Gédéon Ouimet

Gédéon Ouimet

Gédéon Ouimet (born June 2, 1823 in Sainte-Rose (now a district of Laval (Québec) ), † April 23, 1905 in Saint-Hilaire ) was a Canadian politician . He was the second prime minister of the province of Québec and ruled from February 27, 1873 to September 22, 1874. During this time he was chairman of the Parti conservateur du Québec . From 1895 until his death he was a member of the Legislative Council of Québec .

biography

Gédéon Ouimet was born the 26th child of a farmer. In 1834 he came to the Séminaire de Saint-Hyacinthe and continued school in 1837 at the Petit Séminaire de Montréal. He then studied law and received 1844 admission as a lawyer .

Ouimet then opened a law firm in Saint-Michel-de-Vaudreuil. In 1850 he married Marie-Jeanne Pellan, with whom he continued the family tradition of having children - seven of their children reached adulthood. From 1852 to 1854, Ouimet was mayor of his village. He then joined an existing law firm in Montreal , wrote articles for the legal publication Lower Canada Jurist and became a member of the Liberal Conservative Party. Ouimet took part in the elections to the Lower House of the Province of Canada in 1858 and was able to prevail in the Beauharnois constituency. In the subsequent elections of 1861, however, he lost and turned back entirely to his legal work, which he had never completely given up during his parliamentary term. In the first elections to the Québec National Assembly in 1867, Ouimet stood as a candidate for the Parti conservateur du Québec and was elected by acclamation in the Deux-Montagnes constituency. Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau , Québec's first Prime Minister, accepted him as Attorney General in the provincial government. In this position he exerted a great influence on legislation.

On February 27, 1873, Ouimet finally succeeded Chauveau. He also took over the chairmanship of the party and held the post of education minister at the same time. At first he tried to continue the policy of his predecessor, but the following year he was embroiled in the Tanneries scandal . The successor Ouimets as Attorney General, George Irvine, and the Speaker of the Legislative Council , John Jones Ross came back. Unwilling to go to the trouble of finding successors for those who had resigned from among the English-speaking minority and dismissing his French-speaking ministers involved in the affair, Ouimet would wait for his treasurer Joseph Gibb Robertson to return. His resignation, which was also carried out, prompted him to finally give up his office on September 22, 1874, his successor being Charles-Eugène Boucher de Boucherville .

Ouimet remained as a member of parliament and practiced his learned profession again. In the elections of 1875 he again ran for the electoral district of Deux-Montagnes and was able to secure his stay in parliament through his victory. The judge entrusted with the investigation of the Tanneries scandal personally absolved him of all guilt. Ouimet was entrusted with the function of superintendent in the Conseil de l'instruction (English Council of Public Instruction), the council responsible for the state schools. In 1895 the provincial government approved his wish to resign from this office for reasons of age, but he remained a member of the council.

Ouimet became a member of the Legislative Council in the same year, his predecessor now taking his old position of superintendent. Ouimet died in 1905 at the age of 81 after a long illness in the house of his son Gustave and was buried in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery in Montreal.

Web links

• Gédéon Ouimet . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
• Biography on the Québec National Assembly website (French)