The “toffe de la Malbaie”, a nickname that seemed to amuse him, is no more. Former owner of a hotel empire valued at 400 million and sworn enemy of the CSN in an epic conflict at the Manoir Richelieu, Raymond Malenfant died on Friday. He was 91 years old.
To describe Raymond Malenfant is to describe an extraordinary self-made man whose bankruptcy in 1993, and the loss of the famous Pointe-au-Pic hotel, heralded the start of an endless series of unfortunate events that the media have covered throughout the years since.
“The Manoir Richelieu killed me,” he told The Canadian Press on the occasion of the release of his biography in 2003. “I had hotels that were going well, then, with that, the devil took the money. . “
This “Manoir Richelieu” is the tragic story of one of his great blows. After having extended his chain of Universal hotels throughout Quebec, he took over the famous establishment in 1985. He carried out a major renovation but refused to recognize the union presence of the CSN. The conflict quickly degenerates and will be marked by the death of a protester.
Born near Rivière-du-Loup in 1930, Raymond Malenfant was the youngest of a family of nine children. His parents were farmers. “My father just had the means to feed us, then that’s it,” he said on the Camera 90 program, broadcast on TQS. His “first stroke of luck,” he says, comes in Sainte-Foy, with the sale of land to Sam Steinberg. The results of the transaction then allow him to build a hotel in Rivière-du-Loup without borrowing.
After the bankruptcy of 1993, bad luck seemed to persist. Raymond Malenfant finds himself in court. In 1999, Cap-Rouge estimated that the grass on its land was poorly cut and imposed a fine of $ 700. He chooses prison. After a few days, Jean-René Dufort, from La Fin du monde est à sept heures, intervenes in his favor.
In 2001, he was hit by a car in Laval. He was then plunged into a coma for two weeks and lost his memory for six months. “After the accident I had, I thank the good Lord, things are not going so bad,” he told TVA in an exclusive interview in 2014. “My head is there, I have half of the steel climbing body and, the rest, it drags. “