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Maurice Duplessis' patron saint is St. Joseph. Every Wednesday is St. Joseph's day in French Canada. And so Maurice Duplessis has always chosen Wednesdays for his most important speeches, biggest deals, happiest parties. He chose last Wednesday for the election. But the good saint was looking the other way that day. Before the polling, which ran off without incident, Maurice Duplessis had the Premiership, 76 of 86 seats in the provincial legislature, and a future. After it, he had his own seat in the legislature, 72 Liberal colleagues and Montreal's vitriolic Mayor Camillien Houde to bait him, and nothing much politically but a past. As Maurice Duplessis' successor, Québecquois chose staid, clean, able, colorless, short Adélard Godbout, a scientific farmer who was Premier in 1936.
As for Canada, she had a thrilling prickly feeling in her spine that came from good health in all her parts; the slight attack of French gout was over.