At a time when the importance of France-Quebec relations is reminded to us by the appointment of Henri-Paul Rousseau to the position of Quebec’s general delegate in Paris, it is necessary to highlight the exceptional contribution of one of his predecessors, who has just left us.
He is a generous man with a fiery temperament who is one of the key players in the most intense period of Quebec diplomacy. Michel Lucier was at the heart of this generation of government servants who gave Quebec the right to be a citizen abroad. He is recognized, in the wake of Jean-Marc Léger and others, as one of the promoters and artisans of an international Francophonie where Quebec has hard-fought for a place that is worthy of it. Trained in the Sulpician discipline alongside comrades such as the future Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte and Bâtonnier Guy Pépin, he came to action through philosophy and university teaching.
During seven years of priesthood and ministry, combined with his intellectual activities, he worked very closely with Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger, who made him his private secretary. Few people knew better than Michel Lucier this enigmatic prelate, who went from brilliance to asceticism, after having facilitated the takeover by the State of educational and hospital services, until then provided under religious authority.
Touched, like many of his contemporaries, by the questioning of his priestly commitment, the young university professor and vicar of the Marie-Reine-du-Monde cathedral then met the woman he was to marry. Suzanne Prévost and he formed a couple and a warm family which, 54 years later, had been enriched by four children and nine grandchildren.
Founder, with his friend Jacques Léonard, of the Faculty of Continuing Education at the University of Montreal, he broadened his commitment internationally, where he participated in the founding of AUPELF-UREF. It was thus part of the mobilization of the French-speaking scientific community around the issues defined by the summits.
This path led him to the diplomatic forum where he contributed to the preparation of the French-speaking summits that followed those of Versailles and Quebec. He was then to give the full measure of his talent as sherpa of the Prime Minister of Quebec at the summits of Hanoi and Moncton and, ultimately, from 1997 to 2000, at the head of the General Delegation of Quebec in Paris.
This means that I was given the opportunity, on several occasions, to appreciate his efficiency, his expertise and his determination in asserting Quebec’s role on the international scene. Beyond the respect I felt for the professional, I knew and loved the man to whom I was united by bonds of friendship. With a sensitivity poorly concealed under a rough exterior when necessary, he carried his Quebec pride and his sovereignist allegiance high. We will have understood that he was capable of fierce vigilance in his occasional conflicts with his federal counterparts.
None of his professional accomplishments, however real, ever led him to complacency, much less to boasting. The feeling of duty accomplished and of a task well done was enough for him.
Even if it closes a life fully lived, every ending leads to the unfinished. We can think that a man of culture and reflection like Michel Lucier saw in it the obligation of a double continuity to be ensured by his family and the community. There is no doubt that at the heart of these expectations was the continuation of what he hoped for this Quebec that he loved and served with fervor.
