February 17, 2014 • 21 mins
Maurice Duplessis is described as everything from a lovable rogue to a political beast. He served as Premier of Quebec for longer than any other politician in the 20th century;his time in office is known as "The Great Darkness."
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, and today we're doing a listener request.
We've had a lot of request for Canadian history, but
(00:22):
I have to credit listener alien for this one for
the specific request. And it is also a two parter.
We had one recently on Rosa Parks, uh because holy cheese,
oh man, there's a lot of info on this one,
even after we cut an edit for time, there's just
a lot of stuff. Uh So here in the US,
I will be the first to say we do not
(00:43):
get enough history regarding Canada. I pretty much feel like
our Canadian history is mostly about trading beaver pelts during
the like colonial days. Yeah. And I even lived in
the Pacific Northwest when I was elementary school age and
we got a little more than I was getting when
I moved. I moved to fourth grade to Florida and
(01:03):
there was none there. But even so it wasn't a
significant amount. And in a kind of mia culpa moment,
I think I can think of two times we have
even mentioned Canada when we've been on the podcast, and
like one is that the chief Seattle saw Vancouver arrive.
And then the other one was that Sarah Emma Edmonds
(01:26):
had been in Canada. Like, yeah, that's it, so we're sorry,
which is a pity because Canada's lovely. That was not
on purpose. Uh yeah, I mean I'm betting that other
countries probably also skim at best through a lot of
Canadian history. Uh So, as I said, this one's from
a listener request. It features a man who remains pretty
polarizing and controversial even decades after his death. His career
(01:48):
as a politician was one of extreme contrast, and there
is ongoing debate over whether he was a hero or
a villain, depending on the perspective of the person involved. Uh.
We'll talk a little bit about the controversy surround him,
which make him look very villainous, but there are still
people that are kind of re examining his history and
trying to put it in context and uh, trying to
(02:11):
make it not so one sided. It's hard to do,
I think, depending on your kind of worldview, it's sometimes
hard to see him as anything but a little bit unsettling.
But we're talking about more uh duclassie who I have
also heard him referred to as Duplessi by more sort
of americanized English. I'm gonna try to go a little
(02:32):
more French because that's just my inclination. Uh. He has
often described as having something of a ruthless administration. Uh. However,
he's also characterized when you see interviews with people in
very disparate words, even though it's the same person talking
about him. They'll talk about how ruthless and aggressive he
was as a politician, but then they'll also call him
(02:53):
sort of a lovable rogue. Uh. And there's even an
instance that we'll talk about in the second part of
a man that was in a legal battle with him
that was sort of crazy, but he even sort of
talks about him as a nice man at the same
time they were really in this very lockhorn situation. Uh.
It's very very interesting. But he is, uh, you know,
(03:15):
often described as something of a political beast. Uh. Some
people credit him with uniting the people of uh Quebec
and really bolstering French Canadian nationalism when he was in
in office, and he served as Premiere of Quebec for
longer than any other politician in the twentieth century. He
came to be called by some lu chef and to
(03:36):
some Uh the time he held as the seat of
Premier and quip Quebec is also known as the Great Darkness.
So even just in this brief intro you can see
that there is a lot of desparate language used to
discuss him. There's definitely two sides. He was born on
April and this was in Tois Riviere or Three Rivers,
(04:00):
which is the second oldest city in what was once
New France, founded in sixteen thirty four. Yeah, the city
was found in in sixteen thirty four. He was the
son of nare Le Noble Duplicy and Marie Catherine camu
Built Jenney. His father, nere Uh, was an attorney and
a conservative politician. He served in provincial political offices until
(04:21):
he became the mayor of Toiriviere in nineteen o four,
and after leaving politics, Maurice's father became a superior court judge.
So he definitely was raised in a conservative and political family.
They also had four daughters, Marguerite, jean Etiennette and Gabrielle.
Maurice was the only son and in eighteen ninety eight
(04:41):
Maurice attended boarding school at the College Notre Dame in Montreal,
not to be confused with the American University or the
cathedral right many things take that name. He excelled as
a student, particularly in the area of debate, and that
was a skill that served him his entire life. In
nineteen o two, he attended Seminary Devier to continue his studies.
