Resources on French NAZI collaborators in Quebec

June 5, 2024 3:17 PM

Hello! How are you? I'm looking for resources (academic or otherwise) that chronicle the presence of French citizenry/civil service/Vichy political officials that fled to Quebec after the War.

What recommendations might you have? Bonus points for resources examining any relationships with the Quebec sovereigntist movement.

posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon to Society & Culture (1 answer total)

Best answer: Canada between Vichy and Free France, 1940-1945, Oliver Courteaux (2013). "As Courteaux shows, Quebec’s vocal nationalist minority came to openly support France’s fascist Vichy regime and resented Canada’s involvement in a ‘British’ war, while English Canada was largely sympathetic to de Gaulle’s Free French movement and accepted its duty to aid embattled Mother Britain. Meanwhile, on the world stage, Canada deftly juggled ties with both French factions to appease Great Britain and the United States before eventually giving full support to the Free French movement."

Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada 1946-1956, Howard Margolian (2000); Gérard Bouchard vs. Esther Delisle; the story of Count Jacques Charles Noel Dugé de Bernonville (aka Jacques Benoit, aka Jacques Duge), "a French collaborationist and senior police officer in the Milice of the Vichy regime in France," arriving in Quebec in 1946; Monasteries, Miliciens, War Criminals: Vichy France/Quebec, 1940-50, John Hellman, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 1997); The Canadian Fuhrer: The Life of Adrien Arcand, Jean-Francois Nadeau (2011)

Library and Archives Canada, resources; scroll down to "Nazi War Criminals in Canada and Abroad" (several records relate to de Bernonville). The Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, also known as the Deschênes Commission, was an independent commission of inquiry established in 1985 to investigate the charge that a considerable number of Nazi war criminals had gained admittance to Canada through a variety of illegal or fraudulent means. The Commission was headed by Mr. Jules Deschênes, a Justice of the Court of Appeal of Quebec, and it was given wide powers to conduct its investigation, including the power to travel outside Canada. It was responsible for investigating if war criminals were present in Canada and, if so, the means by which they were able to enter.

In September 1986, the Historian of the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, Alti Rodal, submitted her report titled Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present. The report, using archival material, presented the context and evolution of government policies related to immigration, refugees and war criminals from the Second World War to the 1980s. In exploring the presence of war criminals in Canada, Ms. Rodal brought to light the conditions and circumstances that surrounded their arrival in the country and examined the cases of several individuals and groups of individuals who were granted entry.

New release of Rodal Report in commitment to transparency (canada.ca, Feb. 1, 2024)
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:21 PM on June 5, 2024 [6 favorites]