Former Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau samples a glass of his new wine, Cuvee Coteau de l'Elisette, named after his wife, Lisette Lapointe at a tasting in Montreal Thursday, April 22, 2004. Former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau has died at the age of 84. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan RemiorzRYAN REMIORZ/The Canadian Press
Jacques Parizeau did his best to divide Quebec from Canada. In his own way, though, he contributed much to Canada. In the 1960s, he was one of a small group of economists and technocrats who modernized Quebec's economic and social institutions, including the Quebec Pension Plan and the Caisse de dépot et placement du Québec – during the Liberal government of Jean Lesage.
So it's fitting that the present Liberal Premier, Philippe Couillard, has announced that the Caisse's building will be renamed in his honour.
Jean-François Lisée, a former staffer of Mr. Parizeau and now a prominent PQ MNA, said rightly that Mr. Parizeau was "Cartesian, yes," – that is, a rationalist à la française – but a passionate man, too, not always holding his tongue when doing so might have been expedient.
His advocacy of a relatively pure version of a future independent Quebec expressed both sides of his personality. He opposed convoluted compromises such as the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, preferring a simpler, more doctrinaire model of Quebec-Canada relations. At the same time, his emotional side presented a vehement challenge to Canadian federalism – a challenge that Canada has faced up to and survived.
Oddly, he was something of an Anglophile, in the style of a turn-of-the-century arrogant Edwardian tycoon. His manner also suggested the ancien régime in France, hence his nickname "Monsieur," as if he were a member of the French royal family, still living at Versailles.
Sometimes, he lost control of his emotions, most spectacularly on the night of the 1995 referendum, in a narrow defeat, when he bitterly blamed "money and ethnic votes" for the result. Yet in his last years, he was outspokenly against the ultrasecularist Charter of Values proposed by the Parti Québécois, which he had once led.