death_place death_date predecessor birth_place successor office birth_date term_start article_title term_end name
westmount , quebec march 27 , 1964 percy morrison sudbury , ontario robert arthur mayor of sudbury , ontario february 16 , 1893 1920 alfred laberge
 1921 joseph alfred laberge
alfred laberge

joseph alfred -lrb- fred -rrb- laberge -lrb- february 16 , 1893 - march 27 , 1964 -rrb- was a canadian politician , who served as mayor of sudbury , ontario in 1920 and 1921 .
laberge was the son of jean-baptiste laberge , who founded the laberge lumber company and constructed many of the earliest buildings in sudbury .
he later took over management of the company from his father .
elected mayor in 1920 , laberge was at 27 years old the youngest mayor ever elected in sudbury at that point .
he was also the first mayor to have been born in sudbury , and the first francophone to hold the mayoralty since francis lemieux in 1903 .
his election marked at least a temporary end to linguistic tensions between the city 's anglophone and francophone communities initiated by the conscription crisis of 1917 , and ironically occurred just one year after the first municipal election in the city 's history in which francophone candidates had failed to win a single seat on council .
following his term as mayor , laberge ran for the conservative nomination in nipissing in the 1925 federal election , but was subjected to a blackmail attempt by elzéar cousineau , who wrote him an anonymous letter demanding a $ 2,000 payout .
laberge turned the letter over to the police , and on their advice left a dummy package in cousineau 's requested location , and cousineau was arrested when he arrived to retrieve the package .
despite cousineau 's arrest , however , laberge withdrew from the nomination race in favour of john ferguson .
ferguson failed on election day to defeat incumbent mp edmond lapierre ; laberge was selected as the party 's candidate in the subsequent 1926 election , but also lost to lapierre .
after his retirement from the lumber business , laberge moved to montreal , quebec , and died at his home in westmount on march 27 , 1964 .
