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Sir Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau

Article by Andrée Désilets

Published Online January 29, 2008

Last Edited December 15, 2013

Sir Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau, lawyer, journalist, businessman, politician, premier of Québec 1879-82 (b at St-Thérèse-de-Blainville, Lower Canada 7 Nov 1840; d at Montréal 13 June 1898). He was admitted to the bar in 1861 and taught criminal law at Université Laval in Montréal from 1878 to 1885.

Chapleau, Sir Joseph-Adolphe

Sir Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau, lawyer, journalist, businessman, politician, premier of Québec 1879-82 (b at St-Thérèse-de-Blainville, Lower Canada 7 Nov 1840; d at Montréal 13 June 1898). He was admitted to the bar in 1861 and taught criminal law at Université Laval in Montréal from 1878 to 1885. One of the owners of Le Colonisateur 1862-63 and La Presse in 1889, he was also a director of the Laurentides and the Pontiac and Pacific railway companies. He was elected to the Québec legislature in 1867, re-elected in 1871, and he was attorney general 1873-74 and provincial secretary 1876-78. He then led the Conservative Party, to become premier in 1879.

He left provincial politics in 1882, winning a federal by-election in Terrebonne. He was secretary of state until 1892, when he became minister of customs. He became lieutenant-governor of Québec in November 1892, retiring on 1 February 1898.

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