Paul Sauve's statue

   It's Paul Sauve, a Duplessis underling who took over as Premier after Duplessis died. Sauve served a mere 112 days before dying in 1960 of a bum ticker at age 53. During his brief tenure he passed a law saying that Duplessis' statue would sit in front of the National Assembly of Quebec, but his successor Jean Lesage conveniently had the Duplessis statue lost in a warehouse until 1973. But that's a different statue story.
   In the days following Sauve's death in 1960 a consortium of Montreal businessmen agreed to chip in about $2,000 each to get this statue of Sauve done.
   The guy who signed the contract was Herbert J. O'Connell, who was the head of the Quebec Roadbuilders Association and benefited from provincial contracts handed out by Sauve.
   O'Connell's company had been nailed for trying to defraud the provincial government for $15,000 in 1962.
   O'Connell said he had forgotten about the statue by 1974 when it came back to his attention. That's when sculptor Louis Parent went to the media. O'Connell complained that he couldn't buy it because many of the others had died so they could not chip in what they promised.
   Sauve's son had vetoed a couple of offers from companies to buy it from Parent, as Sauve Jr. thought Coca Cola purchasing it to put in front of the Olympic Stadium would seem too commercial. Parent threatened to put it in the showroom of a used car shop on Papineau or else just melt it down for the bronze which was worth about $7,000.