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

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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 from and I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and today

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Speaker 1: we are doing part two of our episode on Maurice

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Speaker 1: Dupas and we left off in the last episode with

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Speaker 1: du Plassy, who was the Premier of Quebec, having lost

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Speaker 1: his seat his premiere after his first terman office. His

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Speaker 1: conservative views and aggressive politicking had really moved him quite

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Speaker 1: quickly through the ranks of the Conservative Party in Quebec,

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Speaker 1: but some poor decisions uh during his first term caused

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Speaker 1: his his new party that he had formed, called the

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Speaker 1: Union Nationale, to lose their power base in the Legislative Assembly.

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Speaker 1: During his first term, he also drank heavily and that

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Speaker 1: really took a toll on his health as well as

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Speaker 1: his reputation. Yeah, he was also hospitalized for a strangulated

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Speaker 1: hernia in Night Team forty two, and he had already

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Speaker 1: had surgery for this same condition more than a decade earlier.

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Speaker 1: But he ended up in a hospital again, and this

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Speaker 1: time for four months, due to complications brought on by pneumonia.

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Speaker 1: After he had had the procedure. He had also been

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Speaker 1: diagnosed with diabetes, and so his health problems and the

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Speaker 1: damage to his image that had come from alcohol led

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Speaker 1: him to decide to just quit drinking altogether. Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: a very funny interview that I saw in like an

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Speaker 1: old documentary where someone said that to the Liberal Party,

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Speaker 1: the worst thing that ever happened was the day du

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Speaker 1: Plessy stopped drinking because he just became much better at

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Speaker 1: his job and a much better politician. Was simultaneously extremely

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Speaker 1: offensive and also funny. It was said in JESU. They

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Speaker 1: weren't like, yeah, he should have stayed an alcoholic, but

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Speaker 1: they were saying, you know, he improved himself and it

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Speaker 1: hurt our party. Uh. But throw throughout the health issues

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Speaker 1: that he was working on. During his time away from office,

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Speaker 1: du Plessy it wasn't exactly absent from politics. He was

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Speaker 1: still very vocally involved. He spoke out against the idea

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Speaker 1: that the of the provinces losing more control to the

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Speaker 1: federal government, particularly over a constitutional amendment that gave unemployment

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Speaker 1: insurance UH to the federal jurisdiction and took it away

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Speaker 1: from the provinces. So, with renewed vigor, Duplessi went back

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Speaker 1: to fighting political battles. He was really vocal in the

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Speaker 1: conscription vote that had begun discussions while he was still convalescing.

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Speaker 1: He continued to stand for French Canadian nationalism and spoke

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Speaker 1: out against federal government control and against labor unions and

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Speaker 1: religious minorities exert exerting influence over the people of Quebec.

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Speaker 1: And when election time came up again in nineteen forty four,

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Speaker 1: with Quebec emerging from the financial depression that had been

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Speaker 1: going on early even in his political career, Duplessi regained

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Speaker 1: his seat as premier. Though it was a tight race,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't like a landslide. However, once he was there,

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Speaker 1: he stayed in power for the next fifteen years, so

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Speaker 1: he really held that seat for a long time. This

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Speaker 1: was kind of a controversial span. Yeah, not all of

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Speaker 1: it was controversial while he was the hare, but we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about some of the bigger controversies that happened.

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Speaker 1: Some of it became controversial later. While he had ingratiated

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Speaker 1: himself to voters as a man of the people in

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Speaker 1: a time when economic crisis had left many quebec quad

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Speaker 1: jobless and uneducated, he was not exactly viewed as a

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Speaker 1: saint a lot of times. Now he's described as a

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Speaker 1: man who wanted to be both loved and feared, and

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Speaker 1: his campaigns were always alleged to be sort of swirled

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Speaker 1: with corruption. There were claims of fraud. Uh. There were

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Speaker 1: assertions that paid thugs had beaten Liberals sometimes even in

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Speaker 1: like the Liberal party headquarters. Uh. There were assertions that

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Speaker 1: there were voting boxes that had been stolen, there was

