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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry, and today we're doing a listener request.

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Speaker 1: We've had a lot of request for Canadian history, but

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Speaker 1: I have to credit listener alien for this one for

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Speaker 1: the specific request. And it is also a two parter.

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Speaker 1: We had one recently on Rosa Parks, uh because holy cheese,

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Speaker 1: oh man, there's a lot of info on this one,

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Speaker 1: even after we cut an edit for time, there's just

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. Uh So here in the US,

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Speaker 1: I will be the first to say we do not

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Speaker 1: get enough history regarding Canada. I pretty much feel like

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Speaker 1: our Canadian history is mostly about trading beaver pelts during

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Speaker 1: the like colonial days. Yeah. And I even lived in

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Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest when I was elementary school age and

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Speaker 1: we got a little more than I was getting when

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Speaker 1: I moved. I moved to fourth grade to Florida and

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Speaker 1: there was none there. But even so it wasn't a

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Speaker 1: significant amount. And in a kind of mia culpa moment,

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Speaker 1: I think I can think of two times we have

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Speaker 1: even mentioned Canada when we've been on the podcast, and

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Speaker 1: like one is that the chief Seattle saw Vancouver arrive.

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Speaker 1: And then the other one was that Sarah Emma Edmonds

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Speaker 1: had been in Canada. Like, yeah, that's it, so we're sorry,

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Speaker 1: which is a pity because Canada's lovely. That was not

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Speaker 1: on purpose. Uh yeah, I mean I'm betting that other

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Speaker 1: countries probably also skim at best through a lot of

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Speaker 1: Canadian history. Uh So, as I said, this one's from

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Speaker 1: a listener request. It features a man who remains pretty

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Speaker 1: polarizing and controversial even decades after his death. His career

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Speaker 1: as a politician was one of extreme contrast, and there

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Speaker 1: is ongoing debate over whether he was a hero or

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Speaker 1: a villain, depending on the perspective of the person involved. Uh.

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Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit about the controversy surround him,

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Speaker 1: which make him look very villainous, but there are still

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Speaker 1: people that are kind of re examining his history and

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Speaker 1: trying to put it in context and uh, trying to

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Speaker 1: make it not so one sided. It's hard to do,

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Speaker 1: I think, depending on your kind of worldview, it's sometimes

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Speaker 1: hard to see him as anything but a little bit unsettling.

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Speaker 1: But we're talking about more uh duclassie who I have

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Speaker 1: also heard him referred to as Duplessi by more sort

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Speaker 1: of americanized English. I'm gonna try to go a little

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Speaker 1: more French because that's just my inclination. Uh. He has

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Speaker 1: often described as having something of a ruthless administration. Uh. However,

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Speaker 1: he's also characterized when you see interviews with people in

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Speaker 1: very disparate words, even though it's the same person talking

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Speaker 1: about him. They'll talk about how ruthless and aggressive he

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Speaker 1: was as a politician, but then they'll also call him

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Speaker 1: sort of a lovable rogue. Uh. And there's even an

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Speaker 1: instance that we'll talk about in the second part of

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Speaker 1: a man that was in a legal battle with him

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Speaker 1: that was sort of crazy, but he even sort of

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Speaker 1: talks about him as a nice man at the same

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Speaker 1: time they were really in this very lockhorn situation. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's very very interesting. But he is, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: often described as something of a political beast. Uh. Some

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Speaker 1: people credit him with uniting the people of uh Quebec

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Speaker 1: and really bolstering French Canadian nationalism when he was in

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Speaker 1: in office, and he served as Premiere of Quebec for

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Speaker 1: longer than any other politician in the twentieth century. He

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Speaker 1: came to be called by some lu chef and to

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Speaker 1: some Uh the time he held as the seat of

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Speaker 1: Premier and quip Quebec is also known as the Great Darkness.

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Speaker 1: So even just in this brief intro you can see

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Speaker 1: that there is a lot of desparate language used to

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Speaker 1: discuss him. There's definitely two sides. He was born on

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Speaker 1: April and this was in Tois Riviere or Three Rivers,

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Speaker 1: which is the second oldest city in what was once

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Speaker 1: New France, founded in sixteen thirty four. Yeah, the city

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Speaker 1: was found in in sixteen thirty four. He was the

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Speaker 1: son of nare Le Noble Duplicy and Marie Catherine camu

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Speaker 1: Built Jenney. His father, nere Uh, was an attorney and

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Speaker 1: a conservative politician. He served in provincial political offices until

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Speaker 1: he became the mayor of Toiriviere in nineteen o four,

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Speaker 1: and after leaving politics, Maurice's father became a superior court judge.

