Upset in Quebec

The French-speaking third of Canada that is Roman Catholic Quebec (pop. 5,000,000) last week voted an end to a long era of highhanded political dominance. Out after 16 years was the Union Nationals, the ultranationalist coalition party founded by a stony-willed Maurice Duplessis and dominated by him until his death last September. In came the revitalized Liberals of new Premier Jean Lesage, 48, a longtime (1945-58) member of the federal Parliament in Ottawa, who has never even sat in the provincial assembly he is now to control. In an upset victory, the Liberals won 51% of the popular vote and increased their seats in the legislature from 17 to 50, giving them a majority of five. It was a close win, but its consequences were immense.

Time for a Change. The Union Nationale had plainly been too long in office. It had come to power back in 1936, when the demagogic Duplessis. playing skillfully on Depression issues and the longstanding French Canadian fears of being dominated by English Canada, won a smashing victory over a Liberal regime that had become corrupt. Except for the war years 1939 to 1944, Duplessis ruled Quebec thereafter with an iron hand and a corrupt machine. Cynical and dictatorial, Le Chef rewarded the voting faithful with bridges and roads, fought labor with savage laws and police brutality, kept Quebec's eyes turned to its agricultural past and stayed in close touch with the powerful church hierarchy. When he died last year, his common-sense successor, Paul Sauve, tried to modernize the party but died in turn before his reforms could take effect. The compromise successor as premier, Antonio Barrette, 61, had no program of his own, and let his party and the province drift.

When Premier Barrette called a provincial election last April, the Liberals saw their best opportunity in years. They charged stock-deal scandals in the U.N. leadership--and won from Barrette himself the admission that he too bought the shares in question, but had ended up with a $98 loss. The Liberals offered an expensive but vote-catching program: provincially sponsored hospital insurance, free college education for the talented, increased old-age pensions. And they had at last found a leader with a flair for organization and a gift of gab.

Buoyed Spirits. Descendant of a family that settled in Quebec in 1678, businesslike Jean Lesage studied law at Quebec City's Laval University, where he developed into a flowery but effective orator. He was admitted to the bar in 1934 at 22, lost his first case to Louis St. Laurent, the Liberal lawyer who was Canada's Prime Minister from 1948 to 1957.

Lesage is known in Quebec French as "le go-getter." In 1945 he won a House of Commons seat from a rural riding. Most Quebec M.P.s insist on speaking French in Ottawa; Lesage gamely practiced his halting English in the House until he mastered it. In 1958 he resigned his Parliament seat to take on the job of reviving Quebec's moribund Liberal organization. He is married to a former concert soprano, Corinne Lagarde, has four children.

Lesage's victory in Quebec buoyed up the spirits of the federal Liberals, who form the loyal Opposition to Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. In Commons on the morning after Lesage's victory, the small Liberal contingent--47

M.P.s out of 262--applauded for one full minute when Opposition Leader Lester ("Mike'') Pearson rose to speak. But the Tories professed not to be worried. Their provincial organization in Quebec is practically nonexistent, even though they captured 50 of 75 Quebec seats in the federal House of Commons in the 1958 election. Since their ties with the old Duplessis machine were informal at best, they insist that the Liberal upset in Quebec does not really affect the Diefenbaker government's national popularity. All this is true, but Quebec itself--that proud, peculiar and partisan province--was in for a change.

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