According to the obituary released on Saturday, Mr Morin “died peacefully at his home”.

Jacques-Yvan Morin, son of Arsène Morin, secretary to Honoré Mercier, son and descendant of the patriot Augustin-Nobert Morin, was predestined to go into politics.

However, before Jacques-Yvan Morin took the stage, he was on his way to a career as a legal intellectual. A native of Quebec, he studied at the University of Montreal, McGill, Cambridge and Harvard, which led him to practice law for a number of years.

In 1958, at the age of 27, he entered the academic world, which he never really left, returning there after his time in politics. Until 1973 he taught constitutional law at the University of Montreal – the place where he honed his first political weapons.

In the early 1960s, a man named Michel Chartrand, then active in the Socialist Party, approached him to draft Quebec’s first charter of human rights.

The text of the charter, which he claims to have largely drafted himself, prompted him to publish an article on the subject in McGill LawJournal in 1963 – a magazine he helped found. His reflection was the “prelude” to the 1975 Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, wrote the lawyer Alain-Robert Nadeau in the legal journalon the occasion of the 25^e Charter Anniversary.

To broadcast MEPs’ memories In 2010, Jacques-Yvan Morin said he was struck by the political stab during the debate over the Fulton-Favreau Formula – a constitutional amendment formula that gave Quebec no veto power over an amendment to Canada’s constitution.

“This formula, which blocked any development favorable to Quebec, seemed implausible to me in the midst of the Quiet Revolution, when Quebec wanted to gain more power,” he confided in an interview with The duty in 2014.

And it is the Fulton-Favreau formula that will allow him to meet his future boss, René Lévesque, who was then a Liberal minister. In 1964, Jacques-Yvan Morin took part in a debate on this issue, confronting him with none other than Mr Lévesque and Pierre Laporte, who was also a minister.

“I was impressed, I won’t hide it from you,” he said with a big smile on the show’s Memoirs of Deputy.

Like many notorious nationalists of his day, Mr. Morin did not describe himself as a separatist. It was the States General of French Canada, of which he was President from 1966 to 1969, that made him change his mind. He concluded at the time that “without sovereignty” there would be no negotiations to grant more powers to Quebec.

Jacques-Yvan Morin took part for the first time in 1970 in a race that was not very favorable for the Parti Québécois: that of Bourassa. Not surprisingly, he was beaten in 1970 only to win three years later while riding Sauvé.

In 1973 the Parti Québécois was reduced to six members and it was Jacques-Yvan Morin who took over as leader of the opposition in the National Assembly.

Three years later, Quebec once again embarked on the election campaign that would lead to the PQ’s historic victory. “To be honest, we didn’t expect that. […] “Our hopes were more modest,” he told the program Memoirs of Deputy.

Jacques-Yvan Morin is appointed deputy prime minister and education minister – a ministry he chose because René Lévesque had offered him education or justice.

While in the department, Mr. Morin initiated major education reform and helped draft Bill 101 with colleague Camille Laurin.

In 1980, at his request, Jacques-Yvan Morin passed the torch of education to Camille Laurin, moving to the Ministry of Cultural and Scientific Development – ​​in charge of implementing the French Language Charter.

After the failure of the referendum on sovereignty and the re-election of the Parti Québécois in 1981, Mr Morin remained Deputy Prime Minister and retained the same ministry for a year before moving to the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs in 1982 – in full respect of the Constitution. Canadian.

At this turbulent time for the Quebec government – the PQ had just lost its referendum and the constitution was being repatriated without its approval – Mr Morin tried to persuade Prime Minister Lévesque to make a trip to embarrass “Quebec’s international personality”.

In 1984, Jacques-Yvan Morin decided to resign and return to university life because he wanted “to do something else”. However, he admits certain events “accelerated” him – including disputes between his department and the International Trade Department, then headed by Bernard Landry.

“In 1984, under continued pressure from Landry, interstate affairs were separated from international relations, leading to the resignation of Jacques-Yvan Morin,” experts Stéphane Paquin and Annie Chaloux said in an article in the journal World released in 2010.

So the lawyer returns to his first love: university teaching. He returned to the University of Montreal, where he retired in 1997 before leaving in 2000.

He then became involved with the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie and the Court of Appeal of the Intergovernmental Agency of Francophonie.

Although Mr. Morin ended his political career in the 1980s, he often takes public positions on issues close to his heart: sovereignty and education.

In 2011, when three Parti Québécois MPs slammed the party’s door and challenged the leadership of then-leader Pauline Marois, a collective of authors – including Jacques-Yvan Morin – encouraged Sovereignists to return home.

“The party best positioned and organized to seize power, defend Quebec’s higher interests and lead it toward independence is the Parti Québécois,” they stressed.

In 2012, during the big student strike, he signed an open letter in the daily newspaper The duty to denounce the increase in tuition fees.

“In the current state of Quebec’s economy, a constructive approach would rather call for a tuition freeze. The need for education in our society is hardly less than at the time of the Silent Revolution. We must therefore also think about improving the loan grant system,” he wrote.

“During the years that I was Minister there, René Lévesque’s government increased loans and grants by 50%. It is actions of this nature that would allow the continuation of the quiet revolution that Quebec youth would need in these times,” he continued.

In 2015, he was also involved in the federal campaign that will lead to the crowning of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals by encouraging Quebecers to vote for the Bloc Québécois in a letter signed by several longtime sovereignists, including Jacques Lanctôt and Gérald Larose voices.

Jacques Yvan Morin, author of numerous books on law, politics and education, received several awards throughout his life. In 2000 he received the Rights and Freedoms Award from the Quebec Human Rights Commission and a year later he was ordained Grand Officer of the Order of Quebec by PQ Premier Bernard Landry.

“Your career is unfolding on two levels of excellence: that of an outstanding professor of international and constitutional law, and that of a great servant of Quebec,” said Prime Minister Landry upon presenting him with the highest decoration of the Ordre du Quebec.

In 2014 he also received the intellectual sovereignty award, named after his former colleague Jacques Parizeau. On that occasion, he explicitly reiterated that the idea of ​​sovereignty was “not dying out.”

“The Parti Québécois cannot continue to please everyone by advocating good government on the one hand and defending sovereignty on the other. He must first define his goal, which is Quebec’s independence, and then find the means to achieve that goal,” he told the daily. The duty.

The funeral of Jacques-Yvan Morin will be celebrated on Wednesday 30 August at 12 noon at the Saint-Viateur church in Outremont.

He is survived by his wife Élisabeth Gallat, his son Étienne, ten grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, and his sister Nicole Morin (deceased Jacques Robichaud).