Chauveau, Flynn, Fortin, Pâquet, Racicot (1879)

What the record says

In 1879, in Quebec, the record groups five changes of affiliation, each from the Quebec Liberal Party to the Conservative Party of Quebec. Five people are named individually, and the record marks the resolution of this group as complete. No source is cited for this event record: it is a legacy lead, kept from an earlier phase of the project because it points at something real, not because anyone has checked it. These entries record the affiliations and their dates. They do not record why the changes were made, and nothing here should be read as a statement of motive. This paragraph was assembled by machine from the rows named in it, and is pending review.

Participants

1. Alexandre Chauveau

   CTF-EP-000147-01

   Quebec Liberal Party→ToConservative Party of QuebecTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.

   Riding

   not recorded

   Effective

   1879year only

   Kind of transition

   Changed party affiliation

   Voluntary

   Not recorded

   Direction

   Not recorded

   Appointment

   Not recorded

2. Edmund James Flynn

   CTF-EP-000147-02

   Quebec Liberal Party→ToConservative Party of QuebecTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.

   Riding

   not recorded

   Effective

   1879year only

   Kind of transition

   Changed party affiliation

   Voluntary

   Not recorded

   Direction

   Not recorded

   Appointment

   Not recorded

3. Louis-Napoléon Fortin

   CTF-EP-000147-03

   Quebec Liberal Party→ToConservative Party of QuebecTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.

   Riding

   not recorded

   Effective

   1879year only

   Kind of transition

   Changed party affiliation

   Voluntary

   Not recorded

   Direction

   Not recorded

   Appointment

   Not recorded

4. Étienne-Théodore Pâquet

   CTF-EP-000147-04

   Quebec Liberal Party→ToConservative Party of QuebecTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.

   Riding

   not recorded

   Effective

   1879year only

   Kind of transition

   Changed party affiliation

   Voluntary

   Not recorded

   Direction

   Not recorded

   Appointment

   Not recorded

5. Ernest Racicot

   CTF-EP-000147-05

   Quebec Liberal Party→ToConservative Party of QuebecTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.

   Riding

   not recorded

   Effective

   1879year only

   Kind of transition

   Changed party affiliation

   Voluntary

   Not recorded

   Direction

   Not recorded

   Appointment

   Not recorded

Claims and the sources cited for them

Every statement this record makes is stored as a separate claim with its own review state and its own citations. A claim with no citation is shown as such rather than omitted.

1. Chauveau, Flynn, Fortin, Pâquet, Racicot changed affiliation from Quebec Liberal to Conservative in 1879.

   Pending review

   Field:

   affiliation_change

   Confidence:

   Not assessed

   Signed by:

   Not signed by a named contributor

   Concerns a living person

   • Alexandre Chauveau — Notice biographique

     Assemblée nationale du Québec · section Notice biographique, Alexandre Chauveau (Rimouski): passage au Parti conservateur, 29 octobre 1879 · FR

     Joignit les rangs du Parti conservateur avec quatre de ses collègues, entraînant la démission du gouvernement Joly, devenu minoritaire le 29 octobre 1879.

     The member's own biographical notice at the Assemblée nationale states that on 29 October 1879 he joined the Conservative ranks with four colleagues, bringing down the Joly government. The same sentence appears on all five notices, which is what makes this a group event rather than five coincidences. It also supplies the exact date the record lacks — the record carries year precision only.

     Archived copy — September 1, 2026

     CTF-S-ANQ-CHAUVEAU-ALEXANDRE · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026

   • Edmund James Flynn — Notice biographique

     Assemblée nationale du Québec · section Notice biographique, Edmund James Flynn (Gaspé): passage au Parti conservateur, 29 octobre 1879 · FR

     Le 29 octobre 1879, joignit les rangs du Parti conservateur avec quatre de ses collègues, entraînant la démission du gouvernement Joly de Lotbinière, devenu alors minoritaire.

     The member's own biographical notice at the Assemblée nationale states that on 29 October 1879 he joined the Conservative ranks with four colleagues, bringing down the Joly government. The same sentence appears on all five notices, which is what makes this a group event rather than five coincidences. It also supplies the exact date the record lacks — the record carries year precision only.

     Archived copy — September 1, 2026

     CTF-S-ANQ-FLYNN-EDMUND-JAMES · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026

   • Louis-Napoléon Fortin — Notice biographique

     Assemblée nationale du Québec · section Notice biographique, Louis-Napoléon Fortin (Montmagny): passage au Parti conservateur, 29 octobre 1879 · FR

     Le 29 octobre 1879, joignit les rangs du Parti conservateur avec quatre de ses collègues, entraînant la démission du gouvernement Joly, devenu minoritaire.

     The member's own biographical notice at the Assemblée nationale states that on 29 October 1879 he joined the Conservative ranks with four colleagues, bringing down the Joly government. The same sentence appears on all five notices, which is what makes this a group event rather than five coincidences. It also supplies the exact date the record lacks — the record carries year precision only.

     Archived copy — September 1, 2026

     CTF-S-ANQ-FORTIN-LOUIS-NAPOLEON · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026

   • Étienne-Théodore Pâquet — Notice biographique

     Assemblée nationale du Québec · section Notice biographique, Étienne-Théodore Pâquet (Lévis): passage au Parti conservateur, 29 octobre 1879 · FR

     Le 29 octobre 1879, joignit les rangs du Parti conservateur avec quatre de ses collègues, entraînant ainsi la démission du gouvernement Joly devenu minoritaire.

