Talk:Premiership of Maurice Duplessis/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Dylnuge (talk · contribs) 00:19, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Hey Szmenderowiecki, I'm picking this and Maurice Duplessis up as part of the GAN backlog drive. I left a general opening comment there, but please do let me know if you'd prefer to have separate reviewers look at these articles! Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 00:19, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Initial remarks: Unsurprisingly, similar overall initial remarks to the ones I made at Maurice Duplessis. Stable, illustrated, no obvious issues with any GA criteria, referencing looks excellent (I noticed source footnotes and list of books are flipped between these two articles; I assume that's due to maintaining existing CITEVAR styles, and of course it's not an issue in either article). Earwig has a few more flags, but these are all short phrases and official titles, not copyvio. Lead overall is appropriately concise and comprehensive—I'd break the opening sentence into two sentences, but otherwise everything looks good here. No concerns with respect to broadness, focus, prose quality. I'll start on Maurice Duplessis, but may be simultaneously leaving comments on both of these pages. Let me know if you'd prefer me to tackle this in a different way! Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 01:54, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

General Comments

• Notes similar to the ones I left on Talk:Maurice Duplessis/GA2:
  • Still the occasional mixing in of Le Chef to refer to Duplessis, though I think it's less of a problem here than in Maurice Duplessis
  • I also see less inappropriate wikilinking here, though there's still some. In particular, the links that are just dates but go to elections are generally easter-egg like. Something like he lost a snap election in [[1939 Quebec general election|1939]] should be he lost a snap election in the [[1939 Quebec general election]] or at least he lost a [[1939 Quebec general election|snap election in 1939]]. A reader should be able to guess where the link is going to take them without hovering over it or clicking on it.
  • Couple tense issues; I fixed the ones I found but worth keeping an eye out for any I missed.
• Is the provincial autonomy a common turn-of-phrase? It reads to me as grammatically incorrect (i.e. I think it should just be "provincial autonomy"), but having seen it in both articles I'm wondering if I'm just missing something about how it's being used.

Oh, I think it should be without the article.

• The collapsed tables look a bit strange formatting-wise; specifically, they appear scrunched up in the corner of my screen until I uncollapse them (see File:Duplessis-table-collapsed.png and File:Duplessis-table-uncollapsed.png for screenshots of what I mean by this).

I get what you mean, but I'm not sure I can do anything with it. It should be something like p align="center", but because code on Wikipedia isn't exactly HTML, I don't know how I can implement this.

• This was in addition to the position of Premier of Quebec and the Attorney General of Quebec, to which position he appointed himself for the whole duration of his terms. — It's not entirely clear to me from the article if appointing himself to be Attorney General was an unusual move, but I'm assuming it was, in which case I feel like there should be more on this. Presumably there was reaction: criticism, support, etc. Did this require politicking or was this an unchecked authority the Premier had? Did this prompt a change in future governments (e.g. was there a later law that prevented this from recurring)?

As I explained in the previous review (Maurice Duplessis), the leader of the party establishes a cabinet they want, and the LtGov by convention accepts the cabinet. By the same convention, the LtGov can't object. Nobody cared to write about it as far as the sourcing went, so this basically says he assumed the roles of Premier and Attorney General. That's it.

• The law was far from ideal: trade unions were unwilling to embrace the scheme (they preferred collective bargaining instead, which led to agreements that were not regulated by the Fair Wage Act); the law excluded railway, agriculture and home servants; companies repeatedly requested exemptions from the regulations, and the government's application of the law was patchy or even used to suppress wage increases — This sentence feels like it's covering a lot at once, especially with the footnote; I think it could be split into several sentences, and I'd replace the parenthetical. Also why did collective bargaining lead to agreements not regulated by the Fair Wage act?

I split it in two. As for the last question - apparently that was the law. I imagine that the government thought that since trade unions were powerful enough to force the employers to change their behaviour (as opposed to a single worker), they could fight alone for the salaries and conditions deemed "reasonable". No source I consulted ever explained this.

• almost a fifth of workers were not paid what they were due — this feels worth expanding on; what was causing the workers not to get paid? What distinguished the workers who were getting paid and not getting paid? Was it intentional on the part of the Duplessis government?

The source doesn't say it explicitly what that "rapport du service de vérification" said about the numbers, or where we can access it. Obviously, being a government paper, we should consider it reliable for historical facts. There may be more answers in Histoire des normes du travail au Québec de 1885 à 2005 : de l'Acte des manufacturiers à la Loi sur les normes du travail, but I can't access it. So I assume the reasons were usual: lack of enforcement and lack of awareness of workers' rights.