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Speaker 1: stuffing of voting boxes. Basically all of like the kind

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Speaker 1: of textbook when you think of like nineteen thirties and

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Speaker 1: forties political corruption checklist. It was all kind of in

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Speaker 1: his uh, his campaigns as well. On top of all that,

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Speaker 1: he was alleged to have kept secret files on all

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Speaker 1: members of the Assembly. And even though by the time

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Speaker 1: he took the position of premier a second time, Quebec

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Speaker 1: was moving into an industrial industrialized era. Uh, but do plus,

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Speaker 1: he was still pretty insistent that agriculture was going to

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Speaker 1: be the most important thing to focus on. And while

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Speaker 1: this did keep him very popular uh with you know,

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Speaker 1: the people in his province that were, you know, still

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Speaker 1: involved in agriculture and making their living as farmers to

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Speaker 1: a lot of people, that also made him appear sort

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Speaker 1: of out of touch and shortsighted, and his detractors would

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Speaker 1: point out, like, he is not moving with the times do. Plus,

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Speaker 1: he was also a devout Catholic for his whole life,

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Speaker 1: and this did cause some criticism and his political career.

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Speaker 1: His detractors hid said that he and the Roman Catholic

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Speaker 1: Church were just too tightly intertwined, with too much influence

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Speaker 1: flowing both ways. And indeed he was quoted numerous times

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Speaker 1: as saying, quote, the bishops eat out of my hand. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's another one of those Wow, you are really brazen. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And there were certainly more controversial issues than that, but

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Speaker 1: they play out in much the same way. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: he really had a pretty insistent view of the world.

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Speaker 1: He felt like he had a handle on how things worked,

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Speaker 1: and that was really what was going to guide him

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Speaker 1: in leading Quebec before we get to the three big

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Speaker 1: scandals that sort of define his political career. Now, when

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Speaker 1: you look back, do you want to take a moment

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Speaker 1: here and work from our sponsor. Yes, let's do. Let's

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Speaker 1: get on that. And now let's get back to Maurice Duplessy.

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Speaker 1: So as we did before the ad break, there were

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Speaker 1: three really damning scandals in duplessis time as Premier, although

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Speaker 1: one did not come to light until after the fact.

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Speaker 1: One involved a man who fought back against him, Another

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Speaker 1: involved a possibly preventable tragedy that costs lives and closed

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Speaker 1: a major roadway, and the third is a really truly

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Speaker 1: tragic legacy that is actually still playing out today. The

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Speaker 1: first in dupless He made a move that would really

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Speaker 1: cost him pretty dearly, the premier ordered the arrest of

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Speaker 1: a group of Jehovah's witnesses who had been distributing religious leaflets.

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Speaker 1: These leaflets criticized the Catholic Church, but dupless He claimed

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Speaker 1: that their rhetoric was just a threat to public order,

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Speaker 1: and a Montreal restaurateur by the name of Frank Roncarelli

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Speaker 1: posted bail for the men who had been arrested in

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Speaker 1: this leaflet scandal, and as a Jehovah's witness himself, he

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Speaker 1: often used his profits and his success from his business

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Speaker 1: to bail out members of his religious group. Not long

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Speaker 1: after that, Roncarelli received notice that his businesses liquor license

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Speaker 1: had been revoked, and without a liquor license, his restaurant

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Speaker 1: was unsa stainable. During an interview many years later, Roncarelli said,

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Speaker 1: interestingly enough, that he harbored no ill will towards Duplessi,

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Speaker 1: even though this whole thing really shut down his business. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He said that he knew Duplessy socially, and that quote

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Speaker 1: he was very charming in company. I just wanted to

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Speaker 1: include that because it's so fascinating that this continues to recur,

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Speaker 1: where it's like, man, he was horrible to deal with,

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Speaker 1: he was so hard to work with. He was really

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Speaker 1: quite delightful socially. Though it's such an interesting slash difficult

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Speaker 1: to accept juxtaposition for me. Yeah. At the time, though,

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Speaker 1: Roncarelli sued the Premiere and what would become an important

