It was sad to hear the news about the mother of former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, who died Sunday, and what makes the story even more tragic is how the 93-year-old woman died.
Hélène Rowley Hotte was locked out of a luxury seniors’ residence in Montreal’s east end, after an alarm was triggered at 4:15 a.m. Carbon monoxide had been detected. Ms. Rowley Hotte left the building through a door that automatically locked behind her, trapping her outside. She froze to death.
At that time, it was –19 C outside with the wind chill making it feel like –32 as a severe winter storm was bearing down on the city.
CBC and other Canadian media reported on the story throughout yesterday.
British Home Child
Ms. Rowley Hotte was the daughter of John James Rowley, a British Home Child sent to Canada in 1906. He was one of an estimated 100,000 orphaned, abandoned and/or poor children who were dispatched to Canada from the British Isles between the mid-19th and mid-20th century.
In 1946, Ms. Rowley Hotte married Jean Duceppe, one of Quebec’s — Canada’s — greatest actors and directors in theatre. They had seven children. Her husband died in 1990.
You can read about Ms. Rowley Hotte’s grandfather on the British Home Child International Group website.
Her family tree is available, partly in English, on Nos Origines. (Click on English in top right of screen.) Her biography there has already been updated with her death and its cause.
As for the name, Hotte, her husband lost his parents at a relatively young age, and took his adoptive father’s surname, Hotte.
