Albert Guay

Joseph-Albert Guay was born on 23 September 1918, in Quebec, Canada. Guay was married to Rita Guay (née Morel) and a resident of Quebec City, where he worked in the jewellery and watch industries. During his marriage to Rita, he became enamoured with 19-year-old waitress Marie-Ange Robitaille, and the two began a clandestine affair. Guay first considered poison, but later decided on the airplane bombing, believing it would be harder for the authorities to link him to that method. The day of the flight, Guay purchased a $CAD10,000 insurance policy (roughly equivalent to $109,000 in 2018[1]) on his wife, which he attempted to collect three days later. There was also a prior $5,000 policy (roughly $55,000[1]) dating from 1942.

Guay had asked clockmaker Généreux Ruest to manufacture a bomb using dynamite, batteries and an alarm clock. The dynamite had been purchased at a hardware store by Ruest's sister, Marguerite Pitre (also known as Ruest-Pitre, wife of Arthur Pitre), ostensibly to be used in clearing a field. At the time, sales of explosives to civilians in Canada were recorded but not strictly regulated. Pitre also delivered the package containing the bomb to the plane, for mail delivery. She had also helped arrange liaisons between Guay and Robitaille.

The airplane was a Canadian Pacific Airlines Douglas DC-3 aircraft (registry CF-CUA S/N: 4518) flying from Montreal to Baie-Comeau with a stopover at Quebec City. The airline involved is sometimes stated as "Quebec Airways", but this was simply a name used for some Canadian Pacific Airlines flights in Quebec. The Flight Number was 108 departing L'Ancienne-Lorette airport on a stopover flight onward to Baie-Comeau. It was there that Guay's wife Rita boarded the plane, unknowingly bringing the bomb in her suitcase.

The bomb detonated and killed Guay's wife. The plan was ruined when the flight was delayed five minutes at takeoff. Guay had calculated the explosion to take place over the Saint Lawrence River, which would have made forensic examination of the crash impossible with the technology then available to forensic scientists. The delay at takeoff meant that the bomb detonated five minutes earlier in the flight than planned, causing the plane to crash-land before the river, over Cap Tourmente, near a small locality named Sault-au-Cochon (sometimes incorrectly given as "Sault-aux-Cochons"), in the Charlevoix region of Quebec. The explosion and subsequent crash killed all four crew members and 19 passengers aboard. Apart from Guay's wife Rita Morel Guay, the victims included four children and three American executives from the Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation including the retiring president, E. T. Stannard; his designated successor, Arthur D. Storke; and Russell Johnston Parker, a vice-president and father of typographer and type designer Mike Parker, as well as Edward J. Calnan and William B. Scoular, both St. Catharines residents, and both senior engineers with the Ontario Paper Company, returning from a business trip to Baie Comeau.

While the bombing was not the first proven instance of sabotaging a passenger flight for criminal purposes, it was the first to be solved and received wide news media coverage locally and abroad.

Dollard Dansereau, author of Causes célèbres du Québec, studied the case and concluded that Ruest may not have known of Guay's intentions when the latter asked him to make the bomb. He also concluded that Pitre may have been innocent. It has been speculated that Guay's motive in denouncing his accomplices was to buy time to delay his own execution, believing that he would be called to testify at their trials. In any event, he testified at Ruest's trial, but was hanged soon after, thus could not testify at Pitre's trial.

On 1 November 1955, six years after the bombing, a later copycat airplane bombing was apparently inspired by the Guay affair. The bombing of United Airlines Flight 629 by Jack Gilbert Graham killed 44 people, all aboard the flight including his mother. Graham's reported motive was his mother's alleged mistreatment of him as a small child, but featured similarities to Guay's bombing including placing a dynamite time-bomb in the target's suitcase, and purchasing life insurance on them shortly before the flight departure.

The incident, subsequent trials and execution of Guay and his accomplices was notorious in Quebec and was inspiration for the fictional Le Crime d'Ovide Plouffe, a 1982 novel by Roger Lemelin and 1984 film of the same name by Denys Arcand.[5] In 1949, Lemelin had been a friend and neighbour of Guay, as well as being the Quebec correspondent for Time magazine. The novel Cape Torment by Richard Donovan is based on the case.

• Air safety
• Capital punishment in Canada
• Jack Gilbert Graham
• Madame le Corbeau

• Causes célèbres du Québec, Dollard Dansereau, Editions Leméac, Montréal, 1974
• Jeffrey David Simon The terrorist trap: America's experience with terrorism, Indiana University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-253-21477-7, pages 47–49

• Timeline of the bombing
• Biography of Albert Guay
• Description of accident
• Aviation Safety Network data on accident
• List of sabotage bombing incidents on airplanes
• A 1947 photo of the airplane involved
• MULTIPLY Group of discussion in French & English. Many rare pictures.
• Link to information about Cape Torment, a novel based on the case.
• An article on the case in The New Yorker by E. J. Kahn Jr. (Nov. 14, 1953)