Nadia Brédimas-Assimopoulos

Nadia Brédimas-Assimopoulos is an academic and former administrator in the Canadian province of Quebec. She was the vice-president of the Parti Québécois from 1984 to 1988 and later served as president of the conseil supérieur de la langue francaise. Before 2000, she was known as Nadia Assimpoulos.

Early life and career

Assimopoulos was born to an academic family in Athens, Greece with strong social democratic connections (her father's books were burned as subversive by the right-wing military dictatorship that governed the country from 1967 to 1974). She moved to Quebec in 1969, later attended the Sorbonne, and wrote a Ph.D. thesis on the linguistic integration of Montreal's Greek community.[1]

PQ candidate and activist

She first ran as PQ candidate in the 1981 provincial election, at a time when the party was reaching out to non-francophone cultural communities.[2] Associated with the social-democratic wing of the party, she later criticized PQ Premier René Lévesque for imposing back-to-work legislation on striking teachers.[3]

Assimopoulos was elected to the powerful post of PQ vice-president in 1984, defeating Paul Bégin and succeeding Sylvain Simard.[4] When Lévesque announced his resignation as premier in June 1985, she was also chosen as the party's interim president.[5] In this capacity, she had a prominent organizational role in the leadership convention that chose Pierre-Marc Johnson as Levesque's successor.

The PQ was defeated in the 1985 election, and Assimopoulos was personally defeated in her second bid for public office. She continued to support Johnson's leadership after the election, including his decision to downplay Quebec sovereignty in favour of a "new national affirmation" in the existing federalist model.[6] He was unable to build consensus support for this position, however, and resigned as party leader in 1987. His successor, Jacques Parizeau, was a hardline separatist; Assimopoulos resigned the vice-presidency in 1988 on the grounds that she could not support the party's policy direction.[7]

Assimopoulos remained outside the PQ organization during Parizeau's tenure as leader. Following the narrow federalist victory in the 1995 Quebec referendum, she condemned Parizeau's remark that the "ethnic vote" had deprived the sovereigntists of victory.[8]

Administrator

Lucien Bouchard succeeded Parizeau as party leader and premier in 1996 and shortly thereafter appointed Assimopoulos as president of the Conseil supérieur de la langue francaise in a bid to rebuild connections with Quebec's cultural communities. Regarded as a moderate, she originally favoured maintaining the status quo of Quebec's controversial language legislation.[9] She later argued that tougher laws might be needed, after several bilingual commercial signs appeared across the province. She was quoted as saying, "There is a great risk that bilingualism spreads, in a short period of time, across the whole province and Quebec loses its French face."[10]

She remained as president of the conseil until 2005.[11]

References

  1. ↑ Sandro Contenta, "Quebec's language adviser Bouchard names Montrealer of Greek origin in bid to repair damage", Toronto Star, 13 April 1996, A2.
  2. ↑ Richard Cleroux, "Babel of languages at rally accents PQ lunge for ethnic vote", Globe and Mail, 7 April 1981, 8.
  3. ↑ Graham Fraser and Margot Clark-Gibb, "Won't quit as leader, Levesque tells party", Globe and Mail, 9 June 1984, 1.
  4. ↑ Graham Fraser and Margot Clark-Gibb, "PQ on 'automatic pilot' for weekend meeting", Globe and Mail, 9 June 1984, 5; "3 defeats foreseeable, Levesque says", Globe and Mail, 20 June 1984, 9.
  5. ↑ Bertrand Marotte and Graham Fraser, "PQ picks Sept. 29 for choosing leader", Globe and Mail, 24 June 1985, 1.
  6. ↑ Bertrand Marotte, "PQ striving to end sovereignty wrangle", Globe and Mail, 13 June 1987, A6.
  7. ↑ Benoit Aubin, "PQ vice-president quits over policy", Globe and Mail, 8 September 1988, N5.
  8. ↑ Sandro Contenta, "Quebec's language adviser Bouchard names Montrealer of Greek origin in bid to repair damage", Toronto Star, 13 April 1996, A2.
  9. ↑ Sandro Contenta, "Quebec's language adviser Bouchard names Montrealer of Greek origin in bid to repair damage", Toronto Star, 13 April 1996, A2.
  10. ↑ "Halt spread of bilingual signs with tough laws, Quebec watchdog says", Toronto Star, 31 August, A12.
  11. ↑ "Le français au Québec, les nouveaux défis", Canada Newswire, 8 June 2005, 9:20 am.
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