Still the Champion

Within an hour after the polls closed on election night last week, it was clear that Quebec's Premier Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis had made Canadian political history. He had won an unprecedented fifth term as premier of Canada's biggest province, and he had stretched his potential premiership to a record 20 years. Against the best-organized opposition he ever faced, Strongman Duplessis had come back more powerful than ever, with a greater share of the popular vote and a massive majority of 72 seats (an eight-seat gain) in the 93-seat legislature for his Union Nationale Party.

At the outset of the month-long campaign, the opposition Liberal Party confidently predicted that the time had come to end Expert Politician Duplessis' long reign as political boss of French-speaking, Roman Catholic Quebec. In recent times, 66-year-old Bachelor Duplessis appeared to have lost some of his old zest for power. Sharp-tongued Maurice seldom spoke in the legislature any more, and when he did, he seemed tired and even conciliatory.

Team of Ministers. Meanwhile, the Liberals looked stronger than at any time since 1936 when Duplessis, campaigning as a reformer against graft, ousted them from power. Quebec's splinter parties joined in an anti-Duplessis coalition, and the strong federal Liberal organization, dropping its hands-off policy toward provincial affairs, sent a team of Ottawa Cabinet ministers to Quebec to campaign.

Whatever lassitude he may have shown beforehand Maurice Duplessis quickly shook off. As always, he made the devout gesture of setting Election Day on Wednesday, the devotional day of St. Joseph, his favorite saint. Then he donned a brown suit (his lucky color) and set off crisscrossing the province in one of his gaudy, old-style election campaigns, complete with banners, fireworks, and plentiful displays of the Duplessis-commissioned fleur-de-lis flag. His main theme, as ever, was the cry that the Ottawa government threatens Quebec's autonomy, endangers its language and religion. Ottawa's contingent of campaigning Cabinet ministers may have served to strengthen his argument; Defender Duplessis pointed to them as further evidence of Ottawa's plan to destroy Quebec's traditions.

Well-Oiled Machine. While Duplessis did the public speaking, the well-oiled Union Nationale machine rolled effectively in private. Party organizers hired hundreds of idle taxis, rented vacant rooms, found temporary work for job seekers, to spread the aura of prosperity. Free TV sets were passed out to influential householders. In at least one case, the party helped with the down payment on a doubtful voter's house.

Against such campaigning, the desperate Liberals stooped to using a demagogic line of their own, charging that Duplessis was selling out the province's resources to U.S. investors. Ironically, this was the same accusation that opponents have been hurling at the Liberal government in Ottawa. But on the Quebec hustings the Liberal politicians unblushingly fired it at Duplessis, charging that the big iron-ore project in Ungava and other U.S.-financed enterprises were "giveaways to foreigners." The maneuver boomeranged on the Liberals. It merely drew the voters' attention to the province's vast industrial development and general prosperity in recent years--and gave them one more convincing reason to re-elect Maurice Duplessis.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.