René Lévesque

1922-1987. A distinguished journalist, dating back to World War II; post-war, he worked for many years for Radio-Canada, the en français wing of the CBC. Part of the "Quiet Revolution" (alongside the likes of Pierre Trudeau) that brought Québec into the 20th Century following the Maurice Duplessis years - he was a member of the Liberal Party at the time, and served, for a while, in provincial government. He broke with the Liberals and formed the Parti Québécois, which soon became the main separatist party, and, in 1976 the governing party. (We will get to that later, perhaps).

Lévesque left the Faculty of Law at Laval University to become a radio war correspondent. He continued a career in radio with Radio-Canada, and eventually became host of the public affairs program "Point de Mire" (Point of View).

Lévesque entered politics in 1960 as a Liberal in Quebec's legislature. In 1967, he founded a separatist party that eventually became the Parti Québécois. He became premier of Quebec in 1976 and presided over an unsuccessful sovereignty referendum in 1980. He is also notable as the only dissenting premier of the 1982 Canada Act, which repatriated the Canadian Constitution (Trudeau supposedly left him out of the final discussions, resigned to the fact that Lévesque wouldn't bend).

In 1985, Lévesque resigned as Parti Québécois leader, and died of a heart attack in 1987.