Pierre Laporte

Pierre Laporte (25 February 1921 – 17 October 1970) was a Canadian lawyer, journalist and politician. He was deputy premier of the province of Quebec when he was kidnapped and murdered by members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) during the October Crisis. Life and career Pierre Laporte, grandson of the Liberal politician Alfred Leduc, was born in Montreal, Quebec, on 25 February 1921. He was a journalist with Le Devoir newspaper from 1945 to 1961, and was known for his crusading work against Quebec's then-Premier Maurice Duplessis. In 1950, he graduated from the Law School at the Université de Montreal, and was hired by Le Devoir shortly afterwards. During his years in journalism, he published a number of series targeting the management of the Duplessis government. At the same time that he criticized the Union Nationale government in public, he wrote campaign pamphlets for the Union Nationale during elections. In 1954, Le Devoir ran a six-part series on problems during the construction of the Bersimis-1 generating station. Laporte alleged that the government had taken kickbacks from construction companies building the dam. In a speech, Duplessis called Laporte "a man without a heart, a pig, a snake and a slothy individual" whose journalism "pandered to the vilest instincts of yellow journalism and the most ignoble sentiments". Duplessis referred to Laporte as a writer for a "Bolshevik journal". In 1954, Laporte published a column in the left-wing newspaper Vrai where he wrote: “The Union Nationale is rotten. Those who don’t have eyes to see clearly...at least have a nose to smell. It’s a rotten fruit, whose stink wafts all the way to the provincial borders." In 1958, he was part of a team of Le Devoir reporters exposing the natural gas scandal, leading to the formation of the Salvas Commission, soon after the election of 1960. Laporte's biographer, Jean-Charles Panneton, stated: "Pierre Laporte was very courageous. He was a pioneer of investigative journalism in an era when investigative journalism was not practiced, when the media were very docile toward the government of Maurice Duplessis."