Louise Roberge

Louise Roberge was a Canadian racer of the late 1960s and early 1970s, most famous for her exploits in a Formula Ford car. She was a contemporary and rival of Monique Proulx. 

According to a newspaper interview she gave in she began racing in a Mini in 1968, and was fifth in her first race. She did at least three rounds of the same championship in 1969, scoring a fourth, fifth and sixth place in the Class A series for cars up to 1300cc. All three races took place at the Mont-Tremblant circuit. In the same interview, with the Winnipeg Free Press, she claimed to have done some rallies at high school, which would have been shortly before her early marriage to Matthieu Roberge when she was 18. Unusually, Louise was a married mother of three when her career began and she always described her husband as supportive, even when she crashed the Mini in the early part of her career. 

Few other details of her early career are readily available, although she is said to have picked up her love of cars from her father. According to another 1971 interview in the Brandon Sun, the fifth place was in a racing school event and she did four further novice races in 1969, in order to upgrade her license. Among her rivals in the Mini was Louis Germain, her partner in the design firm she managed, Caractera Limited. The pair often raced together and Louis acted as her mechanic. Louise’s husband Matthieu had no involvement in motorsport at all, other than helping to bankroll her career.

Away from the circuits, Louise was also said to be a skilled driver on ice. The Ottawa Citizen in January 1969 reports that she had run as high as fourth in an Ottawa Winter Carnival Grand Prix, driving a Mini. She did not finish after the exhaust came off. A ninth place in an ice race across the Plains of Abraham is detailed in a 1970 Winnipeg Free Press article and is said to have occurred in 1969. Louise was one of the organisers of the same event in 1970. She must have done more ice races in the early part of her career, as she talks of crashing out of one of them.

In 1970, she began racing single-seaters, after taking more tuition at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers’ School. Her first single-seater car was a Lotus 61, which was replaced by a Lotus 69 later in the season. She did five rounds of the Molson Quebec championship in this car, scoring a best finish of sixteenth at Trois-Rivieres, in the 61. She had some sponsorship from a tobacco company and her car was apparently white with a rainbow stripe detail.

In 1971, driving the 69 in Quebec Formula B, she was sixth at Mont Tremblant in May. Her other known results are two non-finishes. Louis Germain was also active in the series this year, as was Gilles Villeneuve, who finished below Louise in the final standings. She was sixteenth, which suggests that she did finish some other races that year.

It was this year that another female driver, Monique Proulx, appeared on the scene. She and Louise did not race each other directly as Monique was in saloons at this point, but the press was keen to play up any rivalry between the two. In a 1972 interview with the Calgary Herald, Monique stated that Louise “did not like her” and refused to be in a photograph with her. “She’s a good driver, Louise, but she does not push. Me, I push,” she is quoted as saying.

Louise may also have owned or raced a Lotus 51, although further race results have proved very hard to track down. Any results from 1972 are proving equally difficult to find; Monique Proulx’s comments suggest that she was still racing that year.

The 69 was sold in 1973 and she seems to stop competing around that time. Earlier, in the 1971 Winnipeg Free Press interview, she said that she expected to stop racing when she was 30, although she did not elaborate on this. In the same piece, she made a cryptic comment that one of her three children was destined for motorsport fame, but declined to say which one.

In addition to racing cars, Louise was said to be an enthusiast of adventure sports in general, including canoeing, skating and sky-diving. She may also have worked as a model at some point.

She fades into obscurity after 1973.

(Image copyright Ottawa Citizen)