Lieutenant-Colonel L.J. St. Laurent
Régiment de Hull

We are endeavouring to “sell Canada,” to instill and awaken patriotism and a sense of duty to our native land … We haven’t even a national flag to wave proudly in front of the men. The cowardly sins of omission are bearing fruit. We have not developed a true and strong sense of nationhood. Physically we are a mighty nation, nationally we are children.

(St. Laurent to Brig. Macklin, May 1944)

Born in Ottawa on 25 July 1903, Lucien Joseph St. Laurent was a graduate of the University of Ottawa and worked as a clerk for the city’s electric company. Commissioned with le Régiment de Hull in 1926, he was promoted to captain in 1933 and served as battalion adjutant. He went overseas as a staff officer with 1st Division headquarters in December 1939. He returned home two years later at the rank of major.

He was attached to 18th Infantry Brigade in Canada as brigade major until the Kisak operation in August 1943. St. Laurent then served as brigade major for the 13th Infantry Brigade under the command of Dieppe veteran and former Régiment de Hull CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Dollard Ménard, who had taken on the acting role from Brigadier H.W. Foster.

Serving throughout the six-month expedition to the Aleutians, St. Laurent was promoted to lieutenant-colonel of le Régiment de Hull in February 1944. Two months later, military authorities selected the 13th Brigade for overseas reinforcements, leaving St. Laurent with the difficult task of convincing soldiers conscripted for home defence to go active for general service. In a report to Brigadier W.H.S. Macklin, St. Laurent identified the strident opposition, particularly from French-Canadians within his own battalion:

A number are determined never to sign active in protest against the repeated attempts to have them sign, against the taunts and jibes suffered over the years as “Zombies,” “Westyproofs,” “Conscripts,” “Women’s Home Companions,” “Pantywaists,” “Poltroons,” “The Lily Livered” and other unmentionables. They are members of a fraternity. They have developed a fixation.

He explained the frustrations of officers like himself who “had an interesting experience in England and are anxious to return to the big show”:

It has been a long and heart-breaking four years, filled with an ever-present scene of anticipation shrouded in futility. Bayonets, no matter how well trained cannot reach an enemy thousands of miles away. They taught their men “how to kill”—always with the hope someday this knowledge could be put to effective use and hasten Victory …

A serious lowering of officer’s authority may result from a situation where officers are obliged to use every sort of cajolery, argument and promise to induce their men to enroll. We are not gifted with the divine sparks of hypnotic leadership.

In the end, only 20 percent of le Régiment de Hull volunteered to go active when the brigade embarked for the United Kingdom in May 1944.

St. Laurent received the Order of the British Empire and died in Saanich, British Columbia on 25 December 1984