The Rouge Party

Heir to the radicalism of the Patriote party, the Rouge party promoted liberalism in Canada East beginning in the 1850s, opposing George-Étienne Cartier’s conservative Bleus. The Rouges disseminated their ideas in the newspaper L’Avenir (Montreal) and then in Le Pays (Montreal) and Le National (Quebec). The Institut Canadien, a literary society, was the centre of Rouge activity in Montreal. Vigorously claiming the right to dissociate religion and politics, the Rouges incited strong clerical opposition. The party vehemently opposed the projected confederation of the provinces of British North America; when confederation was realized, the leader of the Rouge party, Antoine-Aimé Dorion, restructured the “new” federal Liberal party to eliminate all trace of radicalism and anticlericalism.