On September 9, 1949, jeweler Albert Guay blew up a plane in mid-flight to get rid of his wife, Rita Morel. The Duty returned to the crime scene on the occasion of the 75the anniversary of this first bomb attack by Western civil aviation, which notably inspired the novel The crime of Ovide Plouffeby Roger Lemelin. Last of two texts.
We are at the corner of Rue Caron and Boulevard Charest, in front of the former premises of the Monte-Carlo restaurant, in the Saint-Roch district of Quebec City. The ocean liner-style building attracts attention from the top of its seven floors of yellow brick topped with a mast. This is where Marie-Ange Robitaille, Albert Guay’s mistress, worked in the summer of 1949.
The 19-year-old waitress had been seduced two years earlier by the elegant jeweler, who encouraged her to leave the family home and stay in rooming houses in the upper town of Quebec. Marie-Ange gradually became the captive of this married man, 12 years her senior. Albert stole his mistress’s fur coat on a cold winter night to prevent her from going out. Another time, he covered her face with lollipops in order to compromise her in front of her relatives. The jealous jeweler went so far as to threaten her with his revolver outside the Monte-Carlo.
“If he hadn’t done all that, my mother would have been stuck with him and we wouldn’t be here,” says one of Marie-Ange’s daughters, Claire, in a new interview with The Duty“Guay really had a problem, he was a manipulator,” says the woman who prefers not to give her last name despite the 75 years that separate us from the events in Sault-au-Cochon.
Marie-Ange ended this toxic relationship at the end of July 1949. Albert then reconnected with his wife, Rita Morel, whom he planned to assassinate by putting her on board a plane that he would blow up in mid-flight. “He told himself that it was the only way to get my mother back, to be free, but he never told her about his plan,” Claire assures.
While the attack is a technical success, the sentimental aspect is different. Guay must set a trap for Marie-Ange to see her again at her accomplice, Marguerite Pitre, in the days following the explosion. The young woman, however, rejects his advances. “When you’re 21, can I have a little hope?” asks the pathetic jeweler. “There are many things that have time to happen in that time,” Marie-Ange replies.
The paths of the former lovers crossed again by chance on rue Saint-Joseph, shortly before Albert’s arrest on September 23. The defendant’s relatives were then inundated with calls from journalists. American press agencies offered up to $100 to obtain photos of the jeweler and his former mistress.
The public is intrigued by the mysterious young woman who has become, in spite of herself, the trigger for the drama. “My mother was traumatized by this experience,” explains her daughter Claire. “At the time, there were no psychologists, nothing!”
The flood of advertising
The curious flocked to the Monte-Carlo in the autumn of 1949. Starting with the legal columnist of The FatherlandJean Beaubien. “The newspaper representative thought he was meeting a young girl emboldened by the publicity surrounding her name,” the journalist wrote on the front page of his daily newspaper. “A deep disappointment, because it took him nearly two hours before he had the moral certainty that he was indeed speaking to the person in question.”
Beaubien moves from table to table to reach the section served by the woman with light brown hair. “Nothing in her gestures indicates that such a frail person is carrying such a flood of publicity on her shoulders.” The journalist pretends to be interested in Marie-Ange’s musical tastes, who tells him about Jacques Normand and Monique Leyrac, her favorite artists, whom she recently heard in her restaurant on Charest Boulevard. “Little by little, the terribly suspicious little waitress becomes tamed,” Beaubien writes.
On the way back, I thought how many frail women’s shoulders can face public opinion with composure.
The representative of The Fatherland returns to the Monte-Carlo the next evening. “While I am talking to her, I look out the window opposite the cash register and through a discreetly half-open shutter, I see the many passers-by who, brazenly, stop and glance to stare at Marie-Ange.”
Beaubien then heard the young woman’s only direct reference to the Sault-au-Cochon affair. “I’m waiting for the trial to be over. There are some who are going to pay!” she said curtly. Marie-Ange was referring to the libel proceedings she was thinking of bringing. She was particularly angry with a Toronto journalist who had taken her photo while pretending to be an insurance agent.
Jean Beaubien leaves the premises upon the arrival of the new ” buddy » by Marie-Ange. “I retreat cautiously even though she told me he wasn’t jealous,” the journalist wrote. On the way back, I thought how many frail women’s shoulders can face public opinion with composure.”
The trial
Marie-Ange’s silhouette came back into the spotlight at the very end of Albert Guay’s trial in March 1950. Seeing the photographers waiting for her at the doors of the courthouse, she quickly hid her face in her gloved hands. In a barely audible voice, the woman dressed in a long black coat spoke of her “stormy love affair” with Albert, who listened to her from the dock, carefully avoiding eye contact.
The former waitress at the Monte-Carlo will have to rebuild her life in the shadow of Sault-au-Cochon, the memory of which is first kept alive by the railway station novel I am a criminal, by Pierre Bernard, which sold over 20,000 copies in the early 1950s. Roger Lemelin also exploited this vein in 1982 in The crime of Ovide Plouffe, which would be brought to the screen two years later by Denys Arcand. “I’m sure my mother must not have liked it,” Claire points out.
Marie-Ange Robitaille would have to change her first name to return to a normal life. A graduate in medical technology in the late 1950s, she would marry late in life in the suburbs of Quebec City after gaining her financial independence. Her children would not learn of her tumultuous past until her death in 2013 at the age of 83.