Luc Larivée (January 17, 1927 – July 30, 2007) was a physician and politician in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He chaired the Montreal Catholic School Commission (MCSC) from 1976 to 1983 and served for many years on the Montreal City Council.
Early life and career
Born in Montreal, Larivée received a medical degree from the Université de Montréal in 1954. For many years, he ran a general practice from his home. He spoke French, English, and Italian.
Chair of the Montreal Catholic School Commission
Larivée was first elected to the Catholic School Commission in the 1973 school board election, winning in the eighth district with an endorsement from the conservative and confessional Mouvement scolaire confessionnel (MSC). He became commission chair in 1976, succeeding Thérèse Lavoie-Roux, who had been elected to the National Assembly of Quebec.
As chair of Montreal's largest school commission, Larivée was a prominent critic of René Lévesque's Parti Québécois (PQ), which governed Quebec from 1976 to 1985. At one stage, he charged that anglophones would "more or less eventually disappear" from Quebec as a result of the PQ's language legislation. In 1977, he openly defied the government's language policy to permit more than 800 children of immigrants to continue attending English classes until the end of the school year.
He was re-elected without difficulty in the 1977 school board election, in which the primary issue was the confessional status of the commission's schools. Larivée and his MSC-supported allies favoured retention of the Roman Catholic system, while rival candidates from the Regroupement scolaire progressiste (RSP) were open to the prospect of secularization. Candidates endorsed by the MSC won all but one of the available seats, and Larivée continued to serve as chair in the term that followed.
Larivée campaigned for the Canadian federalist option in Quebec's 1980 referendum on sovereignty, chairing the "Non" committee in Hochelaga—Maisonneuve. He later acknowledged that this was a mistake, saying that he should have remained neutral in light of his position as school commission chair.
The provincial government briefly put the commission under trusteeship in 1980, criticizing Larivée's handling of a teachers' strike. Larivée was required to face the electorate in the 1980 board election while the strike was still taking place and was re-elected by only twelve votes against a candidate endorsed by the teachers' union.
In 1981, the PQ government distributed materials critical of Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau's constitutional proposals to high school history teachers across the province. Larivée described the materials as "very political" and led the MCSC in ordering its history teachers not to teach them in class.
Larivée subsequently opposed the PQ government's prohibition against teaching English as a second language to children in French schools before the fourth grade. He charged that several PQ ministers believed teaching second languages to young children would have detrimental effects, adding that he himself was entirely opposed to this viewpoint. "I believe the whole problem is related to political problems," he said. "I've been all over the world and I've seen students studying many, many languages and they have no problems."
He stood down as commission chair in 1983 and was not a candidate in that year's board election.
City councillor
Drapeau administration
Larivée was first elected to city council in the 1978 municipal election, winning in the Longue-Pointe ward as a candidate of Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau's Civic Party. The Civic Party won a landslide majority, and Larivée served as a backbench supporter of the Drapeau administration. When Drapeau considered retirement in 1982, Larivée said that he would consider running to succeed him; some believe this speculation was premature and adversely affected his leadership prospects in later years.