher is often considered the father of Quebec sociology. Throughout an academic and civil service career that spanned more than half a century and a retirement during which he continued speaking out on public issues, he was one of Quebec’s most influential intellectuals.

Prof. Rocher, who died on Sept. 3 at age 101, was a person of the classroom and also of the public arena. His professional life spanned the Quiet Revolution, the October Crisis, the late-20th-century apogee of Quebec’s independence movement and the tensions of a 21st-century multicultural province. His conviction did not waver as he opined on matters such as the French language, access to quality public education and secularism in Quebec.

“Guy Rocher was an extraordinary figure in Quebec society,” said Thomas Mulcair, the former NDP leader and University of Montreal professor. “An outstanding academic, he used his deep, yet unpretentious understanding of the history and sociology of Quebec institutions to bring about profound change. His work on the secularization of the Quebec school system in the 1960s and language legislation in the 1970s are prime examples.”

Guy Rocher was born on April 20, 1924, to parents Jeanne Magnan and Barthélemy Rocher in Berthierville, a town located between Montreal and Trois-Rivières on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River.

His father, a civil engineer, died when Guy was eight. The young man attended Collège de l’Assomption and then decided to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps by studying law at the University of Montreal.

He left after a year to become active in the Catholic youth movement Jeunesse étudiante catholique (JEC) along with the likes of future federal cabinet minister and ambassador Gérard Pelletier. Guy Rocher was president of that influential organization, a precursor to the Quiet Revolution, from 1943 to 1945. He then returned to post-secondary studies at Laval University where he came under the tutelage of Dominican priest Georges-Henri Lévesque, who was responsible for social sciences at Laval.

A gifted student, he proceeded to Harvard University, where he obtained a doctorate under the supervision of the eminent American sociologist Talcott Parsons. He returned to Quebec to teach at Laval. In 1960, Prof. Rocher became head of the University of Montreal’s new Department of Sociology, and later joined the university’s Faculty of Law.

Public engagement soon called. He was named to the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education in the Province of Quebec, which was a formative part of the Quiet Revolution, gaining steam under the government of Liberal premier Jean Lesage.

Also known as the Parent Commission, it transformed education in the province, putting an end to religious control of French-language Catholic schools and the Protestant-influenced English-language system.

It brought about momentous change by creating secular French and English education systems under a newly created provincial ministry of education.

Reflecting upon the era in a 1999 collection of essays, Prof. Rocher wrote, “The Quiet Revolution casts just as long a shadow over contemporary Canadian history as it does over Quebec history. It changed the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada, as well as perceptions Quebecers and Canadians have of each other.”

Jean-Philippe Warren, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Concordia University, says Guy Rocher had “immense” stature among Quebec intellectuals. His combination of academic prominence with engagement in the public sphere means, “there is no one to compare him with,” according to Prof. Warren.

His engagement with massive change in Quebec did not end with the Quiet Revolution. Following the victory of the Parti Québécois in 1976, Guy Rocher, an advocate of Quebec independence, was named deputy minister by Péquiste cabinet minster Camille Laurin in 1977. In that capacity, he was involved in the framing of Bill 101, the central, controversial legislative plank in the PQ’s campaign to protect the French language in Quebec.

Guy Rocher would remain an adamant defender of the French language in Quebec for the rest of his life.

“The need to understand and explain social change and the need to participate in it on occasion, in different ways, is, it seems to me, the axis of my sociological practice,” Guy Rocher stated of his attempt to maintain balance between his academic career and the engagement of a public intellectual. His comments appeared in a presentation prepared for a 2006 conference about his career.

Valérie Blanc, a history professor at Collège Édouard Montpetit a CEGEP in Longeuil, thinks she owes her career to the efforts of Guy Rocher and his peers to democratize education in Quebec. From a working-class francophone family, Prof. Blanc believes she was a direct beneficiary of reforms that began with the Parent Commission.

“I was the first person in my family to go to university. I attended UQAM [the University of Quebec at Montreal]. Guy Rocher was instrumental in the creation of both the CEGEP system and UQAM, to make post-secondary more accessible to ordinary people.”

CEGEPS, also known as Collèges d’enseignement général et professionnel, are institutions of postsecondary, pre-university education offering a choice of university preparation or professional training in Quebec.

Prof. Blanc heard Prof. Rocher present at conferences. She was impressed by his calmness, clarity and ability to speak in a manner all people could comprehend.

She did not always agree with him, though.

Prof. Rocher remained adamant about the importance of secularism in Quebec education.

As a CEGEP professor in multicultural urban Quebec of 2025, Ms. Blanc advocates a more supple approach to the wearing of veils in public. At the same time, she understood how his firm defence of secularism would arise from a childhood in an era of Catholic church dominance prior to the Quiet Revolution.

Prof. Rocher’s impact is still felt at the CEGEP level in Quebec. His three-part A General Introduction to Sociology became a required text to generations of students in the province. To this day, Prof. Blanc estimates that a quarter of the students at CEGEP Édouard Montpetit, for example, are exposed to it in a humanities course.

Despite the demands of teaching and his public engagements, Prof. Rocher was also an active writer. In addition to the college textbook, he authored monographs including Le Québec en Mutation and Talcott Parsons et la sociologie américaine, as well as over 200 articles and book chapters. Among his many honours, he was named a companion of the Order of Canada in 1971, a foreign member of the Academy of American Arts and Sciences in 1973 and a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1974. He was a professor emeritus in both sociology and law at the University of Montreal.

On the federal level, Prof. Rocher served as vice-president of the Canada Council for the Arts from 1969 to 1974, responsible for the financing of social science research.

In retirement, Prof. Rocher continued to engage with journalists and speak out on public issues. His impact is still felt among Quebec’s political class.

MNA Ruba Ghazal, a co-spokesperson for the Québec solidaire party, believes Prof. Rocher’s passion for the French language, secularism and independence will survive him.

“He was one of the last living figures of the Quiet Revolution. He was an architect of modern Quebec. His ideas remain valuable,” says Ms. Ghazal, who last saw Prof. Rocher at an event around the time of his 100th birthday.

Part of a family of Lebanese-Palestinian immigrants, Ms. Ghazal feels endebted to Prof. Rocher. “I am a child of the Quebec he helped create,“ she says.

Ms. Ghazal admired Prof. Rocher for continuing to oppose all efforts to undermine equity and accessibility to public education in the province. While she did not agree with him on ”all the details,” she says the emphasis of his life’s work will remain vital for Quebec.

In retirement, Prof. Rocher continued to engage with journalists and speak out on public issues.

Prof. Warren does not share all of Prof. Rocher’s convictions as a social scientist or public advocate. He chuckled while recalling how the two once ended up on opposite sides of a debate about the relative value of the sort of general sociology practiced by Prof. Rocher and the more specialized modes embraced by some of Prof. Warren’s peers.

Their differences aside, Prof. Warren has immense admiration for the scope of Guy Rocher’s contribution and his manner of communicating. “He was a quiet revolutionary. He was friendly, kind and did not raise his voice. He expressed passion, but did so with gentleness,” Prof. Warren said.

Guy Rocher will be celebrated in a national tribute by the government of Quebec on Oct. 2. He leaves his wife, Claire-Emmanuelle Depocas; daughters Geneviève, Isabelle and Anne-Marie; and his grandchildren. His daughter Claire died in 2016 and his first wife, Suzanne Cloutier, died in 2003.

You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.

To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.


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