Robert Bourassa

Robert Bourassa

                                    October 20, 1996
Robert Bourassa

Robert Bourassa died at 5:45am on Wednesday, October9th on the     eighth floor of the Midtown Montreal Hospital.Bourassa was 63,and succumbed to malignant melanoma cancer. He was a skilled politician and strategist to some, but to most was just a nuisance. He had been a fixture on this country's political terrain for the most part of the last   three decades and will not be easily forgotten.
Robert Bourassa was the son of a minor federal government functionary, and grew up in modest conditions in Montreal's east end. He began to display an outstanding ability, and studied law at The University of Montreal, then winning a Rhodes scholarship to attend Oxford and a Ford Foundation grant sent him to Harvard.Along the way, he met and married Andree Simard, a woman from one of Quebec's richest families. Bourassa arose from near anonymity to becoming The youngest Premier in Quebec's history at an age of 36.During his first two terms in office from 1970-1976,Bourassa's government conceived and established the first of the massive schemes to harness the hydroelectric power of James Bay.Their government also introduced restrictive language legislation in Quebec, and set the trend for all that followed. Bourassa also dealt with The October Crisis, (when Front de Liberation du Quebec Terrorists kidnapped provincial labour minister Pierre Laporte and James Cross, a British trade commissioner. Cross was eventually freed but Laporte was killed.) Bourassa was also premier during the failed Victoria, Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional negotiations and the 1990 native standoff in Oka."He is a man who marked Quebec's history," Bouchard said. Bourassa was present for the first election of the Provincial Parti-Quebecois government, an event that not only drove him out of office, but right out of the country. His political resurrection in 1983 has become the stuff of legend in Quebec.The most critical...