The Background Setting: Claire’s Early Career

Born in 1927 and raised in Rimouski, Quebec on the lower St. Lawrence River, Claire was the eldest child in a middle-class family.^{Footnote 3} In the summer of 1946, when Claire announced she wanted to go into law, she was carving a path that few had trod before. Only eleven women had been admitted to the Quebec bar, which was the last jurisdiction in the country to lower the barriers to female lawyers.^{Footnote 4} Across Canada, 1.6 percent of the profession was female.^{Footnote 5}

Claire entered Laval law school in 1948 as one of two women in the class. When she completed her degree near the top of the class, she became the ninth woman to graduate from Laval in law.^{Footnote 6} In 1952, when she was called to the bar, there were 239 lawyers practicing in Quebec City, 238 of them male. Claire would become the second woman to embark upon private law practice in Quebec City.^{Footnote 7} It was her historical fate to be on the cusp of change, at the tip of the wedge that would thrust women into law, decades before Quebec would outstrip the other provinces and claim the highest number of women lawyers in Canada by the turn of the century.^{Footnote 8}

In the mid-twentieth century, getting started in law was a difficult proposition for anyone, male or female, who did not have elite family backgrounds or legal connections. Quebec City was deeply stratified socially and economically, with those born into bourgeois families privileged over those from less elite tiers and smaller urban or rural areas.^{Footnote 9} One lawyer, who qualified for the bar a year after Claire, explained: “It was a very closed society—like the mafia—very closed.”^{Footnote 10} But things were tougher still for women. The Honourable Justice Louis LeBel, who was admitted to the bar ten years after Claire, practised in Quebec City until he embarked on a judicial career that also took him to the Supreme Court. He recalled that the firms were “very reluctant” to hire women: “Men lawyers were uncomfortable with the idea of women lawyers. The senior partners had been raised and lived and practised law at a time when women were not even allowed to join the Quebec bar. So they had this understanding that the place of women was essentially at home.”^{Footnote 11}

Claire had taken to heart the messages bombarding her from all sides that women could not earn a livelihood in law, and she just assumed that secretarial work would be her bread and butter. Fortuitously, while she was still studying law in 1951, she landed a position as a secretary to a Quebec City lawyer, Sam Schwarz Bard.^{Footnote 12} Claire may have been the second female to enter private practice in Quebec City, but Bard was one of only two Jews.^{Footnote 13} Had Bard been a different sort of employer, he might have kept her on in a secretarial capacity, benefitting from her legal knowledge while compensating her at the lower wages of a clerical worker. Instead, as one outsider in the legal profession to another, he transferred her status to that of a full-time lawyer after her admission to the bar. Calin Morin, a female classmate, observed, “I don’t think French-Canadian lawyers would have given her the same chance.”^{Footnote 14}

Sam Schwarz Bard mentored Claire generously and brilliantly as she learned the ropes. Over the next two decades, under his steady, guiding hand, Claire came to love practising law at the Bard firm. She spent the first fifteen years conducting a non-specialized, general practice: drafting contracts, transferring real estate, incorporating companies, and collecting debts. That Bard’s law firm serviced many English-speaking clients enabled Claire, who was already quite conversant in English, to hone her bilingual skills, something that would serve her in good stead on national and international platforms in the years to come. She also managed to combine practice with a family life, something that was most unusual for professional women in that era.^{Footnote 15} In 1957 she married Arthur Dubé, who received a doctorate in engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and taught as a faculty member in Laval University’s mines and metallurgy department. Several years later, the couple had two children: Louise, born in 1960, and Pierre, born in 1964. With the assistance of a succession of nannies, Claire continued to practice throughout this period, restricting herself to fifteen days of leave after each pregnancy.

