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Saturday, October 29, 2005
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 DEATH OF A LADIES MAN : MARTINIS, TRANQUILIZERS & WIFE BEATING - THE FALL AND DECLINE OF RENE LEVESQUE
My international readers may not know much about him, but Rene Levesque is of monumental importance in Canadian history. Widely regarded as the father of the Quebec independence movement, Levesque will someday realize his dream, most likely in my lifetime.
For the uninitiated, Canada is an artificial country, bound together not by any ethnic or national ideology, but rather by convenience and untenable political deals. And it worked for a long time too. But in a century that will be determined by nationalistic fervour more than common sense, Canada cannot long survive.
As much as most Canadians will piss, moan and call me a traitor, they cannot argue that history isn't on my side. Since I've graduated from high school, a number of artificial countries, notably Yugoslavia, Czechleslovakia, and - sooner rather than later, Iraq - have fractured beyond repair. These nations did not dissolve because of external pressures, but rather because of internal ones. I defy any Canadian to name one national idea that binds Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario and Alberta together that isn't merely "we're not Americans." And I'm not sure that you can sustain a nation on the premise that it is not the home of the Oak Ridge Boys.
I couldn't be more convinced that Rene Levesque, while premature, founded a political philosophy that will ultimately prevail, likely in the next thirty years. You don't have to like his goals to recognize that Levesque was a pioneer and a figure of historical importance.
And there was a lot about him not to like. Levesque was a pompous, arrogant and domineering son of a bitch. His only redeeming personal qualities were his overwhelming loathing of Pierre Trudeau and his ability to smoke all the time. The motherfucker had an almost heroic love of cigarettes that I have no choice but to admire.
However it turns out that Rene was even less pleasant when he faced adversity.
Pierre Godin's Rene Levesque: L'Homme Brise (Rene Levesque: The Broken Man) portrays a politician who felt "betrayed, abandoned and let down" by almost everyone around him
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Politically, Levesque's PQ was in turmoil in late '84 and early '85 as key cabinet ministers, including then-finance minister Jacques Parizeau, quit the party to protest Levesque's decision to put independence on the back burner.
Godin, who has written three previous volumes on Levesque, says the sovereigntist leader was suffering from a major burnout that left the province virtually rudderless.
Levesque was drinking at 9 o'clock in the morning and was knocking back martinis all day long, Godin writes.
Some people even began putting tranquillizers in his drinks - a combination that made Levesque paranoid as he tried at least once to listen to conversations through a door, the book states.
You know, I'm getting good and goddamned tired of everyone picking on someone just for drinking vodka or gin at 9AM. It's getting so that you can’t be enthusiastic about anything anymore without someone plotting a fucking intervention.
But there are deeper issues at hand here.
Don't ask me how I know this, but putting tranquilizers in the alcohol consumed by someone suffering from depression is a really, really bad idea. The combination of the two tends to make someone who has a mild mental illness supremely fucking crazy. Don't get me wrong, giving a depressed person booze OR pills is a fantastic idea as it allows them a temporary peace - again, don't ask me how I know this, just know that I do - but giving them both guarantees that you'll have Courtney Love on your hands for the foreseeable future. And while Rene Levesque was a lot of things, he wasn't half as fuckable as Courtney Love was before she got as big as a goddamn house.
Given my druthers, I should think that it wasn't Levesque's enemies who were dosing his martinis. I somehow doubt the federal Liberal Party had access to the Premier's liquor cabinet. Oh no, it was his friends and loved ones who presumably thought this a good idea.
In January '85, Levesque, his wife Corinne Cote-Levesque and some of their entourage took a vacation in Barbados. It was there, Godin writes, that a combative Levesque hit Cote-Levesque, giving her a black eye.
According to the 600-page book, Levesque also shook her a few times and once threw a glass at her, cutting her leg.
I shouldn' t speak ill of the recently dead, particularly when they've been dead for less than a week, but since I’m going to hell anyways, I may as well. Corinne Cote-Levesque must have been a colossal pain in the ass! Maybe she wasn't on the Nicole Simpson scale of annoyance, but it must have been pretty bad for Rene.
Again, I refer back to Courtney Love. Sure, she's a handful. But when her depressive, substance-abusing husband Kurt Cobain, had his fill of her, he did the sensible thing and blew his head off in the greenhouse above the garage. You can't seriously be suggesting to me that the Premier of Quebec didn't have a greenhouse above his garage, can you?
L'Homme Brise makes several references to Levesque's heavy drinking, including an anecdote in Barbados where he mistakenly tries to get into the wrong room and is seen by the American occupant who thinks Levesque has a crush on his wife.
"Philippe (Levesque's brother-in-law) has to separate the two and tell Rene Levesque, who is still going on, that he's lost," Godin writes.
Look, if that hasn't happened to any of my gentleman readers, I'm here to say that you just haven't lived to a full enough life. My favourite part of the story is the American who thinks Levesque is trying to break into his in his room because Rene "has a crush on his wife." Isn't that adorable? All of the best police reports in Alabama usually have that very phrase in them somewhere between the second and fifth paragraph. Those reports usually begin with the sentence "the victim was shot in the head with a small calibre handgun."
As everybody knows, the end of a long career is a sad occasion. But you only know that you had a really good time when that career ends with an involuntary hospitalization.
The book also describes Levesque being hospitalized against his will at the height of his depression.
"We were in an emergency situation where the premier could no longer fulfil his duties but didn't want to admit it," says Pierre Marc Johnson, who eventually went on to replace Levesque as PQ leader and briefly as premier.
Levesque got out of hospital after a few days and stayed in power until he resigned in June 1985. He died on Nov. 1, 1987.
As someone who has held positions of Great Power and Responsibility, I can tell you that I often ended my days by slamming my head into the walls of my workplace. Did that ever get me a few days off? Of course it didn't. That would mean that someone who saw what I went through from day to day would have to replace me during my "me-time." I was lucky enough to get ten days a year where I could fly someplace nice and fuck the pain away.
Am I suggesting that Rene Levesque would've been better off if he had a girlfriend in California? Maybe.
This is where I sympathize even more with Premier Levesque. After all, he had govern Quebec. Those who don't much about Canada don't know what Quebec is. Therefore, they often think of them as merely French. Quebec is so much more than merely French. It is actually a land of paranoid schizophrenic retards that are commonly found to be living under the sink and placated with a meagre supply of Pepsi. Just sharing a country with these people has turned me into a mockery of the latter-day Elvis. I can't imagine what being responsible for all six million of them would do to me. Being Premier of Quebec strikes me as a job description that comes dangerously close to running Hell.
And that is how I came to admire Rene Levesque.
That and the fact that he had a rockin' comb-over!
PermalinkLabels: Fun With Politics, O Canada
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