(05:04):
He enrolled in the University Laval in Montreal studied law
in nineteen ten, following in his father's footsteps, and even
when he was still a law student, he allegedly told
friends that one day he would run the province and
dupless He graduated law school in nineteen thirteen, and shortly
after he partnered with a former fellow student at war
(05:25):
Landois to open a law practice. As an attorney, Duplessi
focused more on civil law instead of criminal and he
generally represented average citizens. He did, however, make some really
important connections while representing specific companies like the show Wannigan
Water and Power Company, and so as his practice got bigger,
(05:46):
his network did as well. But law was not enough
for him for very long, because in nineteen twenty three,
so ten years after he had graduated law school, dupless
He ran for political office for the first time time
as a Conservative Party candidate intoi Riviere. He did not
win the election. He was defeated by a margin of
two and eighty four votes. In nine seven, he made
(06:10):
another run at public office, this time successfully and he
was elected to the Quebec Assembly. He spent the years
between his first campaign and the second one just really
meticulously planning following his opponent, working on kind of a
grassroots pre campaign, and seating a reputation as being the
voice of the average person. And his election was significant
(06:32):
because it broke a long line of Liberal Party wins
for the electoral district. He was the first Conservative to
win an election there in Toi Riviere in twenty seven years,
and the initial victory of the Liberal Party inti Riviere
had actually been what ended his father's Conservative political career,
so now it was like the son sort of regained
(06:52):
the ground that his parent had lost so allegedly. When
do Plessy went to introduce himself to the rest of
the Assembly, which was largely liberal at the time, making
him this Conservative Party outlier, he introduced himself as the
future Premier of Quebec YEA his first speech before the
Legislative Assembly. Uh was by all accounts quite impressive and
(07:15):
it made a very strong impression on everyone who was there,
including the Premier of Quebec at the time, Louis Alexander
de Tesssirou. During these early years as a member of
the Legislative Assembly, do Plusy was also uh. He started
this rivalry that would go on for years. In July,
Conservative leader Author Savey resigned and he was replaced by
(07:38):
Kelmy Chamillion Hood from the electoral district of Montreal Sambre.
While who was much celebrated by party members, do Plusy
believed him to be kind of a short timer and
he plans to kind of bide his time and wait
for this guy to fall out of favor. He was
re elected to his office when elections have ine and
(08:01):
in that same series of elections, who had lost his seat.
Who'd and several other Conservatives had wanted to contest the elections,
particularly those that were won by Liberal Party politicians, but
du Plessy found himself on the opposite side of many
of his Conservative Party members. He, along with a handful
of like minded Conservatives, did not want the elections re examined.
(08:24):
They feared for the potential of having their own wins overturned.
But in this instance, du Plesss win was a very
tight race. He had won by only forty one votes,
so it does make sense that he wanted to let
things stand as they were and kind of keep a
recount out of the situation. And who'd openly criticized Duplessy
for this position. His recount effort was struck down, and
(08:48):
when who lost the Montreal mayoral race in two he
resigned as head of the Conservative Party. Who had hand
picked his preferred successor, who was Charles Ernest Galts, but
Gold was not to be party leader. That position went
to du Plessy. Yeah. Du Pleusy officially became the leader
of the Conservative Party in October of nineteen thirty three,
(09:10):
and he was backed largely by party members who favored
provincial autonomy. As his political career grew, do Plessy dialed
back his work as an attorney. He did his last
case on January fourth, nineteen thirty four, arguing on behalf
of the Showannigan Water and Power Company. Yep, that was
the end of his work as a lawyer, sort of.
(09:32):
It gets called up a little bit later, uh. Part
of the reason that Conservatives were gaining ground again in
politics in Quebec at the time was that the Liberal Party,
which had been in power for a long time, had
developed some problems. There was a very serious economic crisis
going on in Canada at this time and it had
really taken its toll on the party. The Tesherro government
(09:53):
was mired in criticisms of ineffectual nous and some pretty
serious accusations of corruption. In late nineteen thirty three, several
French Canadian nationalists had published a document which was called
the Program to Restaurant Socio. It was a call to
reform uh that was informed largely by religious and specifically
Roman Catholic social teachings, and it supported the bolstering of
(10:17):
local industry and family farming rather than big business. And
it really gained ground not only in the Conservative Party
but also with members of the Liberal government that had
grown a little disillusioned with some of the corruption and
ineffectual nous that we talked about a little while ago,
and they really just felt like change needed to happen.
