On 22 March 1997, five members of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) committed mass suicide in Saint-Casimir, Quebec, setting their house on fire with them inside. Among the dead were two couples: Didier and Chantal Quèze and Bruno Klaus and Pauline Riou, as well as Chantal's mother Suzanne Druau. The three children of the Quèzes had initially been included in the suicide plan, but the first attempt to initiate the suicide failed. After the failure of the first attempt, they confronted their parents, and convinced them that they wanted to live and were let go. Following two more unsuccessful attempts to orchestrate the suicide, the final attempt, with help from the children, was successful.
This followed two prior mass suicides by the group in 1994 and 1995; the group had the theological doctrine that by committing suicide, one would not die, but "transit"; they conceptualized the transit as a ritual involving magic fire, where they would undergo a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius, where they would continue their lives. The two leaders of the group, Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret, had both died in the 1994 incident, but a second mass suicide was orchestrated the next year by the remaining members. Following these past suicides, the group was believed dissolved and was officially banned in Quebec, but it was suspected that they may have continued to operate secretly.
On 20 March, the Quèzes, as well as Klaus and Riou, all former members of the OTS group, began attempting to orchestrate the suicides; they mailed a suicide letter to two Canadian media outlets, outlining their reasons for committing the act. They then drugged their children and attempted to burn the house down. The attempts repeatedly failed, due to both mechanical error and the intervention of the couple's children. Following three unsuccessful attempts to orchestrate the suicide, two days later the children finally helped their parents burn the house down.
Four died of smoke inhalation, while a fifth was separately suffocated by another. While the children were directly involved, they were ultimately not charged with any crime, as the Ministry of Justice deemed their responsibility lessened by their ingestion of drugs and their influence by the sect. After the incident, the OTS is widely believed to have effectively dissolved. The incident provoked widespread media interest and commentary in Quebec, particularly on religious freedom.
Background The Order of the Solar Temple was a religious group active in several French-speaking countries, led by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret. Founded in 1984, it was a neo-Templar secret society with eclectic beliefs sourced from many different movements like Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and the New Age. The OTS had a commune in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade in Quebec, the "Sacred Heart" () commune and farm. The location, having previously belonged to the Catholic organization the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, was bought by the OTS in 1984 for 235,000 Canadian dollars. The farm was located on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City, where the group was headquartered in an old orphanage, also home to one of Jouret's Club Amenta locations. It was intended as an "ark of survival" far from urban areas with 100 people to repopulate the Earth following an apocalypse, due to the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, which would destroy Europe. By 1988, there were about 50 people living at this commune, who worked as volunteer farm workers. Members practiced organic farming and worked long and difficult hours; they also occasionally organized conferences on OTS ideas.
The OTS seemed to be doing well, but on 25 November, the 1988 Saguenay earthquake occurred at a 5.3 magnitude; this earthquake damaged the view held by Jouret and other Templars that Quebec would be a safe haven from the impending apocalypse, which was the main reason they had moved to Canada. While Jouret often spoke of the apocalypse, he had predicted that Quebec would be spared; following the earthquake, members of the Sacred Heart commune began to criticize his leadership and his predictions (viewing them as too specific). The farm was also not self-sustaining, and the commune was close to bankruptcy. In March 1993, Jouret and several other members became embroiled in a gun scandal, when they were charged for attempting to buy illegal weapons, violating Québec law. Following the gun scandal, member Didier Quèze told the media that they were harmless and not a cult; he stated, "In a cult, you're told what to do. Here, you do what you think you should do."
Earlier deaths Following the gun scandal, Jouret became very paranoid and concerned with purported injustice. He began speaking of "transit", an idea which had previously been introduced by Di Mambro several years earlier; the idea of a "voluntary departure of templars to another dimension in space in order to recreate the world." They conceptualized the transit as a ritual involving magic fire, where they would undergo a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius. In October 1994, the first incident killed 53 people, 48 in Switzerland and five in Canada; several of the dead did not consent to death or were directly murdered for being "traitors". Among the dead were both Di Mambro and Jouret. The group left a suicide letter called "The Testament". The main message of this letter is a call to other members of the OTS to join the departed ones by "transiting" themselves, encouraging former members to kill themselves. Included in this letter were the words:
Following these suicides, the group became internationally notorious. In December 1995, 16 more members of the OTS would commit mass suicide, this time in France. Following the previous suicides, French police rounded up members of the OTS for preventative reasons, fearing new mass suicides on dates tied to astrological events or Templar history. It was stated by Yves Casgrain, a spokesman for Info-Secte, that the group likely still operated in Quebec, only underground. The OTS was officially banned by the government of Quebec after the first mass suicide and was believed to be dissolved.