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Speaker 1: So he definitely was raised in a conservative and political family.

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Speaker 1: They also had four daughters, Marguerite, jean Etiennette and Gabrielle.

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Speaker 1: Maurice was the only son and in eighteen ninety eight

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Speaker 1: Maurice attended boarding school at the College Notre Dame in Montreal,

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Speaker 1: not to be confused with the American University or the

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Speaker 1: cathedral right many things take that name. He excelled as

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Speaker 1: a student, particularly in the area of debate, and that

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Speaker 1: was a skill that served him his entire life. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen o two, he attended Seminary Devier to continue his studies.

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Speaker 1: He enrolled in the University Laval in Montreal studied law

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ten, following in his father's footsteps, and even

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Speaker 1: when he was still a law student, he allegedly told

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Speaker 1: friends that one day he would run the province and

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Speaker 1: dupless He graduated law school in nineteen thirteen, and shortly

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Speaker 1: after he partnered with a former fellow student at war

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Speaker 1: Landois to open a law practice. As an attorney, Duplessi

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Speaker 1: focused more on civil law instead of criminal and he

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Speaker 1: generally represented average citizens. He did, however, make some really

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Speaker 1: important connections while representing specific companies like the show Wannigan

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Speaker 1: Water and Power Company, and so as his practice got bigger,

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Speaker 1: his network did as well. But law was not enough

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Speaker 1: for him for very long, because in nineteen twenty three,

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Speaker 1: so ten years after he had graduated law school, dupless

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Speaker 1: He ran for political office for the first time time

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Speaker 1: as a Conservative Party candidate intoi Riviere. He did not

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Speaker 1: win the election. He was defeated by a margin of

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Speaker 1: two and eighty four votes. In nine seven, he made

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Speaker 1: another run at public office, this time successfully and he

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Speaker 1: was elected to the Quebec Assembly. He spent the years

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Speaker 1: between his first campaign and the second one just really

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Speaker 1: meticulously planning following his opponent, working on kind of a

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Speaker 1: grassroots pre campaign, and seating a reputation as being the

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Speaker 1: voice of the average person. And his election was significant

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Speaker 1: because it broke a long line of Liberal Party wins

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Speaker 1: for the electoral district. He was the first Conservative to

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Speaker 1: win an election there in Toi Riviere in twenty seven years,

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Speaker 1: and the initial victory of the Liberal Party inti Riviere

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Speaker 1: had actually been what ended his father's Conservative political career,

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Speaker 1: so now it was like the son sort of regained

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Speaker 1: the ground that his parent had lost so allegedly. When

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Speaker 1: do Plessy went to introduce himself to the rest of

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Speaker 1: the Assembly, which was largely liberal at the time, making

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Speaker 1: him this Conservative Party outlier, he introduced himself as the

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Speaker 1: future Premier of Quebec YEA his first speech before the

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Speaker 1: Legislative Assembly. Uh was by all accounts quite impressive and

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Speaker 1: it made a very strong impression on everyone who was there,

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Speaker 1: including the Premier of Quebec at the time, Louis Alexander

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Speaker 1: de Tesssirou. During these early years as a member of

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Speaker 1: the Legislative Assembly, do Plusy was also uh. He started

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Speaker 1: this rivalry that would go on for years. In July,

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Speaker 1: Conservative leader Author Savey resigned and he was replaced by

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Speaker 1: Kelmy Chamillion Hood from the electoral district of Montreal Sambre.

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Speaker 1: While who was much celebrated by party members, do Plusy

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Speaker 1: believed him to be kind of a short timer and

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Speaker 1: he plans to kind of bide his time and wait

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Speaker 1: for this guy to fall out of favor. He was

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Speaker 1: re elected to his office when elections have ine and

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Speaker 1: in that same series of elections, who had lost his seat.

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Speaker 1: Who'd and several other Conservatives had wanted to contest the elections,

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Speaker 1: particularly those that were won by Liberal Party politicians, but

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Speaker 1: du Plessy found himself on the opposite side of many

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Speaker 1: of his Conservative Party members. He, along with a handful

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Speaker 1: of like minded Conservatives, did not want the elections re examined.

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Speaker 1: They feared for the potential of having their own wins overturned.

