Jeanne Sauvé

Governor-general of Canada (1984-1990)

• Born: April 26, 1922
• Birthplace: Prud'homme, Saskatchewan, Canada
• Died: January 26, 1993
• Place of death: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Sauvé, the first female governor-general of Canada, refined this wholly ceremonial position in Canadian government to what it should be at its best: a proponent for the potential of the peoples of Canada.

Early Life

Jeanne Sauvé (zhahn sohv) was born Jeanne Mathilde Benoît in Prud’homme, Saskatchewan. Her father, Charles, a building contractor, and her mother, Anna, were French Canadians who were determined to preserve their culture in the middle of the English majority. Although the Benoît family had moved from the Saskatchewan prairies to the Canadian capital of Ottawa when Jeanne was three, they still felt surrounded by English speakers. To compensate, Charles reared his children in a traditional French cultural atmosphere, based on the Roman Catholic Church. Jeanne attended church school throughout her childhood and adolescence. She then attended the University of Ottawa.

Sauvé left the somewhat stifling security of her childhood world behind forever when she moved to Montreal in 1943. Montreal was then the leading city in Canada, a multiethnic, cosmopolitan metropolis. Of greatest importance to Sauvé was that Montreal was primarily French-speaking; there, she did not have to shelter herself against the majority culture. As a member of Jeunesse Étudiante Catholique, a liberal organization of young Quebecois, Sauvé made many contacts that were to prove influential in the future, among them Pierre Trudeau, who years later was to sponsor Sauvé’s political career as prime minister of Canada. In 1948, she married Maurice Sauvé, an economics student. The Sauvés went to Europe, where Jeanne taught French in England and later received her baccalaureate degree at the University of Paris. Educated on two continents, Sauvé throughout her career was to impress Canadians as an unusually literate and intelligent politician and public figure. In 1952, the Sauvés returned to Canada.

Life’s Work

Sauvé soon began a career as a journalist and television personality. Fluently bilingual, Sauvé broadcast in both English and French on the best-known Canadian and American networks. Sauvé’s visibility and articulateness made her ideally suited to symbolize the aspirations of Quebec society during the 1960’s. During this decade, in a process known as the “Quiet Revolution,” Quebec was transformed under the leadership of Liberal premier Jean Lesage from a largely rural, conservative province to a progressive, assertive force that sought greater influence within Canada and even independence for itself. Although the conservative Union Nationale Party had ruled Quebec during their youth, both Sauvés were enthusiastic about the modernizing Liberals. As Jeanne rose to fame in the media sector, Maurice was making equal headway in the political sphere, serving in prominent provincial and national posts. The Sauvés were becoming a true “power couple” in Quebec public affairs.

This career division between the couple was to end, however, when Maurice lost his seat in 1968. The national Liberal Party, Canada’s governing party, which by now was headed by Sauvé’s old friend Trudeau, asked her to run in his stead in the next election four years later. Sauvé won handily and moved to Ottawa to take her seat in the federal parliament for the next session. Sauvé’s move into national politics paralleled a decision made earlier by Trudeau and many other Quebecois politicians of his generation to “go to Ottawa” rather than focus their governmental ambitions within the province of Quebec. The ultimate goal of this decision was to make virtually manifest the theoretical assertion of equality between French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians as the two founding languages of the Canadian confederation, to give French Canadians a position of leadership on the national scene. Trudeau, seeing in his old friend Sauvé a kindred spirit in this regard, almost immediately appointed her to a cabinet post in charge of issues relating to science and technology. Even though Sauvé was a political novice, she rose to the task impressively, exhibiting a technical proficiency and competence that went beyond mere execution of day-to-day policy. After Sauvé won reelection in 1974 in her home riding (the Canadian term for a parliamentary district) of Ahuntsic in Montreal, Trudeau promoted Sauvé to a position of more responsibility, that of minister of the environment. Sauvé’s most challenging crisis in this capacity was a dispute between the American state of North Dakota and the adjoining Canadian province of Manitoba over irrigation runoff that threatened to dump excess water from the upper Mississippi watershed into the Red River of the North Basin, largely located in Canada. Sauvé held her ground, although the dispute was resolved only after she had left office.

Sauvé’s rapid advance in prominence during the 1970’s was assisted by factors external to her own performance. This decade saw the large-scale revival of feminism in North America, as women began to be perceived as an interest group demanding more influence in the political process and desiring public visibility commensurate with their demographic position. Sauvé was poised to benefit from the existing power structure’s need to accommodate women’s interests. This era also saw the crest of a renewed Quebec nationalism. Federally inclined politicians such as Trudeau had hoped that the economic prosperity that had accompanied the modernization launched by the Quiet Revolution would bind Quebec closer to the rest of Canada. Instead, it had the opposite effect, raising nationalistic expectations in the province and ushering in an unprecedented era of Quebecois self-confidence. This was expressed politically in 1976, when the Parti Quebecois, which openly demanded political independence from Canada, won the provincial election, led by the charismatic René Lévesque. Because she was a Quebec native committed to the maintenance and revitalization of the federal idea of Canada, Sauvé’s presence in the cabinet became all the more crucial for Trudeau.

By this time, in one of the frequent cabinet reshuffles characteristic of Canadian politics, Sauvé had become communications minister, a task for which her media background had prepared her. This position brought her into direct conflict with Quebec nationalists. The conflict quickly became representative of the general tension in the linguistically divided Canada of the late 1970’s, as Quebec premier Lévesque arranged a referendum, to be held in May of 1980, that would determine whether the province would secede from Canada.

