Bustle in Beauce

Until 1910, when Quebec's Government paved provincial route No. , the patient habitants of thrifty, prosperous Beauce County-trudged to Quebec City's markets along a dismally muddy road that followed the banks of the temperamental Chaudiere River. Because they arrived in Quebec muddy to the seats of their pants, they were called then (and still are, behind their backs) jarrets noirs, meaning black calves.

Last week, the jarrets noirs, pants-deep in another kind of mud, had the time of their lives. In Beauce County's lumber camps, pulp mills and asbestos-mining towns, and in the tidy farm hamlets that line the fertile Chaudiere Valley all the way down to Maine, a hot by-election campaign came to a crackling end.

Bigger issues were at stake than just filling the seat vacated by ailing Edouard Lacroix, Bloc Populaire member. This time no Bloc candidate ran. Aside from a Social Crediter who was just practicing, the contest was between candidates of Quebec's two major parties--ex-Premier Adelard Godbout's Liberals and Premier Maurice Duplessis' Union Nationale. The Liberals hoped to reduce the Government's slim majority in the Legislative Assembly (lower House), then turn the Liberal-dominated Legislative Council (upper House) loose on Government bills, and force an early general election.

If Beaucerons did not know the issues by the time they went to the polls, politicians had wasted five weeks of energetic oratory, such epithets as "fascist" and "crook," and some $350,000 in campaign funds. It was a hangup show. Political organizers swarmed in, hired private homes at $25 a throw to give vote-catching parties, plied the voters with imported Scotch, handed out $5 and $10 bills for displaying candidates' pictures.

Notice for Voters. The provincial treasury sent along $6,000 for a public hall and playgrounds. The Liberals promised to match this with $13,000 if they won--$100 if they lost. Premier Duplessis sent in batches of rural electrical equipment, followed by bulldozers, trucks and asphalt to pave Beauce County roads.

At campaign's end, Beauce's 23,000 voters (among them 3,000 named Poulin) went to the polls. They gave Union Nationale Candidate Georges Octave Poulin a resounding majority, and Premier Duplessis a new lease on life with a seven-seat overall majority in the 91-seat legislature. Quipped Montreal's Liberal Le Canada', the Duplessis victory was "the condemned man's last cigaret."

* Named for an ancient district in France.

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