Francois Dorlot, married to Louise Beaudoin for 25 years, is a man with a past.
Now a high-level Quebec civil servant, he first came to public attention in 1965 during the trial of members of a Quebec revolutionary cell that, along with the Black Liberation Front, had decided to blow up the Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument.
When Quebec revolutionary militant Michelle Duclos was arrested in connection with the plot with a box of dynamite in her car, it was Dorlot who had placed the box in her car, according to a 1995 article in Toronto’s Saturday Night magazine.
In court, Dorlot testified that he thought the box was a case of books. He was never charged.
Later, in 1968, in what became known as the Dorlot Affair, outraged MPs demanded in the House of Commons why Dorlot was awarded a Canada Council grant to study at the Sorbonne after he was linked to Philippe Rossillon.
Rossillon was a shadowy figure denounced by then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as a French spy promoting Quebec separatism in Canada.
Radio-Canada reporter Normand Lester, in a book published last week entitled Enquêtes sur les Services Secrets (Les Editions de l’Homme), says the RCMP broke into Beaudoin’s apartment in the 1970s in order to place bugs because they apparently suspected Doriot was working for French intelligence.
Dorlot’s name has also surfaced in reports on the unsolved 1971 Paris murder of FLQ member Francois Mario Bachand, who was on the run from Canadian authorities.
Dorlot allegedly shared an apartment in Paris with Bachand prior to the murder, according to theSaturday Night magazine article. After the murder, Dorlot gave Bachand’s sister a sketch of a Quebeccouple seen with Bachand the afternoon of the murder, Radio-Canada TV said in a report last year. -AlexRoslin