When the 1968 federal Divorce Act brought Quebec residents their first access to the dissolution of marriage, Claire was uniquely positioned to become the city’s pre-eminent family law practitioner.^{Footnote 16} Other lawyers were disdainful of the new field of practice and anxious to distance themselves from the opprobrium that attended marital disgrace.^{Footnote 17} Claire was already known as one of the few lawyers who would take retainers from the impoverished, desperate women who sought whatever legal relief could be extracted from impossible marriages, before divorce came into the picture. And family law would soon be stereotyped as female work, given the high number of female clients and the relatively low fees that were charged.^{Footnote 18} By 1970, Claire had been pressed into service to conduct continuing legal education workshops for the Barreau du Québec and lectures on family law at Laval. With additional attention from newspaper and television reporters hungry for information about the new divorce regime, her practice “bloomed.”^{Footnote 19} Claire boasted, somewhat ruefully, that after the floodgates opened, she “divorced half of Quebec City.”^{Footnote 20} By dint of her tremendous hard work, tenacity, and charm, she developed a profile as the most successful, prominent, senior woman lawyer in Quebec City.

All of which prepared her perfectly for the startling tap on the shoulder that came in 1972: the offer to enter federal politics as a Liberal candidate.

An Offer from the Top: Liberal Politics and Feminist Demands

Claire should have had an inkling that something was stirring when the phone call came in from Jean-Paul Lefebvre. Lefebvre was a 46-year-old Quebec Liberal Party operative, a confidante of Jean Marchand who was co-chairing the 1972 Liberal federal election campaign.^{Footnote 21} Lefebvre asked if he could come to Claire’s Mont St. Denis home to talk. To her surprise, he showed up with Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

The fifteenth prime minister of Canada had swept to power in 1968 amid the wave of “Trudeaumania” that took the country by storm, and he was preparing to campaign for a second term in the fall of 1972.^{Footnote 22} More than half a century had passed since federal suffrage had been extended to Quebec women in 1940, yet no woman had ever been elected to Parliament. Some were beginning to think it was time for change.^{Footnote 23}

Although much about the 1972 Liberal electoral campaign would continue to be overtly sexist, Trudeau had given instructions that he wanted some female candidates who could actually be elected.^{Footnote 24} There were rumours that Marc Lalonde, Trudeau’s principal secretary who would first win election himself in Outremont, Montreal in 1972, was compiling a list of eight women from Quebec, each of them potential candidates for the party.^{Footnote 25} Lalonde admits that he recruited at least one: “I recommended that women run,” he recalls, “but the desire for women was more widespread, stretching all the way to Trudeau himself.”^{Footnote 26} It was what brought Pierre Elliot Trudeau to Claire’s home that evening.

What was the impetus behind this new interest in recruiting women candidates for political office? Much can be credited to La Révolution Tranquille in Quebec and the second-wave women’s movement throughout Canada, which had coalesced into a formidable demand for more women in positions of power. Crusty social attitudes about gender roles were increasingly challenged as out of sync with the dramatic transformations taking place in education and employment.^{Footnote 27} Laura Sabia, the dynamic leader of the newly formed Committee for the Equality of Women in Canada, had called on Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1966 to set up a Royal Commission on the Status of Women. The Royal Commission’s wide-ranging recommendations, released in 1970, demanded changes to the law, the economy, the family, education, the tax system, childcare, immigration, citizenship, the criminal justice system, women’s prisons, and the role of women in public life.^{Footnote 28} A Toronto Star columnist characterized it as “a call to revolution.”^{Footnote 29} And according to Lalonde, who would later become the minister responsible for the status of women, the government was “serious” about implementing the report. “Trudeau was really supportive, and we wanted to proceed with the recommendations.”^{Footnote 30}

The growing political interest was bolstered by the activism of women who were determined not to let the momentum falter. The Royal Commission’s executive secretary, Monique Bégin, took pains to disseminate its findings in an organized fashion, hiring contractors to teach women how to lobby for implementation of the recommendations. It was a campaign that found particularly fertile ground in Quebec.^{Footnote 31} The Fédération des femmes du Québec published a 46-page discussion guide on the report and distributed thousands of copies to eager women’s groups across the province.^{Footnote 32}

Governments across the country were setting up advisory councils on the status of women, including an exceptionally effective, well-funded Conseil du statut de la femme in Quebec.^{Footnote 33} Independent status-of-women committees were cauldrons of energy that enabled younger, professional women to develop expertise in political skills, and they set their sights on politicians and bureaucrats alike.^{Footnote 34} By 1972, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women had surfaced. This pan-Canadian feminist caucus was composed of service groups, advocacy organizations, business clubs, arts and cultural groups, labour unions, religious institutions, and ethno-racial groups, and its political orientation ran the gamut from conservative to radical feminist.^{Footnote 35} In 1970, the Front pour la liberation des femmes du Québec carried off an explosive Mother’s Day demonstration in Montreal’s Lafontaine Park, denouncing the day’s celebration and demanding the right to abortion with picket signs that read, “Reine un jour, esclave 364 jours” (“Queen for a day, slave for 364 days”).^{Footnote 36} Women’s lib was, beyond dispute, a growing gale swirling through all corners of the land.

