LAURIER, SIR WILFRID (1841-1919), Canadian states man, was born on Nov. 20, 1841, at St. Lin, Quebec, of French Roman Catholic parents. He attended the elementary school of his native parish and for eight or nine months the Protestant elementary school at New Glasgow to learn English ; his associa tion with the Presbyterian family with whom he lived during this period had a permanent influence on his mind. At 12 years of age he entered L'Assomption college, which he left in 1860 to study law at McGill university. At graduation he delivered the valedictory address which, like so many of his later utterances, closed with an appeal for sympathy and union between the French and English races as the secret of the future of Canada. He prac tised law in Montreal, but owing to ill-health soon removed to Athabaska, where he opened a law office and edited Le Defricheur.
While at Montreal Laurier joined the Institut Canadien, a literary and scientific society which, owing to its liberal dis cussions and the fact that certain books upon its shelves were on the Index, was finally condemned by Roman Catholic authorities. Le Defricheur was an organ of extreme French sentiment, opposed to confederation, and also under ecclesiastical censure. One of its few surviving copies contains an article by Laurier opposing con federation as a scheme designed in the interest of the English colonies in North America, and certain to prove the tomb of the French and of Lower Canada.
Laurier was elected to the Quebec legislature in 1871, and his first speech aroused attention both by its literary qualities and the attractive manner and logical method of the speaker. He was equally successful in the Dominion House of Commons, to which he was elected by a small majority in 1874. During his first two years in the federal parliament his chief speeches were in defence of Riel and the French halfbreeds who were concerned in the Red river rebellion, and on fiscal questions. Sir John Macdonald, then in opposition, had committed his party to a protectionist policy, and Laurier, notwithstanding that the Liberals stood for a low tariff, avowed himself to be "a moderate protectionist," be cause he felt that a young country needed protection for the de velopment of its manufactures. In the bye-election which followed Laurier's admission to the cabinet he was defeated—the only per sonal defeat he ever sustained ; but a few weeks later he was re turned for Quebec East, a constituency which he held thenceforth by enormous majorities. In 1878 his party went out of office and
Sir John Macdonald entered upon a long term of power, with protection as the chief feature of his policy, to which was added afterwards the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway.
After the defeat of the Mackenzie government, Laurier sat in Parliament as the leader of the Quebec Liberals and first lieutenant to the Hon. Edward Blake, who succeeded Mackenzie in the leadership of the party. He was associated with Blake in his sustained opposition to high tariff, and to the Conservative plan for the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, and was a conspicuous figure in the long struggle between Sir John Mac donald and the Liberal leaders to settle the territorial limits of Ontario and the legislative rights of the provinces under the con stitution. He was also in conflict with the ultramontane element in Quebec, which was closely allied with Conservative politicians.
In 1887, upon the resignation of Blake, Laurier became Liberal leader. He was the first French Canadian to lead a federal party in Canada since confederation. Apart from the fear that he would arouse prejudice in the English-speaking provinces, the second Riel rebellion was then still fresh in the public mind, and the fierce nationalist agitation which Riel's execution had excited in Quebec had hardly subsided. Laurier could hardly have come to the leadership at a more inopportune moment, but from the first he won great popularity even in the English-speaking provinces, and showed unusual capacity for leadership. His party was beaten in the first general election held after he became leader (1891), but even with its policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States, and with Sir John Macdonald still at the head of the Conservative party, it was beaten by only a small majority. Five years later, with unrestricted reciprocity relegated to the background, and with a platform which demanded tariff revision so adjusted as not to endanger established interests, and which opposed the federal measure to restore in Manitoba the separate or Roman Catholic schools which the provincial government had abolished, Laurier carried the country, and in July 1896 was called by Lord Aberdeen, then governor-general, to form a government.