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Like both of them, he is a shrewd buffoon, clowns as naturally as others converse. He likes to slump in a chair so he can waggle his feet in the air, mug furiously. He has always been willing to do anything for a laugh—and his Montrealers have loved him for it.
When Britain's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited Montreal, he entertained them with a stream of jokes, persuaded the King to sing the rollicking song of the coureur de bois, Alouette. He defined it as God Save the King (which the French Canadians stubbornly refuse to sing) and added slyly, "after midnight."
People's Heart. Yet he works hard at his job. He is up early in his modest grey stone home at St. Hubert Street, where he lives quietly with his wife (his second) and daughter. Usually he walks the three miles to the mayoral office at no Notre Dame Street East, in the old part of Montreal, arriving about 9:30 a.m.
There, surrounded by a platoon of aides and his tools of office—a brass spittoon, a silver shovel for sod turning, and three telephones (one gold-plated)—he talks to a steady stream of people in his fast French and slow, accented English, ducks out frequently for stump speeches. (He spoke at 66 gatherings last June.)
Mayor Houde usually wears striped trousers, a pale grey waistcoat, an ascot tie, a black coat. Sometimes his exuberance blossoms out in color: pale green pants, bright green tie, green and white herringbone tweed jacket with orange flecks. For ice skating, his favorite sport, he prefers a natty ceinture flechée (a colorful belt). A heavy smoker (two packs a day) and chain coffee drinker (ten cups), he is a semivegetarian, eats no red meat, never takes a drink—and is never at a loss for an answer, or a cynical quip.
Once when a visitor seriously asked him about the atom bomb, he replied: "Yes, because of the bomb, decentralization is essential for cities like Montreal." Then, after a pause, he added: "Particularly if we can decentralize the debt at the same time."
He did more than anyone else to pile up that debt. But it has had no political effect for Houde. Why? Answered Houde: "Because I've got the heart of the people."
Butcher Boy. He is one of them. What a tourist spent in a day would have kept the Houde family for weeks.
Camillien was born on Aug. 13, 1889, in a two-room tenement flat on the Rue St. Timothee, the only one of ten children to live beyond his second year. He went to work part time for a butcher at $1 a week when he was nine, got a job in a bank at 16, was branch manager at 26. But at 33, he was earning only $40 a week. Then a fortune-telling friend read his hand; she saw him "talking triumphantly on a street corner and shaking thousands of hands." Camillien, who had an itch for politics anyway, joined the Conservative Club in Montreal's St. Mary constituency, was elected to the provincial legislature, won a name with his quick tongue.
When Alexandra Taschereau, then Quebec premier and scion of one of Quebec's old families, twitted Houde for his lack of culture, he retorted: "I may not have everything that was given to the honorable prime minister. [But] if he had started where I started he would not be where he is today, nor would he be where I am. I am the beginning. He is the end of a race."