• The article should mention when the Padlock Law enacted (at least the year, probably the month)

Done

• In the third paragraph of "Societal issues", was the anti-Semitism of the era provoked by or acknowledged by Duplessis in any way? How did he respond to the creation of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union, if at all?

The CCLU was a relatively minor organization that quickly faded into obscurity. There is no relation between it and the ACLU, which is huge. As for anti-Semitism, the only really relevant instance that could be tied to Duplessis was in the 1944 campaign and which I already describe. The scope of this article was to describe Duplessis's action (or inaction) in areas over which he had control. It was not to describe the general period from 1936 to 1959 and the moods of the society.

But speaking of the anti-Semitism, Duplessis isn't really remembered as an anti-Semite (I mean, Union Nationale admitted Jews, see Turchinsky, p. 315), but he hated communists. He also denied being one. It does not appear anywhere that he led something like an informal campaign against the Jews. But he most definitely slandered Jews when they were accused of being Communists or if they were Liberals, but there is no evidence that he hated Jews for being Jews.

• Citations are missing from the end of the third and fourth paragraphs of "Societal issues".

In para 3, Switzman v Elbling explains everything. In para 4, it's the 1939 election link.

• The hatnote at the bottom of the first government section seems a little awkward. I get what you're going for here—the opposition is technically out of scope for an article on Duplessis's Primership—but it might be better to have a short section summarizing key points with a "main article" hatnote at the top of it. If you think none of that detail belongs, I would still move the hatnote to the top of the Political atmosphere section.

I don't think anything belongs here, and that's not only because it is outside of the article's scope but because there is little to summarise.

• Citations are missing from the end of the first two paragraphs of "Political atmosphere"

The Saint-Aubin book covers most of what I wrote, so I changed this to a statement that he ruled until his death. The second sentence introduces content in the following paragraphs and as such does not need to be cited. The text in the later paragraphs tells the whole story.

• When did Duplessis get the nickname "Le Chef"?

No idea, I haven't found it anywhere. We know why he got it but not when. Conrad Black is silent. I don't think Rumilly mentions it, either. There appears to be no research whatsoever into this question.

Organization thoughts

Pulling this out from bullets because it's a more complex issue. I find the organization of the article a little muddled here. The article is effectively divided chronologically into "First government" and "Second government". The "Second government" portion in particular feels like it's covering stuff out of that chronology. For instance, "Style of governance" section begins by talking about Duplessis in 1936, and little in this section strikes me as specific to his second government. I'm also not totally sure it slots into "Political atmosphere", other than it being clearly not under "Economy"—that division feels a little unnatural to me.

There are cases where I think the split between the two governments hurts the ability of the article to present a clear narrative. For example, the Padlock law was in effect during the majority of both of Duplessis's governments. It is primarily covered in the first government section, so the article gives the impression that it was primarily a factor during his first government and not as prominent during the second. The "Media and censorship" section under the second government mentions it as background from the first government. The "Labor relations" section under second government mentions that it was increasingly used against trade activists and no longer being used against communists, but it's not clear when Duplessis's anti-communist persecution ended. Meanwhile it's under the first government that the Switzman v Elbling ruling striking down the law is mentioned, despite the fact that ruling came in 1957, towards the end of Duplessis's second government. There's no mention in the article of how that ruling affected Duplessis's government (was it the nominal end of a law that was no longer in active use? was it an abrupt end to one of Duplessis's primary tools of power?), but it feels inappropriate to suggest the first government section that primarily covers the law be expanded to include that. Ultimately I found myself wanting a section of the article that gave a clear timeline of the law, and instead was searching back and forth for mentions to connect the timeline. Reorganizing this might also make it clearer that there's missing information.

Chronological ordering isn't necessarily wrong here, but it's not the only option for organization. Looking at articles like Premiership of Gordon Brown (the only GA I found of this style) or Presidency of Ronald Reagan (not a GA, but decently organized), they're organized around policy themes, using chronological ordering internally within sections. I realize the discontinuity of Duplessis's governments makes that kind of organization more difficult, but I wonder if a section explicitly presenting the timeline followed by sections presenting the themes and policies of both governments would be a better way to organize this. You're far more of an expert on this than me, so I'll leave how (and whether) to incorporate this suggestion to you.

