‘Quiet revolutionary’ Guy Rocher was an architect of modern Quebec

Guy Rocher is often considered the father of Quebec sociology. Throughout an academic and civil service career that spanned more than half a century and a retirement during which he continued speaking out on public issues, he was one of Quebec’s most influential intellectuals.

Prof. Rocher, who died on Sept. 3 at age 101, was a person of the classroom and also of the public arena. His professional life spanned the Quiet Revolution, the October Crisis, the late-20th-century apogee of Quebec’s independence movement and the tensions of a 21st-century multicultural province. His conviction did not waver as he opined on matters such as the French language, access to quality public education and secularism in Quebec.