Internationally acclaimed author and journalist Mordecai Richler died nearly a decade ago, but two Montreal city officials have spearheaded an initiative to see that the Montreal native is not forgotten. Michael Applebaum and Marvin Rotrand have begun an online petition requesting “the City of Montreal make an appropriate gesture to commemorate the contribution of Mordecai Richler in naming a street, a public place or building in his honour.” The councillors are looking for the commemoration to occur before the ten-year anniversary of Richler’s death on July 3, 2011.
Many proposals for what form the tribute should take have been presented. Richler’s widow, Florence, has suggested that St. Urbain Street, his birthplace and childhood home, be renamed. Rotrand has claimed that it should come in the form of a renamed library, or a plaque near his childhood home.
Montreal was the setting of many of Richler’s novels. His works include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, St. Urbain’s Horseman, and the award-winning Barney’s Version, which was recently adapted into a film.
In addition to his work as a novelist, Richler wrote for ublications such as the National Post, and the Gazette, often making waves with biting comments about Quebec separatists.
The petition has therefore received some opposition. Members of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, a large Quebec nationalist group, have been particularly vocal. The group’s president Mario Beaulieu cited Richler as an alienating individual who was “anti-Quebec.”
“I don’t think [commemorating him is] a good idea in Quebec because Mr. Richler created many divisions,” Beaulieu told the Canadian Press earlier this month. “For us, he’s an anti-Quebec racist because he denigrated French Quebecers.”
Maxime Laporte, the president of a sovereigntist student group at the University of Montreal, echoed the sentiment.
“Mordecai Richler, for me, is someone who through his writings and words [expresses] a contempt for the Quebec people,” Laporte said. “Mr. Richler demonized certain politicians and was contemptuous of certain events in Quebec history.”
Filmmaker Francine Pelletier’s new documentary, The Last Angry Jew, scheduled to air on Bravo in December, examines the bitter relationship between Richler and Quebec. While Pelletier acknowledges that Richler didn’t always write with tact, she makes an effort to tell both sides of the story.
“I realized in making the film that most Francophone Quebecers see him as the troublemaker, the one who irritated us by beating up on nationalism, the Parti Québécois, and language laws,” she said. “But when people have read Mordecai Richler as a novelist, it changes their perception. They are ready to acknowledge he was a great novelist and a great Quebecer, even if he held views that were not the same as ours.”
Another prominent theme of Richler’s work, especially in Duddy Kravitz, was the adversity the Jewish immigrant minority in the city faced, which Rotrand addressed in an interview.
“He epitomizes, for many Montrealers, the experience of successive groups of immigrants—particularly in the Jewish community, but others as well—who came to the city,” Rotrand said. “For many people, they sense Montreal history in the writing.”
As of last Friday, the petition had 683 signatures, and had garnered support from some unlikely sources, particularly Jean-François Lisée, an advisor to former Parti-Quebecois premiers Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard. Although it’s at odds with Richler on Quebec sovereignty, Lisée praised the petition.
“He is [one of] the top three writers that Quebec has produced in the last century. He’s up there with our very best,” Lisée said. “He did write about Quebec in an astoundingly rich and original way. He’s a gem, and I think it should be recognized.”
Rotrand and others, remain realistic, recognizing that naming a street or public area after Richler will prove difficult, given the writer’s controversial reputation. But Lisée believes the effort is a worthy cause.
“Quebec cherishes its culture, and it should be reflected in its landscape,” he said.
