August 17, 1936: The Province of Quebec holds a general election. It is won by a conservative party, the Union Nationale. Thus begins a period known, in hindsight, as Le Grande Noirceur: The Great Darkness.
Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis was born on April 20, 1890 -- 1 year to the day after Adolf Hitler -- in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. His father, Nérée Le Noblet Duplessis, served in Quebec's Provincial legislature, the National Assembly. Maurice had 3 sisters who married NA members. He graduated from a school that has since been absorbed by the Université de Montréal, and excelled at languages: His native French, English, and even Latin and Greek.
He began practicing law in his father's firm, until his father was appointed to a judgeship. The son developed a large civil law client base, first ran for the NA in 1923, and won for the 1st time in 1926, shortly after his father's death.
In 1936, he formed the Union Nationale, and led that party to victory in Quebec's Provincial election, making him the Premier of the Province -- the equivalent of the Governor of an American State. He tried to exploit anti-English feeling by making Canada's entry into World War II an issue, and called a snap election in 1939, but lost. He got back in for the 1944 election, and was the closest thing to a true tyrant North America had in the 20th Century.
His policies were intensely conservative, as he was closely linked to the Catholic Church, which in Quebec was conservative enough to make Pat Buchanan look like a Kennedy. He was every bit as anti-Communist as his "Catholic" contemporaries Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and Joe McCarthy. He even developed a slogan, based on the colors of his party and the rival Liberals: "Le ciel est bleu; l'enfer est rouge." Heaven is blue; Hell is red.
And he let the Anglophone-Montrealer-dominated banks do as they pleased, because they returned the favor: They left him alone. Yet he occasionally governed like an American Democratic-machine-style politician: Towns that voted UN got benefits like new roads, bridges, post offices, power plants and radio stations; towns that voted Liberal got nil.
Conservative and Catholic? He was a lifelong bachelor, who had no qualms about publicly squiring beautiful, even nationally famous, women to events in Montreal and the provincial capital of Quebec City. Was it a front? Did he never marry because he was secretly gay? No historian has seriously suggested this. More likely, his womanizing, which is probably why he decided in college not to become a priest, meant he had commitment issues.
Canadian federal governments, Conservative and Liberal alike, kept his policies penned in, limiting it to the Francophone Province. But the only thing that truly stopped him was a series of strokes, which ended up killing him on September 7, 1959. His 18 years, though not all consecutive, are still the longest Premiership tenure in Quebec history.
But his death began the decline of the Union Nationale, which only elected 1 other Premier, Daniel Johnson Sr. in 1966, before losing power in 1970, and folding in 1989. It also led to the "Quiet Revolution," Quebec's entry into the modern world in the 1960s. Since then, no Premier or would-be Premier of Quebec -- be he Liberal, Conservative or separatist Parti Quebecois -- has dared cite Duplessis as a role model.
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August 17, 1936 was a Monday. Only 2 baseball games were played. The New York Yankees lost to the Washington Senators, 7-5 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Earl Whitehill was the winning pitcher, as the Senators scored 5 runs to knock Lefty Gomez out of the box after 1 inning. Lou Gehrig went 1-for-4, while rookie Joe DiMaggio went 3-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs.
And the Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 7-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Ted Lyons outpitched Johnny Allen.
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