1. 12th prime Minister of Canada: Louis St-Laurent
BY Ahmad Ali

2. Birth
Louis St-Laurent was born on 1 February 1882 in Compton, Quebec, a village in the Eastern Townships

3. His father was Jean-Baptiste-Moïse Saint-Laurent, a French-Canadian
His father was Jean-Baptiste-Moïse Saint-Laurent, a French-Canadian. His mother was Mary Anne Broderick, an English-speaking Irish Canadian.
He grew up fluently bilingual (English and French). His English had an Irish accent, while his gestures were French.
His childhood was that of a studious young boy and law-abiding citizen
His parent’s home served as a social centre for the village.
He often helped his parents run their shop, which was next to their home.
His childhood studies were done at home
He left Compton to study at a seminary where he received French and English education.
Childhood

4. Although his parents wanted him to become a priest, he opted to study law for his post secondary education at the University of Laval.
After post-secondary education during 1905, he married Jeanne Renault (1886– 1966) with whom he had two sons and three daughters.
Starting from 1905, he worked as a lawyer and steadily rose his reputation.
In 1913 he had built a 15-room house on the Grande Allée, Quebec City’s most fashionable street. This house, servants, and an automobile (acquired in 1916) were easily within his means, because of his good career reputation.
Early life

5. Education His primary childhood education was done at home
He left Compton in 1896 to enter the Séminaire Saint-Charles-Borromée in Sherbrooke. It is at this seminary that he distinguished himself as an active and excellent bilingual student. He earned his degree and graduated in 1903.
He then moved on to law school at Université Laval in Quebec where he studied under some of the city’s most prominent Conservative lawyers. St- Laurent graduated at the top of his class in and won the Governor General’s Medal. He was also offered Laval’s first Rhodes scholarship, but refused it.
Education

6. St-Laurent first began his law when he was accepted a in the office of a prominent Quebec City lawyer, Louis-Philippe Pelletier, at $50 a month. Because of the expenses of marriage and having a family, St-Laurent quit his job at Pelletier’s firm.
Instead, at the beginning of 1909, he formed a partnership with Antonin Galipeault, a young lawyer with political and reliably Liberal prospects. Galipeault happily accepted St-Laurent because he was fluently bilingual and a hark worker.
When Galipeault was elected to the legislature in February 1909, St-Laurent took over much of the firm’s ordinary business and the firm expanded. Eventually St- Laurent found himself specializing in commercial law.
Career-part 1

7. In 1914 St-Laurent and his partners moved to impressive quarters in the Imperial Bank Building on Rue Saint-Pierre. It was also in 1914 that he became a professor of law at Laval. By this time, he was earning $10,000 a year.
By the 1920s, his work extended to cases before the Supreme Court of Canada. By 1923, St- Laurent was being frequently retained by the governments of both Canada and Quebec, sometimes on constitutional cases. St-Laurent became so successful that he was able to join the select and highly elite lawyers who pleaded before Canada’s highest court of appeals, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, England.
Career part 2

8. Politics and government part 1
Due to high recommendations, King recruited St. Laurent to his World War II cabinet as Minister of Justice. St. Laurent agreed to go to Ottawa out of a sense of duty, but only on the understanding that his position into politics was temporary and that he would return to Quebec as a lawyer at the conclusion of the war.
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 (foreign minister) in In this role, St-Laurent represented Canada at many conferences that insured Canada’s participation in the United Nations.
Politics and government part 1

9. Politics and government part 2
St. Laurent became party leader in 1948 and won the 1949 election with 193 seats. At the age of 66, Louis St. Laurent became the prime minister of Canada.
St-Laurent led the Liberals to another powerful majority in the 1953 federal election. While the Liberals lost several seats, they still had 111 more seats than the Tories, enabling them to dominate the Canadian House of Commons.
Politics and government part 2

10. St-Laurent took away unnecessary wartime military taxes and instead payed back all of Canada's debts accumulated during both World Wars and the Great Depression.
St-Laurent expanded Canada's social programs, including social welfare programs such as family allowances, old age pensions, government funding of university and post-secondary education, and an early form of Medicare called “Hospital Insurance” which covered 98.8% Canadians by 1963
Contributions part 1

11. St-Laurent modernized and established new social and industrial policies for the country:
Universalization of old-age pensions for all Canadians aged seventy and above (1951)
Old age assistance for needy Canadians aged sixty-five and above (1951)
Allowances for the blind (1951) and the disabled (1954)
Amendments to the National Housing Act (1954) which provided federal government financing to non-profit organisations as well as the provinces for the renovation or construction of housing for students, the disabled, the elderly, and families on low incomes
unemployment assistance (1956) for unemployed people on welfare who did not have unemployment insurance benefits.
During his last term, as Prime Minister, St-Laurent's government used $100 million in death taxes to establish the Canada Council to support research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Contributions part 2

12. In 1949, St-Laurent ended the practice of appealing Canadian legal cases to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of Great Britain. He also negotiated the British North America (No. 2) Act, giving the Canadian Parliament the authority to amend portions of the constitution. Also in 1949, St-Laurent and Premier Joey Smallwood negotiated the entry of Newfoundland into Confederation.
In 1952, he advised Queen Elizabeth II to appoint Vincent Massey as the first Canadian-born Governor-General.
St-Laurent's government introduced the policy of "Equalization payments" which redistributes taxation revenues between provinces to assist the poorer provinces in delivering government programs and services (1956)
The government also engaged in massive public works and infrastructure projects such as building the Trans-Canada Highway (1949), the St. Lawrence Seaway (1954) and the Trans-Canada Pipeline.
Contributions part 3

13. International relations
Was one of the leading founders who signed an established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a military alliance in 1949.
Under his leadership, Canada supported the United Nations (U.N.) in the Korean War and committed the third largest overall contribution of troops, ships and aircraft to the U.N. forces to the conflict.
In 1956, under his direction, St-Laurent's Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson, helped solve the Suez Crisis in 1956 between Great Britain, France, Israel and Egypt. This helped create the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to establish peacekeeping.
St-Laurent was an early supporter of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee's proposal to transform the British Commonwealth from a club of white dominions into a multi-racial partnership.
It was St-Laurent who drafted the London Declaration, recognizing King George VI as Head of the Commonwealth as a means of allowing India to remain in the international association once it became a republic.
International relations

14. Louis Stephen St-Laurent died from heart failure on 25 July 1973, in Quebec City, Quebec, aged 91 and was buried at Saint Thomas d'Aquin Cemetery in his hometown of Compton, Quebec.
Death

15. Bibliography
Wikipedia contributors. “Louis St. Laurent.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 8 Jan. 2017‎. Web. 8 Jan aurent
Robert Bothwell. "Biography – ST- LAURENT, LOUIS-STEPHEN – Volume XX ( ) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography." Home – Dictionary of Canadian Biography. University of Toronto/Université Laval, Web. 08 Jan rent_louis_stephen_20E.html.

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