The remaining members The Quèzes, Didier and Chantal Quèze (), 39 and 41 years old, respectively, managed the bakery at the Sacred Heart commune: living apart from other members, they were not well-liked, with former OTS members describing Didier as the "know-it-all" of the farm on the commune and as "a real character", while his wife was described as passive and unassertive. The couple was perceived by one ex-member as "withdrawn, haughty, and ill-tempered". Former teachers from France, they had moved to Switzerland to be in closer proximity to the group, before moving to Canada. They had three teenaged children, aged 13 to 16. Sixty-three-year-old Suzanne Druau, Chantal's mother, was not a member of the OTS, but was associated with the movement and lived in a way permissible to the group's beliefs; she had moved from France to live with her daughter following the death of her husband. Druau was the only person to have died in the entire series of OTS deaths who was not a member of the group.
Forty-nine-year-old Bruno Klaus was the former head farmer of the commune; following his divorce from Rose-Marie, he was with Pauline Riou. Klaus was described as a calm and hardworking man, known to be fanatical about the farming methods on the commune (involving astrology), though his methods were ineffective and he was later made to work at the bakery. A lapsed Catholic from Switzerland, Klaus had met Luc Jouret in Switzerland circa 1984 when he visited him (as Jouret was a doctor) due to an earache. Jouret told him that he had actually had cancer, but that he had cured it – after this, Jouret would often tell Klaus that he "should be dead" and that he owed him his life. Klaus would then become a devoted follower of Jouret. Marie-Louise Rebaudo, the OTS's astrologer, later claimed that she saw significant changes in his star chart, which showed that he was to move to Quebec to help start the "ark of survival". He moved with Rose-Marie to the Sacred Heart commune. He had invested over 100,000 Canadian dollars into the farm purchase.
Rose-Marie eventually left the OTS over a "cosmic marriage" enforced by the group that separated her from her husband. For several years after this, she repeatedly tried to get Bruno back, having a "foot inside, but always one outside" the OTS community, but eventually gave up, and began contacting anti-cult groups. She divorced him and returned to Switzerland, taking their two children with her; while previously Bruno Klaus had been a high-status member, his reputation in the group suffered due to the actions of his wife. According to Swiss journalist Arnaud Bédat, Klaus was later romantically involved with Jocelyne Friedli, who died in the 1995 incident. He was then partners with Pauline Riou. Pauline Riou was a 54-year-old Canadian nurse; speaking of her, former member Hermann Delorme described Riou as completely "enthralled" with Jouret, saying that she would "tremble when he spoke". She was not a very active member of the group but was described as a very faithful and obedient one. Klaus, Riou, and the Quèzes were all close friends.
Following the investigation of former members in the group in Canada, Klaus and Didier Quèze, among nearly 100 other former members or sympathizers, were met by police; many of these members were extremely disappointed in the fact that they had not been selected as part of the previous mass suicide. The Quèzes moved to Saint-Casimir, a town of 2,000 people near Quebec City, following the deaths, where they established a bakery, but continued to practice OTS ritual and ideology in secret; they moved their bakery, where they continued to work. Their neighbors were unaware of their connection to the group, then notorious, viewing them as "quite normal", though private. The couple's three children were forbidden from joining sports teams by their parents, and according to their classmates could not play with their peers or leave the house.
Planning and warnings Following the 1994 deaths, Klaus and Didier Quèze were distraught, viewing themselves as having been abandoned by Jouret; according to Bédat they felt rejected by society and were convinced they were being spied on. Didier Quèze was placed under police watch by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) in July 1996, but nothing beyond that, and he defended himself to the press. It was known that the four of them still had extreme faith in OTS beliefs. Police had last had contact with them the last summer solstice. A former police investigator into the OTS claimed that the police had visited the Quèzes several months prior to the deaths and that during this visit he had begged them not to take the children with them if they did do another transit, and that in response they had "[sung him] sweet nothings". Hermann Delorme predicted that another suicide would take place on the summer solstice of 1996, though this did not occur.