Early Life and Career
Paradis was born in Bedford in Quebec's Eastern Townships. He earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Ottawa (1973) and later took graduate studies in bills of exchange and business law at the same institution. He was called to the Quebec Bar in 1975 and worked as a lawyer before entering politics, specializing in constitutional and administrative cases. At age twenty-seven, he won a case before the Supreme Court of Canada against proposed limits on egg marketing.
Before joining the Liberal Party, Paradis was a member of the Union Nationale. He was a riding association president in the 1976 provincial election and later served on the party's provincial executive. He left when he learned that Union Nationale leader Rodrigue Biron was planning to support the "Oui" side in Quebec's 1980 referendum on sovereignty.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Paradis
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“They think how one life hums, revolves and toils,
One cog in a golden singing hive:”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)