Pierre Juneau launched his career with the magazine Cité Libre

Pierre Juneau, the champion of Canadian content whose death has been announced, got his start in media when he launched the political magazine Cité Libre in Montreal with Pierre Trudeau, whom he had met at the University of Paris. This was long before Trudeau's political career and eventual prime ministership and before Juneau helped found the Montreal International Film Festival, and before his long career as head of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and of the CBC.

Cité Libre's existence starting in 1950 was the very definition of punching above its weight. There are those who say it was the seedbed for the "Quiet Revolution" that swept Quebec in the 1960s. The magazine opposed the conservative government of Premier Maurice Duplessis and attracted an astounding masthead including Gérard Pelletier, René Lévesque and Pierre Vallières. In an era when the Catholic church dominated Quebec politics, the magazine was anti-clerical. In a repressed era, it spoke out about civil liberties and opposed the infamous Padlock Law and supported the Asbestos strikers. It ceased publication in 1966 (though it was revived briefly in the '90s).