Several months after beginning my enquiries into the murder of Mario Bachand, I was living in Vancouver, returning to Ottawa from time to time to submit requests, at National Archives, under the Access to Information Act, for new files on Mario Bachand and on related subjects. Most of the files were from the RCMP Security and Intelligence (SI) Branch, others from External Affairs, Solicitor General, and the fond Pierre Trudeau. It took the longest time for the files to be processed, with the AtIP officer having to send each file to the government department responsible for the file, CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service), who inherited the responsibilities of RCMP S&I, or the other responsible Departments. For the first few months of my research, I had available only the open literature and whatever records related to my research that had previously been released under AtIP; there was very little of the last, and nothing specifically related to Mario Bachand. I began a computerized chronology that would be the foundation of my research, and nominal files on related topics.
At the time, no media, historian, or anointed academic or other ‘expert’ in security and intelligence, no CBC or in the Globe and Mail journalist; no one in Quebec, though the Bachand affair was certainly a Quebec story of profound importance; and, for 25 years a great Canadian mystery, no one in Quebec, not one of these worthies thought questions were in order. Whenever I would ask about the murder, I would get the response, “Mario Bachand was not important” “Well, ok, what about who was responsible?”, I would be met by silence.
Investigative journalism a new concept
In the public record, I found precisely nothing about Mario Bachand, apart from newspaper articles mentioning his death in Paris, along with the suggests of who was responsible and why. Who? “terrorists”, they said; Why? “Bachand’s difficult personality”, they said. Any evidence for these claims? Apparently not, for none was given. None of which I found persuasive.
Would two young persons travel from Montreal to Paris, to appear, with a .22 calibre pistol, apparently with silencer, at a St-Ouen apartment to murder someone they did not know, in fact someone they had never met, because that victim had a ‘difficult’ personality? I thought not.
In fact, I found precisely nothing in the public record to support the accounts given by the Journal de Montreal, Globe and Mail, La Press, Le Figaro, the CBC, or any other media, and their worthy journalists. It was clear that there had been no, as in zero, inquiries; the media accounts were clearly based on a single official source that had no relation to the facts on the ground. Not one Canadian journalist in Paris, of which there were several, took the time to board a line 13 Metro to St. Ouen – about 20 minutes – to ask a few questions. Evidently, ‘The fix was in.’ Perhaps it was fear.
“So much for Canadian journalism”, I thought to myself, for whom investigative journalism seems to have been an unknown concept.
Interest in the Mario Bachand mystery
But someone was interested. On a return to Vancouver, on a Canadian Pacific or Air Canada flight, my one suitcase, with my research documentation, was ‘lost’, as I discovered when it did not appear at the carousel at Arrivals. I approached the Lost Luggage desk and informed the clerk that “My suitcase has not arrived”, and showed my ticket. Without making a telephone call, which I found odd, he agreed. “I hope it has not on its way to Singapore or Jakarta?”, I asked, rhetorically. “No, the aircraft is still here. How long? “Until tomorrow”, he said. ” How much baggage from the flight has been lost? “Only one piece”, he said, “Yours”. So it is the only bag ‘lost’, from an aircraft that is still on the tarmac, just there, as I wave my hand. He had a sympathetic tone, which confirmed that the bag was not exactly ‘lost’, but rather in other hands. He said I would get it soon. It was delivered at my home, in Vancouver West Point Grey, that afternoon.
I have no doubt that it had been in a special room in the building where, as we spoke, persons were copying my research records.
Gee whiz technology
On my next trip to Ottawa to my parents’ house, I called a friend on her mobile phone. She was at Library and Archives Canada on the pay phone on the ground floor and was talking with her daughter at their house. Very strange, how could I be connected to the pay phone at Library and Archives Canada, hearing her talking with her daughter, at their house, when I had called her mobile phone from my parents’ house?
A few weeks later, I called her on her mobile phone as she was walking down the driveway to her home in a remote part of Ottawa. She didn’t answer, but I heard part of the conversation as she was talking to her daughter.
All the phones, my parents, my friend’s mobile phone, her home phone, the pay phone at the National Library and Archives, were connected somehow.
It was obvious that there was a ‘gee whiz’ communication technology at work, work that had no legal purpose.
Silence in Quebec
I concluded that, given the apparent attention paid to my luggage at the Vancouver airport, the “gee wiz” technology and the suspiciously parked cars with two immobile occupants that sometimes appeared in front of my parents’ house, there was, in some circles, an interest in the Bachand mystery.
One thing is certain, if I had to solve the mystery of Mario Bachand’s murder, I wouldn’t make any friends. Not the academics, whose statements on security and intelligence were generally devoid of content; not the journalists, who were quite happy to follow an official line of communication, no doubt. Not Quebecers, who would not be happy if someone from British Columbia solved one of Quebec’s great mysteries.
Even Mario Bachand’s family and friends would tell me, when I approached them, “We won’t help you”. Sometimes they would say that I was “Anglophone” or “from British Columbia”. The future looked bleak. I began to hope that my suspicions about the murder of Mario Bachand on March 29, 1971 were wrong.
Of course, in that atmosphere, it was obvious that if I had to solve the mystery, journalists, especially those from Quebec, would make the story their own. Without thanks or reference to British Columbia.
Irritated by the lack of help from all sides, I said to myself that I was a bit fed up: “Okay, Mario Bachand’s murder belongs to Quebec. But solving the murder, if possible, belongs to British Columbia.
If my suspicions were wrong, and Bachand had been murdered by unbalanced felquinistas, I could put an end to my investigations and resume a normal life : writing, studying at UBC, the occasional solitary ride on my BMW 75/5 motorbike in the mountains north of Vancouver; solitary hikes in the coastal range, friends, the deep wonder of a coastal forest, heartfelt walks with my beloved Belgian shepherd, Mishka; literature, philosophy, a bit of mathematics, special texts, my practice. I could live with that. What don’t I like?
There were many things I didn’t like about the long days and evenings in Ottawa, about struggling with texts at Library and Archives Canada, about finding former RCMP security officers to interview, and about wondering why a car with two occupants was parked outside my door for several hours. But then…
DST, La direction de la Surveillance du territoire, and Jean Rochet
I happened to call an acquaintance, a retired senior officer of the DST, the Direction de la Surveillance du territoire. At the time, I didn’t know his responsibilities, but I knew that he had been very high up in the DST at the time of Bachand’s assassination. One level just below the director, Jean Rochet.
I called him and he said, “I’m sorry I don’t know anything about Bachand’s murder”. He added: “I will call Jean Rochet and ask him for permission to consult the files”. Call me back in a week”.
The next week I called back, and he told me
All I can say is that the RCMP knows all about the assassination of Mario Bachand.
Which, given that the only way to know everything about an event is to have done it, confirmed my worst fears.