Madam Speaker, I want to pay tribute to Albert Socqué, a man from Salaberry-de-Valleyfield who was recently inducted into the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, a rare feat for a civilian who never went to war.
The courage, bravery and level-headedness Mr. Socqué showed on July 23, 1941, earned him the King George VI medal the following spring. On that day, Mr. Socqué, who was working for the company now known as General Dynamics, saved a colleague from certain death. The newspaper Le Soleil de Salaberry-de-Valleyfield reported, “When he was unloading nitrocellulose at the incineration site near the St. Lawrence, the highly explosive material caught fire and his colleague Roger Gareau was trapped in the inferno.”
Mr. Socqué did not hesitate to risk his own life in order to tear Mr. Gareau out of the flames and plunge him into the water. The two men survived despite their burns. Albert Socqué passed away in 1989. Today my thoughts are with his family, who were quite emotional upon receiving this posthumous distinction.