The real problem here is that his premiership was interrupted by five years of Adélard Godbout. My idea of organisation came from Premiership of John Edward Brownlee, a FA article about a premier in Alberta. It is also more thematic rather than chronological, and this is a much better organisation style than the French version I was translating from. (It is chronological, not policy-sorted, but reading the biography section of that good article is a total mess).

Now my criterion for covering more in the first part than the second one was this: if the policy that would frame the response to some issues his govt had was passed in the first term, I would cover it there. That's why the Padlock Law is mentioned in the first premiership part but not the second. Because the Padlock Law ostensibly was an anti-Communist law, I also mention all relevant info about Duplessis's persecution of Communists there, whether it was the first term or the second term, because the framework for persecution was set in the first law.

Now I wasn't really able to see if Duplessis-as-Attorney-General engaged in persecution of Communists with the same vigour as he did pre-WWII, but as far as I could see, he did. Duplessis was very strongly against Communism, and he believed that Communists infiltrated trade unions (which he didn't like anyway), so he cracked down on them as emanations of Communism. (Black, p. 300) Also, a padlock was in fact installed on the door of Switzman's rented apartment in 1949, so it's not like it was a dead letter.

In my view, it is important to split the first premiership from the second from the economic perspective, because 1936-1939 and 1944-1959 were totally different - one was a crisis period, the other a period of prosperity, and economic policies were different. So I don't think it's entirely right to pile them one on another.

I am, however, open to any proposal to rearrange the whole article. I just want your proposal based on the content in the article. IMHO a timeline at the end would be somewhat weird, but I am also open to this proposal as well

Ultimately, the organization is up to you, and I'm not going to hold off listing based on these concerns; the article as-organized works. My concern here isn't that a chronological presentation is inappropriate per se, but that a lot of the seemingly chronological sections jump around in time a bit. I found myself jumping around between sections several times to try and piece together a timeline, especially in the first premiership. That got me thinking about ways it could be reordered, but I want to be clear that I don't think this is an intractable problem and I'll defer to your judgement on what structure works best.

I'm also not proposing things be entirely rewritten, though I might not have been clear on that. The article has a lot of content that I feel currently would work better broken out of the "first/second premiership" chronology; for instance, the "Style of governance" section under the second premiership, which talks about Duplessis's political views as early as 1936, feels like the kind of information that I think would benefit from being presented up front, independent of the chronological progression of Duplessis's government.

Status

 On hold Like with the other GA I'm placing this on hold for the moment; I'd like to at least discuss the organization concerns I have before proceeding as I do think it creates a bit of a focus/broadness issue as described above. I realize what I'm proposing here is a more significant overhaul than the standard prose fixes, so please feel free to push back on it if you don't agree, and note that I'm entirely willing to help out here, work through this, and keep the review open while any improvement work is in progress. Thanks again for all your work on both of these articles—I didn't know anything about Duplessis coming in and I found them really interesting. Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 18:02, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Replied above; sorry for the slow turnaround there (got delayed by US holiday weekend and then a couple particularly busy days). Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 18:28, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm still thinking about the best way to organise this Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:32, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Dylnuge Well, I was shuffling content in thematical blocks but it simply wouldn't make sense for me. The problem is that the first and the second terms were quite different. The first term happened during a severe crisis (the Great Depression), the other during times of great prosperity. In the first term, there was some indication that Quebec would adopt at least some of the relatively progressive policies under the influence of ALN members, but there was no possibility of that in the second. The authoritarian inclinations were not much visible in the first term (remember, in 1937 Liberals and UN both agreed that communists must be punished for being communists), but it's his second rule that is much more (in)famous, depending on your perspective. Their campaign juggernaut did not exist in 1936, or 1939, or even in 1944 for that matter. I have no sources describing Duplessis's educational, healthcare and cultural expenditures for the first term.

There's much more coverage of 1944-1959 than of 1936-1939, probably because Grande Noirceur is tied to Duplessis but people can't really say what was it that he did wrong in the pre-war period, expect for maybe the Padlock Law, but they can definitely point to what he did wrong after the war. After all, he's been in power for 15 years. I get your point with the chronological inconsistencies, but I simply don't know how to do that otherwise without maintaining the distinction between the two periods. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:38, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

• Note: per Special:Diff/1178858941, this review has been closed as abandoned. RoySmith (talk) 16:29, 25 December 2023 (UTC)