Who is duplessis maurice

Often standing first in his class, he won many prizes as well as debates. During his twenty-some years as a lawyer, Duplessis practised civil, municipal, parish, and educational law more than criminal law, and his clients were more often ordinary citizens than companies.

Sometimes, however, he did represent industries, such as the Shawinigan Water and Power Company. He spent the following four years in a pre-electoral campaign, visiting many municipalities, tracking his opponent wherever he went, meeting constituents individually, remembering all their names.

His win by a majority of in the general election of 16 May put an end to 27 years of Liberal rule in the riding. He would be returned there in the next eight general elections, from to On 19 Jan.

He made a strong impression on the whole house, even his opponents. The election of had left the Conservatives with only nine mla s.

Houde, who had just become mayor of Montreal, was a rising star. Duplessis knew that Houde would be too undisciplined to be anything other than a shooting star in the sky of the capital: he would wait his turn.

The two men were to be rivals for more than a decade. In the general election of 24 Aug. He and Thomas Maher, an active Conservative supporter, wanted to contest the elections of 63 Liberal mla s. Duplessis, who had taken his riding by 41 votes, was one of the dissident members who did not want to risk having their own elections overturned, and he was criticized for his reluctance by his leader, Houde.

Defeated in the Montreal mayoralty race on 4 April , Houde resigned as leader of the Conservative Party on 19 September. Duplessis now began his ascent, thanks to his talent, experience, and determination, but also as a result of the circumstances, with the Liberals undermined by the wearing effect of being in power, by corruption, and by the economic crisis.

He became leader of the Conservative Party at the convention held in Sherbrooke on 4 and 5 Oct. He would consolidate his base by rewarding those who championed him and punishing those who opposed him. This victory represented above all a vote of confidence in the man, who soon gave up his career as a lawyer.

Duplessis argued his last case on 4 Jan. It was in this period that he began managing to translate his talent for reading public opinion into votes at the polls. He had to flesh out his program at a time when the province was sinking deeper into the depression. From the outset of the decade, Roman Catholic intellectuals who were French Canadian nationalists had been seeking solutions to the crisis of capitalism, while avoiding socialism.

A rather conservative document inspired by the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, especially corporatism, it proposed support for family farming and local industry, introduction of basic social legislation, and opposition to monopolies.

This desire for reform also won over some members of the Liberal Party, which had been in power since ; they were disappointed by the impotence of the Taschereau government, which was weakened by allegations of corruption. Drawing inspiration from the Programme de restauration sociale , the new party promised, among other things, to give back to French Canadians control of their economy, encourage family farming through colonization and introduction of agricultural credit, carry out labour reforms, fight against the electric-power trusts, create a ministry of industry, and clean up politics.

As the election approached, Duplessis feared that the division within the opposition forces might let the Liberals hold onto power despite popular discontent. Eighteen days before the polls on 25 November, the formation of an alliance, the Union Nationale Duplessis—Gouin, was announced. The program adopted would be that of the latter group, which had many fine orators, but not a penny in the bank. Although technically leader of the third party in the Legislative Assembly, Duplessis quickly pushed Gouin aside and took over what became the Union Nationale in His political style was unique.

It would be said of Duplessis that he was a populist, because he cultivated his rural electoral base and expressed anti-elitist ideas when he spoke; that he was authoritarian, because he made arbitrary decisions; but also that he was generous, because he was known to come to the assistance of Liberal opponents who had become vulnerable.

His influence over the opposition mla s and his popularity with the voters grew rapidly in the spring of when, convening the public accounts committee of the Legislative Assembly, he set himself up as a prosecutor in investigating the Taschereau regime.

The testimony given before this committee was damning and created a scandal. The past year had confirmed him as leader of the opposition forces.

He himself so hesitated to stand that on 10 August he arrived at the registration office one hour after the closing time for nominations. The last of his supporters either declined to run or did so as independents. Not one of them was elected. But in the wake of the public accounts committee hearings, he especially emphasized the corruption of the Liberal regime. Modelled on Catholic publications, it sought to extol the virtues of the party in opposition while stressing the shortcomings of the Liberal government.

