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Former PQ minister Jacques-Yvan Morin died on July 26. He was 92.
According to an obituary published on Saturday, Morin “died peacefully at home.”
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A descendant of one of the leaders of the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1873, he taught constitutional law at the Université de Montréal before entering politics.
He was elected as the PQ MNA for Sauvé in 1973 and served as the party’s leader in the National Assembly.
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Three years later, when the PQ swept to power, he was named René Lévesque’s deputy premier and served as the province’s education minister.
In that capacity, he started the process of education reform and helped shape the Charter of the French Language, with his colleague Camille Laurin
Morin became minister of cultural and scientific development in 1980. The ministry was responsible for the application of the charter.
He resigned from the National Assembly in 1984 to return to academia. He became a professor emeritus at the Université de Montréal in 1997 and retired in 2000.
While Morin called time on his political career in the 1980s, he continued to take public positions on issues that matter to him, namely sovereignty and education.
In 2011, when three PQ MNAs left the party in a challenge to Pauline Marois’ leadership, Morin was part of a collective of authors that encouraged sovereigntists to return to the fold.
During the student protests of 2012, he signed an open letter in Le Devoir denouncing a planned tuition hike.
The author of many books on law, politics and education, he received the Rights and Freedoms Prize of the Commission on Human Rights in Quebec in 200 and was named a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec — the order’s highest level of distinction.
Morin’s funeral is due to be held on Aug. 30 at at Outremont’s St-Viateur church.
He is survived by his wife, Élisabeth Gallat, his son Étienne, 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren as well as his sister, Nicole Morin.