Adélard Godbout

Joseph-Adélard Godbout was a visionary agronomist and statesman from the Bas-Saint-Laurent. Serving as Premier of Quebec from 1939 to 1944 during the darkest years of World War II, Godbout enacted the most sweeping progressive legislative agenda in Quebec history before the Quiet Revolution.

Defying fierce clerical opposition, Godbout granted Quebec women the provincial right to vote and run for office in 1940. He established free, compulsory primary education up to age fourteen, enacted Quebec's first Labour Code, and in 1944 expropriated private electrical monopolies to found Hydro-Québec, the cornerstone of Quebec's modern economy.