CANADA: Pere de Famille

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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.

An Outsider. In the general election of 1900, when the great Laurier was running for his second term as Prime Minister,

Louis was a student at St. Charles-Borromee Seminary, a bilingual (French-English) college in Sherbrooke. Because seminary discipline kept him indoors on election night, St. Laurent plotted with an outsider to bring election returns from the local newspaper office and tie them to a string dropped from his dormitory window.

The 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.

At the seminary, Louis is still remembered for his philosophical discussions with his professor-priests and his probing questions in Latin. He also spoke fluent English, taught him by his Irish-Canadian mother (Mary Ann Broderick St. Laurent) and his bilingual father. After St. Laurent became Prime Minister, a newsman asked an old schoolmate, the Rev. Canon Dolor Biron of Sherbrooke, for incidents of St. Laurent's college days. Said the canon: "Mr. St. Laurent is a man who does not have incidents."

At 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.

The Spark. His courtship was in keeping with his background. One night at a card party he met bright-eyed young Jeanne Renault. They were partners at charlemagne (a four-handed game played with 34 cards), and soon Jeanne told her friends that the shy young lawyer was mon idéal. Her friends warned her that it would not be easy to catch St. Laurent, a studious chap who spent most of his evenings with his law books. But when Louis started corresponding a short time later, everyone agreed: "C'est l'étincelle [It's the spark]."

Stern old Pierre-Ferdinand Renault, Jeanne's father, would let his daughter write to Louis by postcard only. Finally, after a good many cards had gone into the mails, Père Renault checked up on the young man's prospects and then popped the question: "You are corresponding with my daughter. What do you intend?" Louis' mind was already made up. In May 1908, he and Jeanne Renault were married.