Louis St. Laurent


Louis Stephen St. Laurent was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 12th prime minister of Canada from 1948 to 1957.
Born in Compton, Quebec, St. Laurent was a prominent lawyer and supporter of the Liberal Party of Canada. In 1941, he entered politics as minister of justice under Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, and in 1942 he won a by-election in the riding of Quebec East. In 1946, St. Laurent became secretary of state for external affairs and served in that post until two years later, when he became leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister, succeeding King who had retired. St. Laurent led the party to back-to-back landslide majority governments in the federal elections of 1949 and 1953.
St. Laurent was the second French Canadian to serve as prime minister after Wilfrid Laurier. He expanded the Canadian welfare state through the creation of equalization payments, the introduction of the registered retirement savings plan, and the establishment of the Hospital Insurance program; the latter an early form of Medicare. His government also initiated major public works projects, including the Trans-Canada Highway, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Canso Causeway, and the Trans-Canada Pipeline. In 1953, his government authorized the High Arctic relocation, which resulted in the forced displacement of 92 Inuit to modern-day Nunavut. In foreign policy, St. Laurent's government oversaw Canada's entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and committed the third largest overall contribution of troops, ships, and aircraft to the Korean War. In 1956, St. Laurent's secretary of state for external affairs, Lester B. Pearson, helped resolve the Suez Crisis by proposing the United Nations Emergency Force, for which Pearson received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize.
St. Laurent earned the nickname "Uncle Louis" as he was popular among the general public throughout his tenure, and the popularity of his government led many to predict that he would easily win the 1957 federal election. However, his decision to rush the 1956 debate on the Trans-Canada Pipeline by invoking closure led some to believe that the Liberals had become arrogant from their two decades in power. In an upset, the party was narrowly defeated by John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives, ending nearly 22 years of Liberal rule. Shortly after his defeat, St. Laurent retired from politics and returned to his law practice. He is ranked highly in rankings of Canadian prime ministers. According to historian Donald Creighton, St. Laurent was "eminently moderate, cautious...and a strong Canadian nationalist."

Early life, family, and education (1882–1905)

Louis St. Laurent was born on February 1, 1882, in Compton, Quebec, a village in the Eastern Townships, to Jean-Baptiste-Moïse Saint-Laurent, a French Canadian, and Mary Anne Broderick, an Irish Canadian. Louis was the oldest of seven children. At the time of his birth, Compton was mainly English-speaking, though it would slowly become majority French between 1901 and 1911. St. Laurent grew up fluently bilingual, as his father spoke French while his mother only spoke English. His English had a noticeable Irish brogue, while his gestures were French. St. Laurent was also interested in English literature as a child. The St. Laurent home would serve as a social centre for the village.
St. Laurent's father, Jean-Baptiste, was a Compton shopkeeper and a staunch supporter of the Liberal Party of Canada and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Jean-Baptiste would unsuccessfully run in a provincial by-election in 1894. When Laurier led the Liberals to victory in the 1896 election, 14-year-old Louis relayed the election returns from the telephone in his father's store.
St. Laurent received degrees from Séminaire Saint-Charles-Borromée and Université Laval. He was offered, but declined, a Rhodes Scholarship upon this graduation from Laval in 1905. In 1908, he married Jeanne Renault, with whom he had two sons and three daughters, including Jean-Paul St. Laurent.

Legal career (1905–1942)

