Roger Teillet

Jean-Baptiste Roger Joseph Camille Teillet, PC (August 21, 1912 – May 1, 2002) was a Canadian politician. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba as a Liberal-Progressive from 1953 to 1959, and in the Canadian House of Commons as a Liberal from 1962 to 1968. Teillet was a cabinet minister in the government of Lester B. Pearson, and retained that post after Pearson stepped down and Pierre Elliott Trudeau became the new Liberal leader.

Roger was born into one of Manitoba's well-known Métis families. Born on River Road in St. Vital, Manitoba, to Sara Riel and Camille Teillet, Roger Teillet was a direct descendant of Marie-Anne Gaboury and Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, who were the first white settlers in Canada's west and also were the grandparents of Louis Riel. Roger was the grandson of Joseph Riel, Louis Riel's younger brother.

Roger was educated in St. Vital and St. Boniface schools, and at St. Boniface College. He continued his studies as a prisoner-of-war in Germany, where an educational program using the expertise of prisoners had been set up.

Roger was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Air Force and a navigator on a Halifax bomber in World War II. He took part in 24 successful bombing missions over Germany before being shot down over France in 1943. After evading German soldiers for 15 days, he was captured at the Rivière Cher, and spent almost three years as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III, southeast of Berlin in the then province of Silesia. The camp was located at Sagan, now in Polish territory and called Zagan. Conditions in this camp were not as brutal as in many others because it was a camp specifically for officers, and officers were not subject to forced labour. Stalag Luft III was made famous after the war because of Paul Brickhill's book, The Great Escape, a book which was also made into a movie.

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