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Speaker 1: But in this instance, du Plesss win was a very

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Speaker 1: tight race. He had won by only forty one votes,

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Speaker 1: so it does make sense that he wanted to let

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Speaker 1: things stand as they were and kind of keep a

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Speaker 1: recount out of the situation. And who'd openly criticized Duplessy

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Speaker 1: for this position. His recount effort was struck down, and

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Speaker 1: when who lost the Montreal mayoral race in two he

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Speaker 1: resigned as head of the Conservative Party. Who had hand

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Speaker 1: picked his preferred successor, who was Charles Ernest Galts, but

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Speaker 1: Gold was not to be party leader. That position went

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Speaker 1: to du Plessy. Yeah. Du Pleusy officially became the leader

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Speaker 1: of the Conservative Party in October of nineteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: and he was backed largely by party members who favored

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Speaker 1: provincial autonomy. As his political career grew, do Plessy dialed

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Speaker 1: back his work as an attorney. He did his last

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Speaker 1: case on January fourth, nineteen thirty four, arguing on behalf

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Speaker 1: of the Showannigan Water and Power Company. Yep, that was

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Speaker 1: the end of his work as a lawyer, sort of.

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Speaker 1: It gets called up a little bit later, uh. Part

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Speaker 1: of the reason that Conservatives were gaining ground again in

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Speaker 1: politics in Quebec at the time was that the Liberal Party,

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Speaker 1: which had been in power for a long time, had

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Speaker 1: developed some problems. There was a very serious economic crisis

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Speaker 1: going on in Canada at this time and it had

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Speaker 1: really taken its toll on the party. The Tesherro government

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Speaker 1: was mired in criticisms of ineffectual nous and some pretty

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Speaker 1: serious accusations of corruption. In late nineteen thirty three, several

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Speaker 1: French Canadian nationalists had published a document which was called

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Speaker 1: the Program to Restaurant Socio. It was a call to

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Speaker 1: reform uh that was informed largely by religious and specifically

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Speaker 1: Roman Catholic social teachings, and it supported the bolstering of

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Speaker 1: local industry and family farming rather than big business. And

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Speaker 1: it really gained ground not only in the Conservative Party

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Speaker 1: but also with members of the Liberal government that had

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Speaker 1: grown a little disillusioned with some of the corruption and

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Speaker 1: ineffectual nous that we talked about a little while ago,

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Speaker 1: and they really just felt like change needed to happen.

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Speaker 1: So rallying around this idea of reform, the group formed

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Speaker 1: the Action Live around Nationale, offering labor reform, agricultural credits,

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Speaker 1: a Ministry of Industry and a promise to eradicate political corruption,

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Speaker 1: and this, uh is a very interesting move on du

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Speaker 1: Plessy's part that is precipitated by this. So, just eighteen

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Speaker 1: days before the n election, Duplessi, who had been with

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Speaker 1: the Conservative Party up to this point, made an alliance

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Speaker 1: with the Action Live around Nationale and they formed a

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Speaker 1: larger group, the Union Nationale Duplessi Guin, which the Duplessi

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Speaker 1: Guin was named after Duplessi obviously and Sir Lomerguin, who

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Speaker 1: had been the leader of the a L N. And

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Speaker 1: they were now in partnership with one another. So just

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Speaker 1: for context, imagine, if you know, in any other election

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Speaker 1: situation across the globe, two and a half weeks before

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Speaker 1: the actual election, a politician said, by the way I'm

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Speaker 1: changing parties, it's almost unheard of. It's kind of wacky.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I might have heard of something similar

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Speaker 1: like once, but it was it was after the election.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty unusual, uh, and it's kind of brazen. He

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Speaker 1: had been a little worried that this sort of new

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Speaker 1: movement was going to appeal to some voters that uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe didn't really agree with what was going on,

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Speaker 1: but also weren't sure that they wanted to go Conservative

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Speaker 1: Party like, so he basically was like, I'm throwing in

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Speaker 1: my lot with these guys. Yeah. So on election night,

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Speaker 1: this newly formed party took twenty six seats in the

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Speaker 1: elections for the Legislative Assembly. Liberal Party candidates took forty

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Speaker 1: eight and Conservative Party candidates took sixteen. So we had

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Speaker 1: this brand new party that took a significant chunk of seats. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you know, more seats than one of the established

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Speaker 1: parties from before. Yeah. And the Liberal Party, while they

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Speaker 1: still took more, many more seats, that was still a

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Speaker 1: big reduction for them, and it um it was a

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Speaker 1: pretty significant change in how things were going. But of

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Speaker 1: course du Plessy, being the man he was, who was

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Speaker 1: pretty assertive, quickly took the role of leader in the

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Speaker 1: Union Nacionale from Guin, and Guen took a back seat.

