Leadership Quote by Robert Bourassa

A revolution that stays politely off the pavement is still a revolution; it just wears a suit. Robert Bourassa’s line is a masterclass in political pre-emption: he’s not denying upheaval, he’s narrowing its acceptable shape. By insisting “we did not expect a revolution in the streets,” he draws a bright boundary between legitimate change (managed, institutional, negotiated) and illegitimate change (messy, popular, uncontrollable). The street becomes shorthand for disorder, for bodies taking up space without permission, for politics conducted outside the rooms where politicians feel sovereign.

The phrasing matters. “I have always said” positions Bourassa as steady, consistent, the adult in the room - a leader who claims he’s been warning you all along. It’s a defensive move that anticipates criticism from both sides: from federalists who fear Quebec nationalism tipping into unrest, and from sovereigntists who want the heat of mass mobilization. The “we” is doing quiet work too, implying a shared understanding among responsible actors: elites, institutions, “serious” people. If protests erupt, the subtext is that someone else broke the social contract.

In Quebec’s late-20th-century context - the aftershocks of the Quiet Revolution, the rise of modern nationalism, referendums, language politics, periodic flare-ups of confrontation - Bourassa’s sentence reads like a pledge of containment. He’s selling transformation without turbulence: historic stakes, controlled temperature. It’s calming rhetoric that also functions as a warning: change may be inevitable, but it will be supervised.