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Speaker 1: civil rights case which dragged on for more than a decade,

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Speaker 1: and during testimony in that case, Duplessi admitted that the

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Speaker 1: revocation of the liquor license was in fact not due

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Speaker 1: to any impropriety or violation of liquor regulation on Roncarelli's part,

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Speaker 1: and that it was just Roncarelli's bailout of the arrested

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Speaker 1: men that precipitated the revocation. So he kind of did say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was just because I was mad at him. He

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Speaker 1: had he admitted basically he was using his political power

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Speaker 1: to get vengeance on someone else. Eventually, an early nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty nine Supreme Court made its ruling in favor of

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Speaker 1: Frank Roncarelli. Duplessi was ordered to pay forty six thousand

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Speaker 1: two dollars personally. They ruled that he had overstepped his

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Speaker 1: bounds and had arbitrarily damaged Roncarelli's livelihood. After the case closed,

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Speaker 1: Roncarelli actually left candidate. He moved to the United States

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Speaker 1: to work with a highway construction company, and he became

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Speaker 1: sort of a David and Goliath to symbol to a

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Speaker 1: lot of people, and he was often touted in a

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Speaker 1: sensationalized manner as the one man who took on Duplessi

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Speaker 1: in one So, in nineteen forty a new bridge, which

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Speaker 1: was the Duplessi Bridge, was opened between trou Riviere and

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Speaker 1: Capita la Madelene. However, this bridge had been built with

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Speaker 1: what uh some people refer to his quote political cements,

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Speaker 1: in other words, inexpensive materials. It was assembled by private

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Speaker 1: contractors who were friends of Dupasy, not really to the

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Speaker 1: highest bidder and not really focused on quality. A lot

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Speaker 1: of corner cutting. Yeah, in the United States, we call

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Speaker 1: that good enough for government work, which used to mean

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Speaker 1: something completely different than it generally does today. So in

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Speaker 1: the early hours of January thirty one one, this three

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Speaker 1: million dollar bridge collapsed and that halted travel on the

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Speaker 1: busiest highway in Quebec and killed four people. And Duplessy's

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Speaker 1: reaction was that he's quoted as saying, I think it's

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Speaker 1: simply sabotage. He uh was completely convinced that the collapse

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Speaker 1: was the work of subversives, at least publicly. Whether he

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Speaker 1: truly believed this to be the case or whether he

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Speaker 1: was trying to cover up some poor decisions in the

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Speaker 1: building process and some poor political connections that he had

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Speaker 1: used to get it built is still unclear. Of course,

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Speaker 1: the actual problem was mediocre construction, and the book Failed

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Speaker 1: Bridges Case Studies, Causes and Consequences describes the conditions that

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Speaker 1: caused the tragedy this way. Four of the eight spans

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Speaker 1: of the welded composite plate girder bridge over the Maurice

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Speaker 1: River collapsed in a night at a temperature of minus

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Speaker 1: thirty four degrees celsius. The steel contained zero point four

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Speaker 1: percent carbon and zero point one two sulfur two fissures

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Speaker 1: in the bridge had been repaired two years earlier, using

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Speaker 1: riveted plates to strengthen the welding seems under tension in

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Speaker 1: the flanges. The bridge had undergone a thorough inspection on

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Speaker 1: the only two weeks before the failure. When it came,

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Speaker 1: the collapse was sudden and completely unforeseen. So it was

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Speaker 1: basically substandard materials in extremely cold weather that just failed. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And the force of the bridge falling was so great

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Speaker 1: when it happened that nearby residents actually thought an earthquake

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Speaker 1: had occurred. As the investigation into the Apps went on,

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Speaker 1: the substandard construction was revealed in reports and the inquiry

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Speaker 1: into the bridge, testimony was given by two Canadian Army

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Speaker 1: engineers and they believe that two wires that were found

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Speaker 1: wrapped around a girder were part of an explosive trigger

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Speaker 1: which was part of a sabotage plot. But to Bell

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Speaker 1: telephone employees later testified that the wires were actually part

