London School

: The first Quebecer to earn a PhD from the prestigious London School of Economics was the architect of Quebec business investment fund and social security agency in 1965 as well as a key player when the province nationalized its electricity producer, Hydro-Québec, according to Toronto Star. In doing so, said Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, he gave us francophones confidence that it was possible in those years . . . to take control of the tools for our development. Former Quebec premier and Parti Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau, who died Monday after a long illness, was one of the founding forces of modern Quebec — first as a bureaucrat and backroom adviser to the provincial Liberals during the Quiet Revolution; then as a minister, premier and eventual leader of the sovereigntist forces in the 1995 referendum. Parizeau went on to become the inaugural finance minister of René Lévesque sovereigntist government, held up as a symbol that there might in fact be some financial sensibility in separation. Despite all the kind words that spilled out Tuesday, despite the promise of a state funeral, the naming of a government building in his honour and the endless testimonies about how Parizeau inspired the leaders of Quebec current political generation, those infamous words seem destined to haunt Parizeau in the afterlife as well. But when he took the reins of the party himself in 1994 and led the province through its second failed vote on independence by a margin of just 54,288 votes, it was four words he said in defeat — money and ethnic votes — that would come to define and colour his legacy in retirement from active politics. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.