Gilles Duceppe

Gilles Duceppe made history on August 13, 1990, when he won the by-election in Laurier—Sainte-Marie as an Independent sovereigntist — the first explicitly pro-sovereignty candidate ever elected to the House of Commons. The son of legendary Quebec actor Jean Duceppe, he was a former Maoist activist turned union negotiator who entered politics to protest the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. He ran with the tacit backing of Lucien Bouchard's nascent sovereigntist movement, and by December 1990, when the Bloc Québécois was formally constituted as a parliamentary group, Duceppe was among its founding members.

Duceppe went on to become the longest-serving leader of the Bloc Québécois, leading the party from 1997 to 2011 and briefly again in 2015. Under his leadership, the BQ won 54 seats in 1993, 44 in 1997, 38 in 2000, 54 again in 2004, and 51 in 2006 — dominating Quebec federal politics for nearly two decades. His tenure ended dramatically in the 2011 "orange wave" when the NDP under Jack Layton swept Quebec, reducing the BQ from 47 to just 4 seats. Duceppe even lost his own riding of Laurier—Sainte-Marie, which he had held for 21 years.