Bureau-Dufresne defends uncle.

In his prime: photograph from 1956 shows Maurice Duplessis in one of his flights of oratory.

The Duplessis Bridge links Trois-Rivieres to Cap-de-la-Madeleine.

Quebec flag flies above the statue of Duplessis in Trois-Rivieres.

He's been dead for 40 years, but he still has a political spin doctor defending his honour and reputation.

When Premier Maurice Duplessis died in September 1959 he left a political legacy steeped in controversy, but no children. Enter 75-year-old Berthe Bureau-Dufresne, one of Duplessis's five nieces, for whom defending the Duplessis record has become a passion.

This year it's a full-time job, because Duplessis's home town of Trois-Rivieres has chosen to celebrate its famous son in what is being called the "Duplessis event."

Some might see it as a crass way to attract tourist dollars - it is the principal reason for the event - but organizers have chosen to discuss Duplessis, warts and all.

And that leaves Bureau-Dufresne and other members of the late premier's family feeling more than a little uneasy.

History, they note, has not been kind to the man who was once so powerful in Quebec that he was known simply as "le Chef."

"The saying goes that after the death of every great man there's a long period of ingratitude," Bureau-Dufresne said as she sat in her classically decorated Trois-Rivieres living room overlooking the St. Lawrence River. "I find Maurice Duplessis's period is lasting pretty long."

Most people, she said, choose to remember only the bad: "They have tried to erase him. They said he was a dictator. I think he has been maligned, and Trois-Rivieres has been particularly thankless."

In his time, she said, "he was adulated here, adored. Everyone called him Maurice. He was one of them. They loved him, and he felt it."

Premier from 1936 to 1939, and again from 1944 to 1959, and leader of the now-defunct Union Nationale, Maurice LeNoblet Duplessis was born in Trois-Rivieres on April 20, 1890.

History remembers him as anti-union and anti-communist, as someone who had little time for civil liberties, who created a thriving political patronage system and was so close to the clergy he could boast he had the bishops eating out of his hand. Heaven, Duplessis used to say, was blue, the Union Nationale colour; hell was Liberal red.

His reputation was so notorious, and opinion on his life is so divided, the Trois-Rivieres event was titled Duplessis - Ombre et Lumiere (Shadow and Light), much to the displeasure of Duplessis's supporters, who feel there's too much focus on the shadowy part of his past and not enough on the good points.

Under Duplessis's leadership, Quebec balanced its books 15 years in a row even as the government launched huge public works, including highway projects and university, school and hospital construction.

Electricity was extended through Quebec. The number of hospital beds tripled, while the number of roads and schools doubled as vast areas of the province, including places like Chibougamou, Sept-iles and the Lac St. Jean region, were opened to civilization.

Conrad Black, who wrote the definitive biography of Duplessis - a book that was recently reissued - writes in the Canadian Encyclopedia that while Duplessis's political patronage system was legendary, he "presided over a period of unprecedented prosperity, economic growth and investment in which Quebec was for the first time by almost any social or economic yardstick gaining on Ontario."

But the story is not the same at his birthplace. An informal walking tour of the old quarter, for example, reveals precious few reminders of the Duplessis connection to the city.

A single, modest statue is tucked away on a side street not far from his ancestral home on Bonaventure St. An austere and cold Duplessis stands there, the fleur-de-lis, the official Quebec flag his government adopted in 1948, fluttering overhead. At his feet, his motto, "Co-operation always, assimilation never," is chiseled into stone.

Another statue stands outside the National Assembly in Quebec City, but its arrival was mired in controversy. It was commissioned by the Union Nationale after Duplessis died in 1959, but when the Liberals took power in 1960 they refused to put it up. Liberal Premier Jean Lesage told the National Assembly he wouldn't erect it because it would provoke "civil disorder."

For years the statue was kept in a secret location. It was finally installed in 1977 by the Parti Quebecois when Rene Levesque was courting Union Nationale votes. Reporters still laugh at how uncomfortable the ceremony was, with Levesque awkwardly shuffling from one foot to the other as Union Nationale old boys clapped.

There is a Duplessis Bridge in Trois-Rivieres, linking Trois-Rivieres to Cap-de-la-Madeleine, but it is remembered mostly because the first attempt to span the water failed: the original collapsed. The bridge most Quebecers associate with Trois-Rivieres is one that spans the St. Lawrence. It's called the Laviolette Bridge.

There are no grand boulevards in Duplessis's name, only a modest suburban horseshoe street.

One of the most obvious reminders of Duplessis is a suburban pool hall that bears his name. No one there seems to care that Duplessis was not a pool player - he preferred baseball - and was so maladroit he couldn't shave in the morning without cutting himself and so used the services of a barber.

A Friends of Duplessis association was in operation to promote his legacy after he died, but it disbanded after the death of Duplessis's personal secretary, Aurea Clouthier, a legend in her own right as a female pioneer in a male-dominated political world.

For some people, Duplessis remains a kind of taboo subject, a piece of the past many would rather forget.

"Over the last 40 years, talking about Duplessis has become like talking about the devil himself," Jean-Marc Beaudoin, a columnist at the Trois-Rivieres daily Le Nouvelliste, wrote recently, lamenting the fact that Trifluviens seem unwilling to make a bigger deal of Duplessis or even acknowledge him as their own.

