Houde was born in
Montreal on August 13, 1889 and died there on September 11, 1958. He was nicknamed "''l'imprévisible''"—the unpredictable. He was the only surviving child of Azade Houde and Josephine Frenette. He is descended from the first Houde ancestor, Louis Houde, who came from
Manou, Eure-et-Loir,
France to New France in 1647. Louis Houde's son was Louis H. who married Marie Lemay in 1685. He was first elected to the
Legislative Assembly of Quebec as a member of the
Conservative Party for the riding of
Montréal–Sainte-Marie in the
1923 election. He was defeated in the
1927 election, but re-elected in a by-election on October 24, 1928. He was elected leader of the Conservative Party on July 10, 1929, led the party to defeat in the
1931 election, and failed to win a seat in
Montréal–Saint-Jacques after vacating his previous seat. He resigned as Conservative leader on September 19, 1932. In 1930, Jews in
Montreal expressed anger over antisemitic statements made by Houde. During a speech, an audience member had yelled, "To hell with the Jews!" Houde replied, "Well said. They have a new country and if they won't meet your demands they can go to Palestine, their country." When
George VI and
Queen Elizabeth visited Montreal on the
1939 royal tour of Canada and were greeted by cheering crowds, Houde turned to the King and said: "You know, Your Majesty, some of this is for you." He moved to federal politics and lost in a bid for election as a
Conservative candidate for the
House of Commons of Canada in a 1938
by-election in the Montreal riding of
St. Mary. In 1940, he was arrested and charged under the
Defence of Canada Regulations. He was imprisoned at
Camp Petawawa in Ontario until the end of the war. He ran again in St. Mary, this time as an independent candidate, in the
1945 federal election, but was again defeated. He won a seat as an independent candidate in the riding of
Papineau in the
1949 federal election by less than 100 votes. He did not run for re-election in the
1953 election. Houde became a figure of ridicule in parts of
English Canada because of his conduct in
opposition to conscription. During the 1949 federal election, the
Toronto Star, which openly supported the
Liberal Party, attempted to link the unpopular Houde with
George Drew, then leader of the
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada even though Houde was running as an independent candidate against an official Progressive Conservative candidate. The
Star accused Drew of making a secret pact with Quebec Premier
Maurice Duplessis to appoint Houde to the
Cabinet as Drew's
Quebec lieutenant should the Tories win the election. The newspaper's campaign reached its culmination the Saturday before the election with a banner front-page headline reading: (in later editions, the last line was changed to "VOTE ST. LAURENT"). Concurrent to his career in provincial and federal politics, Houde was mayor of Montreal from 1928 to 1932, from 1934 to 1936, from 1938 to 1940, and from 1944 to 1954. ==World War II controversy==