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In Again, Out Again. He fought with his party, but in 1928 was elected Mayor of Montreal anyway—chiefly because his friends outdid the opposition in voting the names of non-voting oldsters and invalids.
Houde lost out in 1932, but the depression brought the "man of the people" back in 1934. He pleased the people by spending $40,000,000 on public works in Montreal in two years. Comfort stations, called "Camilliennes," burgeoned the length & breadth of the city.
He went out but was in again when war came, and this time he made his big mistake: he publicly advised citizens not to register for conscription. Three days later, a squad of Mounties drove him off to the internment camp at Petawawa, where he stayed for four years.
Characteristically, he made the most of his time by boning up on world history and becoming the camp champion at Chinese checkers, ice skating, long distance walking, woodcutting. He bore the federal government no rancor. Said he: "I am enraged." But he added: "I am coolly enraged." He knew he still had the heart of the people.
Bloc Populaire. On his release he was met at Montreal's Windsor station by 10,000 wildly cheering citizens. They escorted him to his home in triumph. Four months later they elected him mayor by a thumping majority.
In Houde's absence Montreal's city fathers had clipped his wings. They had supplemented his one-man rule with a 99-man City Council, which had cleaned up the city. At least, it had pulled down the shades on its more flamboyant sights.
Gone was Madame Baby's; gone was Lillian Russell (whose sleekly gowned and strategically bulging figure was not unlike her namesake's); her menage at 92 Ca-dieux Street could entertain whole conventions of tourists at once. Gone also was Madame Cesar's in the more exclusive West End. Only a memory was Madame Alice's where employes and customers alike had been required to wear evening dress.
Less important to tourists but more so for Camillien Houde were other changes. His strident French-Canadian nationalism, with its emphasis on "racism," big families and close ties of church and state, seemed to have lost some of its appeal. Nevertheless, he joined the Bloc Populaire, a catch-all of all nationalistic slogans, to extend his power beyond Montreal. In two election tests, the second last month, the Bloc was soundly trounced. For the time being, at least, the Bloc was a dead political duck.
Old Sights. Camillien Houde had to adjust his ideas to a new generation of French Canadians. But to tourists' eyes, at least, the country of the seigneurs still looked the same.
Down the St. Lawrence, 150 miles from the doorway metropolis, lay Quebec City; its great grey stone citadel, whose guns had once guarded the New World for France, still frowned down on the narrow twisting streets of the Old Town. The habitant women in their dusty-black Sunday clothes still knelt to pray in ancient Chapelle des Augustines. With devout Americans they still trudged the 21 miles to the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupre on pilgrimage.