The factors responsible for the creation of a new purely provincial Quebec political party in 1934 predated the advent of the Great Depression. As the process of large-scale industrialization favoured by successive Liberal regimes from the turn of the century progressed, elements of the francophone professional and business classes increasingly felt disadvantaged, even threatened, by the new economic order. Industrialization and urbanization had jeopardized the social and economic position of French Canada’s traditional professional élites and worked against the interests of francophone business and commerce which were predominantly small. The prolonged collapse of this economic strategy in the early thirties...

Power struggles within the Liberal and Conservative parties of Quebec in the interwar period and differences between federal and provincial politicians figured largely in the appearance, initial success, and ultimate failure of the Action libérate nationale. But, while this drama was played out on the political stage, it was the socio-economic and cultural changes brought on by industrialization and urbanization which shaped the policies and the personnel of the parties which competed for provincial power in Quebec during the 1930s.

The depression in Quebec after World War I had been followed by growing American investment, particularly in the province’s resource...

The onset of the Great Depression intensified the problems francophone professionals and businessmen had been experiencing in the 1920s and further limited their sons’ opportunities. At the same time the misery created by spiralling unemployment called into question the very survival of the capitalist system which French-Canadian Catholics generally wanted to continue, although perhaps in an altered form. It was the disarray and social insecurity brought on by the prolonged economic collapse of the early thirties and the failure of liberalism to overcome the problems threatening their society that prompted reformist and nationalist elements within the francophone professional élite to...

The destruction of even the façade of Liberal party unity in Quebec, with the publication of the manifesto of the Action libérale nationale in midsummer 1934, further confused the complicated political situation in that province. Not even those responsible for launching the movement were certain of the role the ALN would play in future political developments. In the belief that the solution to Quebec’s pressing social and economic problems depended on “a political evolution” at the provincial level, the sponsors of the ALN introduced themselves to Quebecers as the spokesmen for a “movement ... founded on the need of decisive...

Liberals and Conservatives from Quebec who were active in federal politics shared the concern of their provincial counterparts at the enthusiastic response to the anti-trust, anti-party themes stressed by members of the ALN. They were not reassured by repeated declarations from ALN leaders that the party operated solely at the provincial level and that, consequently, support for it need not conflict with national party loyalties. Federal Liberals feared the repercussions of the prolonged anti-Taschereau campaign if they faced a test at the polls before voters had had an opportunity to express their discontent provincially. While the Liberal party in Quebec...

Once Conservative and ALN organizers had successfully negotiated the terms of a common front, they launched a united effort to dislodge the Liberals. Their chances of success had been greatly increased by what each leader brought to the alliance. Duplessis’s genius for politics and Gouin’s success in assuming leadership of the forces for renewal within French Catholic circles made the Union Nationale formidable. The Conservative leader could deliver the votes of his party’s traditional supporters as well as those of some of the forces Houde had attracted while Gouin had the sympathy of the church, various Catholic associations, the nationalist...

Paul Gouin’s withdrawal of the Action libérale nationale from active politics meant that on 17 August 1936 Quebec voters would have a choice between a supposedly reformed Liberal party led by Adélard Godbout and an alliance of former Conservatives and Liberals united behind Maurice Duplessis. Despite desperate efforts to avoid such a situation, the Liberals faced the task of defending their party’s record against attacks from a party which included almost all the dissident Liberals who had been elected as ALN representatives the year before. The refusal of most ALN deputies to follow Gouin out of the Union Nationale suggested,...

The departure of Hamel’s group, and of Drouin, from the Union Nationale immediately raised the possibility of a reconciliation between the supporters of Gouin and Hamel. The bitterness caused by the reciprocal attacks of the two groups between Gouin’s break with Duplessis and the 1936 election had created barriers between these forces, but the ALN leader had remained on good terms with Hamel and had not ruled out the possibility of a rapprochement.¹ His refusal to attend a banquet given for Philippe Hamel in November 1936, on the grounds that it was up to his former Quebec City allies “to...

The stresses Quebec’s middle-class professionals and small businessmen faced as the province industrialized and became increasingly urban in the early decades of the twentieth century were ones their class had experienced elsewhere in North America and in Europe. Francophone responses to the onset of modernity were coloured by the ethnic division of labour within Quebec and the prevalence of the belief that French Canada’s national survival depended upon preservation of the Catholic faith, the French language, and the rural way of life. Lay and clerical élites wanted to ensure that they and their successors would occupy positions of power in...