So rallying around this idea of reform, the group formed
(10:39):
the Action Live around Nationale, offering labor reform, agricultural credits,
a Ministry of Industry and a promise to eradicate political corruption,
and this, uh is a very interesting move on du
Plessy's part that is precipitated by this. So, just eighteen
(10:59):
days before the n election, Duplessi, who had been with
the Conservative Party up to this point, made an alliance
with the Action Live around Nationale and they formed a
larger group, the Union Nationale Duplessi Guin, which the Duplessi
Guin was named after Duplessi obviously and Sir Lomerguin, who
had been the leader of the a L N. And
(11:20):
they were now in partnership with one another. So just
for context, imagine, if you know, in any other election
situation across the globe, two and a half weeks before
the actual election, a politician said, by the way I'm
changing parties, it's almost unheard of. It's kind of wacky.
(11:40):
I feel like I might have heard of something similar
like once, but it was it was after the election.
It's pretty unusual, uh, and it's kind of brazen. He
had been a little worried that this sort of new
movement was going to appeal to some voters that uh,
you know, maybe didn't really agree with what was going on,
(12:00):
but also weren't sure that they wanted to go Conservative
Party like, so he basically was like, I'm throwing in
my lot with these guys. Yeah. So on election night,
this newly formed party took twenty six seats in the
elections for the Legislative Assembly. Liberal Party candidates took forty
eight and Conservative Party candidates took sixteen. So we had
(12:22):
this brand new party that took a significant chunk of seats. Yeah,
and you know, more seats than one of the established
parties from before. Yeah. And the Liberal Party, while they
still took more, many more seats, that was still a
big reduction for them, and it um it was a
pretty significant change in how things were going. But of
(12:45):
course du Plessy, being the man he was, who was
pretty assertive, quickly took the role of leader in the
Union Nacionale from Guin, and Guen took a back seat.
So as the Public Accounts Committee of the Legislative Assembly
came together in nineteen thirty six, du Plessy, going back
to his roots as an attorney, appointed himself as a
(13:06):
prosecutor against the Tashera administration. And this administration had come
back into power in nineteen thirty five. The hearings did
not go well for Tasherou, who resigned amid the scandal,
and this whole event really increased duplessy standing with the public.
H he continued to build his political career as a reformer,
a man of the people, a friend of agriculture, like
(13:30):
kind of assault of the earth candidate who was going
to root out the problems in government. So in ninety six,
the new party headed by Duplessy took seventy six seats
in the Legislative Assembly, with only fourteen going to the
Liberal Party. So the Union Nationale would wind up being
the dominant political party for the next eighteen years, and
(13:51):
du Plessy was elected as the sixteenth Premier of Quebec. Yeah,
you'll notice that the Conservative Party had kind of vanished
from those numbers because it had really lumped in with
Union Nationale at that point. So, which gives you a
sense of what a juggernaut this man was in terms
of just he's like a catemory of politics. He just
keeps rolling and things go with him. So with that,
(14:13):
we're going to pause for just a moment and take
a word from our sponsor. So going back to do
plus C, we will talk a little bit about his
first term as Premier of Quebec. It was not exactly spectacular,
but the Farm Credit Bureau and Fairway Discommission were established,
and a pension program was put into place, so some
(14:34):
things did happen. Yeah. He also established during this time
the so called Padlock Law which uh it prohibited the
use of any house for propagation of quote Communism or
Bolshevism by any means. And the Padlock Law also prohibited
the printing and distribution of Communist or Bolshevik materials. Uh.
