tears:
“Your Honour, look at this brave man, a farmer who has given his life to feed his family. Do you think for one moment that he would steal his grandfather’s inheritance?”
But, more often than not, lawyer Maurice Duplessis entertains the gallery with his puns and jests. The judges are fond of him. He is very talented. His theatrical arm-waving is well calculated to hold his audience in sway. He reserves the right word for his offensive, and then explodes with an irresistible witticism. He learns to dominate a crowd, to win over the undecided at the Bar, at the Court House. The courtroom is where he is sharpening his political skills.
Maurice Duplessis doesn’t only defend the man in the street. He also represents the corporations of the region, like the Shawinigan Water and Power Company. Over the years, he makes friends everywhere. His name is synonymous with success, especially in cases of civil law, which interests him passionately. When asked if he would eventually go in for criminal law, he answered that he would find it extremely disagreeable having to defend a murderer.
In the meantime, newspapers are having a field day with the trial of Télesphore Gagnon’s wife from Lotbinière. Marie-Anne Houde is accused of having brutalized her stepdaughter, poor little Aurore, who has died as a result of her injuries. The trial has sparked a great deal of curiosity verging onto voyeurism, and has turned into a veritable circus. The crowd is jostling to get a good look at the stepmother and to listen to the deliberations. Maurice Duplessis’s cases pale by comparison to this soap opera. And yet each victory in the court of law brings him closer to his ultimate goal: politics.
Since Msgr. Laflèche’s death in 1898, Jacques Bureau, a Liberal, is the new strongman in Trois-Rivières. He reigns over it as if it were his personal fiefdom. Appointed solicitor general by Wilfrid Laurier, he enjoys enormous prestige. It was he who gave the Rouges the seat everyone thought was painted blue forever. Maurice has not forgotten the time when his father was the Conservative deputy for the region. Maybe the time has come to get even and give Bureau’s gang a good lesson.
“The election is coming. Why not try our luck?” asks Arthur Sauvé, new head of Quebec’s Conservative Party. He is looking for good candidates for the February 5, 1923 election.
Maurice Duplessis’s qualifications are impeccable. He is young, dynamic, a brilliant lawyer whose good name is an added plus. Two years earlier, at the federal election, he had agreed to work for the Conservative candidate despite the anti-conscription attacks directed at the Bleus. So he also has courage. His political allegiances are well known. That is why Arthur Sauvé urges him to come to Montreal and meet him. Flattered, Duplessis doesn’t hesitate for very long. In Sauvé’s office, the two men have much to talk about.
“My dear Maurice, in Quebec, we are stagnating in the Opposition because of that old goat Taschereau who puts the good people of the province to sleep. I dream of the day when we can dislodge him. I feel that you have the potential to take on this Herculean task.”
“I don’t think I have any chance of winning. The people of Trois-Rivières are not yet ready to let go of Bureau, who strokes them the right way.”
“I want to renew my team,” says Sauvé. “In Montreal, I found Camillien Houde, an ex-bank employee and insurance salesman, a working-class man. The big city has had enough of Quebec potentates. I think that in your town, there is a similar undercurrent of dissatisfaction. I’m convinced that you could channel these feelings in your favour. Come on, jump into the fray. I have great confidence in you.”
Maurice Duplessis doesn’t need to be begged for long. He has considered his chances. Even though they are slight, he decides to take the leap. He is resigned to losing. So, on the evening of February 5, after Camillien Houde’s victory in Sainte-Marie is announced, the vote-counting is a simple formality. The outcome is as predicted. The Liberal opponent is re-elected deputy by a majority of two hundred votes.
It is Maurice Duplessis’s first electoral defeat. And his last as candidate for the riding of Trois-Rivières. Next time will be the right time, he tells himself. When he goes back to the electorate, it will be to keep them “in his pocket” for the next three decades.
Aéurea Cloutier has heard about a secretarial position in a lawyer’s office. Born in Iron Mountain, Michigan, she moved to Trois-Rivières with her parents when she was five. She speaks French and writes it almost perfectly. Wearing a pearl-grey suit, gloves, and a small felt hat, she presents herself at the Hart Street office.
“I’m almost thirty years old, and I wonder if I’m too old.”
Maurice Duplessis sizes her up. This young lady looks serious. Is she discreet? It is very important that she know how to keep secrets, that she be meticulous. A trustworthy, devoted secretary.
“Miss Auréa Cloutier, I’m hiring you. On a trial basis for one week. I will keep you on if I’m satisfied with your work. One of your jobs will be to cut out any newspaper articles about me. You will put them in this file, at the end of my desk.”
The pact is concluded: the two are united, more faithful than if they were married. Over time, Auréa Cloutier will go from being a legal secretary to his political attaché. She is the one who greets Maître Duplessis’s clients. Gradually she gets to know better than anyone else the friends of the Conservative Party. If Mr. So-and-So is more important, he is admitted before the one who is a Liberal. And does he contribute to the electoral kitty of the Bleus? Then she treats him like a prince. He is entitled to treatment commensurate with his generosity.
One day, Maurice Duplessis leaves a book that he has borrowed from the library on his secretary’s desk. “Miss Cloutier,” he says in a firm voice, “copy the passage on the Workers’ Compensation Act in Russia.”
Why all this zeal? Everything is useful to Duplessis if he wants to become MLA for Trois-Rivières. The day after his defeat in the election of 1923, Maurice starts to rally his supporters. He puts together a plan based on the needs of his riding. At the next election, in four years, he knows he will be ready to face any kind of adversary. To temper any outburst of impatience, he recalls a fable by La Fontaine, whose tales he often memorized when he was at the Collège Notre-Dame. The fable is The Lion and the Rat. And so, quite naturally, he thinks of the moral of the fable: “Patience and hard work do more than strength or rage.”
The two major political parties are playing musical chairs at the federal and provincial levels. Canadians go to the polls in 1925. The election campaign is a lacklustre one as Liberal William Lyon Mackenzie King hangs on to the power coveted by Conservative Arthur Meighen. Maurice Duplessis remains on the sidelines. He waits for his turn. He is helping out a friend in Berthier, but he doesn’t think it wise to throw himself into the fray just yet.
Surprisingly, what he waxes most enthusiastic about is a new machine that he has just bought: a wireless radio that he installs in the middle of his living room. On October 29, comfortably seated and surrounded by friends, he listens for the first time to the results of the election over the wireless. A technical revolution! Surrounded by friends, Maurice uses this opportunity to poke fun at the federal leader:
“Poor old Mackenzie King, he consults Mrs. Bleaney, his fortune teller, but he’s not able to win a convincing victory. You don’t need a crystal ball to see that Wilfrid Laurier’s successor hasn’t the stuff to be his heir!”
For Duplessis, the quarrels in Ottawa are like quarrels among distant cousins. He chooses to invest his energy into what is going on in Quebec. He follows the news avidly, reads several newspapers a day and listens faithfully to his
