Bourassa, Henri (1868-1952)

Canadian politician and journalist. Elected in 1896 to the Dominion House of Commons as a Liberal, he resigned in 1899 as a protest against Canadian participation in the Boer War and was triumphantly re-elected as a Nationalist. He left the Dominion Parliament in 1907 and was a member of the Québec legislature 1908-12. In 1910 he established the Montréal nationalist newspaper Le Devoir.

His Québec Nationalist following joined forces with Ontario Conservatives to defeat the Liberal prime minister Wilfrid Laurier in 1911, but Bourassa bitterly opposed the Conservative policy of conscription in World War I. He sat again in the House of Commons 1925-35.