Log Cabin Chronicles

Old Quebec City

Photograph/John Mahoney

QUEBEC AFFAIRS

PETER BLACK

Slow track to the top

Daniel Johnson Sr.'s rise to power could hardly be described as mercurial -- more like molasses uphill.

He served as an ordinary member of the Quebec legislature for ten years before Maurice Duplessis finally named him to his Union Nationale cabinet. When Le Chef dropped dead in the remote mining town of Schefferville in September, 1959, it was not Johnson who replaced him, but Paul Sauvé.

When Sauvé too, died suddenly, after a New Year's levée, on his 114th day as premier, Antonio Barrette took his place and promptly led the UN to defeat at the hands of Jean Lesage's Liberal Dream Team.

(It's been argued that Sauvé's death profoundly changed the course of Canadian history. Not only did his death open the door to Lesage's Liberals, the loss of such a staunch ally of John Diefenbaker effectively doomed Dief's floundering Tory government in Quebec and ultimately led to its defeat in the national election of 1963.)

At last it was Johnson's turn.

Named leader in 1961, he got to rally the spent UN forces in opposition to the gleaming Quiet Revolution juggernaut with the mesmerizingly charismatic Lesage at the helm. The UN took a licking in the snap vote Lesage called in 1962 and Johnson seemed doomed to be an asterisk of history.

But in the 1966 election, in one of the most stunning upsets in Canadian voting history, Johnson beat the stunned Liberals by six seats and became premier of Quebec, 20 years after he was first elected to the legislature. Unfortunately for Johnson, he only got to savour his triumph for two years, during which he had a fabled spat with then-justice minister Pierre Trudeau at a federal-provincial conference.

Johnson died of a heart attack in September, 1968, while on a visit to a hydro dam north of Baie Comeau. (Note to would-be Quebec premiers -- don't go into the backwoods.)

This brief bio sketch is an attempt to explain why Quebec Liberal Leader Jean Charest, in a recent magazine interview, names the indefatigable Johnson as his political role model, not the flashy, fiery Lesage. There is also Charest's breeding as a UN conservative, but that's another story.

"Daniel Johnson Sr. is probably the one who traveled the longest and most difficult road to become premier of Quebec. He inspires me," Charest confesses in the current edition of L'actualité.

And inspiration, it would seem, is what Charest needs as he scans the political landscape that lies ahead of him for the next few years.

Charest has now into the third year of his emergency transplant as the new Tory blue heart pulsing in the blood red body of the Quebec Liberal Party. There are some who say the transplant has yet to take and there are troubling signs of rejection.

Nevertheless, unless he's telling bold-face lies, Charest is committed to the goal of becoming premier of Quebec, if not in 2002, then 2006, when he'll be all of 48 years old -- he turns 42 on June 24, la fete nationale.

The political strategist in Charest already may have conceded the next election to Lucien Bouchard, and unless he and his PQ government blunder badly, the odds are fair to good Bouchard will win another term. Bouchard of course is the PQ's best asset and as long as his hold on Quebec remains strong, he'll be hard to beat.

Daniel Johnson Sr. may have felt the same way Jean Charest feels now, relegated to the sidelines while the governing party basks in popularity. But he too played the long game, realizing that opposition largely means harmlessly biding one's time until the party in power stumbles or burns itself out. And unless Quebec reverts to Alberta-like one-party rule, alternance virtually guarantees a Liberal government in the next decade.

There are many wrinkles to the Charest prognosis, however.

The wild card of a referendum on sovereignty during the current PQ term cannot be discounted. Nor can an orderly succession in the PQ be ruled out, in which Bouchard hands off to a popular minister such as Health Minister Pauline Marois or Education Minister François Legault.

Critics may say Charest hasn't done enough, fast enough to improve the Liberal party's fortunes. But by Daniel Johnson Sr.'s standards, Charest is on the fast track to the premier's chair.

CBC logo Peter Black is a writer living in Quebec City, where he is the producer of Quebec A.M. -- CBC Radio's popular English-language morning show (91.7 FM, 6-9, Mon.-Fri).


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