For a brief time, it seemed that Sauvé and the Liberal Party would not be in office to meet this challenge. In elections held in May of 1979, the Liberals were swept out of office by the progressive Conservatives, led by an attractive young politician, Joe Clark. Clark possessed only a minority, however, and in new elections held the following February, the Liberals were returned to office with a majority. Three months later, the independence side lost the Quebec referendum, temporarily silencing the national aspirations of the Quebec people.

Sauvé had been very active on Trudeau’s behalf in both causes, and the returned prime minister rewarded her with the post of speaker in the new parliament. Unlike the U.S. Congress, in which the speaker is the leader of the majority party, the speaker in Canada is deliberately nonpartisan; the main function of the post is to maintain decorum and process in parliamentary discussion. Sauvé’s performance in this role over the next three and a half years demonstrated that she could transcend the particularities of factionalism and party interest, thus paving the way for her next position.

In December of 1983, Trudeau made history by appointing Sauvé to the position of governor-general. When Canada had entered into confederation in 1867, it had been agreed that the British sovereign would rule Canada. Because of Canada’s geographical distance from London, however, the sovereign needed a representative, the governor-general, to rule on his or her behalf. From the beginning, the post had been ceremonial, as the British monarchy itself was by this time, but it was very important symbolically, and when the first Canadian entered this post in the middle of the twentieth century, it was felt that Canada’s colonial status was on its way to being changed. When Trudeau appointed Sauvé, Queen Elizabeth II was the nominal Canadian head of state, with Sauvé serving as her representative in Ottawa. Theoretically, Trudeau served at Sauvé’s behest, though actually the elected prime minister had all the power; Sauvé’s role was wholly ceremonial.

Canadians paid more attention than usual to the appointment of this governor-general, because Sauvé was the first woman to hold the post. Sauvé plunged into her duties with gusto, immediately winning respect from the Canadian people for her bearing and dignity. The national scene, however, was shifting under Sauvé’s feet, because her old friend Trudeau resigned in February of 1984, to be succeeded as Liberal leader and prime minister by John Turner. Turner lost the next federal election, in September, 1984, to the Conservative Brian Mulroney. Sauvé swore both Turner and Mulroney into office in her constitutional capacity as prime minister, and she worked smoothly with Mulroney for the remainder of her five-year term, even though he was of the opposing party. Most important for the strongly Roman Catholic Sauvé, however, was the role she played in receiving Pope John Paul II when he made the first-ever papal visit to Canada in 1984.

The life of a Canadian governor-general is not particularly eventful, but Sauvé succeeded in making a marked impression on Canada during her five years in office. Remaining scrupulously nonpartisan throughout her term, Sauvé had occasion to swear in Mulroney again on his reelection in 1988. Sauvé’s term ended in 1990, and she retired, spending most of her postgovernment years in support of the artistic charities to which she had always been dedicated. When she died in Montreal in January of 1993, she was mourned by all Canadians.

Significance

Sauvé’s role as governor-general may have been only ceremonial, but she turned this lack of political clout into a personal advantage on the strength of her ability to relate to the Canadian people without the obtrusion of ulterior motive or political agenda. Once in the shadow of her husband, she ultimately became far more prominent a civil servant than he had ever been. Sauvé’s experience prepared the way for a woman who was to exercise real political power, future prime minister Kim Campbell. Most important, Sauvé’s presence and her bilingual cosmopolitanism helped heal the simmering wounds that remained after the defeat of the Quebec independence referendum in 1980. Although the relationship between English and French Canadians was still bitter and unresolved, the fact that Canada remained unified as a nation was largely the result of Sauvé’s quiet but determined efforts.

Bibliography

Armour, Moira, and Pat Staton. Canadian Women in History: A Chronology. Toronto, Ont.: Green Dragon Press, 1990. Accords Sauvé’s odyssey a prominent role in its chronicling of the accomplishments of women north of the 49th parallel, though it tends to marginalize the importance of her Quebecois background.

Greenwood, Barbara. Jeanne Sauvé. Markham, Ont.: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1989. This introductory book covers Sauvé in a thorough if noncontroversial manner. The spotlight is on Sauvé as female role model and as bridge-builder between the English and French communities in Canada.

Megyery, Kathy, ed. Women in Canadian Politics. Toronto, Ont.: Dundurn Press, 1991. This comprehensive book situates Sauvé’s career in the context of the possibilities and obstacles faced by politicians of her generation and gender.

Mollins, Carl. “A Quiet Revolutionary.” Maclean’s, February 8, 1993, 17. This most generous and affectionate of Sauvé’s obituary notices reflects on her constitutional role and the promise she held out to Canadian women.

Morton, Desmond. A Short History of Canada. 2d rev. ed. Toronto, Ont.: McClelland & Stewart, 1994. A brief but thorough account of the history of Canada, including its politics.

Wearing, Joseph. The L-Shaped Party: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1958-1980. New York: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981. This book provides crucial background on the party in which Sauvé received her political baptism and through which she rose to national prominence.

Woods, Shirley. Her Excellency Jeanne Sauvé. Toronto, Ont.: Macmillan, 1986. The most detailed and scholarly treatment of Sauvé’s life available. Although this book eventually will be surpassed by a full-scale historical biography, it is a vital prerequisite to the serious study of Sauvé’s career.