Claude Béchard broke the news last Wednesday to Premier Jean Charest: His two-year fight against cancer was over.
Doctors had told Béchard that chemotherapy was having no effect and that the cancer was progressing rapidly. He came to the stark realization that the end was near.
Less than a week later, Béchard died. He succumbed to pancreatic cancer on Tuesday at the age of 41.
“He was very much a fighter,” Charest said in paying tribute to his friend and cabinet colleague. “He had political courage and in that respect it was legitimate for him to think he could one day become premier of Quebec.”
Béchard was born on June 29, 1969 in the village of Saint-Philippe-de-Néri, a small community of fewer than 1,000 people in the picturesque Lower Saint-Lawrence region.
He was proud of his hometown, deeply rooted in the traditional values of his parents who operated a dairy farm. It was there – in the community hall where he spent so much time during his childhood and as a teenager – that he launched his political career in a by-election in September, 1997.
This was the man everyone remembered as a boy delivering milk to their doorsteps, the same boy who later distinguished himself as a fierce debater at his secondary school in nearby La Pocatière.
Béchard was destined for politics at a young age. Even during his undergraduate days in political science at Laval University, where he later completed a master’s degree, Béchard was heavily involved in the youth wing of the Quebec Liberal Party.
He refused to follow then Liberal youth wing president Mario Dumont’s decision to break with the party over disapproval of the Charlottetown constitutional accord in August, 1992. Béchard’s astute political instincts told him his future rested with the Liberal Party and in the fall of 1993 he was hired by late premier Robert Bourassa as a political adviser on youth policies.
These were formative years for the ambitious Béchard, who was tutored by Bourassa and his experienced chief-of-staff, John Parisella, in the Liberal world of politics. His popularity grew rapidly among his peers. After Bourassa quit politics for health reasons, Béchard was hired by former premier Daniel Johnson, who took over the party leadership in January, 1994.
Béchard worked on the Liberal campaign that led to Johnson’s defeat in September, 1994, at the hands of the Parti Québécois, which quickly moved to prepare the referendum on sovereignty the following year. During this critical period, Béchard took on a job as a party researcher working with Liberal opposition critics.
These were difficult times for Johnson’s Liberals, who came within a few thousand votes of losing the 1995 referendum. A few months after the referendum, Béchard felt the time was ripe to leave the world of politics. In 1996, he went to work for consulting firm GPC Consilium, headed by lobbyist and former federal Liberal minister Rémi Bujold.
In the spring of 1997, the Liberal member of the National Assembly from his hometown riding of Kamouraska-Temiscouata quit to run for the federal Liberals. Béchard, who was party vice-president, contested the nomination and, as chance would have it, his only opponent dropped out of the race.
Using his skills as a debater and orator, Béchard demonstrated his ability at being a tough and ruthless campaigner. He was the youngest in a family of eight children and could count on an army of relatives spread across the riding to recruit volunteers and deliver the votes.
On Oct. 6 1997, after a hard-fought and aggressive campaign that many had predicted he would lose to the PQ, the 28-year Béchard won by a comfortable majority. In the general election the following year he barely held on to his seat, having to wait for a judicial recount to confirm his victory.
It would be last time anyone ever came close to defeating him.
