Ernest Lapointe: Mackenzie King's Great Quebec Lieutenant

451 Pages·2002·23.275 MB·English

by  Lita-Rose Betcherman

ERNEST LAPOINTE
Mackenzie King's Great Quebec Lieutenant
Also by Lita-Rose Betcherman
The Swastika and the Maple Leaf: Fascist Movements in Canada in the
Thirties
The Little Band: The Clashes between the Communists and the Political and
Legal Establishment in Canada, 1928-1932
Ernest Lapointe
Mackenzie King's Great
Quebec Lieutenant
LITA-ROSE BETCHERMAN
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2002
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-3575-2 (cloth)
Printed on acid-free paper
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Betcherman, Lita-Rose, 1927-
Ernest Lapointe : Mackenzie King's great Quebec lieutenant
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-3575-2
1. Lapointe, Ernest, 1876-1941. 2. Canada - Politics and government -
1921-1930. 3. Canada - Politics and government -1930-1935. 4. Canada
Politics and government - 1935-1948. 5. Cabinet ministers - Canada -
Biography. 6. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons - Biography.
I. Title.
FC581.L36B48 2002 971.063'2'092 C2001-903683-3
F1034.3.L36B49 2002
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
To ray husband, Irving Betcherman
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 National Attention 3
2 Conscription 14
3 King-Maker 23
4 Cabinet Minister 35
5 Diplomat 49
6 Relative Obscurity 62
7 Minister of Justice 73
8 Leader of the House 86
9 The Bilingual Schools Issue 99
10 The Margaret Affair 107
11 The Imperial Conference of 1926 120
12 The Dominion-Provincial Conference of 1927 135
13 The'Persons'Case 143
14 Silver Anniversaries 153
15 The 1929 Conference on the Operation of Dominion
Legislation 161
viii Contents
16 Defeat 171
17 Member of the Opposition 182
18 Back in Power 191
19 The Ethiopian Crisis 202
20 The Curse of Patronage 211
21 The Padlock Act 224
22 Aberhart's Legislation Disallowed 235
23 In the Appeasers' Camp 248
24 Neutrality Abandoned 259
25 Canada Goes to War 271
26 Duplessis Beaten 284
27 Wartime Election 296
28 The National Resources Mobilization Act 312
29 Vichy 324
30 Last Days 336
Conclusion 348
Notes 355
Bibliography 399
Illustration Credits 405
Index 407
Illustrations follow page 212
Preface
When Ernest Lapointe lay on his deathbed, Mackenzie King told him,
'But for you, I would never have been Prime Minister, nor would I have
been able to hold the office, as I have held it through the years.'1 These
were not just soothing words to console a dying man. Canada's durable
prime minister spoke no less than the truth. King was dependent on
Quebec. He was elected time after time because Quebec as a bloc voted
for him. Yet he understood neither the province nor its language. He
left that to Ernest Lapointe, his minister of justice, 'as a kind of local
governor, almost autonomous in his powers.'2
King was able to preserve national unity, and incidentally stay in
power so long, because of Lapointe's ability to 'deliver' Quebec. The
mass of French Canadians trusted Lapointe more than any other fed-
eral politician, not excepting Laurier or St Laurent. He shared the views
of his people and was their spokesman at Ottawa. A loyal Quebecker,
yes, but Lapointe envisioned Quebec only within the larger context of
the Canadian nation. His lifelong task was to help construct a Canada
broad enough to embrace French and English viewpoints.
The King-Lapointe partnership can be compared with that of Baldwin
and Lafontaine or Macdonald and Cartier. Throughout the 1920s and
1930s and into the first years of the Second World War, Lapointe was
King's highly effective Quebec lieutenant. But he was much more than
that - he was the prime minister's closest associate. Reconciling his
loyalty to Quebec with devotion to national unity was not an easy road
for Lapointe; there were obstacles all along the way. The inevitability of
war in the late 1930s confronted him with a challenge of epic propor-
tions. Quebec wanted to remain neutral while the rest of Canada was
resolved to join the Allies' fight against Hitler. Lapointe won Quebec's