Camilien Houde - his story

  Seven term, 17 year Mayor, Camillien Houde, Aka Mr. Montreal marches in the St. Jean Baptiste Society parade, surely sometime during his post-internment career as Mayor of Montreal, from 1944 to 1954. Houde became a big time quipster and cut up during those times - for example when he famously told the Queen in front of cheering fans "some of those cheers are for you."
   He was born in 1889 and first lived in a two room tenement flat on St. Martin Street near the Grand Trunk Railway tracks, an area which has long been torn down and replaced by the Ville Marie Expressway a short stroll southwest of Guy and Dorchester. His first job was doing deliveries for a butcher for $1 a week and he became a bank manager at 26, a job which he quit because it paid too little. He was elected to the provincial legislature in 1923 and became Mayor of Montreal in 1928.
   While Mayor he was also a provincial MNA and leader of the Conservative party of Quebec but he did little to advance the cause and quit that in 1932. He lost as Mayor in 1932 and 1936 but won in 1948.
   He was also elected to the federal House of Commons in 1949 by a slim majority as an Independent but showed little interest in federal politics and only showed up a few times and didn't run in 1953.
  He only started learning English in his late 30s but once he learned he spoke it very well.
   He remained mayor but quit as Mayor in 1936 four months prior to the end of his mandate due to a financial dispute with Premier Duplessis. The two later patched it up and became friends. He was interned in 1940 for urging the population not to register for WWII military service and was re-elected Mayor upon his release in 1944.
  He married twice, fathering two daughters with the first wife and one with the second.
  He lived on the Plateau and moved to the Mount Royal Hotel where he lived the last years of his life which ended in 1958 when he was aged 69.  In the photo, he is flanked by N.N. Nantel and Mathieu President and VP of the Bourget Section of the St. Jean Baptiste Society.