Union nationale

Union nationale, the party of Maurice Duplessis, appears in the novel both as the governing political force in Quebec and as the banner under which the Bolduc family asserts its local power in Touladi. Commonly called the Blues, it is presented through campaign rhetoric and the actions of its local partisans: its victory at the polls is real, but in Touladi the election leaves behind intimidation, violence, and a damaged community rather than uncomplicated triumph.

Government and Political Identity

Union nationale had been carried to power on August 8, a change that strengthened the position of the Bolducs, its zealous supporters in Touladi. The party’s provincial success thus has an immediate local consequence: it gives added weight to a family already contesting the D’Anjou influence in the village. The novel frames the Bolducs’ advantage as a meeting of party alignment and local power, not simply as a matter of campaign preference.

At the end of May, Duplessis opened the election campaign with a forceful address at the Château Frontenac. He argued that Quebec’s interests and resources needed protection from encroachment by Ottawa, and presented himself as champion of Quebec, its language, and its faith. The appeal gives the party a recognizable political identity in the novel: it claims to defend Quebec against federal pressure, and grounds that claim in a language of collective protection. The narrative also places this public message beside the concrete conduct of party supporters in Touladi, where political loyalty is bound up with influence over local institutions and the treatment of opponents.

The Blues in Touladi

Roland Bolduc, his brother Romuald, and their associates immediately campaigned for the Blues. The opposition gathered around Clovis Lacroix, a schoolteacher whose mother was a D’Anjou. He organized young supporters of the Reds and sought to counter the Bolducs’ campaign. The division therefore crossed both party lines and family affiliation: Clovis’s D’Anjou connection did not prevent him from leading the local opposition, while the Bolducs’ support for Union nationale linked the party’s provincial ascendancy to their standing in the village.

The imbalance between the factions appears in the pressure brought to bear on Clovis. The school board president, described as a Bolduc dependent, warned that Clovis risked losing his teaching post if he continued his political activity. The warning followed veiled pressure from the priest and more direct threats from Roland. The incident shows how a public position such as schoolteacher could become vulnerable when local political authority and control of an institution overlapped. Clovis answered by resigning, rather than allowing the threat to silence his campaigning.

Roland’s public confidence was equally blunt. He disparaged the young Reds and predicted that they would be crushed; Gilbert Rougeau, his strong-arm man, joined in the mockery. The account does not establish that the party’s provincial leadership directed such conduct. Instead, it distinguishes Duplessis’s campaign appeal from the Bolduc network’s local methods, showing how the party’s support in Touladi operated through influential families, allies, and pressure on a dissident teacher.

Election Day and Its Consequences

On election day, the conflict turned into a violent confrontation. Roland, angry after being opposed by the young Reds, considered using a firearm against them. When the young men barricaded themselves in his garage, their stated purpose was to prevent the Blues from getting voters drunk and thereby manipulating their votes. They planned to cast their ballots only at the end of the day, after that opportunity had passed. This episode places electoral competition at the intersection of formal voting and alleged informal coercion: the young men sought to preserve their ability to vote freely by physically obstructing the tactic they feared.

The encounter ended with Roland gravely injured. News of the accident spread through the village and halted campaigning and propaganda on both sides. The voting continued in a somber atmosphere, and although Duplessis’s victory was announced that evening, no one in Touladi celebrated. The Bolducs circulated news that Roland was hovering between life and death, to the D’Anjous’ dismay. The local outcome thus complicates the party’s electoral success: the Blues won, but the victory did not resolve the village’s antagonism or produce a public display of unity.

The consequences extended beyond election night. The next day, Clovis was arrested for attempted murder, handcuffed by the sheriff and accompanied by Gilbert Rougeau, who served as a local constable. Clovis spent several months in the Rimouski penitentiary before his cousin, the Quebec lawyer Jean D’Anjou, secured his defense. He missed the start of the 1952 school year; despite efforts to keep a criminal record from following him, he could not return to teaching. He eventually took work in Quebec City as a proofreader and bookstore clerk, and later moved to Montreal, where he became involved in beatnik and revolutionary circles close to the Quebec Liberation Front. The novel traces this altered future from the local election conflict without equating every later development with Union nationale itself.

Narrative Significance

Union nationale connects provincial political language to the intimate scale of family rivalry, employment, and electoral pressure. Duplessis’s campaign presents the party as a protector of Quebec, while the Touladi storyline shows how allegiance to the Blues could reinforce the Bolducs’ local standing and make an opponent’s livelihood precarious. The contrast is not simply between public rhetoric and private behavior: it is between the broad claim to defend a community and the narrow, contested mechanisms through which influence is exercised in one village.

The election’s ending preserves that tension. The party’s leader wins, yet the community’s silence and Clovis’s lasting exclusion from teaching mark the cost of the local struggle. Union nationale therefore functions as more than a label on campaign posters: it is the political alignment through which the novel stages a clash between organized local power and a younger opposition, while keeping the distinction clear between the provincial party’s victory and the violence and pressure carried out by its Touladi partisans.