By Michel Rossignol
The “Most Courageous Athlete of 1940”, according to the Philadelphia Sports Writers’ Association, was a young man who spent most of his youth in Ottawa’s Lowertown. Jean-Paul Joseph Desloges played many hockey games as a goaltender, but it was his narrow escape from death in August 1940 during the Battle of Britain that caught the attention of the Americans. Desloges managed to jump out of his burning Hurricane aircraft and parachute to safety after he was attacked by a German plane; he spent many weeks in hospital because of the head injuries and serious burns he suffered. The Ottawa Citizen of January 31, 1941 reports that Desloges accepted the award at the association’s annual banquet “in all humility” on behalf of the “other fellows” – the other British, Canadian, and Allied fighter pilots who had defended British cities and airbases against German air attacks.
Desloges was the subject of a recent Royal Canadian Air Force (R.C.A.F.) article; see Battle of Britain Profile of Courage: Wing Commander Jean-Paul Joseph Desloges, August 4, 2015, in news articles at www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/battle-britain/index.page.
However, the article did not indicate his links to Lowertown. Desloges was born in Hull (now Gatineau), Quebec, in April 1913, but a few years later, his family moved to Bolton Street in Lowertown and he went to Guigues School on Murray Street. He played hockey, football, and other sports at the University of Ottawa, but he did not neglect his studies. After graduation, Desloges became a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but he wanted to be a pilot and joined the R.C.A.F. Before sailing to the United Kingdom in 1940, Desloges was briefly in Ottawa; he got married and had a home in New Edinburgh, but his parents still lived in Lowertown at 33 Heney Street, on the northern edge of Macdonald Gardens Park.
Desloges was appointed the military attaché of General George P. Vanier, who became Canada’s representative to the French Committee of National Liberation (the Free French Forces led by General de Gaulle) in late 1943. He was invited to visit Free French airbases in North Africa at a time when Canada was becoming more involved in the training of Free French pilots. Tragically, Desloges was killed on May 8, 1944 in Algeria, when the aircraft transporting him from one base to another crashed on take-off.