Pierre Laporte

Pierre Laporte ( born February 25, 1921 in Montréal, † October 17, 1970 ) was a Canadian politician. He was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour of the province of Quebec. In October 1970, he was kidnapped and murdered during the October Crisis terrorist Front de libération du Québec of the ( FLQ ).

Biography

Laporte studied law at the Université de Montréal in 1945 and was admitted as a lawyer. However, he aspired to a career in journalism and worked until 1961 for the newspaper Le Devoir. Laporte was parliamentary correspondent and an avowed opponent of the National Union of Maurice Duplessis traditionalist- clerical policy. In 1956 he ran as an independent candidate for a seat in the National Assembly of Quebec, but was not elected.

The new Liberal Prime Minister of Quebec, Jean Lesage, persuaded Laporte, to enter again into politics. As a candidate of the Parti libéral du Québec, he was elected on 14 December 1961. From December 1962 to June 1966, he was also Minister of Culture in Lesage's Cabinet Secretary for municipalities, as of September 1964. In 1969 he ran for party chairman, but was defeated Robert Bourassa. After four years in opposition, the Liberals won the elections in April 1970. Bourassa appointed Laporte to his deputy and as Minister of Labour.

On October 10, 1970 Laporte was kidnapped by members of the Chénier cell of the FLQ from his home in Saint- Lambert, five days after the kidnapping of British diplomat James Richard Cross. The terrorists held him hostage fixed and referred to him in their communications as " Minister of unemployment and assimilation". The federal government called on October 16, a state of emergency. An anonymous caller told a radio station, Laporte was killed. Police found him on the same day strangled in the trunk of a car that had been parked near the airport Saint- Hubert. His captors were later arrested and sentenced to long prison terms, but came to only seven to eleven years in prison again.

Three days after his assassination Laporte was buried in the cemetery of Notre- Dame-des- Neiges in Montreal. Named after him, among other things, the Pont Pierre- Laporte, a suspension bridge in the city of Québec.