This law of course suppressed free speech, and it was
(14:57):
not written entirely clearly, so the lack of specificity that
it contained made it easy to use this lot to
shut down information sharing by international trade unions. So is
uh not really the greatest kind of shut down a
lot of free speech. Du plus East did really firm
against the idea of nationalized electricity or other direct governmental
(15:21):
intervention and economic affairs. This wound up losing him the
support of some of the members of the Action Liberal Nationale,
which had followed him into the Union Nationale. Yeah, he
really wanted the provinces to kind of carry a lot
of their own uh power in these matters. It's interesting
(15:41):
because That's another thing that you'll here discussed in a
way that is very disparate there, and I'll talk about
that a little bit later. But uh, in many of
his speeches that he gave during his first term D plus,
he would frequently repeat the following help yourself and Heaven
will help you, or help yourself and Union Nationale will
help you. These two expressions are synonymous. That doesn't sound
(16:05):
arrogant at all. He had some doozy sort of catchphrases
throughout the years. In September, du Plessy made a very
poor decision when he called a vote over participation in
the war effort. He was really hoping to embarrass the
Liberal Party, which supported participation by bringing up the idea
(16:29):
of conscription. Yeah, and he really called this vote like
in a hurry. It was like, we got a hurry
and do this because he kind of wanted to catch
the Liberal Party off guard. But Liberal Party pr made
it very clear that no soldiers should be forced to
fight in Europe if the vote to participate in the
war effort passed, and as a consequence, du Plessy was
kind of the one with egg on his face. He
(16:50):
basically had saying they're gonna make you go do this.
They're like, no, we're not, and then he just said
they're going, oh whoops. Uh. It did not look good
for him at all. This feels to me like something
that would go very differently today because of the prevalence
of the news media and covering politics and uh, it's
(17:12):
someone can say something that's completely not true and have
that interpreted in the press as being like, that's actually
how it works. So in the long, long before internet
news time, I think this would have gone very differently.
In a modern context, it absolutely would have. So shortly thereafter,
in the October election, the Union Nationale faired very poorly,
(17:36):
and Do Plus he lost his seat is premiere and
that for now is where we're actually gonna pause and
in the story. But in the next part we're going
to talk about how do Plus he spent his downtime
out of office, uh, and a few of the major
scandals that than really happened during his time as Premiere,
as well as his death. UH. And I also have
(17:58):
listener mail. Uh. These are actually first time I talk
about both their too. They're both from Facebook, and they're
both about our momification and embalming episode you got a
lot of very interesting about we heard from a lot
of people well who embalm for their jobs. Got me
so excited, and one of these is from one of
(18:20):
those people. The first is from our listener Annie, and
she says, I just listened to the momification and embalming episode.
As a modern day embalmer, I am obviously fascinated by
the history of what we do to preserve the deceased.
Even as late as one and fifty years ago, the
dead were eviscerated and ebolved from the inside out before
it was patented in eighty one to use the body's
(18:40):
own fluid system to disperse chemical You could do several
podcasts on post ancient slash pre modern embalming practices. I'm
not sure I could be an embalmer if I had
to preserve each organ separately. It's absolutely amazing. Anyway, good
job on the Momentification podcast. So yeah, I just little
did I even think that we had embalmers that listened,
but several It turns out it's really cool. And uh.
(19:03):
We have another also from Facebook message from our listeners Cecil,
about the same episode, and she says, in regards to
the kidneys being left in the abdominal cavity. In the
Embalming podcast, the kidneys are in the retroperitoneal space. They're
separated from much of the main cavity by a membrane. Therefore,
depending on how deep the initial incision, many times they
(19:24):
would not be felt by someone just by touch through
a superficial incision. This may be why they were often
left in C two, which makes total sense. It totally
does make sense. Yeah, they felt around and probably thought
they cleared everything out because there was a membrane separating
that section from the area where the kidneys were. I
was reminded of when I had to study anatomy and
physiology and kind of went, oh, yeah, I remember having
(19:46):
to remember what stuff was retro paratnial. We also got
a couple of news from people who pointed out that
embalming as it exists right now is mostly like a
primarily North American practice. Like today, embalming is not a
global thing. Well, there are even movements within North America
and the US to kind of do quote natural burials
(20:09):
and skip that process so or cremate people, which yeah,
I gets into a whole other area of your personal
desires and belief. Yeah. Well, and there are all kinds
of other burial rituals and practices really different from that,
all over the world. Uh So, if you would like
to write to us about embalming practices or maury stupus
(20:34):
e or anything else, you can do so by writing
us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can
also connect with us at Facebook dot com slash mist
in history, on Twitter at mist in History at mist
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If you would like to learn a little bit more
(20:54):
about what we talked about today, you can go to
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is a whole section all about the history and the
geography and all manner of aspects of about wonderful province.
Uh If you would like to learn about almost anything
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(21:20):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, and today we're doing a listener request.
