Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Brosseau
Régiment de Maisonneuve

It was recruited to full strength under its gallant leader, Col. Robert Bourassa, himself a veteran of the last war, and who unfortunately, after proceeding to England with his units, has now been invalided back and lies here paralyzed. He led the van of Canada in recruiting and the sympathy of all Canadians must go out to him now, to console him in his suffering.

(J. A. Matthewson, provincial treasurer, 25 Nov 1941)

Born in Laprairie, Quebec on 25 March 1893, Robert Bourassa was a lawyer, former crown prosecutor, and commanding officer of the Régiment de Maisonneuve since 1936. He had belonged to the Cadet Officer Training Corps at Laval University and enlisted in the 1st Canadian Tank Battalion in April 1918 shortly after passing the Quebec Bar. Facing defence budget cuts in the interwar years, Bourassa advocated for a new regimental armoury in Maisonneuve, which had yet to be built by the declaration of war in September 1939. “What we want is a suitable place that the men can easily reach,” he stated exactly a year earlier, “not a tombstone to a regiment that will necessarily disappear if it is located in the far east end of the city.”

Despite lacking the appropriate barrack accommodations, Bourassa mobilized his regiment and brought it up to full strength. In addition to military duties and presiding over courts martial, he continued to work as defence counsel in civilian cases. Before the March 1940 federal election, his name was floated as a possible Liberal candidate in Verdun but he decided against running. He gave up his law practice and devoted himself to wartime service.

Shortly after the regiment arrived for maneuvers at Valcartier, Bourassa fell ill. Health problems dated back at least to his military service in England in 1918 when he had complained of chronic epigastric pain. He nevertheless took the Régiment de Maisonneuve overseas in August 1940. Two months later, hospitalization and two operations forced him to relinquish command to Major Paul Brosseau, son of the founder of the regiment. Major-General Victor Odlum of the 2nd Division reported, “even if he pulls through it, he will probably have to be sent home permanently incapacitated with very short life expectation.”

“I had pride in knowing that I left behind a very efficient regiment, ready to do their part, when the time comes,” Bourassa declared on arrival home in November. Although he spent the war years sick and bed-ridden in Quebec, his early effort to recruit one of the first mobilized French Canadian units, was rewarded with an Order of the British Empire in 1946.

He died on 22 November 1958 in Montreal.