Villeneuve family seeks to protect driver's 'legacy' in battle against Quebec museum

Formula One driver Gilles Villeneuve speaks during an interview for the first time since signing to drive for Ferrari, replacing Niki Lauda on this Oct. 3, 1977 photo in Montreal. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/File)

The legend of Gilles Villeneuve still holds an outsized place in the minds of Canadian auto racing fans, more than 40 years after the Quebec-born Formula One star died at age 32 in a crash during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix in 1982.

Now, his widow and two children — including former F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve — are taking action to get back his possessions from a museum that bears his name, citing concerns over the institution’s ability to safeguard both the physical items and the racing star’s legacy.

Mélanie Villeneuve says the theft late last year of a large bronze statue of her father from outside the Gilles Villeneuve Museum in Berthierville, Que., was the “point of no return” that cemented the family’s loss of confidence in the institution.

“I think (the theft) damages the image and I think for us, when we speak about it in the family, we decided that perhaps we do not necessarily trust in the security measures that the museum has put in place to protect our heritage and legacy and the items that we’ve loaned to the museum,” she said Wednesday in a video interview.

The statue was created in 1984 as a tribute to Villeneuve, who participated in 67 Formula One races from 1977 to 1982, winning six.

Thieves sawed off and made away with the five-foot-three-inch tall likeness, leaving behind a pair of metal boots and a podium, in what provincial police said was likely a plan to melt the statue down to sell the metal.

Mélanie Villeneuve said that while the “bizarre” theft was the catalyst for the family’s decision to retrieve her father’s items, concerns with the museum about 70 kilometres northeast of Montreal began earlier.

In recent years, she said, they’ve noticed examples of her father’s image being “misappropriated,” including being used without permission on beer and wine labels.

“For quite some time, we’ve been worried about how his image is being diluted by this use, and I don’t want to be super negative because I don’t think people did it with the wrong intentions,” she said. “But I think that now we’re ready to maybe turn the page open a new chapter and maybe take ownership of his legacy.”

Villeneuve said the family, including her brother and her mother, Joann, have started a process to recuperate some of her father’s items that are at the museum, which opened in 1988.

She said that will include legal action, described in a news release as a pre-judgment seizure, scheduled to be filed Thursday.

The family is seeking items including personal possessions as well as trophies and memorabilia, some dating back to Villeneuve’s early days of racing on Quebec’s snowmobile circuit and the Formula Atlantic league.

She said all the memorabilia being sought was on loan from the family, and they are not trying to stake a claim to items donated by other parties.

“We’re just going to take back what belongs to us, basically,” she said.

Villeneuve said that while she doesn’t want to start a fight, her family doesn’t have an “active relationship” with the management of the museum and that emails she sent last summer were never returned.

She said she did not inform the museum direction of the family’s intention to take legal action.

She described the effort to retrieve the items as part of the family’s bigger plan to promote her father’s legacy in new ways, including through media projects and online.

She said her father’s legend has continued to grow, which she said is a testament to his incredible talent and also the strength of character that took him from snowmobile races in rural Quebec to Formula One in a few years' time.

“The amount of work that he put into his career is mind-boggling and he was a single-minded, passionate individual that would never take no for an answer,” she said.

On those smaller snowmobile circuits, only winners took home prize money, she said, which fostered a win-at-all-costs mentality for a man with a wife and two young children to support.

“He had to make tremendous sacrifices and make sure that he would win,” she said. “That particular force of nature is something that I’d like to share and I’d like to be able to present.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 27, 2025.