Canada at War: Houde’s Hope

QUEBEC Houde’s Hope When the doors of Montreal’s Hôtel de Ville were opened one morning last week, rotund Camillien Houde was waiting outside. The former Mayor of Montreal marched briskly to the city clerk’s office, filed again as candidate for Mayor. After four years’ internment for having advised Canadians not to register for the draft (TIME, Aug. 28), Camillien, free again, was seeking his old $10,000-a-year job.

The chances were good that the voters would give it to him. Montreal’s solid citizens were worried. They were backing stubby little Adhemar Raynault, who had been Mayor while Houde was interned. He had done an honest but uninspired job of presiding over Montreal’s 99-man council. But Mayor Raynault, mindful of Houde’s colorful personality and his record as an anticonscriptionist, was on the defensive. Said he: “This is not the time nor the place nor the moment to say whether my opponent was right in 1940.” Answered Houde: “In the present struggle, I am a symbol whether you like it or not.”