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Speaker 1: So as the Public Accounts Committee of the Legislative Assembly

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Speaker 1: came together in nineteen thirty six, du Plessy, going back

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Speaker 1: to his roots as an attorney, appointed himself as a

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Speaker 1: prosecutor against the Tashera administration. And this administration had come

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Speaker 1: back into power in nineteen thirty five. The hearings did

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Speaker 1: not go well for Tasherou, who resigned amid the scandal,

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Speaker 1: and this whole event really increased duplessy standing with the public.

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Speaker 1: H he continued to build his political career as a reformer,

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Speaker 1: kind of assault of the earth candidate who was going

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Speaker 1: to root out the problems in government. So in ninety six,

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Speaker 1: the new party headed by Duplessy took seventy six seats

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Speaker 1: in the Legislative Assembly, with only fourteen going to the

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Speaker 1: Liberal Party. So the Union Nationale would wind up being

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Speaker 1: the dominant political party for the next eighteen years, and

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Speaker 1: du Plessy was elected as the sixteenth Premier of Quebec. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you'll notice that the Conservative Party had kind of vanished

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Speaker 1: from those numbers because it had really lumped in with

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Speaker 1: Union Nationale at that point. So, which gives you a

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Speaker 1: sense of what a juggernaut this man was in terms

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Speaker 1: of just he's like a catemory of politics. He just

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Speaker 1: keeps rolling and things go with him. So with that,

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Speaker 1: we're going to pause for just a moment and take

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Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor. So going back to do

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Speaker 1: plus C, we will talk a little bit about his

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Speaker 1: first term as Premier of Quebec. It was not exactly spectacular,

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Speaker 1: but the Farm Credit Bureau and Fairway Discommission were established,

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Speaker 1: and a pension program was put into place, so some

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Speaker 1: things did happen. Yeah. He also established during this time

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Speaker 1: the so called Padlock Law which uh it prohibited the

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Speaker 1: use of any house for propagation of quote Communism or

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Speaker 1: Bolshevism by any means. And the Padlock Law also prohibited

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Speaker 1: the printing and distribution of Communist or Bolshevik materials. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This law of course suppressed free speech, and it was

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Speaker 1: not written entirely clearly, so the lack of specificity that

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Speaker 1: it contained made it easy to use this lot to

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Speaker 1: shut down information sharing by international trade unions. So is

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Speaker 1: uh not really the greatest kind of shut down a

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Speaker 1: lot of free speech. Du plus East did really firm

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Speaker 1: against the idea of nationalized electricity or other direct governmental

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Speaker 1: intervention and economic affairs. This wound up losing him the

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Speaker 1: support of some of the members of the Action Liberal Nationale,

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Speaker 1: which had followed him into the Union Nationale. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: really wanted the provinces to kind of carry a lot

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Speaker 1: of their own uh power in these matters. It's interesting

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Speaker 1: because That's another thing that you'll here discussed in a

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Speaker 1: way that is very disparate there, and I'll talk about

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Speaker 1: that a little bit later. But uh, in many of

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Speaker 1: his speeches that he gave during his first term D plus,

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Speaker 1: he would frequently repeat the following help yourself and Heaven

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Speaker 1: will help you, or help yourself and Union Nationale will

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Speaker 1: help you. These two expressions are synonymous. That doesn't sound

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Speaker 1: arrogant at all. He had some doozy sort of catchphrases

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Speaker 1: throughout the years. In September, du Plessy made a very

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Speaker 1: poor decision when he called a vote over participation in

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Speaker 1: the war effort. He was really hoping to embarrass the

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Speaker 1: Liberal Party, which supported participation by bringing up the idea

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Speaker 1: of conscription. Yeah, and he really called this vote like

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Speaker 1: in a hurry. It was like, we got a hurry

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Speaker 1: and do this because he kind of wanted to catch

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Speaker 1: the Liberal Party off guard. But Liberal Party pr made

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Speaker 1: it very clear that no soldiers should be forced to

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Speaker 1: fight in Europe if the vote to participate in the

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Speaker 1: war effort passed, and as a consequence, du Plessy was

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Speaker 1: kind of the one with egg on his face. He

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Speaker 1: basically had saying they're gonna make you go do this.

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Speaker 1: They're like, no, we're not, and then he just said

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Speaker 1: they're going, oh whoops. Uh. It did not look good

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Speaker 1: for him at all. This feels to me like something

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Speaker 1: that would go very differently today because of the prevalence

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Speaker 1: of the news media and covering politics and uh, it's

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Speaker 1: someone can say something that's completely not true and have

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Speaker 1: that interpreted in the press as being like, that's actually

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Speaker 1: how it works. So in the long, long before internet

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Speaker 1: news time, I think this would have gone very differently.

