LAURIER, SIR WILFRID

born Nov. 20, 1841, Saint-Lin, Canada East [now Quebec, Can.] died Feb. 17, 1919, Ottawa, Ont., Can. Laurier the first French-Canadian prime minister of the Dominion of Canada (18961911), noted especially for his attempts to define the role of French Canada in the federal state and to define Canada's relations to Great Britain. He was knighted in 1897. Additional reading Authoritative and sympathetic biographies of Laurier are L.O. David, Laurier: sa vieses oeuvres (1919); and O.D. Skelton, The Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 2 vol. (1921, reprinted 1965). Also laudatory is Sir John Willison, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party: A Political History, 2 vol. (1903). More recent reappraisals of Laurier's life and work include Paul Stevens, Wilfrid Laurier: Politician, in M. Hamelin (ed.), The Political Ideas of the Prime Ministers of Canada (1969).