Years later, Marc Lalonde tried to explain the influences that stretched right to the top in the prime minister’s office, and the personal insights that had caused so many to believe that feminism was politically important. His experience was instructive:

Claire Lalonde laughs at her husband’s candour, describing the feminist movement in Quebec as “exciting” and “serious,” a movement of which she was proud to be a part. She was not only a persuasive influence on her husband but had been at the founding meetings of the FFQ and served on one of its committees.^{Footnote 38} Other prominent leaders of the FFQ were married to powerful Liberal men: Rita Racette-Cadieux, the second president of the FFQ, was the wife of Fernand Cadieux, former president of the Jeunesse Étudiantes Catholiques (JEC), who was close to both Trudeau and Michael Pitfield. Fernande Juneau, also active in the FFQ, was the wife of Pierre Juneau, co-founder with Trudeau of the dissident Cité Libre, the first president of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and, later, the president of the CBC. It was a remarkable network of women who brought unparalleled pressure to bear on their husbands to respond to feminist demands. Those who watched the process from within credited them for much of the changing environment.^{Footnote 39}

Why did the politicians come calling on Claire? Ironically, Claire was not someone who would ever claim membership in “women’s liberation,” and she was without attachment to any of the burgeoning new feminist organizations. When Claire launched her career in 1952, she was well ahead of the rebirth of organized feminism. She was not one of the select group that set the feminist wheels in motion:

Nor was she a woman who joined the feminist organizations that were blooming around her in the early 1970s. The woman who would rise to prominence as a feminist icon and, later, as a lightning rod for anti-feminist attack in her position as a Supreme Court jurist, was strongly supportive of egalitarian ideals but distinctly not a self-identified feminist:

When the politicians went looking, she was in the right place at the right time. Simply by virtue of being one of Quebec City’s only high-profile women lawyers, the most senior woman in private practice, Claire had become an icon, propelled forward by the momentum of something much larger than her own talents or ambitions. She was on the cusp of feminist demands for revolution, and the government was ready to showcase a few new women in politics. Claire was the recipient of unleashed pent-up desires, singled out precisely because she was a woman, and in response to the demands of a movement to which she had never actually belonged.

There were also other factors that made Claire an attractive prospect. While she had never had any personal political involvement with any political party, she had important linkages to key Liberals. The Liberal Party’s chief Quebec power broker, Jean Marchand, was a good friend of Yves Dubé, Claire’s brother-in-law and the dean of social sciences at Laval University from 1968 to 1976. Through Yves, Claire had been introduced to Marchand. By chance, Claire, Yves, and Jean Marchand had found themselves on a plane to Ottawa one morning, and they had arranged to meet up that night. The three spent an enjoyable evening together, and Claire remembers dancing with Marchand, who had a considerable reputation for being flirtatious with women. Claire was impressed by the dynamic cabinet minister, whom she perceived as having entered politics “with his heart, to change things.”^{Footnote 42}

Marchand had first reached prominence during the Asbestos Strike, when he stood out as an impassioned orator and brilliant labour organizer who travelled the backroads of Quebec, sleeping in workers’ bedrooms, speaking in church basements, and singing ballads in cafés as he pressed for workers’ equality. He resigned his position as head of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CNTU) to run for the Liberals in 1965. Marchand, Trudeau, and Gérard Pelletier would be dubbed the “three wise men” (or, in French, “les trois colombes”) when they successfully burst onto the federal electoral scene together that year. Marchand was appointed to the cabinet immediately, named as senior Quebec minister. He was to become one of Trudeau’s closest confidantes, a lifelong friend throughout his long tenure as a politician.^{Footnote 43}

The L’Heureux-Dubé family connections reached even higher in the party hierarchy, since Claire’s husband, Arthur Dubé, knew Pierre Trudeau personally. The two had socialized years earlier as part of a small French-Canadian cohort in Ottawa, when Arthur had worked for the Department of Mines prior to joining the faculty at Laval.^{Footnote 44} Both Arthur and Yves were great admirers of Trudeau and his political approach. So it was that Arthur welcomed the prime minister as an old friend the evening that Trudeau and Lefebvre came calling, and the whole group sat down in the family’s living room.

