Word: quebecs
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...election was a catastrophic defeat for lanky, Harvard-educated Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa. In 1973 his party won 102 of the 110 seats in Quebec's legislature and 55% of the total vote by campaigning singlemindedly against the threat of l'indépendance represented by Lévesque and the Parti Québécois. This time Lévesque and his followers took 41% of the vote and 69 legislature seats, including Bourassa's own riding in Montreal. The Liberals, with 34% of the vote, were reduced to a humiliating 28 seats, partly because...
...vesque is still committed to separatism for Quebec, but his masterly campaign strategy was built around barely mentioning the Independence issue. After the 1973 election debacle, the Péquistes had soft-pedaled their platform calling for immediate separation, promising instead to honor the results of a popular referendum to be held within two years of taking office. In the campaign, Lévesque concentrated on attacking Bourassa's Liberals for economic mismanagement, ineptitude and untrustworthiness. Said Lévesque repeatedly through the campaign: "Our first aim will be to create the best provincial government possible...
Most Canadians could endorse at least the second part of that self-analysis by Quebec's Premier-elect René Lévesque, 54. Once a firebrand Cabinet minister in the federalist Liberal government of Quebec, he was even considered by some-in much earlier days -as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of Canada. Now the voluble, hyperactive Levesque says that anyone who does not believe his separatist Parti Quebecois is determined to seek national independence is "daydreaming...
Passionately articulate on Quebec, Lévesque is intensely guarded in his private life. By temperament he is a loner with few close friends. Separated for the past six years from his wife, he lavishes attention on his three grown children. Born in the bucolic Gaspé Peninsula region of Quebec, Lévesque left law school in 1943 to serve with the U.S. Office of War Information as a European radio correspondent. In the 1950s he moved on to television and speedily became the most popular news commentator in Quebec. Lévesque's pouchy eyes, nervous mannerisms...
Recruited by the Liberals in 1960, Lévesque became Minister of Natural Resources within a year. He earned the nickname "Reneé the Red" in conservative, English-speaking business circles by pushing through a controversial nationalization of Quebec's hydroelectric industry. One friend with whom Lévesque spent many heated nights discussing the hydro scheme was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, then a law professor at the University of Montreal...