Francis Daniel Johnson Sr. (April 9, 1915 – September 26, 1968) was a Canadian politician and the 20th premier of Quebec from 1966 until his death in 1968.
Leader of the traditionalist wing of the Union Nationale turned defender of the expanding welfare state, Daniel Johnson was a major figure of two epochs that mark Quebec's modern history: the Great Darkness and the Quiet Revolution.
Elected at the age of 31 as the Member of the Legislative Assembly for the provincial riding of Bagot in 1946, Johnson quickly became the figurehead of the up-and-coming generation within his aging party, the Union Nationale. After having served in multiple different roles under Maurice Duplessis's government, including as parliamentary secretary to Duplessis himself and as deputy speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Johnson was appointed as the Minister of Hydraulic Resources in 1958. During his time as minister, he most notably launched the construction of the Manic-5 dam. He became the leader of Union Nationale in 1961 and consequently became the leader of the official opposition to Jean Lesage's ruling Liberal Party. He would occupy this role for an additional five years after failing to win the 1962 election.
The Union Nationale was finally returned to power in the 1966 election, making Johnson the 20th premier of Quebec. However, the party that would now go on to form a majority government bore little resemblance to the one of Maurice Duplessis, having broken with its traditional anti-statism and anti-intellectualism under Johnson's leadership. His administration was also the first in Quebec history to open up the door to Quebec separatism, while still not explicitly endorsing it. During Johnson's premiership, Quebec's relationship with France underwent a rapprochement due to his close collaboration with the French president, Charles de Gaulle, who visited Quebec in 1967 at Premier Johnson's behest, whereupon de Gaulle gave his Vive le Québec libre speech.
In September 1968, while still in the midst of his reforms in health, education, the economy, and the constitution, Johnson died in office following a heart attack. He is the father of Pierre Marc Johnson and Daniel Johnson Jr., who each later briefly served as premier of Quebec, with Pierre Marc heading the Parti Québécois and Daniel Jr. heading the rival Quebec Liberal Party.
Johnson was born in the town of Danville, located in the Eastern Townships region of Quebec. He was the eldest son of Francis Johnson, an anglophone labourer of Irish heritage, and Marie-Adéline Daniel, a French Canadian. He was raised bilingually but educated entirely in French.
His father, Francis, was politically active in the Conservative Party of Quebec, which at the time was the opposition party to the governing Liberal Party of Quebec. However, due to rampant patronage, this support cost Francis his job and prevented him from receiving social welfare assistance. As a result, he was reduced to scrounging together what odd jobs he could find in order to make ends meet. With eight children to feed, this precarity put the family under great financial strain. Despite the environment of familial solidarity and religious piety that Daniel Johnson grew up in, the poverty and deprivations of his youth would leave a lasting imprint.
In 1928, Daniel Johnson started high school at Collège Antoine-Girouard in Saint-Hyacinthe. A brilliant student with an excellent memory, he frequently found himself among the top of his class. He also leveraged his natural sociability to cultivate relationships and participate in extracurricular activities, most notably the literary circle affiliated with the Catholic French-Canadian Youth Association. During this time, Johnson met Jean-Jacques Bertrand, a student with whom he would later share a political destiny.
Johnson initially intended to study to become a priest. His family was still penniless, but with the financial help of a generous benefactress, who was a widowed friend of his mother's, Daniel Johnson was able to enter the Grand Séminaire in the fall of 1935. However, while he was in seminary, Quebec was plunged into the worst economic crisis in its history. The context of the Great Depression led the young Johnson to take an acute interest in social, economic, and political issues. Three events then coincided to make him reconsider the priesthood altogether: the creation of a new party, the Union Nationale, by Maurice Duplessis; the defeat of the Liberal Party at the hands of the Union Nationale in the 1936 election; and the death of Johnson's mother by tuberculosis.
In September 1937, he finally decided to abandon his studies in theology and opt for law instead. However, with the first semester of university having already started at that point, he had to obtain special permission from the president of the bar of Quebec. In 1937, the president was none other than Maurice Duplessis himself, leading to the first meeting between Johnson and Premier Duplessis. After being granted special permission, Daniel Johnson entered the faculty of law at the University of Montreal in fall 1937. True to form, Daniel Johnson became involved in many extracurricular activities during his time at university, including the Federation of Catholic students (French: Fédération des étudiants catholiques) and the Canadian Union for Young Catholics (French: Union des jeunesses catholiques du Canada). He was also elected president of the students' union of the University of Montreal, and wrote for the student newspaper, called Le Quartier Latin. He participated in international conferences held by groups such as World Student Relief, an organization responsible for aid to prisoners of war and student victims of war, as well as Pax Romana, an organization seeking to promote international cooperation between Catholic students. Finally, like the majority of young people in his generation in Quebec, he participated in activism against conscription in the Second World War.
In 1943, Johnson married Reine Gagné (1918–1994). The two had met at university, where Gagné was studying literature and contributing to the same student newspaper that Johnson was involved with. While she encouraged his participation in politics, knowing how important it was to him, she had reservations about the impact of his fervent dedication and consequent frequent absences on their young family, saying that she had "just lost her husband" on the night of Johnson's first electoral victory in 1946. In 1953, she survived being shot twice by her extramarital lover, Radio-Canada announcer Bertrand Dussault, who then committed suicide.
Johnson and his wife had four children: two sons and two daughters. Both of his sons, Pierre-Marc Johnson and Daniel Johnson Jr., also served as premiers of Quebec. Each was a leader of a different party and each lasted less than a year as premier, Pierre-Marc as leader of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois for a brief period in 1985, and Daniel Jr. as leader of the federalist Liberal Party of Quebec for nine months in 1994. Each was voted out in a general election after becoming leader of their respective parties.
Lawyer and Union Nationale activist
In the 1939 provincial election, Daniel Johnson was invited by a former classmate, André Dumont, to participate in the Union Nationale's campaign in the riding of Bagot. Though the Union Nationale was defeated by Adélard Godbout's Liberal Party, including in the riding of Bagot, which was won by the Liberal candidate Cyrille Dumaine, the experience was a watershed moment for Daniel Johnson. Thenceforth, he would concentrate his political ambitions in Bagot.
In July 1940, Johnson officially became a lawyer. Though his main practice was located in Montreal, he spent his weekends at a second office in Acton Vale as part of his efforts to establish a permanent presence in Bagot.
In 1942, he joined a new firm created by Jonathan Robinson. Robinson, one of the few anglophone Union Nationale members of the Legislative Assembly, had been fired by his previous anglophone firm for his party's anti-conscriptionist stance, though he himself was in favour. This new firm was helped off the ground by the wealthy American industrialist, Robert R. McCormick, who was the owner of The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune, founder of the town of Baie-Comeau on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, and owner of logging operations on vast forest lands in the Baie-Comeau area, granted to him by the Quebec government. McCormick had become well-acquainted with Robinson through his role as intermediary between McCormick and Duplessis, leading to him appointing Robinson's new firm as his main legal counsel in Quebec. Daniel Johnson's time at the law firm thus allowed him to forge close ties with numerous influential figures, especially within the Union Nationale.