Loïc’s Divided Loyalties and Identity Conflict

Loïc’s divided loyalties and identity conflict take shape as a recurring condition: whenever he is claimed by two opposing sides, affection and belonging make neutrality painful and concealment seem necessary. A childhood dispute between his biological father, Alcide Bolduc, and his adoptive father, Guillaume D’Anjou, returns in altered form when Loïc serves in Ottawa under his cousin Régis D’Anjou while privately hoping for the Parti québécois to win in the Province of Québec. The political division does not simply recall the family conflict; it makes Loïc experience that conflict again, now as a test of his public allegiance and private integrity.

The First Division: Two Fathers

During the childhood confrontation, Guillaume calls Loïc home because it is late, while Alcide continues tending the fire and objects that the boy’s home is also here. Guillaume insists that he has custody and that the child should have been sent back before dark. Alcide counters that Loïc is his son and that he can keep him when he wants. Their dispute turns custody into a direct contest over who may claim the boy.

Loïc is immobilized between them. He does not want to displease Alcide, yet fears Guillaume’s anger; one father calls, the other keeps him. The scene’s stillness sharpens the division: everyone else is frozen, while Alcide alone continues to fuss with the fire. For Loïc, divided belonging is not an abstract question of family history but an immediate predicament in which responding to one attachment risks injuring the other.

Ottawa and the Election of 1976

On November 15, 1976, Loïc is in his office at the Langevin Building in Ottawa as the Province of Québec’s election results approach. He has been retained for the evening with the prime minister’s advisers and assistants, and cannot simply leave to speak with Régis, who is in the adjoining room. The stakes are both national and intimate: a sovereignist victory could alter Canada’s future, while Loïc’s close collaboration with Régis binds him to the federal political world in which he works.

Loïc’s loyalties pull in opposite directions. His Quebec identity makes him hope intensely for the Parti québécois, which he sees as a means of resisting the contraction of the French-speaking nation in America. Yet he must sit among colleagues who are awaiting the results and conceal his growing joy. As the first reported lead goes to a Parti québécois candidate, and by about 7:30 p.m. roughly ten of its candidates are ahead of Liberal opponents, the atmosphere in the Langevin corridors grows tense. Loïc steps out to get a sandwich from the West Block cafeteria. Walking along Wellington Street, he feels his long-contained hope rise as he looks toward the Parliament buildings and the Peace Tower. The public drama of the election therefore has a private cost: the closer the result comes to what he wants, the more carefully he must hide that desire from the people around him.

Political Allegiance and Personal Integrity

After the sovereignist government is elected, Loïc sees Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his team taking up a confrontational position against the Province of Québec. He understands that he can no longer remain balanced on an invisible fence between the two camps. His situation is not an easy compromise between two policies: the political course he is expected to serve now conflicts with his sense of belonging to the people whose government faces opposition.

The conflict strains him physically and emotionally. He sleeps badly and gets up at night to write resignation letters, only to tear them up at dawn. His dilemma is sharpened by the fact that Régis is not merely a colleague. Loïc has been chosen by his cousin as a close collaborator, and regards him as a fatherly figure. Leaving the work could mean relinquishing a valued bond; staying could mean suppressing his own judgment. His sense of being divided is thus both political and relational, joining loyalty to Régis with loyalty to himself.

When Loïc finally speaks, he proceeds cautiously, trying to explain that his generation cannot see Canadian federalism as Régis’s generation does. He has witnessed a deeply divided Canada from his youth onward, and cannot continue defending the rigid federalism embodied by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. He points out that a clear majority of French-speaking voters in the Province of Québec chose the sovereignist party, and that this population is theirs as well as his. Régis listens without interrupting, but his pallor and stiffness register the hurt and strain of the exchange. Loïc’s careful phrasing does not remove the disagreement; it reveals how much effort he has spent trying to voice it without breaking the relationship.

The Return of the Earlier Conflict

The narrative explicitly links Loïc’s political predicament to the childhood scene between his fathers. Régis has assumed a paternal place in Loïc’s life, so the prospect of disagreeing with him revives the older pattern: one father holds him, another claims him, and Loïc feels compelled to hide from one the attachment he bears to the other. His adult version of the village’s divided ground is the Ottawa workplace, where private conviction must be masked in the company of colleagues and a beloved mentor.

That repetition gives the political conflict its personal force. Loïc’s effort to remain poised between federalism and sovereignty resembles his earlier effort to answer two competing paternal claims without displeasing either man. But the election makes the balancing act untenable: once he believes the federal government is going to war against Québec, neutrality would itself amount to complicity. He tells Régis that he would rather stand above the struggle, perhaps by returning to journalism, his former profession. The possibility is expressed as a wish, not a completed departure. What the episode establishes is the cost of the division: Loïc can no longer preserve both political allegiance and personal integrity simply by keeping his deeper preference hidden.