The De Gaulle-Johnson Intervention to Break the Empire [Part one]

In this first installment of a four part series co-written with my friend and historian Raynald Rouleau, we will meet a network of alliances that formed in France and Quebec under the leadership of Quebec’s Premier Daniel Johnson Sr. and French President Charles DeGaulle from 1967-1968 who intended to create an international program for development in opposition to the Anglo-American Empire that has been written out of modern history. Just as this plan was blossoming, assassins bullets ended the lives of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The life of Daniel Johnson Sr was cut short under extremely suspicious circumstances during this same period leaving Charles De Gaulle to stand alone in the face of a new global paradigm shift which soon saw his leadership overthrown in 1969 under a London-directed neo-Jacobin movement of anarchism in France.

Their stories are told here for the first time.

Part 1

The Origins of the Parti Québécois

The founders of the Parti Québecois (PQ) never had the intention of transforming Quebec into a truly sovereign country: that is to say, a constitutional republic, independent of the British Empire. A republic that would be built upon the inalienable rights of citizens, as these were defined and later enshrined in the preamble of the United States Constitution by the founding fathers of the American republic, as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Quebec Premier Daniel Johnson (1966-68)

We are not referencing the actual leaders of the PQ, but rather those who, from the beginning, catalyzed the PQ into existence and continue, to this day, to forge and profit from the artificial divisions that were partly successful in setting up the larger segment of the population of Quebec, the French speakers against the English speaking Canadians living in Quebec and the rest of Canada. A perceived unbridgeable divide that was famously called The Two Solitudes, in earlier times.

In fact, these catalyzers of the separatist movement had fought tooth and nail against Daniel Johnson Sr. who was among the leading nation-builders in Canadian history and one who did have a mission to implement a constitutional republic for Canada modelled on the American constitution.

The PQ was created 16 days after the tragic death of Daniel Johnson, the then Premier of Quebec. The goal was simple: attract all separatist-nationalist forces; whether they be left, right, communist, socialist, catholic or Masonic. The game plan was straightforward: maintain the separatist movement as a wedge issue, a divide and conquer British Empire tactic and prevent a Johnson solution that would overthrow the British stranglehold over Canada.

The Origins of the Deep State in Commonwealth Nations

Before Canada was ever given the legal status of “country”, the term in usage was “Dominion of Canada”; an appendage of the British Empire within the North American continent, administered by Crown Agents, and Rhodes Scholars across hundreds of institutions.

This structure still exists to this day.

In this organization’s official history “A Short History of Crown Agents and Their Office”, by Arthur William Abbott, we read that:

“Crown Agents have no formal Constitution and are not part of the United Kingdom Civil Service or of the United Kingdom Government machine… Crown agents act as businesses and financial agents for the Governments of all territories for the administration of which the Secretary of State is ultimately responsible, including the territories under the protection of Her Majesty and the territories administered on behalf of the United Nations”1.

Crown Agents work directly through such key organizations that run the upper echelons of the Civil Service of Commonwealth Nations. It is not within the corporate boards of directors or even parliament, but here in this hive, where the real directing power of Canada is located.

As for the Parti Québécois itself, it was founded by René Lévesque. The 1973 biography of Lévesque written by Jean Provencher documents how Lévesque was recruited by an agent going by the name of Robb during WW2, who was the Montreal bureau chief of the Office of War Information 2 (OWI), [3] a nominally American intelligence service, but which often operated under British influence.

Lévesque was quickly sent to New York to meet Pierre Lazareff, the editor-in-chief of the French services of the OWI, and was quickly sent to London. By the end of the war he had attained the equivalent to the level of captain: “We were still among the best paid guys. I had something equivalent to the grade of lieutenant. I think I ended as a captain. I wasn’t a captain in charge of a unit, but something equivalent” said René Lévesque in an interview years later [4]. After this experience, he was recruited by British intelligence as a “journalist” for the Montreal office of the international radio service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). He was transferred to television services in the 1950s and became a celebrity for the French Canadians with his popular political-economic news program “Point de Mire” on Radio Canada.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Lévesque was a regular contributor to the magazine Cité Libre begun by none other than Pierre Elliot Trudeau. By this time, Trudeau had also been recruited by British Intelligence after his conditioning at Harvard, and the London School of Economics. Trudeau was tutored by mentors like William Yandell Elliot, Joseph Schumpeter, Wassily Leontieff, and the leader of the British Fabian Society Harold Laski.

Both young men had been profiled early on in their Jesuit-run elitist schools; Trudeau in Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf and Levesque in la Séminaire de Gaspé . The idea that there had been a legitimate feud between these two men in later years would become one of the greatest frauds of Canadian history.

It was at this moment that Lévesque was «officially» catapulted to action in Quebec politics. The reason was very simple. It was vital to end, at all cost, the power of the Union Nationale as Daniel Johnson was in the midst of becoming its leader, after the sudden deaths of Maurice Duplessis and Paul Sauvé and the failure of Antonio Barrette as leader of the party.

With Daniel Johnson as leader, the Union Nationale would again win the elections of 1966. From the British point of view, this could absolutely not be allowed to happen. Daniel Johnson was after all, a politician of Irish descent, who understood history, and most importantly understood the psychology of the British Empire. He especially understood how the Empire had caused the Irish to suffer famine over generations as a matter of policy. Johnson was part of a small but influential group working within the Catholic Church, who opposed the massive introduction of Malthusian values into society via the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which had forced school reforms leading to the brainwashing of youth in all industrialized countries. This was the beginning of what was later called “the counter culture revolution” of sex, drugs and Rock & Roll 5.

