Maurice Duplessis

Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis (20 April, 1890–7 September, 1959) served as the premier of the Canadian province of Quebec from 1936 to 1939 and 1944 to 1959. A founder and leader of the conservative Union Nationale party, he built his reputation by exposing the misconduct and patronage of Liberal Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau. He was a very strong supporter of provincial rights, but was critical of certain individual civil rights. He was a life-long bachelor.

Profile

Born in Trois-Rivières, Duplessis obtained a law degree from Université Laval, and was admitted to the Barreau du Quebec in 1913. He returned to his home town to practice law until running for public office. He first won a seat as a Conservative Party of Quebec candidate in the 1927 Quebec election. In the 1931 election, Duplessis was reelected in his seat, but Conservative leader Camillien Houde lost both the election and his own seat. In 1932, the Conservative caucus chose Duplessis to be the leader of the Opposition, and he formally won the leadership of the party in 1933.

Two weeks before the 1935 provincial election, he engineered a coalition with the Action libérale nationale (A.L.N.), a party of dissident reform Liberals and nationalists who had quit the governing Parti libéral du Québec). While he lost that election, Duplessis was soon able to exploit a patronage scandal involving the family of Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau to force Taschereau's resignation. The A.L.N. and Conservatives had by now formally merged into a single party, the Union Nationale.

Duplessis and the U.N. won the August 1936 election in a landslide, putting an end to thirty-nine consecutive years of Liberal rule.

Duplessis's first government was defeated in the 1939 election, a snap election called by the premier in hopes of exploiting the issue of Canadian participation in World War II.

Duplessis returned as premier in the 1944 election, and held power without serious opposition for the next fifteen years, until his death. He became known simply as le Chef (the chief, the boss). He was elected to five terms of office in all, the last four of them consecutive. After him, no political party in Quebec elections at the provincial level has managed to win more than two terms of office in a row.

Duplessis Policy

The Duplessis governments were characterized by an arguably authoritarian rule, the lavish use of patronage, anti-Communist propaganda, strong-arm methods against labour unions, and the limiting of access to education for the general population. Also notable was his opposition to the military: he opposed conscription and Canadian involvement during World War II, as did the clear majority of Quebecers.

Duplessis favoured rural areas over city development and did introduced various agricultural credits during his first term. He also was noted for meagre investment in social services and effective electoral campaigning.

During his terms, while saying that he was not against unions, he made several laws that drew heavy criticism from especially the international union group such the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC). His most notable antiunion initiative was the Padlock Law which initially was a law that would eliminate communism propaganda. It was believed that it was also used as a legal weapon against the Jehovah's Witnesses ^{[citation needed]}.

In 1949, Duplessis also tried to introduce a copycat law of the U.S Taft-Hartley Act, created in 1947, which would have eliminated certain rights for unions that were acquired by the Labour Relations Law of 1944, the equivalent of the American Wagner Act of 1935. It was withdrawn due to the fierce opposition by union but would later reintroduced a nearly similar law in 1954, known as Bill 19. The law would force union to ban any members that would support communism and would any union would lose its trade-union accreditation if any there is a single member. The party lost even the support of the catholic union group and forced it to review its structure.

During several significant labour strikes such as the Dominion Textile in Valleyfield in 1946, the asbestos in the Beauce region in 1949 and the Murdochville copper mine strike in 1957, Duplessis used rapidly with force the provincial police to disperse picket lines and restore order. Several arrests were made in these conflicts. However, the latter led to a major victory to union groups which acquired several rights.

The U.N. often had the active support of the Roman Catholic Church in its political campaigns. Referring to the two parties' campaign colours, a slogan commonly heard from the pulpit was Le ciel est bleu; l'enfer est rouge: The sky/heaven is blue (UN); Hell is red (Liberal). [1]

On January 21, 1948, he made one of his most enduring contributions to Quebec with the adoption of an official Flag of Quebec, the fleurdelysé, which replaced the Union Jack at the top of the Quebec Parliament Building.

Death and Legacy

He died in office in Schefferville, Quebec, on September 7, 1959. Afterwards, Quebec society was caught in a very swift socio-cultural change away from his conservative, Church-oriented policies toward a highly secular, socially liberal welfare state. This was called the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille) and also went by simultaneously with the radical church reforms during and after the liberalizing Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which highly influenced the previously very Catholic region of Quebec.

The Quebec born newspaper baron Conrad Black wrote a well-regarded and definitive biography, Duplessis (ISBN 0-7710-1530-5), now out of print.

Many had called Duplessis's reign as the period of the "Great Blackness"(La Grande Noirceur) in which Duplessis always kept current traditions and values at that time. Major changes occurred when the Liberals regained power in 1960 under Jean Lesage.

Elections as party leader

He won the 1936 election, lost the 1939 election, won the 1944 election, 1948 election, 1952 election, and 1956 election and died in office in 1959.

Most of his surviving relatives have not handed down the "Duplessis" name to their children, although one of his nieces, Berthe Brunet-Dufresne, has taken it upon herself to rehabilitate her uncle.

External links

Reference works

Conrad Black, Duplessis, ISBN 0-7710-1530-5, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1977.
Jacques Rouillard, Le syndicalisme quebecois, Boreal, Montreal, 2004
CSN-CSQ, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier au Quebec, 2001

Preceded by Adélard Godbout	Premier of Quebec 1936-1939	Succeeded by Adélard Godbout
Preceded by Adélard Godbout	Premier of Quebec 1944-1959	Succeeded by Paul Sauvé
Preceded by Camillien Houde	Leader of the Quebec Conservative Party 1933-1936*	Succeeded by none
Preceded by none	Leader of the Union Nationale 1935-1959	Succeeded by Paul Sauvé
Preceded by Charles Ernest Gault	Leader of the Opposition in Quebec 1932-1936	Succeeded by Télesphore-Damien Bouchard
Preceded by Télesphore-Damien Bouchard	Leader of the Opposition in Quebec 1939-1944	Succeeded by Adélard Godbout

*The Union Nationale was founded as an alliance in 1935 with Duplessis as leader. In 1936 the UN formally became a unitary political party with the Quebec Conservative Party dissolving into it