Pierre Laporte, at home with his wife, Francoise, and their children, daughter Claire and son Jean, announcing his candidacy for Liberal Party leadership in 1969.The Canadian Press
On Saturday, Oct. 10, 1970, Françoise Laporte was getting ready to go out for the evening with her husband, Pierre Laporte, a Quebec cabinet minister. Meanwhile, he was tossing around a football with a nephew in front of their home in St. Lambert, Que., while he waited for her.
Suddenly, a green Chevrolet pulled up and masked members of the Front de libération du Québec whisked away Mr. Laporte at gunpoint. The kidnapping was the second by the FLQ in five days, following that of British diplomat James Cross (who would be freed weeks later). The brazen abduction signalled an escalation in what became known as the October Crisis, one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history, when hundreds of innocent people were arrested and army tanks roamed the province’s streets as civil liberties were suspended in the name of law and order.
The kidnapping of Mr. Laporte, Quebec’s deputy premier and minister responsible for labour and immigration, was one of a series of FLQ crimes – including numerous bank robberies and hundreds of bombings – committed across Quebec since 1963.
A week after his kidnapping, Mr. Laporte, 49, was found strangled to death in the trunk of the same car in which he had been taken. The gruesome discovery came a day after prime minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, marking the first time in Canada’s history that martial law was declared during peacetime.
Mrs. Laporte during her 90th birthday celebration in 2013 with her son Jean Laporte.Courtesy of the Family
Despite her grief, Mrs. Laporte, who died Nov. 2 at age 98, went on to thrive in a new career as a citizenship judge from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, and had a fulfilling life with family and friends, while also travelling extensively and partaking in cultural activities.
“I don’t think you ever forget tragedy like that, and [especially] when things happen so arbitrarily to a family,” said her grandson Thomas Laporte Aust. “But I think her legacy is she didn’t let what happened to her get in the way of appreciating what she had and living life to the fullest.”
She was born Françoise Brouillet on Jan. 30, 1923, in the Montreal-area farming community of L’Assomption, Que. Her father, Ovide Brouillet, was a dairy and vegetable farmer, justice of the peace and entrepreneur who sold cow-milking machines, and her mother, Marie-Laure Brouillet (née Durand) was a teacher. Françoise was the eldest of their six children.
“I remember my mother saying she knew how to milk a cow from when she was young,” her daughter Claire Laporte Aust said.
Mrs. Laporte earned teaching credentials at a teachers college in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, but did not spend much time in front of a classroom. She was 20 when she met Mr. Laporte at a graduation ball at the Collège L’Assomption, where Mr. Laporte was a student. The couple married two years later.
Mrs. Laporte gave birth to three children while Mr. Laporte trained as a lawyer and then chose a career in journalism. He was a harsh critic of premier Maurice Duplessis, exposing his involvement in a gas-company scandal, before entering politics with the province’s Liberal government.
The couple’s first child, Marie, died at age eight from a brain tumour. “That [kind of tragedy] alone, I think, can destroy some people but certainly didn’t destroy the resolve or the positivity with which my grandmother went through life,” Mr. Aust said.
Mrs. Laporte learned of her husband’s death from a television report while she and her children, Claire and Jean, and future son-in-law, Edward Aust, were under police protection, along with then-premier Robert Bourassa and other officials, in Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel.
Three days later, police sharpshooters patrolled rooftops as Mr. Laporte was buried in a simple ceremony that captured the country’s attention. (Mrs. Laporte had refused a state funeral.)
Mrs. Laporte poses with two grandsons and another child at the site of a citizenship ceremony.Courtesy of the Family
“They were a good team and it must have been devastating when my father died,” said Mrs. Laporte Aust. “My brother was 11 years old then. I was 21, so I was raised but my brother was not. It must have been very daunting for her to start to roll up her sleeves and to tackle the [parenting] job by herself.
“And, what is difficult is that it was a private event for us, but it was also a public event,” she added, referring to Mr. Laporte’s death. “Most people, when their father [has] died, they go through it privately and they can talk to each other. We talked to one another, but it was also a whole public thing going on – like a monster. So it was different.”
The federal government offered Mrs. Laporte the citizenship judge post based on her past work volunteering with various immigration organizations.
Initially, Mrs. Laporte was reluctant to accept the job, because she did not feel qualified, and she was concerned that her son could be adversely affected if she was not home when he returned from school. But she later relented.
“If I had to say a characteristic [that defined her], it was her ability to adapt to a very difficult situation,” her son-in law, Edward Aust, said. “She pulled up her socks and she did it,” he said of the citizenship judge role. “That’s a hard thing to do for someone who had not been going to work every day and then to fall into that role and do the studying she had to do – and she really produced.”
“[The citizenship ceremony] was a celebration for [immigrants] to become Canadians and it was very meaningful for them and it was for my mom, too – to be able to make [their citizenship] official for them,” added Mrs. Laporte Aust. “And, she did it with all her heart until she retired.”
Thomas Aust fondly recalled Friday shopping trips with his grandmother in Montreal’s Chinatown and other districts, during which immigrants, grateful for being sworn in as citizens by Mrs. Laporte, would invite her in for visits.
Mr. and Mrs. Laporte in 1965.Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
“It was just a really nice thing to see because, ultimately in her work, she worked for the [federal] government, but there was this beautiful relationship between what she did and the people she helped,” he said.
The Friday shopping trips marked the beginning of weekend stays for Mr. Aust and his brother, Charles, at their grandmother’s home in St. Lambert. Cherished activities included dining on her homemade chicken-vegetable-and-noodle soup, dubbed Soupe de Grandmaman, and listening to a variety of music, including French jazz, and gypsy tunes. Mr. Aust credited Mrs. Laporte with passing on many eclectic tastes and interests.
“I learned to play bridge with my grandmother,” he said. “I was 10 years old and I’d be playing bridge with her with a whole bunch of 70-year-olds, and they didn’t know me. Some of them were happy to see me, because they had grandkids, too, and some of them weren’t. She [said]: ‘Let’s try it out, let’s see if it works’ – and it did.
“I went to bridge games with her every Wednesday for a couple of years. I was a lawyer in Montreal and I would still go to bridge games with her. We just had very kindred spirits and she shared those kindred spirits with her other grandkids as well.”
Over the years, Mrs. Laporte attended the launches of several venues named in Mr. Laporte’s honour.
“It was emotional every time and it brought back difficult memories,” said Mrs. Laporte Aust, who often accompanied her mother to the events. “But at some point, you feel that you’re carrying history with you and you embody it. And, it’s important that, when the time comes you are there, and you show your family that these things are important – and she was good at that.”
Mrs. Laporte spent her final years in a seniors facility, where she contracted and overcame COVID-19 in 2020. (Vaccines were not yet available.)
“She lived through that and was quite angry because her taste buds weren’t working,” Mr. Aust said.
Even while battling dementia, Mrs. Laporte never lost her taste for music, singing with Mr. Aust and Mrs. Laporte Aust, until their final visits.
“It’s kind of cool,” Mr. Aust said. “She didn’t know who I was, she didn’t know who my mother was, but she remembered the lyrics of songs she sang 80 years ago.”
Mrs. Laporte leaves two children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, as well as three sisters, Lucie, Claire and Louise, the latter of whom who married Roland Laporte, a brother of Pierre Laporte. In addition to her husband and eldest child, Mrs. Laporte was predeceased by her brothers, Marcel and Laurent.
Mr. Aust said his grandmother was both a proud Quebecker and a proud Canadian. “That doesn’t create some sort of a conflict,” he said. “Certainly, my family grew up knowing that their whole lives – still do.”