Wilfrid Laurier Biography

Laurier Photo“I have had before me as a pillar of fire,” said Wilfrid Laurier, “a policy of true Canadianism, of moderation, of reconciliation.”

Conservative Quebec thought at first he was much too liberal. Loyally British English Canada thought he must be too French. Even some of his parliamentary colleagues thought he was too young, too intellectual, and maybe even too lazy to succeed as prime minister. But his passionate commitment to Canada as a partnership of French and English made him one of Canada’s great leaders and the first francophone prime minister.

First elected to the House of Commons in 1874, the young lawyer from the Eastern Townships of Quebec first distinguished himself mostly by his debonair charm. But when his fundamental commitments were touched, Wilfrid Laurier could respond with passion and with conviction. In 1877 he confronted the bishops of Quebec with his defence of political liberalism, and succeeded. In 1886 he went to Toronto and told a hostile crowd why, if they had been born among the Métis, they too might have carried a rifle with Louis Riel. His commitment to tolerance and to peaceful accommodation marked him indelibly as a leader. In 1896, he swept to power and remained at the top for fifteen tumultuous years.

His years in power became known as “the Laurier boom.” Canadian industry and resource development surged ahead, immigrants flooded into the country, and new provinces were created in the west. Laurier famously said he preferred “sunny ways” over stormy confrontations, and he skillfully sought compromise for the sake of unity whenever he could. But at the end of his career, when fundamental disagreements over Canada’s role in the First World War threatened to tear the country apart, he stood once again for tolerance and accommodation and minority interests, even at the cost of seeing his Liberal Party temporarily torn apart.

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