riding death_place death_date birth_place profession party birth_date term_start article_title term_end name
richmond -- wolfe ottawa , ontario 31 august 2005 bromptonville , quebec administrator , farmer liberal 29 march 1930 april 1963 patrick tobin asselin
 april 1968 joseph patrick tobin asselin
patrick tobin asselin

joseph patrick tobin asselin -lrb- march 29 , 1930 -- august 31 , 2005 -rrb- , known as patrick tobin asselin , was a canadian politician .
a liberal member of parliament -lrb- mp -rrb- in the canadian house of commons for two terms in the 1960s , he returned to parliament a quarter-century later to work as a security guard .
he was born on a farm in bromptonville , quebec in the eastern townships and was educated in montreal at both english and french high schools .
asselin was descended from politicians on both sides of his family .
he was the grandson of edmund william tobin , who had spent thirty years in the house of commons , representing the same quebec riding asselin later represented .
tobin was appointed to the canadian senate in 1930 .
his father , joseph-omer asselin , was chairman of montreal city council 's powerful executive committee .
his mother , beatrice tobin , was a liberal organizer in the era of william lyon mackenzie king , and served as president of the women 's liberal association of canada in the 1960s .
her two sons both served as liberal mps .
she had been awarded an order of the british empire during world war ii for her work in establishing an organization to help canadian prisoners of war .
after graduating from high school , asselin attended st. mary 's college in halifax , nova scotia , and then returned to his home town to run the family 's dairy farm .
he was also a captain in the canadian army for ten years .
during the 1963 federal election , he was serving as president of the liberal riding association in richmond -- wolfe , the rural quebec constituency in which he lived , when the nominated liberal candidate unexpectedly dropped out of the race 30 days before election day .
asselin stepped in as the new candidate , and defeated incumbent social credit mp andré bernier by 350 votes .
asselin 's brother , edmund tobin asselin , was re-elected in the montreal riding of notre-dame-de-grâce in the same election .
the election brought to power a liberal minority government under the leadership of lester pearson .
pearson appointed asselin chairman of the house standing committee on agriculture .
under his stewardship , the committee inaugurated canada 's marketing board system .
asselin 's margin of victory increased to 2,000 votes at the 1965 election .
when pearson announced his retirement , asselin supported pierre trudeau 's campaign to become liberal leader at the 1968 liberal leadership convention .
however , despite trudeaumania , asselin lost his seat at the 1968 election after the right-wing `` ralliement créditiste '' attacked the liberal government in the rural , socially conservative riding over the government 's social liberalism , particularly trudeau 's decriminalization of homosexuality .
both asselin and trudeau were accused of being communists by supporters of asselin 's rival , léonel beaudoin .
`` i got out of politics because of illness -- the voters got sick of me , '' said asselin .
his defeat came six months short of the minimum period of service required at the time to qualify for a parliamentary pension .
following his defeat , asselin worked as an aide to agriculture minister bud olson .
he returned to politics to serve as mayor of aylmer , quebec from 1979 to 1983 .
he subsequently returned to ottawa to work as a security supervisor on parliament hill .
warren allmand , a former liberal canadian cabinet minister , later said of asselin : `` he was n't egotistical .
even though he had been an mp , he was n't at all embarrassed to get a job as a security guard in order to earn a living and support his family ... security work was all he could get , so he did it . ''
asselin died in ottawa in 2005 of a neurological disease .
