Duceppe’s mom freezes to death outside residence

Full investigation promised by minister responsible for seniors

Quebec is promising a full investigation and tougher regulations, if need be, after former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe’s mother was found dead of hypothermia Sunday morning outside the private Lux Gouverneur retirement home where she lived.

Hélène Rowley Hotte left her east-end Montreal apartment just after 4 a.m. on Sunday after a fire alarm went off. Police received a call shortly before noon about a woman found dead in the snow.

“It’s shocking for me to see that somebody at the age of 93 years old dies when it’s cold like it was (Sunday),” Marguerite Blais, Quebec’s minister responsible for seniors, told reporters. “I’m very, very, very sad.”

Blais said she will await the coroner’s report before deciding whether stricter rules are needed. “If we have to change something in the future, to make sure people are living in more security, we will do it,” she said.

The temperature was about -20 C Sunday morning, with a wind chill of about -30.

Initial reports indicated the doors locked behind Rowley Hotte as she went into a backyard and she was unable to get back into the building.

But in a statement, the owners of the retirement home said security camera footage showed that Rowley Hotte fainted after going outside. She was wearing winter clothing when she left the building, according to Lux Gouverneur.

Montreal police said they found no criminal element to the death. They said it appears Rowley Hotte, who had hearing problems, did not hear the audio notification advising residents not to go outside but rather to gather at meeting points inside the building.

The three-building Lux Gouverneur complex, located at 5500 Sherbrooke St. E., was opened in 2009 by the company that owns the Gouverneur chain of hotels.

Blais said the buildings, which house 660 people in 440 units, have an evacuation plan, but it’s not clear if anyone did a head count after the alarm was over.

The complex is home to autonomous seniors, with only 69 residents receiving regular support from the local health authority, Blais said.

Lux Gouverneur’s provincial certificate of compliance was renewed in April 2018 after the residence met or exceeded provincial standards, she added. Blais said Lux Gouverneur has six people on terrible news.”

Rowley Hotte was a gentle, introverted woman who was always present for her children and focused on their education, according to a recent biography of Gilles Duceppe, by Robert Blondin.

“She was a determined woman who, because of her husband’s endless professional activities, had to assume more often than not the role of both parents,” according to the book, Gilles Duceppe: Bleu de coeur et de regard.

The mother of seven children, she was particularly close to Gilles, her eldest.

Gilles Duceppe once said of her: “All her life, my mother has dedicated herself to her children and her husband, with attention, dedication and patience that translate into an inexhaustible love.”

As the oldest child, Duceppe said, he became very close to his mother. “We had many discussions and I think I provided real help. When you look at family photos, I always have one of my younger brothers or one of my younger sisters in my arms. When I left home, she told me she was losing a confidant and a partner.”

Rowley Hotte was the daughter of a London-born British Home Child of Irish heritage, one of about 100,000 orphaned, abandoned and poor children sent to Canada from the British Isles. Her father, John James Rowley, ended up with a family in St-Benoît-du-Lac after arriving in Quebec in 1906.