Origin
The party started as a loose coalition of legislators, the Action libérale nationale (a group dissidents from the Quebec Liberal Party) and the Conservative Party of Quebec. In the 1935 Quebec election the two parties agreed to run only one candidate of either party in each district. The Action libérale nationale (ALN) elected 26 out of 57 candidates and the Conservatives won 16 seats out of 33 districts.
Conservative Leader Maurice Duplessis became Leader of the Opposition. He soon rose to prominence as he used the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to expose the corrupt practices of the Liberal government of Alexandre Taschereau and force it to call an early election.
Capitalizing on his success, Duplessis called a caucus meeting at Sherbrooke's Magog Hotel and received the support of 15 Conservatives and 22 ALN members in favor of a merger of the two parties under his leadership.
The new party had no formal ties to the federal Conservatives. It ran candidates in every district and won a majority of the seats in the 1936 election.
Read more about this topic: Union Nationale (Quebec)
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