97 Facts About Maurice Duplessis

Son of Neree Duplessis, a lawyer who served as a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly, Maurice studied law in Montreal and became a member of the Bar of Quebec in 1913.

Maurice Duplessis then returned to his home town of Trois-Rivieres, where he founded a successful legal consultancy.

Maurice Duplessis narrowly lost his first campaign for the Trois-Rivieres seat in the 1923 election, but managed to get elected in 1927 as a Conservative MLA.

Maurice Duplessis was a strong proponent of economic liberalism and implemented pro-business policies by keeping taxes low, refraining from regulation and adopting pro-employer labour policies, in particular by cracking down on trade unions.

Maurice Duplessis was ruthless to the perceived enemies of the Church or of the Catholic nature of the province, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, whom he harassed using his government's apparatus.

Communists were persecuted under the Padlock Law, which Maurice Duplessis authored in 1937.

Maurice Duplessis's legacy remains controversial more than 60 years after his death.

Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis was born on April 20,1890, in Trois-Rivieres to a religious family that was quite wealthy.

Maurice Duplessis was the second child and only son of Neree Le Noblet Duplessis, a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec for Saint-Maurice.

Maurice Duplessis's father, who came from a family of peasants residing in nearby Yamachiche, was a kind but busy man and spent little time with the family, which was typical at the time.

Maurice Duplessis's mother was Berthe Genest, who had Scottish and Irish origins on her maternal side.

Maurice Duplessis was born during his father's reelection campaign, who chose to name his son for the electoral district he was the MLA for.

In 1898, Maurice Duplessis left his home city to study at the College Notre-Dame in Montreal, which was run by the Congregation of Holy Cross.

Maurice Duplessis came to like young Duplessis and handed him over the task of finding students whom the rector wished to see.

The relationship was so close that it was then that Maurice Duplessis developed the cult of Saint Joseph, which he carried for the rest of his life and which sometimes would influence his political choices.

In 1902, Maurice Duplessis moved to the Seminaire de Trois-Rivieres in order to pursue his study in a classical college.

Maurice Duplessis continued to excel in other subjects, including history, theology, Latin and Greek, which helped him become the best student in his year.

Maurice Duplessis was especially fond of Louis Hebert, one of the first colonizers of the New France and a pioneer of farming in the area.

Maurice Duplessis understood from that experience that he preferred the practical aspects of politics rather than the theory.

When finishing school, Maurice Duplessis was thinking of either further engaging in public life or becoming a priest in the Catholic Church.

In parallel to his studies, he trained in the offices of Rodolphe Monty et Alfred Duranleau, two nationalist conservatives and friends of Duplessis's family, where Maurice was referred to by his father.

Maurice Duplessis, sitting in the opposition, was a local star within the model parliament organized by the university.

Maurice Duplessis returned to his home town to practice law at the Bar of Trois-Rivieres, whose member he would stay until his death.

Maurice Duplessis first worked together with his father, but this was cut short as on June 15,1914, Neree was nominated as judge of the Superior Court of Quebec.

Maurice Duplessis did not serve in the Canadian Armed Forces during World War I as he was exempt from conscription.

Maurice Duplessis was quickly recognized as a sociable and competent lawyer who approached his cases carefully, and thus became a popular figure in the town.

Maurice Duplessis suspended his law career in early 1934 amid mounting duties in the Legislative Assembly, though he would still be mentioned as a member of the bar.

Maurice Duplessis made his first attempt to get to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec in 1923 as a Conservative, seeking to oust the incumbent Liberal MLA, Louis-Philippe Mercier, from his Trois-Rivieres seat.

Maurice Duplessis counted on the solidarity of his fellow lawyers, the good reputation among his clients as well as his father's acquaintances' support.

Maurice Duplessis's campaign focused on the criticism of what Duplessis alleged was Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau's contempt towards provincial autonomy and municipal rights as well as of the mismanagement of the judiciary.

Four years later, Maurice Duplessis attempted a second run to the Legislative Assembly, campaigning among working- and middle-class families by paying personal visits to them.

Maurice Duplessis's resolve to get to the provincial parliament increased even further after his father died in 1926.

At election time, Maurice Duplessis flipped the seat for the first time in 27 years, winning 2,622 to Mercier's 2,496 votes.