St. Laurent worked as a lawyer from 1905 to 1942. He also became a professor of law at Université Laval in 1914. St. Laurent practised corporate, commercial and constitutional law in Quebec and became one of the country's most respected counsel. St. Laurent served as president of the Canadian Bar Association from 1930 to 1932.
In 1907, St. Laurent gained some attention in Quebec after he made a move that was viewed unusual at the time: he put a priest and nuns on the witness stand and cross-examined them. This occurred during his engagement in a case contesting the will of a woman who had left everything she owned to her parish priest. In 1912, St. Laurent won a case against Canadian Pacific. In 1913, he was one of the defending counsel for Harry Kendall Thaw, who was seeking to avoid extradition from Quebec.
In 1923, St. Laurent opened his own law office. In 1926, in a test case before the Supreme Court, St. Laurent argued for religious minority rights. He was in favour of Jewish demand for representation on Montreal’s Protestant Board of School Commissioners and he also supported a separate Jewish system of schools. Though St. Laurent's bid to have Jewish representation in the school board was unsuccessful, the province of Quebec recognized the right to establish separate schools for non-Christians.
Though an ardent Liberal, Louis remained aloof from active politics for much of his life, focusing instead on his legal career and family. He became one of Quebec's leading lawyers and was so highly regarded that he was twice offered a seat as a justice on the Supreme Court of Canada, offers he declined.

Cabinet minister (1942–1948)

Minister of Justice

It was not until he was nearly 60 that St. Laurent finally agreed to enter politics when Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King appealed to his sense of duty in late 1941. King's Quebec lieutenant, Ernest Lapointe, had died in November 1941. King believed that his Quebec lieutenant had to be strong enough and respected enough to help deal with the volatile conscription issue. King had been a junior politician when he witnessed the Conscription Crisis of 1917 during World War I and wanted to prevent the same divisions from threatening his government. Many recommended St. Laurent for the post. On these recommendations, King recruited St. Laurent to cabinet as Minister of Justice, Lapointe's former post, on 9 December. St. Laurent agreed to go to Ottawa out of a sense of duty, but only on the understanding that his foray into politics was temporary and that he would return to Quebec at the conclusion of the war. In February 1942, he won a by-election for Quebec East, Lapointe's former riding, which had been previously held by Laurier. St. Laurent supported King's decision to introduce conscription in 1944. His support prevented more than a handful of Quebec Liberal Members of Parliament from leaving the party and was therefore crucial to keeping the government and the party united. St. Laurent was King's right-hand man.
St. Laurent represented Canada at the 1945 San Francisco Conference that helped lead to the founding of the United Nations.
In 1944, St. Laurent oversaw the creation of family allowances. In 1945, St. Laurent supported a program of economic reconstruction and more social welfare, which consisted of federal-provincial cost-sharing schemes for old-age pensions and hospital and medical insurance. Some officials were worried that these sweeping changes would cause disputes between the federal and provincial governments, but St. Laurent believed that Canadians identified with and supported these programs, stating that " were constantly made aware of the services which provincial governments render while they tended to think of the central government as one imposing burdens such as taxation and conscription."
In September 1945, Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko unexpectedly arrived at St. Laurent's office with evidence of a Soviet spy ring operating in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Known as the Gouzenko Affair, the revelations and subsequent investigations over the following few years showed major Soviet espionage in North America.

Minister of external affairs

King came to regard St. Laurent as his most trusted minister and natural successor. He persuaded St. Laurent that it was his duty to remain in government following the war in order to help with the construction of a post-war international order and promoted him to the position of secretary of state for external affairs in 1946, a portfolio King had always kept for himself.
In February 1947, St. Laurent delivered a speech at the University of Toronto describing "the foundations of Canadian policy in world affairs", which Canadian former diplomat Peter Boehm described in 2026 as having "set out the parameters of the rules-based international order". The principles he described in the speech included "respect for the rule of law" and a Canadian “willingness to accept international responsibilities.”

United Nations

St. Laurent, compelled by his belief that the UN would be ineffective in times of war and armed conflict without some military means to impose its will, advocated the adoption of a UN military force. This force he proposed would be used in situations that called for both tact and might to preserve peace or prevent combat. In 1956, this idea was actualized by St. Laurent and his secretary of state for external affairs, Lester B. Pearson, in the development of UN peacekeepers that helped to put an end to the Suez Crisis.
St. Laurent also believed that the UN was failing to provide international security from communism from the Soviet Union. He therefore proposed an Atlantic security organization that would supplement the UN. That would become reality in 1949, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded. St. Laurent is seen as one of the first people in power to propose such an institution.