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Bourassa back from exile

Broadcast Date: March 13, 1979

Politics must be in Robert Bourassa's blood. After spending three years in self-imposed exile in Europe and the United States, Bourassa has returned to the scene of his political downfall. Officially he's back to teach at the Université de Montréal and the Université Laval. But as discussed in this CBC Television footage, the man once described by his own backbenchers as "the most despised man in Quebec," can't stay away from politics.

When CBC's Eric Malling asks Bourassa about the personal slights, public insults and allegations of corruption, Bourassa simply replies that it's all part of politics. "Very often in politics when you are defeated," says Bourassa, "you take too much blame and when you are elected you have too much praise."

Bourassa back from exile

• Robert Bourassa was booed and hissed out of Quebec in 1976 after losing what some say was arguably the most important election in Canadian history. He spent the next three years in academic obscurity. Bourassa was the visiting professor at the Institut européen d'administration des affaires (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, (1976) and a speaker at the Institut des affaires européennes in Brussels (1977). In 1978 he went to Washington to teach at the Center of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

• Bourassa was famous for his unwillingness to publicly commit himself to one position. During a constitutional crisis, a journalist asked him to answer a question: yes or no? Bourassa said: "Mais Normand, you know me better than that."
• Bourassa's reluctance to commit himself politically throughout his career made him the butt of many jokes. How did "Boo," as journalists dubbed him, die of thirst? Give him two glasses of milk and make him decide which one he wanted.

Bourassa back from exile

Medium: Television

Program: The Fifth Estate

Broadcast Date: March 13, 1979

Guest(s):

Host: Eric Malling

Duration: 17:08

Last updated:
Oct. 4, 2007