Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 108

Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 108, known as the Sault-au-Cochon Tragedy, was a Douglas DC-3 operated by Canadian Pacific Air Lines (registry CF-CUA S/N: 4518) that was blown up by a dynamite time bomb on 9 September 1949. The plane was flying from Montreal to Baie-Comeau, Quebec, with a stopover at Quebec City, when it was destroyed. All 19 passengers and 4 crew members were killed in the explosion and crash. The bombing was the first instance of an airliner bombing being conclusively solved.

A five-minute delay resulted in the plane crashing on land instead of water, allowing vital evidence to be uncovered. Investigators discovered that three people, Joseph-Albert Guay (22 September 1917 – 12 January 1951), Généreux Ruest (1898 – 25 July 1952), and Marguerite Pitre (5 September 1908 – 9 January 1953), had conspired to destroy the plane to obtain life insurance money. Guay had wanted to kill his wife, who was a passenger, so he could marry his mistress. The case was solved after Pitre confessed, implicating Guay but not herself or her brother Généreux Ruest. However, Guay later sent an extremely detailed 40-page confession revealing the complicity of his two accomplices to Premier of Quebec Maurice Duplessis. Guay, Ruest, and Pitre were tried for murder, found guilty, and executed.

Background

Joseph-Albert Guay was born the youngest of five children on 22 September 1917 in Charny, Quebec. His father was killed in a railway accident when he was aged 5 and the family moved to a suburb of Quebec City.

During World War II, Guay obtained a conscription deferment. In August 1941, he married Rita Morel and moved to Quebec City, where he worked at the Dominion Arsenal and sold jewelry and watches on the side. During this time, Guay met a watchmaker named Généreux Ruest, becoming close friends with Ruest and his sister, Marguerite Pitre. Towards the end of the war, Guay started selling jewelry fulltime, offering engagement rings, crucifixes, and watches. He also picked up damaged watches and took them to Ruest, who had his own workshop, to be repaired. Ruest and his wife moved to Sept-Îles, where the couple had a daughter in 1945.

Pitre was born in Saint-Octave-de-Métis, Quebec. She ran a boarding house at Saint-Roch, and was known by her neighbours and later the press as "Madame le Corbeau" ("Madame Raven") because she always wore black, or La femme Pitre.

Flight 108

Flight 108 was a Douglas DC-3 operated by Canadian Pacific Air Lines flying from Montreal to Baie-Comeau with a stopover at Quebec City.

Guay calculated that the explosion would send the plane into the Saint Lawrence River which would have made any forensic investigation very difficult with the technology of the time. A five-minute takeoff delay caused the plane to crash instead at Cap Tourmente, near Sault-au-Cochon in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, killing all 23 persons on board – four crew members and 19 passengers including four children. The bombing was the second attack against civil aviation in North America and received wide news coverage locally and abroad. All but three of the victims were Canadians. The three exceptions were the president, president-designate, and vice-president of the Kennecott Copper Corporation.