65 years after his groundbreaking electoral victory, the legacy of Louis J. Robichaud lives on
Robichaud served as premier from 1960-70 and oversaw a program of change that remade New Brunswick
Sixty-five years ago, New Brunswick elected an Acadian as premier for the first time, spurring the province to begin bridging the gap between its French and English populations.
Louis J. Robichaud served as premier from 1960-70 and oversaw a program of change that remade New Brunswick.
When he entered office, the province faced divisions of language and class. But while he wasn't able to solve these problems, he did set a course toward more equality for all New Brunswickers — French or English, urban or rural.
"Louis Robichaud was one of the people who started to put New Brunswick together in a shape that we recognize today," said Michael Camp, a former provincial affairs reporter at CBC New Brunswick and journalism professor at St. Thomas University.
"[He] introduced two essential pieces of legislation which have really guided the politics of this province for more than half a century."
Robichaud was born in rural Saint-Antoine, in eastern New Brunswick, when the social status of Acadians living in largely rural areas of the province's east and north was far below anglophones at the time.
"I think pre-1960 you could say it was very much subservient to the anglophone majority," said Mario Levesque, a political scientist at Mount Allison University.
"We saw this [in the] nature of our social services overall, our education system that we had at that time and even the fact that there were very few [Acadians elected] to office as well."
Robichaud was first elected as an MLA in 1952 and quickly rose through the ranks of the Liberal Party during its stint on opposition benches.
In 1958, Robichaud became leader of the party and was soon thrust into a general election campaign against Hugh John Flemming's Progressive Conservatives.
Fleming, who had already served two terms as premier, was seen as the favourite to win.
According to Della Stanley in her book Louis Robichaud: A Decade of Power, all the provincial media outlets sent reporters to Flemming's campaign headquarters on election night, ignoring Robichaud.
It would turn out to be an embarrassing evening for the media: Robichaud's Liberals trounced the Tories 31-21.
While Robichaud wasn't the first Acadian premier, he was the first Acadian premier elected by the people of New Brunswick, with support in francophone and anglophone areas.
"I think it's as big as the 2024 New Brunswick election where we elected our first female premier," said Levesque.
"Talk about a watershed moment. Robichaud was a huge watershed moment."
Equal opportunity
Robichaud, who eventually became a senator and died in 2005, is most remembered most for two achievements: installing official bilingualism and his equal opportunity program.
The equal opportunity was a series of bills that extended throughout the Robichaud administration.
The program was aimed at ensuring all New Brunswickers had equal access to services throughout the province. At the time, huge discrepancies existed between different areas of the province.
Before Robichaud areas like health care, education and basic social services were seen as the purview of local government, charities or religious institutions.
What this meant in practice was that people living in the cities had easier access to higher-quality services because their tax base was larger.
In rural New Brunswick, local governments were underfunded, which in turn meant their services were well below what was on offer to city folk.
"He modernized New Brunswick in a way that we've not seen in a 10-year period," said Yves Bourgeois, an urban planning professor at Mount Allison University.
"[He brought] it from [a] largely church-based health and school system into a modern state with professional civil servants and professional teaching programs."
First the province standardized the property tax system. Then it took over the responsibility of schooling from parish and religious school boards. This ensured schools would receive an equitable operating grant.
The province also established the Université de Moncton, creating the province's first francophone university.
Robichaud also reduced the number of local governments and founded a series of local service districts, where services would be provided by the provincial government.
Official bilingualism
Before Robichaud, the status of the French language in New Brunswick was not secure.
French was offered few legal protections and limited services were offered in French.
But the tide was turning and Acadians were starting to demand their language rights.
It was a time of growing frustration in the community and even spurred a nascent nationalist movement among younger Acadians.
Robichaud was sympathetic to the calls for official bilingualism, and in 1969 the province passed legislation, making New Brunswick officially bilingual.
That's not to say there weren't hiccups along the way.
While the province was nominally bilingual, several services of the state, including the judiciary, struggled to implement official bilingualism.
In fact, while made official by Robichaud, much of the work of implementation fell to his successor, the anglophone Progressive Conservative premier Richard Hatfield.
"We still think of it as Louie Robichaud's initiative," said Camp
"But Hatfield had to make it work."
Legacy
Robichaud's further accomplishments are almost too numerous to list; he remade the civil service, expanded the role of cabinet ministers, modernized the province's liquor laws, made improvements to the electoral system.
"I don't think governments now are necessarily going to be [engaged] in the ... huge restructuring of anything," said Greg Marquis, a history professor at the University of New Brunswick Saint John.
"It's maybe tinkering ... there's pretty limited fiscal room, I think, for governments in recent decades to enact major changes."
Robichaud wasn't afraid to stand against the accepted norms, quipping in a 1983 interview with CBC News that "traditions, per se, meant absolutely nothing to me."
Nicole Arseneau-Sluyer, the president of the Acadian Society of New Brunswick, says it's important to safeguard the progress made under Robichaud, even though nearly six decades have passed since he instituted those policies.
"Even with all these reforms that [were] put in place by him, the work is far from over," said Arseneau-Sluyer.
"There are still many major challenges when it comes to protecting francophone rights."
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