Jean Drapeau - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

The son of Joseph-Napoléon Drapeau and Alberta (Berthe) Martineau, Jean Drapeau was born in Montreal in 1916. His father, an insurance broker, city councillor and election worker for the Union nationale, introduced him to politics. Jean Drapeau studied law at the Université de Montréal.

Drapeau was a protégé of nationalist priest Lionel Groulx in the 1930s and 1940s, and was a member of André Laurendeau's anti-conscription Ligue pour la défense du Canada. In 1942, he ran as a candidate of the nationalist Bloc Populaire, which opposed Canadian conscription during World War II, in a federal by-election (see Second Conscription Crisis). Drapeau lost the election. He was also a Bloc populaire candidate in the 1944 provincial election but was badly defeated in his Montreal constituency.

He began his practice as a criminal lawyer in Montreal in 1944. During the Asbestos Strike of 1949, he took on the legal defence of some of the strikers.

In 1945, he married Marie-Claire Boucher. They had three sons.

Read more about this topic:  Jean Drapeau

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:

    Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
    James Thurber (1894–1961)

    I have given the best of myself and the best work of my life to help obtain political freedom for women, knowing that upon this rests the hope not only of the freedom of men but of the onward civilization of the world.
    Mary S. Anthony (1827–1907)

    Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.
    Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)