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Speaker 1: of an emergency line. Yeah, that whole uh support for

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Speaker 1: duplessis sabotage theory kind of fell apart. UH. The bridge

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Speaker 1: was eventually rebuilt, and again it was built with a

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Speaker 1: private contract against the wishes that a union contractor be

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Speaker 1: given the project. So even though this had all happened,

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Speaker 1: Duplessy kind of did the exact same thing he did

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Speaker 1: on the first build and handed it to friends. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: All in all, he spent more money on highway infrastructure

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Speaker 1: than any previous premier did. Yeah. I mean he did

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Speaker 1: expand a lot of Quebex roadways. So whether or not

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Speaker 1: others had similar problems that were never exposed by you know,

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Speaker 1: an incident or cold weather precipitating an incident, he did

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Speaker 1: add more roadways to the province than any anybody had

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Speaker 1: done previously. Uh. The darkest legacy of Duplessy's time in

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Speaker 1: office didn't come to light until after Duplessy had actually

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Speaker 1: died uh in nWo, So this is quite some time

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Speaker 1: after he had passed. A group calling themselves the Duplessy

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Speaker 1: Orphans Committee, headed by writer Bruno Ray, went public with

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Speaker 1: some extremely horrifying allegations. Basically, during the time that Duplessy

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Speaker 1: was premier in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, thousands

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Speaker 1: of orphans were swiftly declared to be either mentally ill

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Speaker 1: or mentally retarded. And these were actually healthy children who

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Speaker 1: had been under the care of the Quebec government, and

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Speaker 1: they were living in homes that were run by the

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Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Church, and the reason for these sudden literally

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Speaker 1: overnight diet nses uh. Between nine and nineteen sixty the

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Speaker 1: Canadian federal government would pay seventy cents per day per

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Speaker 1: orphan to orphanages for their care. However, it paid a

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Speaker 1: subsidy of two dollars and twenty five cents per day

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Speaker 1: per patient to psychiatric hospitals, and it was more fiscally

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Speaker 1: lucrative to care for psychiatric patients than for orphans. So

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Speaker 1: Duplessy on paper was like, hey, we could get more

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Speaker 1: money for this if we just said they were all insane.

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Speaker 1: That is such an ugly thought. In nineteen sixty one

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Speaker 1: commissioned on Quebec psychiatric hospitals determined that more than a

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Speaker 1: third of the twenty two thousand patients foused in psychiatric

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Speaker 1: hospitals at the time had been incorrectly diagnosed. Most of

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Speaker 1: these people were orphans from the dupless E era who

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Speaker 1: had been in the system since a very early age. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so they had been declared mentally ill and then we're

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Speaker 1: still decades later living in that system when they should

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Speaker 1: have never ever been there in the first place. The

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Speaker 1: exact number of children that were affected by this rampant

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Speaker 1: diagnosis misdiagnosis is unclear. Uh. It ranges anywhere from two

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Speaker 1: thousand children too close to twenty depending on your source.

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Speaker 1: And uh, you know, it's one of those things that

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Speaker 1: is difficult to track. Some of the children that were

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Speaker 1: in the orphanages were born out of wedlock. Uh. Some

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Speaker 1: had lost their parents and had no family. Others had

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Speaker 1: been turned over to the system by parents that were

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Speaker 1: too poor to feed them. And we're thinking that would

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Speaker 1: at least be a better option for their care, but

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Speaker 1: instead they were all subjected to this sort of horrific

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Speaker 1: bit of paperwork that basically ruined their lives. Stories of

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Speaker 1: abuse are really rampant. There was electroshock therapy, which was

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Speaker 1: a deeply different thing in the forties and fifties than

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Speaker 1: it is today. Purposefully high drug dosages, forced lobotomies, physical

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Speaker 1: and sexual abuse. All of these things have been claimed

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Speaker 1: by survivors, and this list of horrors is lengthy. It

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Speaker 1: resulted in a government payout to all the surviving orphans

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Speaker 1: in the two thousands, an effort was made to get

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Speaker 1: the bodies of the orphans who had died in the

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Speaker 1: care of the corrupt homes exhumed to prove that they

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Speaker 1: had been used in medical experimentation. But this effort was

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Speaker 1: met with a lot of resistance. And I do think

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Speaker 1: it's important to note that, uh, while du Plessy authorized

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Speaker 1: this paperwork, he has never been determined to be personally

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Speaker 1: involved in the abuse. It's kind of like he made

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Speaker 1: a very poor fiscal decision that resulted in it, but

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Speaker 1: he's never implicated as having known that these children were

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Speaker 1: potentially being used in medical experiments, that they were being abused.

