Maxime Fortin

Fortin, Maxime

Maxime Fortin, parish priest, editor, Catholic union organizer (b at St-Aubert, Qué 17 Mar 1881; d at St-Jean-Port-Joli, Qué 4 Aug 1957). A dominant figure in Catholic unionism in Québec, Fortin was a founding member and first chaplain (1921-32) of the Canadian Catholic Confederation of Labour, chaplain of the Québec City Catholic Labour Council and a professor at Collège Ste-Anne-de-la-Pocatière. Involved in resolving Québec's social and economic problems, he was director and editor of L'Action catholique and l'Association catholique de la jeunesse canadienne française. Fortin established Cercles d'études des ouvriers at Québec to build an elite to propagate the church's SOCIAL DOCTRINE to workers and to organize confessional national unions. He organized workers and helped the CCCL obtain federal government recognition. Fortin pragmatically endorsed strikes, strike funds and closed shops; but he warned that workers were not "docile sheep" and was against class struggle, sweetheart contracts and management's intransigence towards unionization.

See alsoCONFEDERATION OF NATIONAL TRADE UNIONS.