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Mr. and Mrs.President

See How They Ran

We can only hope that the contract signed justified Quebec Superior Court Judge Georges Audet's decision to suppress publication of the manuscript - which described unflattering information the writer discovered.

The sanctity of a contract should be respected and a historian for hire cannot easily find refuge in the hallowed yet increasingly dilapidated halls of academe. Academic historians do not write on commission, and most of us will never earn $54,000 from a lifetime of writing efforts, let alone one project.

This case, however, should awaken us to a serious threat to free thought and free speech in this province. Section 35 is simple and sweeping. It makes no provision for the prominence of the individual or the passage of time. Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, and their descendants for generations hence would have grounds to sue even the most sycophantic of biographers, as would the descendants of Samuel de Champlain and Jacques Cartier.

This law threatens the central mission of the historian - to assess the past and interpret it as objectively as possible.

Historians are not cheerleaders. And historians cannot do their jobs without writing about individuals. In the most elementary of textbooks or the most sophisticated analytical works, historians must follow the evidence, regardless of the consequences. Yet in our increasingly litigious society who would dare to write a biography of anyone controversial, alive or dead, if even one heir remains?

This law is not limited to controversial biographies. Its scope threatens one of the most significant historiographical developments in recent years, the growing focus on ordinary people as historical players. Historians have begun to paint broad canvasses populated with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of characters. In recent years, my colleagues at McGill have produced important works about Italian immigrants, workers in Halifax and soldiers fighting the Boer war.

Must they secure permission from each heir before quoting someone long since dead, or must they cover their tracks and blur the line between fact and fiction by creating imaginary names for each person quoted? Such requirements are particularly burdensome at this time of reduced funding. The university is certainly not about to help with the task or provide legal aid if even the most conscientious of historians ends up in a legal jam.

Some colleagues insist that such fears are unfounded, that this law, like all Canadian laws, is applied reasonably and sparingly. But even they admit there are legitimate areas of historical inquiry they would be loathe to undertake. I, for one, would not only refuse to write a biography of anyone in Quebec under Section 35, I would warn off any graduate student from such a risky endeavour.

In this case of competing rights - the rights of privacy and of free inquiry - the characteristically Canadian emphasis on collective rights reinforces the broader civil libertarian's bias in favor of freedom. Liberty is a fragile flower. Sweeping laws that favour the sensibilities of ghosts over open inquiry chill the climate freedom needs to flourish.

Democratic rights are inherent and fundamental. They should only be diluted or sacrificed for compelling reasons. The burden should be on the state to prove why the rights need to be trampled; the burden should not be on the citizen to prove that the rights have been exercised properly. The democratic revolutions of the late 18th century that swept North America and Europe institutionalized this expansive understanding of freedom; the democratic revolutions of the late 1980s that swept away the Soviet system underlined how precious such freedom is.

While Americans often worry unduly about the chilling effects of too many laws, Canadians are absolutely paranoid about the Americanizing effect of too many freedoms. Simply allowing historians to inquire freely and critically, while adopting a more expansive view of freedom of speech, will not necessarily spawn Canadian versions of Howard Stern and Jerry Springer. The United States could use more restraint, just as Canada, and especially Quebec, could use more freedom of speech, in all languages.

If the cliche is true that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, those who sanitize the past are condemned to far worse.

Without open inquiry into the heroes and villains of the past, be they famous or obscure, without a real appreciation of a society's true successes and defeats, we not only lose as a civilization, we lose as a polity. Demagogues have always flourished where truth and freedom languish. Especially in this province, we know the dangers of distorting the past, we know how easily historical half-truths can create misleading illusions or irritate festering sores.

All of us jealous of our rights as citizens should rise up in a full-throated yet well-reasoned cry to defend our passionate yet civilized commitment to the search for truth, whatever it may be, wherever it may lead.

Gil Troy is chairman of the history department at McGill University.