War & Peace Quote by Robert Bourassa

Bourassa’s line reads like a politician trying to freeze-frame history at the most convenient angle. By insisting “There was no censorship of the press,” he isn’t just making a factual claim; he’s laying down a moral alibi for extraordinary state power. The phrasing is cool, managerial, almost technocratic: if the newspapers kept printing, then the government must have stayed on the right side of democracy. It’s a narrow definition of freedom that treats civil liberties like a checklist item rather than a climate you can suffocate without banning a single headline.

The second clause is where the real work happens: “in general, the War Measures Act could have been made even more radical.” That’s a preemptive hardening of the record. Instead of defending the Act on necessity alone, Bourassa suggests restraint - not because restraint was demanded, but because the state supposedly chose it. The subtext is a warning in reverse: if you think this was heavy-handed, remember we had the capacity to go further.

Context matters: Quebec in the shadow of the October Crisis, with public fear, the FLQ, and Ottawa’s sweeping powers hanging over daily life. Bourassa is positioning his government as competent and moderate amid a moment that blurred lines between security policy and political theater. He’s also signaling to two audiences at once: to federalists and centrists, that order was maintained; to critics, that dissent should be grateful it was only this bad. The quote’s intent is less about truth than about legitimizing a precedent: emergency powers as reasonable governance, not a democratic rupture.