"In francophone Quebec, it's as if a lead shell has been installed on this era to squash it, overshadow it, ostracize it and make it disappear forever, eradicating it from the collective memory."

The situation has only grown worse with the controversy surrounding the Duplessis Orphans, the group of children born out of wedlock or into poverty during the period Duplessis was premier, and who were institutionalized and often abused after being falsely labeled mentally deficient.

That story is one of the first themes that comes to mind to the youthful crowd hanging out at the chic Cafe Morgane on the city's main street, a place where the music is hip, latte is the beverage of choice and Duplessis is a long-forgotten image in a high-school history book.

"He held back Quebec's evolution," student Daniel Gariepy, 23, blurted out when asked by a reporter what he knew about Duplessis. "He was very conservative."

"We hear more about (Winston) Churchill and U.S. politicians than him," added Gilles Fortin, 25. "I don't know whether it's a lack of interest, but (the Duplessis) period was a time of stagnation.

"What I retain was his connection to the church, and I have a problem with religion. He was part of a system that imposed values on everyone, cutting all critical thought. It was a megamonopoly, almost a totalitarian regime."

It's the kind of talk that horrifies the older people of the city, who remember the man in a different way. Even his political foes of the time find the city has neglected his memory and done nothing to counter the negative image of the man Black describes as "Quebec's principal political personality for 30 years."

Sipping An

O'Keefe, 80-year-old Jacques Lacoursiere tut-tutted through the pipe held firmly in his teeth when reminded of history's treatment of Duplessis. It's a surprising reaction considering Lacoursiere, a former Trois-Rivieres Superior Court judge, is a lifelong Liberal who ran against one of Duplessis's star candidates, the formidable Maurice Bellemare, in the 1952 provincial election. Even though Lacoursiere lost, Duplessis removed his father from his government job.

"I was a sworn Liberal and I worked against him, but it hurts me today to hear these stories" about Duplessis, Lacoursiere said. "It wasn't true. It's unfortunate, but most of those who knew him are dead.

"It's not fair to him. I never, for example, hear anyone talk about his electoral successes."

Duplessis, who perfected the art of political patronage, was a legendary campaigner who also mastered the art of ballot-box stuffing and vote-fixing. Stories abound of Union Nationale troops arriving in rural towns with truckloads of whiskey or sacks of potatoes, nylon stockings, shoes and hams in exchange for votes. Legend has it that more than half the households in the Lac St. Jean region got their first refrigerators from the Union Nationale.

In recent electoral history, no provincial political leader has been able to win a third consecutive mandate. Duplessis last did that in 1952.

Lacoursiere has his own take on why the city has chosen to mark Duplessis's existence.

He believes local separatists - the provincial and federal ridings are held by Parti Quebecois and Bloc Quebecois candidates respectively - are trying to resurrect Duplessis, portraying him as a man who one day would have shared their convictions.

Duplessis did engage in jurisdictional feuds with the federal government, wresting more control over taxes, but Lacoursiere said there's a big step between that and being a separatist.

Gilles Garceau, a local notary who was also around to see Duplessis in action, complains that nobody under 40 understands the man any more.

"It's always the period of darkness here, the period of darkness there," Garceau said. "You have to put things in context."

Bureau-Dufresne is up to the task. In her living room, decked out with Duplessis photographs and paintings her uncle collected, Duplessis the politician is still very much alive. So is the man.

She steered a reporter over to the museum operated by the local Ursuline sisters. Here is Duplessis's tiny cradle, his parents' bedroom suite, a photo of his dog, Braven, even his report card. Duplessis scored four out of five for conduct, but five out of five on the politeness scale.

The museum tour is on the list of events connected to the Duplessis event, and is Bureau-Dufresne's favourite. She concedes she was less than enthusiastic when the initial program for the Duplessis event came out and was, in her opinion, focused far too much on the negative side of the man.

The pamphlet features a picture of Duplessis looking positively manic.

Organizers insist there was no point trying to sugar-coat Duplessis's record, and the events planned reflect this.

Besides tours and visits to historic sites, the city is sponsoring debates and talks about Duplessis that have so far drawn respectable crowds and diverse opinions.

There are several theatre pieces - including street theatre - to take people back in time. When the Duplessis event was launched in April there was a Duplessis impersonator on hand to lay a little Duplessis oration on the masses. He gave the speech from the back of a truck on the Duplessis Bridge just as "le Chef" once did. Some older members of the crowd who remember the man wept at the sight.

"The period leaves no one indifferent," said Stephane Filion, a co-ordinator of the events. "And that was our goal. We present the facts. It's up to the public to decide."

Added Jacques Lacoursiere, a historian working on the event: "This is not a rehabilitation exercise. But it will be a fresh look at the one who was a demigod for some, but the devil incarnate for others."

Bureau-Dufrense is ready with her viewpoint. Visiting reporters are handed a fact sheet about Duplessis she has written herself. It rhymes off Duplessis's accomplishments, to which she adds personal anecdotes. She used to go to local schools to tell her story.

She plans to attend some of this summer's events, if only to stand up for the past.

"I'm used to it," she mused. "I never liked politics, but when it comes to defending (Duplessis), there's a fire somewhere."