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Speaker 1: I think he just thought it was literally going to

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Speaker 1: be a paperwork, transaction and easy money. He actually suffered

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Speaker 1: a series of strokes and died on September seven, ninety nine,

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Speaker 1: and that was shortly after the verdict in the first

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Speaker 1: scandal that we talked about, the Ranca Relli case. It's interesting,

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Speaker 1: though perhaps unsurprising, is that depending on what biographical source

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Speaker 1: you're reading from, you'll see him described in completely contradictory ways.

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Speaker 1: One will speak of how staunchly he opposed the federal

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Speaker 1: government in the work of provincial government. Another will comment

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Speaker 1: on how he recognized that the only right path for

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Speaker 1: Canada was to not to unite the provinces under the

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Speaker 1: federal government. Yeah, he almost as like a ghost like

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Speaker 1: people make up their version of him sometimes. Uh. He

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Speaker 1: definitely had anti elitist views and that made him very

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Speaker 1: popular with some voters. He was sometimes even called a ruralist,

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Speaker 1: and his insistence that agriculture remained uh an integral part

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Speaker 1: of Quebec earned him the loyalty of a lot of people.

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Speaker 1: As we mentioned earlier, for a lot of people, his

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Speaker 1: death is a milestone that marks a significant and pivotal

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Speaker 1: moment in Quebec's history and the time that he governed,

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Speaker 1: Quebec experienced economic stability, but xenophobia and anti union sentiments

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Speaker 1: were also part of that package. And after Duplessy, during

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Speaker 1: the so called Quiet Revolution, Quebec became more secularized. The

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Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Church lost a lot of its political power,

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Speaker 1: and then the ministries of education and health were established,

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Speaker 1: but the economic growth slowed. Duplessy never married, and when

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Speaker 1: he was asked in interviews about his perpetual bachelorhood, he

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Speaker 1: would always tell people that he was married to Quebec.

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Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that, uh, I have you know

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Speaker 1: friends in Canada, and I asked them about Maurice Duplessy

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Speaker 1: and what they're taught in school and how much they

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Speaker 1: knew about him, and as he characterized as more of

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Speaker 1: a hero or a villain nowadays, because there have been

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Speaker 1: movements to try to kind of repaint him and put

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Speaker 1: him in context of like, yes, if you just look

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Speaker 1: at the facts on paper, he can look very bad,

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Speaker 1: but if you look at him in context of the

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Speaker 1: bigger political machine at the time, it really wasn't out

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Speaker 1: of the ordinary. It wasn't like he was a monster.

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Speaker 1: But every person I asked, none of whom were from

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Speaker 1: Quebec I should mention, said who they had never heard

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Speaker 1: of him, or they had heard of him in like

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Speaker 1: that distant bell ringing. Isn't there like a Duplessi road

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Speaker 1: Like they couldn't conjure who he had ever been, which

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Speaker 1: was very interesting to me. Yeah. Well, and considering how

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Speaker 1: the orphan scandal was ongoing into the two thousands, I

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Speaker 1: think that's what makes it that was off. At my

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Speaker 1: follow up, like do you know about du Plessy or

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Speaker 1: the dupless Orphans, they would go not really, uh, And

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Speaker 1: that led to some discussion of sort of the division

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Speaker 1: that there's ongoing sort of strife and discussion and disagreement

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Speaker 1: about Quebec's place in the bigger Canadian structure and French nationalism,

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Speaker 1: and uh that sort of desire to be separate and

