Wilfrid Laurier

Wilfrid Laurier (born November 20, 1841, Saint-Lin, Canada East [now Quebec, Canada]—died February 17, 1919, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) was the first French Canadian prime minister of the Dominion of Canada (1896–1911), noted especially for his attempts to define the role of French Canada in the federal state and to define Canada’s relations to Great Britain. He was knighted in 1897.

Early life and education

Laurier was born of French Canadian parents and studied at the college at l’Assomption, where he received literary training under Catholic priests. He then studied law at McGill University in Montreal and was called to the bar in 1864. His bicultural education, most unusual at the time, may have played a part in his lifelong dedication to Canadian unity. While at McGill, he became a leading member of the Institut Canadien, a political club of advanced liberals (Les Rouges) with anticlerical and republican views. Later he joined the law offices of one of the leading Rouge politicians and contributed a number of articles to radical newspapers, one of which he edited for a few months in the mid-1860s.

In 1866, for reasons of health, Laurier moved to Athabaska, where he opened his own law practice. In 1868 he married Zoë Lafontaine of Montreal, and, despite a long relationship with Emilie Lavergne, his law partner’s wife, his childless marriage seems to have been a happy one. In 1871 he was elected to the opposition benches of the provincial legislature of Quebec, where his first speech, an eloquent plea for educational reform, attracted much attention. In 1874 he was elected to the Canadian House of Commons, of which he was to be a member until his death.

Rise to leadership

As Laurier gradually rose to become minister of internal revenue (1877–78) and eventually to leadership of the opposition Liberal Party in 1887, he persistently sought to bring together his countrymen on the issues that have since been recognized as the dominant themes of modern Canadian politics: the relations of church and state, the bicultural entente between French- and English-speaking Canadians, and the country’s association with the British Empire and relations with the United States. One of the political highlights of these years for Laurier was his famous speech on Liberalism delivered in 1877 in the city of Quebec. In that speech he set himself against both the Quebec politicians who attempted to form a Catholic party and the extremist elements in his own group who sought to exclude the clergy from all political activity. Because of his skillful statesmanship, the cold antagonism between conservative churchmen and liberal politicians gradually began to thaw; after 1896 no anticlerical ever attained important public office and no cleric officially interfered in politics.

In 1885 Laurier became a national figure when he delivered a moving plea of clemency for Louis Riel, who had led a rebellion of the Métis (people of mixed French and Indian extraction) in Manitoba and whose death sentence provoked violent outbursts between the French Catholic nationalists in Quebec and the Britannic groups in Ontario. Showing great courage, Laurier, though not condoning Riel’s actions, charged the government with mishandling the rebellion. Although he did not succeed in saving Riel, he established his reputation as a man of principle and high ideals. Throughout his political life, he emphasized moderation and compromise and gradually became recognized as the only leader able to effect a national reconciliation.

At the same time, he was turning his personal magnetism into a valuable political weapon. Between 1887 and 1896 he perfected his party’s organization, refined Liberal strategy, made political alliances, assessed local partisans, and judiciously applied his personal charm to winning over Conservative adversaries and dissident Liberals. He infused new life into his party, for instance, by campaigning vigorously for unrestricted reciprocity, the grant of mutual commercial privileges, with the United States. After the policy had served its purpose, however, he dropped it from his platform in 1893. Between 1895 and 1896 he spoke at between 200 and 300 meetings, thus personally reaching some 200,000 voters. In mid-1896, with the Conservative government divided and disorganized, he easily carried the Liberal Party to victory in the general election.

Laurier’s “national policy”

Intent on heading an administration of national unity, Laurier attracted to his first cabinet men who had won distinction in their own provinces. His “national policy” consisted of protection for Canadian industries, the settlement of the west, and the building of an effective transportation system. The years between 1896 and 1911 became a boom period for which the prime minister himself provided the slogan: “The Twentieth Century belongs to Canada.” The budget of 1897 lowered tariffs but established a protection policy that lasted until 1911. Laurier’s land and emigration policy remains as perhaps the basic achievement of his government. During 15 years more than one million people moved into Manitoba and into the western territories, which in 1905 became the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Wheat became the major product of the new Prairie Provinces, towns and ports sprang up, railroads flourished, and in 1903 Laurier announced that a second transcontinental rail system would be built: the Canadian west had become the granary of the world.

Meanwhile, the prime minister’s attention had been diverted to external affairs. In 1897, 1902, 1907, and 1911 he attended Imperial Conferences at which he steadily resisted British proposals for closer ties that might commit Canada to defense responsibilities. He sincerely admired the institutions and liberal policies of Great Britain—he accepted a knighthood (1897) and once declared that he would be proud to see a Canadian of French descent affirming the principles of freedom in the British Parliament—yet he would never agree to any dilution of Canadian autonomy. Thus, from his policies there began to emerge the modern concept of a British Commonwealth of independent states.

Britain’s South African War of 1899 marked the start of Laurier’s decline. Quebec nationalists denounced his decision to send a force of 1,000 men, while English Canadians thought the number insufficient. Then, a series of invidious disputes—over denominational schools in the Northwest, Sunday observance laws, and the restrictions of French linguistic rights in Manitoba and Ontario—kept widening the rift between the nationalities in the east and new Canadians in the west and between Laurier and his cabinet. As the election of 1911 approached, the prime minister attempted to reunite his factious party by negotiating a treaty of reciprocity with the United States, but he failed. Reciprocity did not distract Quebec from the convincing argument that each one of Laurier’s compromises was a surrender of French Canada’s fundamental rights. Among the Britannic Canadians, reciprocity seemed an opportunistic capitulation to the United States, the first step toward annexation. In a month of bitter campaigning in 1911, the 70-year-old prime minister delivered more than 50 speeches yet could not overcome the powerful combination of imperialist business interests and bigoted nationalism. He retired with the dignity Canadians had learned to expect of him and spent his remaining years as leader of the opposition.