At the time when Maurice Duplessis was elected, the Legislative Assembly was only in session for two months in a year, which allowed Maurice Duplessis to spend more time in his electoral district.

Maurice Duplessis became immediately active on the parliament floor once the parliament convened on January 10,1928.

Maurice Duplessis proposed to make an inventory of the forest industry and to reorganize the provincial police.

Maurice Duplessis said to his party colleague, Antonio Barrette, who would briefly serve as Premier in 1960: "You're going to see Houde get to the top of the mountain and then be over the hill".

Maurice Duplessis was in many ways fundamentally conservative; he mistrusted the flamboyant and doubted the improbable.

Maurice Duplessis did not think that this endomorphic gadfly would prove a match for the crafty, magisterial, and thorough M Taschereau.

Houde lost his own riding; Maurice Duplessis got reelected with a razor-thin margin of 41 votes.

Houde wanted to challenge 63 electoral results in the province, but Maurice Duplessis was against this idea because of his thin margin.

Maurice Duplessis repeatedly questioned the government on its failure to make a turnaround.

Maurice Duplessis pointed to the overcapitalization of companies and to the general chaos in the province's industry and resource exploitation.

Maurice Duplessis further alleged unjust treatment of municipalities, lack of respect for traditions and unnecessary confrontations with the federal government.

Maurice Duplessis was then preparing for the upcoming 1935 election, starting a tour across the province more than a year before the voters were to go to the ballots.

Still, Maurice Duplessis remained distrustful of the ALN members, seeing them as unreliable men who would join the Liberals after the election and ruin his dream of heading the government himself.

Maurice Duplessis got safely reelected with a margin of 14 percentage points.

Maurice Duplessis continued his offensive in spring 1936, when he succeeded in having the parliamentary public accounts committee start an inquiry into the management of public funds by the Taschereau government.

Maurice Duplessis immediately embarked on fulfilling some of the electoral promises.

However, Maurice Duplessis emphatically refused to nationalize the producers of electricity and largely continued the economical policies of his predecessor.

Maurice Duplessis first rose to the highest office in the province in a difficult time, as the Great Depression ravaged through the province, leaving hundreds of thousands of people unemployed.

The federal government started intervening in the province's finances to stabilize them, but Maurice Duplessis resisted these attempts as he thought they violated the principle of the provincial autonomy.

In line with the Church's teaching, Maurice Duplessis launched a program of assistance to needy mothers, as well as to the blind and the orphaned.

Maurice Duplessis introduced and had the Legislative Assembly pass the so-called Padlock Law.

Maurice Duplessis decided to seize that opportunity and announced a snap election to cement his grip on power by rallying the population around the fears of conscription.

The defeat of the Union Nationale meant that Maurice Duplessis's leadership was in danger.

Joseph-Damase Begin called to convene a caucus meeting to consider changing the leader, with Onesime Gagnon and Hormisdas Langlais as possible contenders, but Maurice Duplessis successfully quashed the effort.

Maurice Duplessis had previously considered the issue several times, but, unlike some of his colleagues, largely avoided discussing it and generally either abstained on the legislation or opposed it by voting "nay" or by trying to block the bill in committee.

Maurice Duplessis accused Godbout of hypocrisy, as the Liberal leader previously opposed similar bills seven times.

Maurice Duplessis did not want to allocate taxpayer money to the nationalization and believed that negotiating prices between the government and the electricity companies was a better way to decrease them than assuming state ownership.

Maurice Duplessis based his campaign on portraying the religious minorities, the federal government and the trade unions as threatening the province's interests, autonomy, traditions and identity.

Maurice Duplessis attacked Godbout's reforms as threatening the Church and the Catholic faith.

Still, Maurice Duplessis was able to form the government as vote splitting between the Bloc populaire and Godbout's party let the Union Nationale win 48 out of 91 seats.

The first was his personal charisma, which was so strong that the figure of Maurice Duplessis mattered much more than the party he represented.

The way Maurice Duplessis solicited the investments was consistent with economic liberalism.

Maurice Duplessis attracted the money by using a combination of low taxes, low regulation and pro-employer labour policies.

Maurice Duplessis had a consistent position of disincentivizing collective bargaining by passing unfavourable regulations for organized labour, which at the time was unique in Canada.

Maurice Duplessis underwent two surgeries for a strangulated hernia in 1930 and 1942, which each ended in several-month-long stays in the hospital due to complications or other diseases slowing down his recovery.

