Abstract

Abbé Lionel Groulx (1878-1967) is the most influential intellectual in Quebec history. A historian and nationalist activist, he asserted that the French language was the guardian of the Catholic faith in North America. He edited L'Action française de Montréal (1917-1928), a magazine inspired by the traditionalist thinking of Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras. Groulx advocated Quebec independence as early as 1922. He denounced Anglo-Saxon cultural infiltration of French-Canadian society, through both British imperialism and American capitalism. He harshly criticized the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s, which de-Christianized Quebec under the pretext of modernizing it, and in particular the educational reform that distanced French culture in America from the living axis of ancient Greco-Latin civilization.