In the year 1941, Mr. Louis Even and Mrs. Gilberte Côté-Mercier (then Miss Gilberte Côté), who were in the process of laying the foundations of the movement of the Union of Electors, launched an appeal through the pages of VERS DEMAIN for generous, high-spirited young men and women who would consecrate their lives to the founding of a new civilization based on Christian principles and the philosophy of Major Douglas which we know as the school of Social Credit.
Providence blessed this call of our founders and sent to them as their first apostle, Gérard Mercier. Since that day in 1941 when Gérard presented himself before the directors of the movement, he has never looked back, never hesitated; he has devoted himself with amazing energy and unflagging zeal to the work of the movement. He gave up his family, his goods, his position in life, and with no thought of material reward (for there is none for those devoted apostles of the Union of Electors the full-time workers) he has for twenty long years given himself to the task of spreading the movement far and wide in the Dominion of Canada.
Were there bitter and powerful enemies to be faced? Gérard Mercier was to be found in the front ranks, right where the battle was the hottest, giving encouragement to those discouraged by the appalling odds and showing how best to lay on with a good blow. Were there somber and anxious moments for the movement when ambitious members sacrificed the good of the movement for their own political ambitions? Gérard Mercier, with undiminished zeal and enthusiasm, was there to begin the work of rebuilding and repairing the damage; heartening the weak and giving the splendid example of a man who never loses faith in an ideal which he knows must ultimately triumph.
Mr. Louis Even said of Gérard Mercier: "He knows both how to make God the center of his life and to give himself without reservation to the good of his neighbor." And we might say without any danger of exageration that Gérard Mercier, in his love for God and his love of his neighbor typifies the ideal Social Crediter who knows that if the new civilization is to be built, it must be built not alone upon monetary and economic reforms, but as well upon the fundamental principles of Christianity - love of God, love of ones neighbor.
In honoring Gérard Mercier, a great apostle of Social Credit, we honor at the same time, all those men and women who, in the hope of bringing a better world into being for the sake of their fellow-men, have devoted themselves to the cause of Social Credit. Gérard Mercier, although he was the first to give his life to this work, has today many comrades in the Union of Electors, young men and women who have given up the prospects of material gain in order to spread the doctrine of Social Credit. Nor does the Union of Electors have a monopoly on such fine people. Around the world wherever the word of Social Credit has reached, you will find the same type of men and women, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, always facing tremendous odds and vicious opposition, fighting with undiminished zeal and faith to realize the ideal of the Social Credit community.
It is all these people that the Congress at Levis honored, when it honored Gérard Mercier.
May there be an ever-increasing number of men and women to follow in their footsteps. For the need is great and the time is short. Without them the Social Credit movement cannot succeed. With them it cannot fail.