Maurice Duplessis was hospitalized for a shorter period in 1929 for injuries he had sustained in a car accident.

Maurice Duplessis had been a heavy drinker, but on the advice of his doctor, pressure from his party and Adelard Godbout's suggestion that this "weakness was going to ruin [Maurice Duplessis]", became a teetotaller after his second surgery.

Sometime before September 2,1959, Maurice Duplessis accepted an invitation from Quebec Iron, a subsidiary of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, to travel to Schefferville to see its mines.

Maurice Duplessis's body was then embalmed and laid in state in the building of the Legislative Assembly.

That said, despite the several reforms that have been implemented in the short "100 days", as the period is known, Sauve stressed his loyalty to the legacy of Maurice Duplessis and portrayed his rule as the continuation of what Maurice Duplessis was doing.

For most of his political life, Maurice Duplessis lived alone in Chateau Frontenac.

Maurice Duplessis still remained close to his sisters as well as their husbands.

Maurice Duplessis became a godfather to a daughter of Antonio Talbot, the minister of roads in his post-war government.

Maurice Duplessis believed that he had to behave in a strictly aristocratic and gentlemanly manner towards them but his convictions did not prevent him from making risque comments about women in their presence.

Maurice Duplessis enjoyed historical or political books the most, but he read classical French or English-language authors, such as Rudyard Kipling, Tennyson and Shakespeare.

Later in his life, Maurice Duplessis developed a taste for paintings and started collecting them.

Balcer-Maurice Duplessis inherited the works of art, which she donated to the provincial government in exchange for the cancellation of the inheritance tax.

Maurice Duplessis has not practised any in his life, except for croquet.

Maurice Duplessis is recognized as one of the most colourful, if controversial, people in Canadian politics.

Pierre Trudeau would write in Cite Libre that Maurice Duplessis did not tax enough on the provincial level and this enabled the federal government's invasion of provincial autonomy and deprived Quebeckers of the needed social services.

The role of Maurice Duplessis was along the lines of the "Negro Kings", the local chieftains whom the British allowed some control over their area but who had to recognize the supremacy of their overlords.

Yves Vaillancourt, who analyzed the period from the perspective of administration of welfare, stated that social justice was in disrepair and that the government of Maurice Duplessis was at fault for causing this problem.

Black, on the other hand, believed that Maurice Duplessis was an able politician who managed to modernize the province even while defending traditional values; the latter then further clarified that in his view, the Quebecois owe their prosperity to Maurice Duplessis as he used the money saved from underpaying teachers and nurses to make infrastructural investments.

Maurice Duplessis argued that the blame for the regime's regressiveness should be laid on the Catholic Church and on society, which wanted order and security and thus tolerated oppression.

Yet other historians emphasize in their opinions that the "rupture" between the Quiet Revolution and Maurice Duplessis is not present in every aspect of Quebec's life, is generally exaggerated or even artificially created, or else that it should be better thought of as a transitionary period.

Frederic Boily dismissed that reasoning as simplistic, because it implied that Maurice Duplessis was a populist along the lines of Peron and Brazil's Getulio Vargas.

The premier retorted that while, in his opinion, Maurice Duplessis had many faults, he defended Quebec, unlike the "woke" Nadeau-Dubois.

In December 1959, Paul Sauve passed a law in the Quebec Legislature that envisaged building a monument to Maurice Duplessis and placing it somewhere in the city of Quebec.

Therefore, the first statue of Le Chef was unveiled in 1964 in Trois-Rivieres by the Societe des amis de Maurice L Duplessis, a private organization dedicated to the preservation of Duplessis's heritage.

Government commemoration of Maurice Duplessis lost steam as the Quiet Revolution progressed and the general populace evolved a negative view of the Maurice Duplessis's reign.

Denys Arcand treated him extensively in his early film career: in 1972, he directed Quebec: Maurice Duplessis et apres for the National Film Board of Canada, and, six years later, he was a screenwriter for the TV series Maurice Duplessis, which was released on the screens of Radio-Canada.

The Union Nationale, then under the stewardship of Roch La Salle, distanced itself from the heritage of Maurice Duplessis and lost all seats in the 1981 election.

Maurice Duplessis held some top positions in relation to his law career.

However, it was agreed that Maurice Duplessis would have become Premier if the UN had won the 1935 election.