Andre "The Human Bomb" Deblois remembered

Andre "The Human Bomb" Deblois after being shot in the jaw

 Friday is the anniversary of Montreal's most spectacularly audacious one-man attempted robbery.
   Andre Deblois Day in Montreal is an occasion to remember a young man who walked into the TD Bank at 8290 St. Lawrence (corner Guizot) on March 8, 1957 clad ridiculously in a nylon stocking over his face, a plastic nose, rubber bathing cap and sunglasses.
  He was also wearing six sticks of dynamite in his grey coat and was hauling another 33 in his bag.
    Deblois, 21, arrived after 2 p.m. in a taxi he had stolen at Jean Talon and Iberville. A cop had attempted to apprehend him but Deblois was allowed to keep rolling after he pulled his gun and flashed the TNT.
   Upon entering the bank, some staffers believed the outlandishly-clad Deblois was just pulling a prank until he fired a bullet into a countertop and another into a clock with a foot-long hunting rifle. He then started babbling incoherently in French according to bank manager John MacFarlane.
   Clerk Louis Beaupre, 18, set off an alarm with his foot and the standoff began.
   DeBlois ordered two cops outside to drop their guns and come inside. They said they would do it only if he put down his gun.
DeBlois refused. After a 20 minute standoff Constable Joseph Perron said a little prayer, kicked through a window and shot Deblois through the jaw.
   Had his bullet made contact with the vest, it likely would have blown the entire building sky high.
   With Deblois demobilized on the floor, 20 cop cars descended on the scene and bomb specialist Leo Plouffe (who would later perform legendary service during the FLQ threats) neutralized the explosives.
   But Deblois mentioned that there was another bomb set to go off at five p.m. in a locker at Central Station. Officers took the key, rushed to the train station and called in Plouffe again, who yanked the wires off a ticking time bomb connected to five sticks of dynamite set to explode at 5 o'clock.
   It was already past five p.m. but a defect in the bomb had made it misfire, a defect that potentially saved the lives of 1,000 rush hour commuters.
    Deblois was likely driven nuts by a series of recent troubling personal issues. First his seven month-old child died, then he was in a truck accident, his home in Chambly burnt down, he lost his factory job and his long-hospitalized father died a day or two before the attempted robbery.

   He said he didn't mean to hurt anybody but ended up badly hurt himself, suffering paralysis from his wound.
   He was brought to trial but his condition continued to deteriorate until he died on May 12, 1957.