We've had a lot of request for Canadian history, but
(00:22):
I have to credit listener alien for this one for
the specific request. And it is also a two parter.
We had one recently on Rosa Parks, uh because holy cheese,
oh man, there's a lot of info on this one,
even after we cut an edit for time, there's just
a lot of stuff. Uh So here in the US,
I will be the first to say we do not
(00:43):
get enough history regarding Canada. I pretty much feel like
our Canadian history is mostly about trading beaver pelts during
the like colonial days. Yeah. And I even lived in
the Pacific Northwest when I was elementary school age and
we got a little more than I was getting when
I moved. I moved to fourth grade to Florida and
(01:03):
there was none there. But even so it wasn't a
significant amount. And in a kind of mia culpa moment,
I think I can think of two times we have
even mentioned Canada when we've been on the podcast, and
like one is that the chief Seattle saw Vancouver arrive.
And then the other one was that Sarah Emma Edmonds
(01:26):
had been in Canada. Like, yeah, that's it, so we're sorry,
which is a pity because Canada's lovely. That was not
on purpose. Uh yeah, I mean I'm betting that other
countries probably also skim at best through a lot of
Canadian history. Uh So, as I said, this one's from
a listener request. It features a man who remains pretty
polarizing and controversial even decades after his death. His career
(01:48):
as a politician was one of extreme contrast, and there
is ongoing debate over whether he was a hero or
a villain, depending on the perspective of the person involved. Uh.
We'll talk a little bit about the controversy surround him,
which make him look very villainous, but there are still
people that are kind of re examining his history and
trying to put it in context and uh, trying to
(02:11):
make it not so one sided. It's hard to do,
I think, depending on your kind of worldview, it's sometimes
hard to see him as anything but a little bit unsettling.
But we're talking about more uh duclassie who I have
also heard him referred to as Duplessi by more sort
of americanized English. I'm gonna try to go a little
(02:32):
more French because that's just my inclination. Uh. He has
often described as having something of a ruthless administration. Uh. However,
he's also characterized when you see interviews with people in
very disparate words, even though it's the same person talking
about him. They'll talk about how ruthless and aggressive he
was as a politician, but then they'll also call him
(02:53):
sort of a lovable rogue. Uh. And there's even an
instance that we'll talk about in the second part of
a man that was in a legal battle with him
that was sort of crazy, but he even sort of
talks about him as a nice man at the same
time they were really in this very lockhorn situation. Uh.
It's very very interesting. But he is, uh, you know,
(03:15):
often described as something of a political beast. Uh. Some
people credit him with uniting the people of uh Quebec
and really bolstering French Canadian nationalism when he was in
in office, and he served as Premiere of Quebec for
longer than any other politician in the twentieth century. He
came to be called by some lu chef and to
(03:36):
some Uh the time he held as the seat of
Premier and quip Quebec is also known as the Great Darkness.
So even just in this brief intro you can see
that there is a lot of desparate language used to
discuss him. There's definitely two sides. He was born on
April and this was in Tois Riviere or Three Rivers,
(04:00):
which is the second oldest city in what was once
New France, founded in sixteen thirty four. Yeah, the city
was found in in sixteen thirty four. He was the
son of nare Le Noble Duplicy and Marie Catherine camu
Built Jenney. His father, nere Uh, was an attorney and
a conservative politician. He served in provincial political offices until
(04:21):
he became the mayor of Toiriviere in nineteen o four,
and after leaving politics, Maurice's father became a superior court judge.
So he definitely was raised in a conservative and political family.
They also had four daughters, Marguerite, jean Etiennette and Gabrielle.
Maurice was the only son and in eighteen ninety eight
(04:41):
Maurice attended boarding school at the College Notre Dame in Montreal,
not to be confused with the American University or the
cathedral right many things take that name. He excelled as
a student, particularly in the area of debate, and that
was a skill that served him his entire life. In
nineteen o two, he attended Seminary Devier to continue his studies.
