Editing Order of the Solar Temple (section)

=== Saint-Casimir ===
{{main|1997 Saint-Casimir mass suicide}}

On 22 March 1997, five members of the Solar Temple died in a mass suicide in [[Saint-Casimir, Quebec]], burning their house down with them inside.{{sfn|Clusel|Palmer|2020|p=217}} The dead included two couples: Chantal and Didier Quèze, as well as Pauline Riou and Bruno Klaus (Rose-Marie Klaus's ex-husband), and one of their parents.{{sfn|Clusel|Palmer|2020|pp=233–234}} Responding officers found three teenage survivors at the scene, the children of the Quèzes, who were found to be drugged.{{sfn|Clusel|Palmer|2020|p=218}} Following the first failed attempt to initiate the mass suicide (that included them against their will), the children had negotiated their right to live with their parents, who eventually agreed that they did not have to die. Following this, the adults continually failed to burn the house down, becoming increasingly sick, until eventually the teenagers burned the house down at their parents' request.{{sfn|Clusel|Palmer|2020|p=237}}

The children were ultimately not charged with any crime, as the fact that they had been drugged and the influence the cult could have had on them was viewed as mitigating their responsibility.{{sfn|Clusel|Palmer|2020|p=234}}{{sfn|Bédat|Bouleau|Nicolas|2000|p=299}} The adults had mailed a transit letter to several Canadian news outlets, in which they explained that they had taken their own lives believing that their deaths would let them "transit" to another planet to continue living.{{sfn|Lewis|2004|pages=296–297}}{{sfn|Clusel|Palmer|2020|pp=235–236}}