Canada Statesman. Born on December 20, 1918, in Champlain, Québec, at the end of the 1940s, he was one of the young social and political leaders spawned by the Social Sciences faculty of Laval University. He got a job as a trade union organizer and served for many years as secretary general and later as president of the main union in Québec, the “Confédération des Travailleurs Catholiques Canadiens” later known as the “Centrale des Syndicats Nationaux.” It is during one of the big strikes that he was in charge of, the Asbestos Strike of 1949, that he became a friend of Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, then a lawyer and a teacher, and Gérard Pelletier, then a journalist. They were to become lifelong friends and allies during their continuing battles with the government of Premier Maurice Duplessis of Quebec. Between 1963 and 1965,he was a member of the Royal Commission of Enquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism which provided the blueprint for the federal government policy of bilingualism. During these years he continued his role in the labour movement, representing workers as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Unemployment Insurance Commission, and participating in numerous national and international workers’ organizations. In 1965, he decided to join Trudeau and Pelletier in presenting themselves as candidates for the Liberal Party in the upcoming federal election. This trio was labelled in French “Les Trois Colombes” and in English “The Three Wise Men”. On November 8, 1965, the electors of the Québec West riding sent him to the House of Commons. Although the name of their district changed for Langelier, they reelected him three more times in 1968, in 1972 and in 1974. In the Pearson and Trudeau cabinets, he servec as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration from December 18, 1965 to September 30, 1966, Minister of Manpower and Immigration from October 1, 1966 to July 5, 1968, (combining this for a few months with the responsability of Secretary of State of Canada), Minister of Forestry and Rural Development from July 6, 1968 to March 31, 1969, Minister of Regional Economic Expansion from April 1, 1969 to November 26, 1972, Minister of Transport from November 27, 1972 to September 25, 1975, Minister without Portfolio from September 26, 1975 to January 21, 1976 and Minister of the Environment from January 22, 1976 to June 30, 1976 when he resigned from the cabinet over the non-use of French in communications between pilots and air controllers In November 1976, he tried to get elected to the National Assembly of Québec but was defeated in the riding of Louis-Hébert. A few days later, on December 9, his friend, Prime minister Trudeau appointed him senator for the De la Vallière Division. He took the charge of Speaker of the Senate from March 4, 1980 to December 15, 1983, date when he left his seat in the Senate to become the Chairman of the Canadian Transport Commission. He died at his summer home in Saint-Augustin near the city of Quebec City,on August 28, 1988.