Reine Johnson - how the woman behind three Quebec premiers survived her lover's bullets

    Reine Johnson (nee Reine Gagne) lived to see her husband Daniel Johnson Sr. and both sons Daniel Johnson Jr. and Pierre-Marc Johnson all rise to the post of Quebec premier.
   What's less known is that she survived an attempted murder-suicide on Saturday, January 10, 1953 in Westmount, when her clandestine lover, Bertrand Dussault, a celebrated radio announcer, attempted to kill her before killing himself.
   Reine left her home on Harvard Ave. in NDG to go her lover Dussault's rooming house around 1:30 p.m. at 4041 Dorchester, part of a now-demolished strip of buildings on the north side, just west of Atwater in Westmount.
   Johnson's secret lover was a 28-year-old Radio Canada freelance announcer named Bertrand Dussault.
   Dussault was born in Amos, Quebec and attended College de Montreal, College St. Laurent and Lower Canada College, where he learned perfect English.
   He then went to study law at McGill but instead got hooked on radio after spending a day in a van reading from a political candidate's text from a loudspeaker roaming the streets of the east end.
   A radio brass guy heard him and gave him a job in Roun Noranda in 1945.  Dussault then got radio work at CKVL in Montreal in 1946 and switched over to Radio Canada the next year where he hosted many shows and interviewed such stars as Danny Kay and Bobby Hope.
   Dussault left Radio Canada in 1951 to become a freelancer and was seen as a man about town as his tall skinny frame was a familiar sight in such chic restaurants as the 400, Cafe Martin and Woodlands.
  ***
  On that fateful day, the last day of his life, Dussault and the married Johnson hung out for about 45 minutes together on Dorchester, doing whatever they did and then Dussault asked her to leave her husband.
   Johnson didn't give Dussault the answer he sought, so he pulled out a pistol and blasted five shots in her direction out behind the house, hitting her twice.

Bernard Dussault explained in a 1950 Montreal newspaper interview that he liked women too much to settle down
(find courtesy Annie Richard)

   Johnson fled to nearby Tupper St. and was scooped up by a cab and survived after a stay in the hospital.
   Her lover, however, did not. Dussault turned the pistol on himself and ended his own life at about 2:30 p.m.

Daniel Jr., Lise, Daniel Sr. Reine, Marie and Pierre-Marc
after dad was elected in a surprise Union National
victory in 1966

   Her kids at the time were Daniel, who was aged nine, Pierre-Marc, six and Diane and Marie who were even younger.
  At that time her husband Daniel Johnson Sr. was still a relative unknown, a 37-year-old backbencher for the Duplessis government serving as MNA for Bagot.
   Marie, the daughter of a Conservative lawyer, had married Johnson in 1943.
   Johnson offered his resignation but Duplessis declined and pressured the media to go easy on the story and only La Presse mentioned the name of the victim in a discreet article that went largely unnoticed.
  The scandal might even have endeared Johnson to Duplessis, as the leader was soon named  him parliamentary assistant, then speaker, then Hydraulic Resources Minister soon after and in 1958 was named by Le Devoir as one of five Duplessis cabinet ministers who apparently cashed in on shares of a natural resources company in what appeared to be a possible conflict of interest. He took over the Union Nationale party in 1961 and was elected premier in 1966.

The rooming house stood around here

   The building where Johnson's lover killed himself was demolished in 1965, as part of a provincially-backed project to widen Dorchester.
  Pierre-Marc Johnson later recounted that he had to stay with his aunt for a while after his mother was shot. He became premier from Oct-Dec. 1985 while his older brother Daniel reigned as a Liberal premier for most of 1994.
   To his credit, Pierre-Marc acknowledged the incident to a biographer who detailed the story in a 2007 biography of the family.

Reine fled Mrs. H. Peterson's rooming house and flagged
a hack on Tupper