After the Liberal victory in Quebec’s 1960 elections, René Lévesque, and a coterie of young Malthusian technocrats around Pierre Trudeau and Paul Guérin-Lajoie were among the new `reformers` assigned to carry out the overhaul of the Quebec political and educational structure. Oxford Rhodes Scholar Paul Guérin-Lajoie, the first Minister of Education, would lead the radical reforms of the Quebec educational system that brought in those OECD reforms by 1965.

Within this small but influential group working within the Catholic Church, this “alliance for progress and development” found men representing several nations, from diverse regions of the world, such as Aldo Moro of Italy, Ben Barka of Morrocco, John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, General de Gaulle of France, Cardinal Montini (later to become Pope Paul VI), and Martin Luther King, to name but a few. All promoted human progress. For these people, every human was created in the image of God, regardless of colour and every man, woman and child had the fundamental right to development and enjoy the full fruits of scientific and technological progress. This concept is extremely dangerous for an empire which can only maintain its hegemony through the exploitation of resources, and a physical-intellectual impoverishment of its subjects.

It is within this context that René Lévesque played his assigned role, directly against the networks of Daniel Johnson. The only positive steps taken by the Liberal Party in Quebec during their period in government (1960-1966), were made via the efforts of Charles de Gaulle, his ministers, and the leader of Opposition Daniel Johnson who had many like-minded thinkers within the Liberal Party. The intensity of their organizing even influenced at times the paradoxical and confused Premier Jean Lesage who tended to see himself as a “C.D. Howe nation-builder”, yet was often controlled by forces that he never understood.

Little beknownst to Lesage, these forces ironically hated both progress and especially C.D. Howe, the “minister of everything” of the federal Liberal Party of 1938-1957. Lesage would have the wits about him to first open up “Maisons du Québec” in Paris with the help of Charles de Gaulle, but not nearly enough to recognize in what way he was being used to undermine both Quebec and Canada as a whole.

The majority of the financing of the Liberal Party at that time, was coming from the networks run by Maurice Strong, an enemy of Charles de Gaulle, who himself was an active agent working for the networks of Prince Philip and Prince Bernhard. Liberal Party funds were channeled through subsidiary entities controlled by Power Corporation, of which Maurice Strong was a leading director. Strong became Vice President of Power Corporation in 1963, after having made a fortune during the nationalization of electricity in Quebec. Power Corporation soon got out of the business of energy and quickly became a giant consortium specializing in financial services whose reins were given to a young Paul Desmarais to run as an integral component to the newly re-organized Canadian oligarchy in 1968.

To get a simple idea of the relationship between René Lévesque and Daniel Johnson: One day, during a session of the National Assembly, Levesque told Johnson «vous êtes le personnage le plus vomissant que je connaisse» (“you are the most disgusting person that I know).

Nevertheless, after Louis Joseph Papineau, Daniel Johnson is the political figure who did the most to advance the development of Quebec and its citizens. Johnson understood that in order for the idea of a new constitution to be accepted in Canada, it needed the approval of the other provinces, though not necessarily Ottawa. In effect, due to a fallacy imbedded in the British North America Act of 1867, the progress of Canada has tended to be catalyzed by the provinces rather than the federal government. From a legal standpoint, Ottawa was rarely much more than the “buffer” between the British Empire and the Canadians. When Ottawa had been able to direct true development as was seen clearly during the 1937-1957 Liberal Party leadership, it was due to a mix of American private and public initiative, and the vast war powers used by the likes of C.D. Howe which permitted him to bypass both the parliamentary red tape and the civil service bureaucracy long after World War II had come to an end. Daniel Johnson knew that if he could gain the support of the provinces, then Ottawa would have no other choice but to accept the will of the people.

An informal conference comprising the ten provinces had occurred by the end of 1967, in order to put in place a strategy which would go on to become the first official Constitutional conference in February 1968, which strove to adopt a Canadian Constitution, written by and for Canadians. A constitutional committee made up of provincial representatives was established in the course of that month. This committee’s mandate involved studying all of the propositions made by the provinces. Sadly, on June 5, 1968, Johnson would suffer a severe heart attack, forcing him to pull out of politics for 10 weeks, returning triumphantly in September. He would give a press conference on September 25 in Quebec, just before leaving for the inauguration of the Manicouagan 5 dam, where he was planning to unveil his full nation-building vision. He was planning to meet de Gaulle ten days later, and was intending to invite him to return to Quebec in 1969. However, the next morning he would be found dead in his bed at the foot of the great hydro project that he had set into motion ten years earlier.

To add insult to injury, Charles de Gaulle would be denied an invitation to attend the funeral of “mon ami Johnson”. This would mark the end of Johnson’s Constitutional project.

Check in tomorrow for Part two of this story (The Charles de Gaulle – Johnson Project)

End notes

1 p.1-2 A Short History of Crown Agents and Their Office, by Arthur William Abbott, C.M.G, C.B.E The Chiswick Press 1959. — A.W. Abbott à été Secrétaire de Crown Agents de 1954 à 1958.

2 p. 45 Renée Lévesque: Portrait d’un Québécois, par Jean Provencher Éd. La Presse 1973

3 In order to win the war, Roosevelt created the OWI and OSS (Office of Strategic Services). OWI took care of the propaganda while OSS took care of intelligence. After the war the OSS and OWI were dismantled, as they were not entirely under American control. The OSS was purged of all FDR-loyalists and was reconstituted as the CIA in 1947 and the OWI was re-integrated into British Intelligence services.

4 p. 71 Renée Lévesque: Portrait d’un Québécois, par Jean Provencher Éd. La Presse 1973

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and in 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation . Consider helping this process by making a donation to the RTF or becoming a Patreon supporter to the Canadian Patriot Review