The discussions that followed would open the door to a career path that had been largely blocked for women in the past. This newfound opportunity appears to have been based, in part, on Claire’s considerable legal talent and skills; her professional status and family connections; the changing economic, social, and political framework within a modernizing Quebec; and the strength of the women’s movement at the time.

The Path Not Taken: “I Said No”

Trudeau came to the point quickly. He asked Claire to run as a Liberal in her home riding of Louis-Hébert, emphasizing that they “wanted a woman.” There are several versions of the conversation that ensued, all of them amusing. Claire recalls that she gave Trudeau a flat rejection: “I said, ‘No, I’m not interested at all to go into politics. You’re too late, my children are born. And you’re too early, because they are not brought up.’”^{Footnote 45} Then, she quipped: “I accept on one condition. That I be defeated!”^{Footnote 46} Other recollections are of a longer exchange, in which Trudeau protested that she would not be defeated, and that they “could put a dog there and get it elected.” Claire’s rapid-fire comeback was “So, run the dog.”^{Footnote 47}

Despite the humorous sparring, the conversation also involved some probing on Claire’s part. She wondered aloud whether women were just wanted as window-dressing. She predicted that women would be relegated to the backbenches. She argued that no one listened to women, and that female MPs would be no exception. When Trudeau intimated that he would put Claire into his cabinet, she registered total disbelief: “I’m not stupid. That’s ridiculous. I said no.”^{Footnote 48}

The main rationale Claire offered for her refusal seems to have been that politics would be incompatible with her family responsibilities. Louise was twelve, Pierre was eight, and Arthur shouldered little responsibility for child rearing. Claire was no stranger to the challenge of combining long working hours with a family. But federal politics would have added geographical distance to the mix, taking her frequently to Ottawa. It seems a more than reasonable explanation for Claire’s decision. Yet a mere six months later, Claire would accept a judicial appointment to the Superior Court that also required a great deal of travel away from Quebec City to sit on circuit. Judging would also detract considerably from her time with the family. The family could not have been the only reason for Claire’s categorical dismissal of the political opportunity.

The objections Claire raised that evening also suggest that she believed women would have insufficient status to make a significant mark in politics. She may have doubted the long-term strength of the nascent women’s movement, or its potential to transform gender relations deeply enough to provide women with a fair chance. Years later, Claire admitted that she might also have been “afraid” of politics: “My father was a civil servant. We never talked about politics. I knew nothing about it. I would have thought, ‘I don’t know how, I don’t have the background, I don’t have the money.’”^{Footnote 49}

Claire had no firsthand experience of politics and very little she could draw upon indirectly from family and colleagues. No one from her family or her law firm had ever run for office. None of the women from her cohort of graduates at Laval had tried their hands at politics. Being in the position of a path-breaker had not daunted her, as she was one of the first women to scale the walls of Laval and venture into practice in the capital. But Claire’s self-confidence seems to have faltered at the prospect of politics. She did not ask Trudeau for time to reflect on the offer. She appears never to have second-guessed her decision. She didn’t look twice at the momentous fork in the road.

Her decision made the headlines in the local newspaper, which noted that Madame Claire L’Heureux-Dubé had turned down an offer to run for politics in the forthcoming election. The refusal was attributed entirely to family needs. The laudatory article described Claire as “humaine,” “dynamique,” “optimiste,” and “une travailleuse acharnée,” quoting her as saying, “Mon schème de valeurs ne me permettait pas d’y penser. Ma priorité va à ma famille.”^{Footnote 50} The radical feminists who had demonstrated against Mother’s Day two years earlier must have shuddered in recognition, even though the real explanation behind Claire’s refusal may have been broader than maternal responsibilities alone.

