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Fernand Daoust, trade union official (born 26 October 1926 in Montreal, QC; died 23 January 2020 in Montreal). Between 1969 and 1993, Daoust was successively General Secretary and President of the Québec Federation of Labour (QFL), and a major force and key figure on the Québécois scene.
Career Highlights
After university, Fernand Daoust became involved in the union movement in 1950, campaigning in turn for the Hatters' Union (1968), the Canadian Congress of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress. From 1959 to 1968 he worked at the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers' union. He then held the position of Quebec head of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
In 1969 Daoust embarked on a long career on the Executive Committee of the Quebec Federation of Labour (QFL) (see Union Centrals, Quebec), when he was elected General Secretary of this group of affiliated trade unions under president Louis Laberge. Fernand Daoust succeeded Laberge in 1991 and retired in 1993. From 1994 to 1996, he was President of the Solidarity Fund QFL, a union investment fund for the protection and creation of jobs.
Daoust was involved in many public organizations throughout his years of militancy: the Conseil supérieur de l'éducation, the Office franco-québécois de la jeunesse, and Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
However, it was as defender of the rights of Quebec workers to work in their own language that Fernand Daoust made his mark on the Quebec public arena. Since 1959, in negotiation with multinational businesses, he demanded that discussions take place in French. He was a founding member (1971) of the Mouvement Québec Français (MQF), an organization that grouped together trade unions, and cultural and national organizations dedicated to the defence of the French language. A member of the Board of Directors for the Office de la langue française since its establishment in 1977, he intervened relentlessly on linguistic issues.
Honours
In 1994, the Conseil de la langue française decorated Fernand Daoust with the Ordre des francophones d'Amérique. In recognition of his contribution to the French language, he was awarded the Prix Georges-Émile-Lapalme (1998), and the same year he was named Patriot of the Year by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal. In June 2001, he was made a Chevalier of the National Order of Quebec.