     The member's own biographical notice at the Assemblée nationale states that on 29 October 1879 he joined the Conservative ranks with four colleagues, bringing down the Joly government. The same sentence appears on all five notices, which is what makes this a group event rather than five coincidences. It also supplies the exact date the record lacks — the record carries year precision only.

     Archived copy — September 1, 2026

     CTF-S-ANQ-PAQUET-ETIENNE-THEODORE · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026

   • Ernest Racicot — Notice biographique

     Assemblée nationale du Québec · section Notice biographique, Ernest Racicot (Missisquoi): passage au Parti conservateur, 29 octobre 1879 · FR

     Le 29 octobre 1879, joignit les rangs du Parti conservateur avec quatre de ses collègues, entraînant ainsi la démission du gouvernement Joly, devenu alors minoritaire.

     The member's own biographical notice at the Assemblée nationale states that on 29 October 1879 he joined the Conservative ranks with four colleagues, bringing down the Joly government. The same sentence appears on all five notices, which is what makes this a group event rather than five coincidences. It also supplies the exact date the record lacks — the record carries year precision only.

     Archived copy — September 1, 2026

     CTF-S-ANQ-RACICOT-ERNEST · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026

2. In 1879, in Quebec, the record groups five changes of affiliation, each from the Quebec Liberal Party to the Conservative Party of Quebec. Five people are named individually, and the record marks the resolution of this group as complete. On 2026-09-01, 5 citations were attached to this record's affiliation claim, drawn from 5 sources, and they are recorded as pending review. The editorial status of the record is unchanged: it remains a legacy lead, and no editor has yet stood behind it. These entries record the affiliations and their dates. They do not record why the changes were made, and nothing here should be read as a statement of motive. This paragraph was assembled by machine from the rows named in it, and is pending review.

   Pending review

   Field:

   summary

   Confidence:

   Low

   Signed by:

   Official-source deterministic verifier

   Assumptions: Machine-assembled from this database’s own rows and from no other source. The text restates, as sentences, the participant rows attached to this record: the affiliation recorded on either side of each change, the date at the precision that row carries, the jurisdiction and chamber, whether the change is filed under a group event, and whether the event record behind it carries a citation. No date is printed finer than the row’s date_precision, so a year-precision row yields a year and never a day. Both languages are composed from the same rows rather than translated from one another. No motive, benefit, causation or characterisation of a person appears, and none may be added under this claim.

   Counterarguments: Two limits, stated rather than glossed. First, the prose is only as sound as the rows beneath it: where a party link is wrong the wrong party name is printed, and where an event is a legacy lead the sentence repeats an unverified lead — saying so, but repeating it. Second, restating a thin record fluently can make it read as established; the pending status on this claim, and the sentence inside the text naming the evidence state, are the only things that say otherwise. Four label-to-party mappings were deliberately not printed, because the party row’s name did not exist on the date of the event; the underlying links were left untouched and are still visible on the record.

   No source is cited for this claim.

What happened afterwards

Recorded outcomes only. An absence here means nothing has been recorded, not that nothing happened, and no causal link to the affiliation change is asserted unless a source establishes one.

No outcome is recorded for anyone on this event.

Corrections to this record

• Five-member Quebec group record named individually

  The published participant count was wrong. This record counted 5 people as one, because a single "persons" row carried all their names. It now names each person separately and counts 5: Alexandre Chauveau, Edmund James Flynn, Louis-Napoléon Fortin, Étienne-Théodore Pâquet, Ernest Racicot.

  September 1, 2026 · material correction · CTF-COR-COUNT-000147

Revision history

Every change to this record is appended here. Nothing is edited away.

1. r4 expanded

   Wrote summary_en and summary_fr, both of which were empty. The text is machine-assembled from this database’s own rows and from no other source: the 5 participant rows attached to this event, each with the affiliation recorded on either side, the date at the precision that row carries, the jurisdiction and chamber, and whether the event record behind it carries a citation (0/1). No date is printed finer than date_precision. No motive, benefit, causation or characterisation is asserted, in keeping with the published mandate of the automated validator that signs it. Both languages are composed from the same rows rather than translated from one another. The last sentence of the text says, in the text itself, that it was assembled by machine and is pending review, so the disclosure travels with the paragraph through the API and through a copied quotation. The text is recorded as claim CTF-CL-SUM-74A0021E107B, kind project_analysis, assertion status pending_review. Nothing was copied or paraphrased from any encyclopaedia: the earlier removal of Wikipedia-derived prose from this project is not reversed by this change. Publication status and verification level are unchanged.

   September 1, 2026 · Official-source deterministic verifier

2. r3 corrected

   This record asserted that one person changed affiliation: event_scope was "individual" and participant_count_estimate was 1, while its single participant row pointed at a composite person record named "Five Quebec MLAs (Chauveau, Flynn, Fortin, Pâquet, Racicot)" that stood for 5 people. The record now has event_scope "group", participant_count_known 5, and one participant row per person: Alexandre Chauveau, Edmund James Flynn, Louis-Napoléon Fortin, Étienne-Théodore Pâquet, Ernest Racicot. Each person was verified against an authoritative source before being created. No date, party, affiliation label, transition type or verification level was changed.

   September 1, 2026

3. r2 corrected

   Corrected the stored permanent URI. It pointed at /en/crossings/5-quebec-mlas-1879, a path this site has never served, so the citation target returned HTTP 404. It now points at /crossings/5-quebec-mlas-1879, the canonical record address. No fact, date, party, participant or source in this record was changed.

   September 1, 2026

4. r1 created

   Imported from the legacy archive as an unpublished research lead. Historical narrative, motive labels, and benefit scores were not treated as verified claims.

   July 31, 2026 · Crossing the Floor project maintainer