In the election of 17 Aug. In the fall the new premier called an emergency session of the Legislative Assembly. In the long run, this move would bring Duplessis the support of farmers, a basic factor in the longevity of the Union Nationale, given the over-representation of rural regions on the electoral map. During this short session, Duplessis established an old-age pension program in conjunction with the federal government something the Liberals had been rejecting since , but had agreed to just before the election , and he introduced several amendments to the electoral law and the law on workplace accidents.

Relieved of the reform wing of his party, he turned his back on radical policies such as nationalization of the electric-power companies and adopted a liberal approach that differed little from that of his predecessor. About corporatism he said not a word. It was a measure intended to exploit the insecurity of the populace during that turbulent period.

Applauded at first by the Catholic labour organizations, it would, in the end, constitute a threat to the trade-union movement: any place being used for the propagation of communism or Bolshevism could be condemned by the attorney general. The year set the tone for relations between the unions and Duplessis, whose most progressive step was the creation of the Fair Wage Board.

It was not well received, however, by the trade-union movement, which preferred collective bargaining to the arbitration process set up to establish a minimum wage.

In addition, Duplessis prohibited the closed shop in which workers must belong to a designated union to be hired and he exempted public works carried out for the government from the provisions of the Fair Wages Act and the Act respecting the extension of collective labour agreements given royal assent in Moreover, he gave the government the right to revise agreements that had been extended by decree to an industrial sector.

Last of all, that year Duplessis and his minister of labour, William Tremblay, intervened in the strike at the Dominion Textile Company Limited, ordering the workers to return to their jobs before negotiating. For Duplessis, the nationalization of electricity, or any other direct governmental intervention in the economy, was out of the question. The advent of Duplessis and the Union Nationale to power in the province represented primarily a changing of the guard.

Economic liberalism would still be in the forefront, and in addition a social conservatism of a more definite ideological hue. That year Duplessis introduced social measures compatible with the views of the church: assistance to needy mothers but not unwed mothers and separated or divorced women , assistance to the blind, and renewed encouragement for colonization.

He preferred the idea of charity to that of justice. In , in his opening speech to the National Eucharistic Congress held in Quebec City, Duplessis explicitly rejected the principles of the French revolution and reiterated his profession of faith as a Catholic.

He gave a ring to the archbishop of Quebec, Cardinal Villeneuve. The cardinal responded by emphasizing that this gesture signified the union of the temporal and the spiritual. To put the unemployed back to work, he demanded that the federal government initiate a program of public works.

Ottawa was also thinking of putting in place an unemployment-insurance scheme. For the time being, attention turned to the rising tensions in Europe. On 17 May Duplessis, with grace and dignity, welcomed King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who were visiting North America to encourage support for their country in the coming conflict. Speaking in French in the chamber of the Legislative Council at the Parliament Buildings, he assured them of the loyalty of the French Canadian people.

Yet upon the outbreak of hostilities, Duplessis took a stand against participation in the war, thereby alienating English-speaking Conservative voters. On 23 Sept. The strategy backfired when the Liberals guaranteed that no soldier would be forced to fight in Europe.

Moreover, because Duplessis refused to submit his scripts to federal censorship, he could not use the radio during the election campaign and relied instead on public meetings. Powerfully eloquent and unrelentingly outspoken, Duplessis skewers his opponents and charms his supporters effortlessly as heard in this speech on provincial autonomy.

Maurice Duplessis was elected to replace him in But, Duplessis had a Herculean task ahead of him; overhauling the Tory party which had been out of power in Quebec since On Nov. Campaigning on a platform of anti-corruption, Duplessis was successfully elected premier in the election. Nonetheless, Le Chef did manage to introduce wage regulations, modest relief funds and agricultural provisions.

Duplessis made a pre-emptive strike against the federal government, which hadn't yet proposed conscription of soldiers for the Second World War, and campaigned on an anti-conscription platform. With the support of three federal ministers — Ernest Lapointe, minister of justice, P. A populist through and through, he drew crowds. At the Legislative Assembly, he was a formidably sharp debater and his adversaries were often taken aback by argumentation bordering on electioneering.

Duplessis left no one indifferent, sparking passion among both admirers and critics. For best viewing of this site, you will need the plugin: Adobe Flash Player.