Maurice Duplessis

Biography

Youth and studies

Born with Three-Rivers, Maurice Duplessis is the son of Nérée Noblet Duplessis, lawyer and appointed, and of Marie Catherine Camille Berthe Genest.

Duplessis obtained a diploma in right from the Laval University in Montreal (current the Université of Montreal) and was allowed with the Bar of Quebec in 1913. It turned over in its birthplace to practice the right until it launches out in policy. Among its leisures, he liked the sport, had involved a team of baseball, assisted with the parts of the Canadian and could listen to the Yankees of New York to play at the time of the world Séries.

Political life

Maurice Duplessis was candidate demolishes at the time of the Québécois general election of 1923. Then, he was elected appointed Conservative party of Quebec at the time of the election of 1927, and re-elected at the time of the election of 1931. After the resignation of Camillien Houde, in 1932, the preserving caucus chooses Duplessis to be chief of the opposition. He was elected chief of the party at the time of the congress of 1933, demolishing Onésime Gagnon.

Two weeks before the provincial election of 1935, it created a coalition with the national liberal Action (ALN), a party of liberals dissenting reformists and nationalist which had snap the door of the Liberal party of Quebec. Although it lost this election, Duplessis succeeds in exploiting a scandal of favoritism (one said at the time “patronage”) implying the family of the Prime Minister Louis-Alexandre Taschereau to oblige this last to resign. The ALN and the conservatives had already formally amalgamated in only one party, the National union.

Duplessis led the National union to the victory at the time of the election of August 1936, putting fine at 39 consecutive years of liberal reign. The first government of Duplessis was demolishes with the elections of 1939, a election-surprise started by the Prime Minister with an aim of exploiting the question of the Canadian participation in the Second world war.

Duplessis was deferred to the capacity in 1944. It preserves it during the fifteen following years, until its death; it was called simply “the Chief” (sometimes “Cheuf”). On the whole, he was appointed during nine consecutive mandates and Prime Minister during five mandates, the last four being consecutive. After him, no political party succeeded in gaining more than two consecutive mandates at the time of Québécois provincial elections.

The governments of Duplessis were characterized by the nonrestricted use of the trading of favors, the fight anti communist, the use of the strong manner against the Syndicat S, and an invincible electoral machine. Its initiative the most famous anticommunist was the Loi protecting the province against communist propaganda , called “the Loi of the lock”. The National union often enjoyed the active support of the Roman Catholic church in the electoral campaigns.

The period of its reign is sometimes called “ the Great Blackness ” by some of its adversaries. The social context of Quebec was then, as it was in the decades which preceded the Quiet revolution, very arranged hierarchically, since one could distinguish a mass from generally French-speaking workers of an industrial leading class made up of english-speaking. To that was added a Clergé who had hegemony on the schools and universities of French language, like on the health care.

What characterizes the reign of Duplessis, it is the birth of a movement of assertion of the French-speaking majority which claimed a more important control on the economy and the intellectual and artistic life of Quebec. This movement carried out inter alia to the rise of the trade unionism and the development of a intellectual life which will allow the quiet revolution when the political power changes hand. The opposition of Duplessis to these changes, its insistence to muzzle the trade unions and its lack of opening towards the claims of the French-speaking people who aspire to control their destiny, as those which are summarized in proclamation of the Total Refus (1948), will make of him the pet peeve of the reformers. The Quiet revolution, which will crystallize these claims in the creation of new institutions and an in-depth change of the whole of the company, will crystallize also a resentment of the intellectuals towards Duplessis. Its allies will remain also stigmatized, since from now on it will be the left which will be able to benefit from nationalism, that the clergy will quickly lose not only its control on French-speaking education and the hospitals, but also its faithful, since the churches will quickly be closed down, and that finally the anglophone minority will lose its monopoly on the economy of Quebec.

Duplessis did one of its most durable contributions to Quebec the January 21st 1948, with the adoption by decree of the Drapeau of Quebec, fleurdelized, which replaced the Union Jack at the top of the Hôtel of the Parliament.

Although the judgment of the history was often hard towards Duplessis, some make the point that it governed one long period of an economic strong growth and deposited 15 consecutive balanced budgets. The systematic trading of favors of its government is legendary, but this one did not differ so much from what occurred under the liberals from Taschereau in the previous decades; Duplessis never grew rich personally, and he died involved in debt.

Duplessis died in function with Schefferville the September 7th 1959. Paul Sauvé succeeded to him as chief of the National union and Prime Minister. Thereafter, the Québécois company was swept by a wind of sociocultural change, moving away from its preserving policies centered on the Church to move towards a État-providence highly laicized and socially liberal, phenomenon which one called the Quiet revolution.

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