As an 18-year-old, Cinq Mars rushed the beaches of Normandy at the Raid on Dieppe which saw 24 of the 26 young men in his landing craft shot dead by German sniper.
Once on the beach Cinq-Mars surrounded two fallen German airmen but opted not to shoot them dead.
He was soon after shot twice in the leg and hit by shrapnel all over his body.
He was taken prisoner and lived on a loaf of bread and a bucket of water per week. He was then chained up alongside other Allied prisoners for 14 months. The clever soldiers quickly learned to undo their locks.
Cinq-Mars tried escaping seven times and for his efforts was transferred to a work camp at a sugar factory in Poland. One day he was ordered to walk west in the deep snow, with bad footwear and bloody feet.
He later said that the three week march was worse than the horrors of Dieppe. Over half of the 7,000 prisoners on the march died due to cold and starvation. Many others died in similar horrors, he noted, particularly the Russians because their rulers had not signed the Geneva Convention.
Patton's tanks eventually pushed through near Vienna and he was saved.
He took a year off and joined the Montreal police department where he gained a reputation for daring and fearlessness.
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He served in squad cars for nine years in the toughest assignments and then did nine years on the holdup squad under Joe Bedard.
But they shook with fear at the very mention of his name as his patrol ruled the city from midnight to seven a.m.
The methods and techniques of that squad were infamous.When detectives wanted a confession they got it.
Their methods included putting a tin garbage can on a suspects head and banging it until his ears rang. Or inviting a suspect to have a look at a gimmick lighter that looks like a gun. Once the suspect grabbed it the interrogator would tell him that now he has his fingerprints on what looks like a weapon he'd better confess or be shot dead, as the cop could claim he was attacked.
The night patrol was disbanded in June 1979 after the murderous Dubois gang complained that they were brutalized by the squad. Cinq Mars retired that November.
He had a daughter Giselle, born in 1961 and a son Daniel born 1959.
In an excellent profile from 1979 Tim Burke asked Cinq-Mars if he was planning to move to Florida in his retirement. "I love it right here. I love the four seasons and especially I love the winter. And why shouldn't I stay here? We arrived in 1646, so I guess that's long enough to be called a Canadia, eh? I will die a Canadian, in Canada."
He was coping with severe dementia, living at Ste. Anne's Veteran's Hospital when he died.
Novelist Trevor Ferguson named his Montreal police protagonist of his City of Ice series Emile Cinq Mars as a tribute to Jacques. He told an interviewer
I borrowed the surname as a homage to the original Cinq-Mars. After he retired, the police force was reorganized so that someone like him could never come along again. After him, the bureaucrats would rule, no more folkloric cops loved by the media, cops who planned and executed amazing and dramatic strikes against the mobsters. My guy would resuscitate not only the name but that sense of style, that sense of action, that close-to-the-streets and independent style of cop who manages to stymie his superiors through the scope of his intelligence. But it's always a battle.