Tuesday night, in the most unexpected way, The historian Frédéric Bastien suffered a heart attack. He was 53 years old. He was in good shape. He was an athlete, a good cyclist.
And suddenly the reaper passed away.
He had a wife, three children, and many friends who admired and cared for him. This morning they have a hard time believing what happened to him.
I’m writing about him knowing he’s gone, yet I can’t quite believe he won’t be with us anymore.
historian
Frederick was a historian. Over the years he had published some important works that caused a stir and turned our public life upside down.
I mention two.
In his 1999 book Special Relations, he showed how our national question had shaped part of French political life in the decades following General de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre” in July 1967.
But he particularly shocked in 2013 with the Battle of London, where he showed that the constitution’s patriation in 1982 was the result of an unnamed coup d’état, as the Supreme Court overstepped its role in enabling Pierre Trudeau’s project.
Frédéric Bastien, authentic historian, was a true intellectual in it.
But Frédéric was not only a historian.
He was also a determined nationalist activist.
He was still very young for Quebec independence and this commitment has always been at the heart of his life. In recent years it had taken up even more space.
Frédéric had decided to take the plunge into politics, even going so far as to run for leadership of the PQ in 2020. He thought he was there.
But even more: he was fully committed to public life, as an intellectual, as I said, but also as a columnist and, in his own way, even as an activist in the best sense of the word.
A radical opponent of multiculturalism, the Woke ideology, and all the whims that lead to the deconstruction of the West, he advocated robust secularism and genuine control of immigration.
He also waged a courageous fight against Islamism in all its dimensions.
He was, to put it another way, an unbridled nationalist, unwilling to be dictated to by ideological tyrants and the timid who submitted to them.
Both in his beliefs and in his personality, Frédéric found a way to resist.
combative
Strongly argumentative and laughing, he made no false diplomatic concessions in conversation, but always remained cordial. He followed his idea with conviction.
He was a man of quality, a loyal friend, a tireless activist who believed that sooner or later the people of Quebec would have their land or they would disappear.
The best way to honor him today is to continue his fight without ever giving up or giving up.
