Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Bourassa
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.”

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