Claude Morin dies at 96 in Québec
Claude Morin died in Québec on Tuesday at the age of 96. The former Parti québécois minister was one of the notable figures of the Quiet Revolution, and his death closes the life of a man who moved from academia to the center of Québec politics.
Born in 1929 in the worker village of Montmorency, near the falls in the Québec region, Morin studied social sciences in Québec and New York before being hired by Université Laval in 1956. He later became a speechwriter for Jean Lesage in 1960 and accepted the post of deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs of Québec in 1963.
Jean Lesage and Robert Bourassa
Morin kept that post under Daniel Johnson père, Jean-Jacques Bertrand and Robert Bourassa in 1970, then left it in October 1971. He refused twice to run as a Liberal candidate in Chauveau, joined the Parti québécois in 1972 and was defeated in Louis-Hébert in the 1973 election.
His career carried a contradiction that followed him to the end. Morin proposed a referendum as the path to independence, and the PQ adopted étapisme with two thirds of the vote at the party's 5th congress in November 1974. At the same time, his reputation was marked by collaboration with the GRC.
Parti québécois and étapisme
In the summer of 1974, Morin received an unexpected call from GRC agent Léo Fontaine. He defended his reputation until his last breath despite that collaboration, even as he became known as an architect of the PQ's gradual path to sovereignty.
Morin’s name now belongs to the record of Québec’s Quiet Revolution and to the later debate over the Parti québécois route to sovereignty. His death ends a career that moved through Université Laval, Jean Lesage’s office, the Québec civil service and the PQ itself.
