"This is the first comprehensive biography of Claude Ryan based upon his published writings and personal papers. Set against a background of intense religious and cultural change and tensions over the meanings of nationalism and federalism in both Quebec and Canada, this book traces the emergence of Ryan's vocation as a public intellectual, in which a merging of Catholic religious fervour and new currents of social analysis enabled him to escape his roots in the poverty-stricken neighbourhoods of Depression-era Montreal. This book reveals the ways in which this enabled Ryan to speak to a postwar generation of committed young Quebecers, thus assuring his surprising ascension to the position of one of the most influential voices in Canadian liberalism and federalism in the 1960s. In rich detail, this biography presents the development of Ryan's ideas on religion, politics, and society, which marked him as both as a major figure seeking the transformation of Roman Catholicism in the 1950s and 1960s, and a key Canadian exponent of a current of liberalism at odds with that espoused by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Through analysis of Ryan's personal and intellectual dealings with both Trudeau and Ren Lvesque, this book will contribute to a significant rethinking of the relationship between liberalism, nationalism, and federalism. It contains compelling new material on the breakdown of social and cultural consensus in Quebec in the late 1960s, and provides a strikingly new interpretation of the motives of the key players in the October Crisis of 1970"--

The new Christendom : a poor knight's quest, 1925-1945 -- The bishops' man : forging a nation of youth and taming Catholic action, 1945-1951 -- "I must see Rome also," 1951-1952 -- Diagnosing French Canada's "spiritual schizophrenia" : the travails of a Catholic intellectual in "late Christendom," 1952-1958 -- "Are we pagans?" : diagnosing French Canada's spiritual crisis, 1958-1962 -- "Deus Quod Operatus in Claudio Ryan" : springtime in church and state, 1962-1964 -- "The dawn of a new political spring" : biculturalism and the spirit of federalism -- Between Christendom and the "new gods" : the search for a stable society, 1964-1966 -- We choose the Canadian hypothesis" : defining the ethics of federalism, 1964 -- "There have always been some bridge-men" : navigating the shoals of federalism and nationalism, 1964-1967 -- "Anger rumbles over the city" : the unravelling of the quiet revolution, 1967-1969 -- "This bewildering ambivalence" : the dissolution of French Canada, 1967-1969 -- "The prophetic charisma of the Christian journalist" : disclosing the meanings of the October Crisis.