Senate of Canada

The Senate of Canada enters the novel through Régis D’Anjou’s final professional years and his renewed work with Loïc. It is not developed as a political institution in its own right; instead, its committees provide the setting for a last shared assignment, linking Régis’s public career to a private relationship that would later fracture.

Régis D’Anjou’s Senate Career

After leaving religious orders and turning to journalism, Régis built an intellectual career as a contributor to Cité Libre and an essayist on Quebec society. By the end of the 1960s, he had become a speechwriter for the prime minister in Ottawa, and he later finished his career as a senator. The Senate of Canada thus marks the final institutional phase of a career that had moved from religious life and journalism into federal public service.

Committee Translation Work

Régis brought Loïc to Ottawa to review translations of Senate committee materials with him. The assignment was their last work together: a practical, shared task within the Senate’s committee process, and a point of closeness that exceeded their family connection. Their collaboration made the institution part of their personal history, not merely the setting for Régis’s title as senator.

The Senate in Their Relationship

Loïc remembered this work while sorting through the correspondence and papers Régis had left him. Their joint assignment was the last before a dispute over the 1995 referendum estranged them. The Senate episode therefore stands as a point of contrast in their relationship: a period when they worked side by side, followed by years in which Loïc was excluded from Régis’s later research and discoveries. The institution’s narrative significance rests on that brief convergence of public work and personal intimacy.