Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis, QC (French pronunciation: [mɔʁis lə nɔblɛ dyplɛsi]; April 20, 1890 – September 7, 1959), byname "Le Chef" ([lə ʃɛf], "The Boss"), was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 16th premier of Quebec. A conservative, nationalist, populist, anti-communist, anti-unionist and fervent Catholic, Duplessis and his party, the Union Nationale, dominated provincial politics from the 1920s to the 1950s. With a total of 18 years and 82 days in office, he remains the longest-serving premier in Quebec history.
Son of Nérée Duplessis, a lawyer who served as a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Maurice studied law in Montreal and became a member of the Bar of Quebec in 1913. He then returned to his home town of Trois-Rivières, where he founded a successful legal consultancy. Duplessis narrowly lost his first campaign for the Trois-Rivières seat in the 1923 election, but managed to get elected in 1927 as a Conservative MLA. His rhetorical skills helped him become the leader of the Official Opposition in the Legislative Assembly in 1933 in the place of Camillien Houde. As opposition leader, he agreed to a coalition with Paul Gouin's Action libérale nationale (ALN), which they called the Union Nationale. It lost in 1935 but gained a majority the following year as Gouin retired from politics and Duplessis took over the leadership, thus breaking almost 40 years of uninterrupted rule by the Quebec Liberal Party. In addition to his premiership duties, Duplessis served as attorney general and briefly held other ministerial posts as well.
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