(05:04):
He enrolled in the University Laval in Montreal studied law
in nineteen ten, following in his father's footsteps, and even
when he was still a law student, he allegedly told
friends that one day he would run the province and
dupless He graduated law school in nineteen thirteen, and shortly
after he partnered with a former fellow student at war
(05:25):
Landois to open a law practice. As an attorney, Duplessi
focused more on civil law instead of criminal and he
generally represented average citizens. He did, however, make some really
important connections while representing specific companies like the show Wannigan
Water and Power Company, and so as his practice got bigger,
(05:46):
his network did as well. But law was not enough
for him for very long, because in nineteen twenty three,
so ten years after he had graduated law school, dupless
He ran for political office for the first time time
as a Conservative Party candidate intoi Riviere. He did not
win the election. He was defeated by a margin of
two and eighty four votes. In nine seven, he made
(06:10):
another run at public office, this time successfully and he
was elected to the Quebec Assembly. He spent the years
between his first campaign and the second one just really
meticulously planning following his opponent, working on kind of a
grassroots pre campaign, and seating a reputation as being the
voice of the average person. And his election was significant
(06:32):
because it broke a long line of Liberal Party wins
for the electoral district. He was the first Conservative to
win an election there in Toi Riviere in twenty seven years,
and the initial victory of the Liberal Party inti Riviere
had actually been what ended his father's Conservative political career,
so now it was like the son sort of regained
(06:52):
the ground that his parent had lost so allegedly. When
do Plessy went to introduce himself to the rest of
the Assembly, which was largely liberal at the time, making
him this Conservative Party outlier, he introduced himself as the
future Premier of Quebec YEA his first speech before the
Legislative Assembly. Uh was by all accounts quite impressive and
(07:15):
it made a very strong impression on everyone who was there,
including the Premier of Quebec at the time, Louis Alexander
de Tesssirou. During these early years as a member of
the Legislative Assembly, do Plusy was also uh. He started
this rivalry that would go on for years. In July,
Conservative leader Author Savey resigned and he was replaced by
(07:38):
Kelmy Chamillion Hood from the electoral district of Montreal Sambre.
While who was much celebrated by party members, do Plusy
believed him to be kind of a short timer and
he plans to kind of bide his time and wait
for this guy to fall out of favor. He was
re elected to his office when elections have ine and
(08:01):
in that same series of elections, who had lost his seat.
Who'd and several other Conservatives had wanted to contest the elections,
particularly those that were won by Liberal Party politicians, but
du Plessy found himself on the opposite side of many
of his Conservative Party members. He, along with a handful
of like minded Conservatives, did not want the elections re examined.
(08:24):
They feared for the potential of having their own wins overturned.
But in this instance, du Plesss win was a very
tight race. He had won by only forty one votes,
so it does make sense that he wanted to let
things stand as they were and kind of keep a
recount out of the situation. And who'd openly criticized Duplessy
for this position. His recount effort was struck down, and
(08:48):
when who lost the Montreal mayoral race in two he
resigned as head of the Conservative Party. Who had hand
picked his preferred successor, who was Charles Ernest Galts, but
Gold was not to be party leader. That position went
to du Plessy. Yeah. Du Pleusy officially became the leader
of the Conservative Party in October of nineteen thirty three,
(09:10):
and he was backed largely by party members who favored
provincial autonomy. As his political career grew, do Plessy dialed
back his work as an attorney. He did his last
case on January fourth, nineteen thirty four, arguing on behalf
of the Showannigan Water and Power Company. Yep, that was
the end of his work as a lawyer, sort of.
(09:32):
It gets called up a little bit later, uh. Part
of the reason that Conservatives were gaining ground again in
politics in Quebec at the time was that the Liberal Party,
which had been in power for a long time, had
developed some problems. There was a very serious economic crisis
going on in Canada at this time and it had
really taken its toll on the party. The Tesherro government
(09:53):
was mired in criticisms of ineffectual nous and some pretty
serious accusations of corruption. In late nineteen thirty three, several
French Canadian nationalists had published a document which was called
the Program to Restaurant Socio. It was a call to
reform uh that was informed largely by religious and specifically
Roman Catholic social teachings, and it supported the bolstering of
(10:17):
local industry and family farming rather than big business. And
it really gained ground not only in the Conservative Party
but also with members of the Liberal government that had
grown a little disillusioned with some of the corruption and
ineffectual nous that we talked about a little while ago,
and they really just felt like change needed to happen.
