Bourassa, Henri

Henri Bourassa, journalist and politician, was born at Montreal, Quebec, on September 1, 1868, the son of Napoleon Bourassa and Azalie Papineau, and the grandson of Louis Joseph Papineau. He was educated by tutors, and became a journalist. He was a contributor to Le Nationaliste, a journal published in Montreal; and in 1896 he was elected to represent Labelle as an independent Liberal in the House of Commons. He became a pronounced "Nationalist" and in 1910 he founded Le Devoir, a Nationalist newspaper in Montreal, of which he became the editor-in-chief, and he continued as editor until he broke with many of the Nationalists, and resigned from the paper in 1932. Bourassa has been described as a man of erratic impulses. This is exemplified in his resignation from the House of Commons in 1907 so he could sit in the Quebec Legislative Assembly. He remained in the Assembly from 1908 to 1912. He sat once again in the House of Commons from 1925 to 1935, when he was defeated in his old constituency, Labelle. Bourassa was an outstanding political figure, and a first-rate orator. He also published many pamphlets on political questions, in both French and English. Henri Bourassa died at Outremont, Quebec, on August 30, 1952.

Taken from: The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography. 4th ed. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1974.