Word: quebecs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When St. Laurent first came to Ottawa, he said with a trace of pride: "I know nothing of politics or politicians." The boast was not entirely true. As a boy, he worked as a part-time clerk in his father's general store in the Quebec village of Compton (pop. 1,000). Those were the days when Sir Wilfrid Laurier was leader of the Liberal Party. Young Louis lent an ear to all the hot & heavy political talk around the cracker barrel, and was an ardent Laurier Liberal from the start...
...political dimout in St. Laurent's life began four years later when Louis' French Canadian father, Moïse, ran for the Quebec legislature as a Liberal and was beaten. Sorely disappointed, Moïse St. Laurent advised Louis to stay out of politics...
...Quebec City's Laval University, where he earned his law degree, Louis' work prompted the rector to make a flat prediction: "Le petit St. Laurent ira loin [Little St. Laurent will go far]." He won the Governor General's Medal and was offered a Rhodes Scholarship. Strong-willed young Louis, with plans already made to practice law, turned down the scholarship, went to work for one of Quebec's leading lawyers...
...years later St. Laurent built a 17-room house on the Grande Aliée, a cow-path then, but now Quebec City's most fashionable street. The house seemed large (the St. Laurents had only three children at the time), but Louis was looking ahead. Said he: "This is a house for a Canadian family." Within the next five years, he had two more children...
...Laurent could afford a big house. Most of his legal business was unspectacular (company reorganizations and civil lawsuits), but profitable. He made a name by unraveling business snarls and working out compromises that satisfied opposing parties. It was a time when big British and U.S. companies were coming to Quebec to develop the province's timber, mineral and hydroelectric resources, and the biggest of them were St. Laurent's clients. He was regularly on the go (sometimes at a fee of $200 a day) pleading cases before the Supreme Court in Ottawa and the Privy Council in London. He collected...