This day in history

Half a century ago today, Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis — and with him, effectively, duplessisme — was eulogized and buried in Trois-Rivières. CP reported:

The great of the land gathered here today to pay their final respects to Premier Maurice Duplessis.

The funeral was the biggest Trois-Rivieres has ever seen. The provincial government alone reserved 800 of the 1,200 seats in the Trois-Rivieres cathedral.

Most businesses were closed.

Following the services the cortege wound to St. Louis cemetery, on a hill overlooking Trois-Rivieres, the premier's home town and favourite city.

Duplessis died three days earlier in the Iron Ore Company chalet at Schefferville, a stone's throw from the Labrador border. A legend had grown up, which Duplessis did nothing to dispel, that he once urinated across the line to express his opinion of the 1927 Privy Council decision — although another legend has it that M. Duplessis may have had certain anatomical difficulties in performing such a show of contempt.

Anyway, Duplessis is dead and buried.

So is duplessisme.

At least, it is in Quebec.