Word: laurent
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Louis St. Laurent, the man who must deal with Canada's economic quandary, is Prime Minister of Canada almost in spite of himself. Before joining the government in 1941, he was one of the Dominion's top corporation lawyers, a man who started as a junior partner in a Quebec law firm at $50 a month and steadily built his earnings to nearly $50,000 a year. His only interests along the way had been the law and his family. A new interest was injected one night in 1941 by a long-distance call from Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie...
Madame St. Laurent wept at the news...
...Laurent hesitated, then asked the advice of the late Rodrigue Cardinal Villeneuve, Archbishop pf Quebec. The cardinal urged him to take the job, pointing out that as a symbol of national unity in wartime it was important to have a prominent French Canadian in the cabinet. On the day St. Laurent accepted the post, a new granddaughter was born in a Quebec hospital. Louis St. Laurent traveled over from Ottawa to see the baby, stood over her crib and mused aloud: "For myself, I may be making a mistake, but perhaps in the long run this child will benefit...
Best Choice. St. Laurent moved into the cabinet like a veteran, applied his quick, logical and incisive lawyer's mind to every problem that came his way. As early as 1943, Mackenzie King told intimates that St. Laurent was the best choice to succeed him as head of the government. When King, after 21 years as Prime Minister, stepped down last November, St. Laurent moved into his office in the East Block of the Parliament Buildings...
...Prime Minister, St. Laurent follows a rigid routine. By 9:35 a.m. he is at his desk, once the desk of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's only other French Canadian Prime Minister (1896-1911). At lunchtime, he usually walks across the street alone (he has no bodyguard) to the staid and stark Rideau Club, where he customarily sits with other cabinet members at the "Ministers' Table." After lunch, he is in his office until about 6:30. Except on the hottest days St. Laurent works with his coat on. It is an unwritten rule that the 44 members...