Broadcaster with Itchy Feet

"When I'm involved in a project, I try to be as logical as possible. But as for what's going to happen to me personally, I'm no good at figuring the options."

Most Canadians could endorse at least the second part of that self-analysis by Quebec's Premier-elect Rene Levesque, 54. Once a firebrand Cabinet minister in the federalist Liberal government of Quebec, he was even considered by some--in much earlier days --as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of Canada. Now the voluble, hyperactive Levesque says that anyone who does not believe his separatist Parti Quebecois is determined to seek national independence is "daydreaming."

Passionately articulate on Quebec, Levesque is intensely guarded in his private life. By temperament he is a loner with few close friends. Separated for the past six years from his wife, he lavishes attention on his three grown children. Born in the bucolic Gaspe Peninsula region of Quebec, Levesque left law school in 1943 to serve with the U.S. Office of War Information as a European radio correspondent. In the 1950s he moved on to television and speedily became the most popular news commentator in Quebec. Levesque's pouchy eyes, nervous mannerisms and accompanying fog of cigarette smoke became his trademarks--along with a gift for popularizing abstract issues.

Recruited by the Liberals in 1960, Levesque became Minister of Natural Resources within a year. He earned the nickname "Renee the Red" in conservative, English-speaking business circles by pushing through a controversial nationalization of Quebec's hydroelectric industry. One friend with whom Levesque spent many heated nights discussing the hydro scheme was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, then a law professor at the University of Montreal.

Levesque frequently displays a fierce temper. In one encounter with hydro executives, he slammed his fist through a glass desktop. What Levesque's fellow Liberals found even more unsettling was his increasingly outspoken contempt for Canada's federal system. Said Levesque: "I am first a Quebecois and secondly--with rather growing doubt --a Canadian."

Levesque claims he arrived at separatism "bit by bit, without even noticing." But his breaking point with the Liberals came in 1967, shortly after Charles de Gaulle outraged Ottawa with his famous cry of "Vive le Quebec libre!" Levesque was squashed by the party after he presented a plan for more social, economic and political autonomy for Quebec within an altered Canadian union.

A year later he founded the Parti Quebecois. Levesque's moderate approach to separatism through the ballot box managed to survive Canadian revulsion during the October Crisis of 1970, when separatist terrorists kidnaped British Trade Commissioner James Cross and murdered the province's Labor Minister, Pierre Laporte.

Levesque's method of separatism involves an amicable divorce between Canada and Quebec. The two countries would negotiate a customs union and the type of monetary arrangement planned--but never achieved--for the Common Market. Domestically, Quebec would vaguely be "social democratic" along Scandinavian lines. For now, Levesque is less interested in discussing specifics than in achieving his goal of independence. After that, he implies, many of the problems will solve themselves.

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