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Speaker 1: In a modern context, it absolutely would have. So shortly thereafter,

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Speaker 1: in the October election, the Union Nationale faired very poorly,

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Speaker 1: and Do Plus he lost his seat is premiere and

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Speaker 1: that for now is where we're actually gonna pause and

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Speaker 1: in the story. But in the next part we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about how do Plus he spent his downtime

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Speaker 1: out of office, uh, and a few of the major

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Speaker 1: scandals that than really happened during his time as Premiere,

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Speaker 1: as well as his death. UH. And I also have

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Speaker 1: listener mail. Uh. These are actually first time I talk

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Speaker 1: about both their too. They're both from Facebook, and they're

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Speaker 1: both about our momification and embalming episode you got a

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Speaker 1: lot of very interesting about we heard from a lot

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Speaker 1: of people well who embalm for their jobs. Got me

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Speaker 1: so excited, and one of these is from one of

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Speaker 1: those people. The first is from our listener Annie, and

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Speaker 1: she says, I just listened to the momification and embalming episode.

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Speaker 1: As a modern day embalmer, I am obviously fascinated by

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Speaker 1: the history of what we do to preserve the deceased.

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Speaker 1: Even as late as one and fifty years ago, the

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Speaker 1: dead were eviscerated and ebolved from the inside out before

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Speaker 1: it was patented in eighty one to use the body's

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Speaker 1: own fluid system to disperse chemical You could do several

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Speaker 1: podcasts on post ancient slash pre modern embalming practices. I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure I could be an embalmer if I had

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Speaker 1: to preserve each organ separately. It's absolutely amazing. Anyway, good

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Speaker 1: job on the Momentification podcast. So yeah, I just little

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Speaker 1: did I even think that we had embalmers that listened,

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Speaker 1: but several It turns out it's really cool. And uh.

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Speaker 1: We have another also from Facebook message from our listeners Cecil,

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Speaker 1: about the same episode, and she says, in regards to

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Speaker 1: the kidneys being left in the abdominal cavity. In the

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Speaker 1: Embalming podcast, the kidneys are in the retroperitoneal space. They're

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Speaker 1: separated from much of the main cavity by a membrane. Therefore,

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Speaker 1: depending on how deep the initial incision, many times they

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Speaker 1: would not be felt by someone just by touch through

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Speaker 1: a superficial incision. This may be why they were often

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Speaker 1: left in C two, which makes total sense. It totally

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Speaker 1: does make sense. Yeah, they felt around and probably thought

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Speaker 1: they cleared everything out because there was a membrane separating

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Speaker 1: that section from the area where the kidneys were. I

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Speaker 1: was reminded of when I had to study anatomy and

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Speaker 1: physiology and kind of went, oh, yeah, I remember having

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Speaker 1: to remember what stuff was retro paratnial. We also got

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Speaker 1: a couple of news from people who pointed out that

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Speaker 1: embalming as it exists right now is mostly like a

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Speaker 1: primarily North American practice. Like today, embalming is not a

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Speaker 1: global thing. Well, there are even movements within North America

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Speaker 1: and the US to kind of do quote natural burials

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Speaker 1: and skip that process so or cremate people, which yeah,

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Speaker 1: I gets into a whole other area of your personal

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Speaker 1: desires and belief. Yeah. Well, and there are all kinds

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Speaker 1: of other burial rituals and practices really different from that,

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Speaker 1: all over the world. Uh So, if you would like

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Speaker 1: to write to us about embalming practices or maury stupus

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Speaker 1: e or anything else, you can do so by writing

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Speaker 1: us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can

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Speaker 1: also connect with us at Facebook dot com slash mist

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Speaker 1: in history, on Twitter at mist in History at mist

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Speaker 1: in history dot tumbler dot com, or you can visit

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Speaker 1: us on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash misk in history.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to learn a little bit more

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Speaker 1: about what we talked about today, you can go to

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Speaker 1: our website and type of the word Quebec and there

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Speaker 1: is a whole section all about the history and the

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Speaker 1: geography and all manner of aspects of about wonderful province.

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Speaker 1: Uh If you would like to learn about almost anything

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Speaker 1: else your mind can conjure, you should do that at

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Speaker 1: our website. And that website is how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics

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Speaker 1: because it how stuff Works dot com. Audible dot com

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