Joseph-Napoléon-Henri Bourassa (; September 1, 1868 – August 31, 1952) was a French Canadian political leader and publisher. In 1899, Bourassa was outspoken against the British government's request for Canada to send a militia to fight for Britain in the Second Boer War. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier's compromise was to send a volunteer force, but the seeds were sown for future conscription protests during the World Wars of the next half-century. Bourassa unsuccessfully challenged the proposal to build warships to help protect the empire. He led the opposition to conscription during World War I and argued that Canada's interests were not at stake. He opposed Catholic bishops who defended military support of Britain and its allies. Bourassa was an ideological father of French-Canadian nationalism. Bourassa was also a defining force in forging French Canada's attitude to the Canadian Confederation of 1867. Early life Born in Montreal, Quebec, to Napoléon Bourassa and Azélie Papineau (Bourassa), Henri Bourassa was a grandson of the pro-democracy reformist politician Louis-Joseph Papineau. He was educated at École Polytechnique de Montréal and at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1890, he became mayor of the town of Montebello, Quebec, at the age of 22. Political career In 1896, he was elected to the House of Commons as an independent Liberal for Labelle but resigned in 1899 to protest the sending of Canadian troops to the Second Boer War. He was re-elected soon after his resignation. He argued that Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier was un vendu ("a sell-out") to British Empire and its supporters in Canada. To counter what he perceived to be the evils of imperialism, he created in 1903 the Ligue nationaliste canadienne (Canadian Nationalist League) to instill a pan-Canadian nationalist spirit in the francophone population. It opposed political dependence on either Britain or the United States and supported instead Canadian autonomy within the British Empire. Bourassa left the federal parliament on May 11, 1907, but he remained active in Quebec politics by being elected to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec in the 1908 provincial election in Montréal division no. 2. He led the Ligue until he retired from the assembly on September 5, 1912. He continued to criticize Laurier, whose compromises mostly helped the British Empire. Bourassa opposed Laurier's attempts to build a Canadian Navy in 1910, which he believed would draw Canada into future wars between Britain and Germany. He supported the