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It was a remarkable turn for the former small-town girl who was admired for her support of veterans and for being a crusader for the disabled — Thibault is bound to a wheelchair after a toboggan accident when she was a teenager. She had been named the first woman Queen’s representative in Quebec by Jean Chrétien, the former prime minister.

After being named to the position in late 1996, Thibault said in an interview, ”I want to bring (to the job) values, things we cannot touch but can feel.”

A week before her swearing-in, she got into hot water after saying in an interview that she would be willing to sign a law declaring Quebec sovereignty if separatists won a referendum.

She also raised eyebrows when she disclosed to reporters that she accepted the job only after convening a “summit meeting” with her deceased relatives and friends.

But it wasn’t her words that brought an abrupt end to her position in 2007; it was her spending. The Journal de Montréal uncovered irregularities, including claims for meal expenses incurred at a ski resort in the Laurentians, as well as in suburban Quebec City 300 kilometres away, during the same period.

At the time, she insisted in a statement that she had used the public’s money in a responsible manner. The statement noted her “community commitment and charisma.”

However, a joint federal and provincial audit of her expenses uncovered more problems and criminal charges were laid in 2009.

Her lawyers had initially tried to have the case thrown out on grounds her role entitled her to “sovereign immunity” — the notion the “Queen can do no wrong.”