So rallying around this idea of reform, the group formed
(10:39):
the Action Live around Nationale, offering labor reform, agricultural credits,
a Ministry of Industry and a promise to eradicate political corruption,
and this, uh is a very interesting move on du
Plessy's part that is precipitated by this. So, just eighteen
(10:59):
days before the n election, Duplessi, who had been with
the Conservative Party up to this point, made an alliance
with the Action Live around Nationale and they formed a
larger group, the Union Nationale Duplessi Guin, which the Duplessi
Guin was named after Duplessi obviously and Sir Lomerguin, who
had been the leader of the a L N. And
(11:20):
they were now in partnership with one another. So just
for context, imagine, if you know, in any other election
situation across the globe, two and a half weeks before
the actual election, a politician said, by the way I'm
changing parties, it's almost unheard of. It's kind of wacky.
(11:40):
I feel like I might have heard of something similar
like once, but it was it was after the election.
It's pretty unusual, uh, and it's kind of brazen. He
had been a little worried that this sort of new
movement was going to appeal to some voters that uh,
you know, maybe didn't really agree with what was going on,
(12:00):
but also weren't sure that they wanted to go Conservative
Party like, so he basically was like, I'm throwing in
my lot with these guys. Yeah. So on election night,
this newly formed party took twenty six seats in the
elections for the Legislative Assembly. Liberal Party candidates took forty
eight and Conservative Party candidates took sixteen. So we had
(12:22):
this brand new party that took a significant chunk of seats. Yeah,
and you know, more seats than one of the established
parties from before. Yeah. And the Liberal Party, while they
still took more, many more seats, that was still a
big reduction for them, and it um it was a
pretty significant change in how things were going. But of
(12:45):
course du Plessy, being the man he was, who was
pretty assertive, quickly took the role of leader in the
Union Nacionale from Guin, and Guen took a back seat.
So as the Public Accounts Committee of the Legislative Assembly
came together in nineteen thirty six, du Plessy, going back
to his roots as an attorney, appointed himself as a
(13:06):
prosecutor against the Tashera administration. And this administration had come
back into power in nineteen thirty five. The hearings did
not go well for Tasherou, who resigned amid the scandal,
and this whole event really increased duplessy standing with the public.
H he continued to build his political career as a reformer,
a man of the people, a friend of agriculture, like
(13:30):
kind of assault of the earth candidate who was going
to root out the problems in government. So in ninety six,
the new party headed by Duplessy took seventy six seats
in the Legislative Assembly, with only fourteen going to the
Liberal Party. So the Union Nationale would wind up being
the dominant political party for the next eighteen years, and
(13:51):
du Plessy was elected as the sixteenth Premier of Quebec. Yeah,
you'll notice that the Conservative Party had kind of vanished
from those numbers because it had really lumped in with
Union Nationale at that point. So, which gives you a
sense of what a juggernaut this man was in terms
of just he's like a catemory of politics. He just
keeps rolling and things go with him. So with that,
(14:13):
we're going to pause for just a moment and take
a word from our sponsor. So going back to do
plus C, we will talk a little bit about his
first term as Premier of Quebec. It was not exactly spectacular,
but the Farm Credit Bureau and Fairway Discommission were established,
and a pension program was put into place, so some
(14:34):
things did happen. Yeah. He also established during this time
the so called Padlock Law which uh it prohibited the
use of any house for propagation of quote Communism or
Bolshevism by any means. And the Padlock Law also prohibited
the printing and distribution of Communist or Bolshevik materials. Uh.
This law of course suppressed free speech, and it was
(14:57):
not written entirely clearly, so the lack of specificity that
it contained made it easy to use this lot to
shut down information sharing by international trade unions. So is
uh not really the greatest kind of shut down a
lot of free speech. Du plus East did really firm
against the idea of nationalized electricity or other direct governmental
(15:21):
intervention and economic affairs. This wound up losing him the
support of some of the members of the Action Liberal Nationale,
which had followed him into the Union Nationale. Yeah, he
really wanted the provinces to kind of carry a lot
of their own uh power in these matters. It's interesting
(15:41):
because That's another thing that you'll here discussed in a
way that is very disparate there, and I'll talk about
that a little bit later. But uh, in many of
his speeches that he gave during his first term D plus,
he would frequently repeat the following help yourself and Heaven
will help you, or help yourself and Union Nationale will
help you. These two expressions are synonymous. That doesn't sound
(16:05):
arrogant at all. He had some doozy sort of catchphrases
throughout the years. In September, du Plessy made a very
poor decision when he called a vote over participation in
the war effort. He was really hoping to embarrass the
Liberal Party, which supported participation by bringing up the idea
(16:29):
of conscription. Yeah, and he really called this vote like
in a hurry. It was like, we got a hurry
and do this because he kind of wanted to catch
the Liberal Party off guard. But Liberal Party pr made
it very clear that no soldiers should be forced to
fight in Europe if the vote to participate in the
war effort passed, and as a consequence, du Plessy was
kind of the one with egg on his face. He
(16:50):
basically had saying they're gonna make you go do this.