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Speaker 1: different kind of being a problem sometimes socially. Uh So

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Speaker 1: some of them were like, that could just be the

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Speaker 1: problem is that it's a piece of Quebec history and

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Speaker 1: we don't always get taught very much about that outside

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Speaker 1: of that province. So I just thought it was interesting

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Speaker 1: that none of my Canadian friends knew who he was, um,

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Speaker 1: and they spread from sort of Vancouver all the way

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Speaker 1: over to ah Ottawa. But yeah, Maury Stupissy still kind

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Speaker 1: of up in the air in terms of whether he

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Speaker 1: was a good guy or a bad guy for many people. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I also have listener mail. I was just about

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Speaker 1: to ask, this is gonna dovetail on a previous little

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Speaker 1: listener mail experiment that we did, which is that we

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Speaker 1: had had a listener who was going to go to

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Speaker 1: New Orleans and wanted ideas for what to do, and

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Speaker 1: we had so many great ideas we put together a

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Speaker 1: blog post on them, and now we kind of have

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Speaker 1: like the stuff you missed the history class guide of

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Speaker 1: interesting things to do in New Orleans that might not

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Speaker 1: be in guide books. So we're gonna do a similar

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Speaker 1: thing and this one involves Canada. Uh. This actually comes

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Speaker 1: from a uh Facebook note we got from our listener Robin.

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Speaker 1: She says, Hey, ladies, my beloved husband introduced me to

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Speaker 1: the podcast recent ly and I've been hooked ever since.

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Speaker 1: We've both become pretty avid listeners and really enjoyed discussing

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Speaker 1: the cool stuff we learn. Anyway, my husband and I

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Speaker 1: are going to celebrate our tenure wedding anniversary. Congratulations, I

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Speaker 1: say to you, Uh, this May, and we're hoping to

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Speaker 1: visit Victoria, British Columbia. It would be awesome if you

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Speaker 1: could do a podcast on the city or something related.

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Speaker 1: It would also be so great to visit and have

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Speaker 1: some historical insights to help us in deciding where we

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Speaker 1: visit and what to see. Uh. So I once again

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Speaker 1: putting a call out to our various listeners who might

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Speaker 1: have knowledge of Victoria, British Columbia on what is really

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Speaker 1: cool to do there. I will admit I don't know

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Speaker 1: much there. I usually I visit Vancouver periodically, which I love.

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Speaker 1: I love that city. So much. Uh, but I don't

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Speaker 1: know a lot about Victoria and it's specific magic. So

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Speaker 1: if you know things, you can um share those with

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Speaker 1: us and I will once again put those all into

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Speaker 1: one big blog posts and we will have a fabulous

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Speaker 1: guide to yet another city. Yay, I know, and then

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Speaker 1: we'll have to go on the history class tour of

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Speaker 1: the world once we have several put together. Uh So,

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Speaker 1: if you would like to write to us with questions

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00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:10,719
Speaker 1: or to answer Robin's query about what's good to do

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Speaker 1: in Victoria, British Columbia, you can do so at History

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Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also connect with

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Speaker 1: us at Facebook dot com slash missed in history, on

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00:21:19,040 --> 00:21:23,160
Speaker 1: Twitter at Miston History at Misston History dot combler dot com,

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00:21:23,240 --> 00:21:26,080
Speaker 1: and we're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash

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Speaker 1: missed in history. If he would like to uh learn

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Speaker 1: more about a topic related to what we've discussed today,

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Speaker 1: you can go to our website and type in the

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Speaker 1: words scandal and one of the articles that will come

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Speaker 1: up is ten political scandals. And while do pssy is

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Speaker 1: not mentioned, again, it helps put it in context that

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Speaker 1: there have been a lot of weird and awful and

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Speaker 1: sometimes fascinating things that have gone on in the political realm,

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Speaker 1: the political missteps. So if you want to learn about

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00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:55,800
Speaker 1: that or anything else that you can think of, you

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00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:57,600
Speaker 1: can do that at our website, which is how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com for more on this and thousands of

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