But Claire’s influence was felt nevertheless. The night she said no, she urged Trudeau and Lefebvre to solicit Albanie Morin, a client of hers who lived in the same riding. Morin was a teacher and translator by occupation, a rising municipal politician with the Council of Sillery who had just enrolled in law school. Her husband and sons had been Liberal Party stalwarts. Recently widowed and with grown children, Morin had retained Claire to handle the affairs of her husband’s estate. Claire was intrigued with her impressive client and recommended her without reservation. Although neither Trudeau nor Lefebvre committed themselves that night, they did indeed pursue Morin. In the election of 30 October 1972, Morin sailed to victory in the Louis-Hébert riding that had initially been offered to Claire. She entered Parliament as one of the first three Québécoise MPs ever elected, along with Monique Bégin and Jeanne Sauvé.^{Footnote 51}

What If: “She would have made a great politician”

Many observers have characterized Claire as a natural politician, someone who could work a room and charm all manner of person. Family law expert Julien Payne insisted that she “would have made a great politician,” adding, “Claire knows everybody! If she’s in a room, she’d know everybody in the room by the time the evening’s over.”^{Footnote 52} Quick on her feet, humorous, well-organized, and a glutton for long hours of work, Claire had many of the key attributes for electoral success. What if she had taken the bait that evening and entered federal politics in the winnable riding of Louis-Hébert? Would she have surpassed Albanie Morin, who became the first woman to sit as the assistant deputy chair of the House of Commons Committee of the Whole; Monique Bégin, who served as a long-time successful cabinet minister; and Jeanne Sauvé, who became Canada’s first female governor general?^{Footnote 53}

Paths not taken present opportunities for speculation. What if Claire had said yes? Backed by the Quebec Liberal machine she, instead of Morin, would undoubtedly have taken the Louis-Hébert riding that fall. It was a “safe” seat for the Liberals, and it is likely that the party would have provided financial backing for her campaign, as it did for some of the other women who were the first to run in Quebec.^{Footnote 54} Entering Parliament as one of five women out of 264 MPs, Claire would have been well positioned to take a leading role.^{Footnote 55} The only Liberal women were the three Québécoises. With the prime minister intent on reserving a cabinet posting for a woman, chances are that Claire would have garnered the prize.^{Footnote 56}

Musing many years later over the results of the 1972 election, which returned a minority Liberal government, Monique Bégin emphasized that the inner circle was searching for the strongest fighters it could find.^{Footnote 57} She was told she was not a serious candidate for the cabinet because, at age thirty-six, she was “too young,” too much of a “novice,” and perceived as vulnerable.^{Footnote 58} Albanie Morin was not a contender either. Even if she had been elected alongside Claire, Morin was perceived to be insufficiently powerful to qualify as cabinet material.^{Footnote 59} Jeanne Sauvé, the one who did get the cabinet posting, was fifty years old, ambitious, and well-positioned due to the stature of her husband, Maurice, who had been a Liberal MP and a cabinet minister before her.^{Footnote 60} But Bégin believes that Claire would have edged out Sauvé in 1972, particularly because Sauvé and her husband were John Turner supporters and viewed as suspect by Trudeau loyalists at the time.^{Footnote 61} Marc Lalonde hypothesized that if Claire had won, there might have been two female cabinet ministers from Quebec, especially since Claire came from Quebec City and Jeanne Sauvé from Montreal.^{Footnote 62}

Had she been assigned to the cabinet, Claire might have gone on to even greater political acclaim. Stéphane Dion, who took on the leadership of the Liberal Party some years later, believed that Claire would have been highly successful. Having known her from childhood, since his parents were close friends with Claire and Arthur, Dion offered the opinion that Claire would have relished working with Trudeau. “She would have admired Trudeau’s strength of opinion, his ability to hold an unpopular position,” he said, and her “facility in English would have been a great asset.” He added: “She would have been made a cabinet minister. She would have been successful.”^{Footnote 63} This was an opinion shared by Marc Lalonde, who ventured that Claire’s “outgoing, open personality,” “forcefulness,” and “good judgment” would have suited politics well.^{Footnote 64} Allan Rock, who served as a Liberal cabinet minister from 1993 to 2003, agreed: “She would have been a marvellous politician and cabinet minister. She is colourful, charismatic, and self-confident. She would have built up a huge following. She would have been a wonderful counterfoil to Trudeau. And if she could have brought a feminist influence into the cabinet during these critical years, it would have had a major impact on the shaping of public policy.”^{Footnote 65}