They're like, no, we're not, and then he just said
they're going, oh whoops. Uh. It did not look good
for him at all. This feels to me like something
that would go very differently today because of the prevalence
of the news media and covering politics and uh, it's
(17:12):
someone can say something that's completely not true and have
that interpreted in the press as being like, that's actually
how it works. So in the long, long before internet
news time, I think this would have gone very differently.
In a modern context, it absolutely would have. So shortly thereafter,
in the October election, the Union Nationale faired very poorly,
(17:36):
and Do Plus he lost his seat is premiere and
that for now is where we're actually gonna pause and
in the story. But in the next part we're going
to talk about how do Plus he spent his downtime
out of office, uh, and a few of the major
scandals that than really happened during his time as Premiere,
as well as his death. UH. And I also have
(17:58):
listener mail. Uh. These are actually first time I talk
about both their too. They're both from Facebook, and they're
both about our momification and embalming episode you got a
lot of very interesting about we heard from a lot
of people well who embalm for their jobs. Got me
so excited, and one of these is from one of
(18:20):
those people. The first is from our listener Annie, and
she says, I just listened to the momification and embalming episode.
As a modern day embalmer, I am obviously fascinated by
the history of what we do to preserve the deceased.
Even as late as one and fifty years ago, the
dead were eviscerated and ebolved from the inside out before
it was patented in eighty one to use the body's
(18:40):
own fluid system to disperse chemical You could do several
podcasts on post ancient slash pre modern embalming practices. I'm
not sure I could be an embalmer if I had
to preserve each organ separately. It's absolutely amazing. Anyway, good
job on the Momentification podcast. So yeah, I just little
did I even think that we had embalmers that listened,
but several It turns out it's really cool. And uh.
(19:03):
We have another also from Facebook message from our listeners Cecil,
about the same episode, and she says, in regards to
the kidneys being left in the abdominal cavity. In the
Embalming podcast, the kidneys are in the retroperitoneal space. They're
separated from much of the main cavity by a membrane. Therefore,
depending on how deep the initial incision, many times they
(19:24):
would not be felt by someone just by touch through
a superficial incision. This may be why they were often
left in C two, which makes total sense. It totally
does make sense. Yeah, they felt around and probably thought
they cleared everything out because there was a membrane separating
that section from the area where the kidneys were. I
was reminded of when I had to study anatomy and
physiology and kind of went, oh, yeah, I remember having
(19:46):
to remember what stuff was retro paratnial. We also got
a couple of news from people who pointed out that
embalming as it exists right now is mostly like a
primarily North American practice. Like today, embalming is not a
global thing. Well, there are even movements within North America
and the US to kind of do quote natural burials
(20:09):
and skip that process so or cremate people, which yeah,
I gets into a whole other area of your personal
desires and belief. Yeah. Well, and there are all kinds
of other burial rituals and practices really different from that,
all over the world. Uh So, if you would like
to write to us about embalming practices or maury stupus
(20:34):
e or anything else, you can do so by writing
us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can
also connect with us at Facebook dot com slash mist
in history, on Twitter at mist in History at mist
in history dot tumbler dot com, or you can visit
us on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash misk in history.
If you would like to learn a little bit more
(20:54):
about what we talked about today, you can go to
our website and type of the word Quebec and there
is a whole section all about the history and the
geography and all manner of aspects of about wonderful province.
Uh If you would like to learn about almost anything
else your mind can conjure, you should do that at
our website. And that website is how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
(21:20):
because it how stuff Works dot com. Audible dot com
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(21:43):
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