These were turbulent years for the Liberal government of Canada. Their minority government went down in defeat within eighteen months, was returned with a majority in 1974, was defeated by a short-lived Conservative government under Joe Clark in 1979, and returned to power yet again in 1980. The country stumbled from crisis to crisis: recession, the oil embargo, the controversy over bilingualism, the unpopular introduction of wage and price controls, the divisive National Energy Program. Then, in 1976, René Lévesque’s Parti Québécois swept to power in Quebec, catapulting the dissolution of the country into high relief.^{Footnote 66}

Monique Bégin, who rode through those tumultuous years as a powerful force within the Liberal government, suspects that Claire would have thrived. She noted that the Liberals needed tough spokespersons from Quebec in order to bring prevailing perspectives into the caucus and to sell the government message back to constituents. She forecast that Claire would have started with relatively small portfolios and graduated to positions of high prestige, potentially the minister of justice and the minister of foreign affairs. She thought that Claire would have been easily re-electable, well-mentored, and widely liked by political colleagues for her intelligence, competence, humour, and charm. She added that Claire had the “self-confidence” and “thick skin” necessary to succeed in politics.^{Footnote 67}

The risk factors? Observers predicted that the two biggest questions would have been whether Claire could get along with the civil service and whether she could compromise when necessary. “She would have needed to develop good relations with the civil service,” remarked Bégin. “Some of them are easy, some not. Would she have been able to work with them? Did she have a reputation of not suffering fools gladly? Am I right or wrong that she can’t stand stupidity? If so, it’s a problem because they notice that attitude. A big minus.” As for compromise, Bégin speculated: “[All] hell may break loose. Claire appears to me to be the kind of human being who might have exploded, might have resigned from Cabinet on principle.”^{Footnote 68}

Assuming Claire surmounted the risks, where might she have ended up? There was little chance she would have obtained the highest rung, the post of prime minister. Even if the forceful headwinds against a female PM had been somehow neutralized, Trudeau held on to the reins of power until 1984 and then, according to traditional convention, was succeeded by an Anglophone leader, John Turner. Bégin wondered if Claire would have been satisfied with lateral cabinet shuffles decade after decade, leavened perhaps with the odd posting as an ambassador. She, rather than Jeanne Sauvé, might eventually have been offered the position of governor general. But having to follow rigid protocol and refrain from expressing any opinions in that office would undoubtedly have come at a high cost to Claire. Assuming she had wished to leave politics for the judiciary, she would probably never have made it to the Supreme Court of Canada. A direct posting to the highest court would have been unlikely. And if she had started in the lower courts after a significant stint in politics, she would have needed a lightning-speed ascent to reach the top court in time to make a mark.

The Judicial Path: A Different Legacy

Instead, it was the judicial door that opened next, just months after Claire’s decision to forego a career in politics. This time the call came from Claire’s former client, Albanie Morin, now the Liberal MP for Claire’s riding, whom Claire had personally recommended to Trudeau. Morin told Claire there was a judicial spot opening up, and it was time to put a woman on the bench. The forces that had coalesced to prompt the offer of a political seat were still reverberating, and with Morin’s backing, the Liberals had agreed to approach Claire again.

The path that opened this time was the one that Claire took. Although she was initially reluctant to agree, primarily on account of her family’s financial needs and the cut in pay she would take with a judicial posting, she did not resist Morin’s insistent urgings. Although she remained uncertain, Claire sent in her curriculum vitae. On 8 February 1973, the Honourable Otto Lang, federal minister of justice, advised her that the cabinet had signed the order-in-council naming her to the Quebec Superior Court. With the stroke of a pen, on 9 February 1973, Claire L’Heureux-Dubé became the first woman on the Superior Court in the district of Quebec, the second in the province, and the third in the country.^{Footnote 69}

Would Claire L’Heureux-Dubé’s legacy have been greater had she chosen the political route rather than the judicial one? No one can know for certain, but perhaps we will be closer to venturing a thoughtful answer when the full biographical study of the Supreme Court jurist is finally written, and observers have more opportunity to consider the judicial legacy that was, alongside the legacy that wasn’t.