Remembering the October Crisis

Historical revisionism and the legacy of Canada's darkest hour.

Thirty years ago today, Canada was plunged into one of its darkest historical moments. The kidnapping of British trade commissioner James Cross, and later the abduction and murder of Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte, were the culmination of years of terrorist attacks in Quebec that shocked the country and continue to divide French- and Anglo-Canadians.

Most of us are familiar with the major plot points of the October Crisis, but in the Montreal Gazette today, Bernard Amyot attempts to rectify some misunderstandings that have cropped up – some by accident, some by historical revisionism. For one, it was the provincial, not federal government, that called in the army. “At all times,” Amyot writes, “the Canadian soldiers took orders and reported to the chief of the Sûreté du Quebec.” (Canadians can be forgiven for not knowing this, as Pierre Trudeau’s “Just watch me” clip is the most memorable sound bite in our political history.) Trudeau has been criticized for using the War Measures Act during the crisis, but Amyot says its implementation “was not an all-out assault on civil rights … Freedom of expression, even to denounce the act, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly were at all times preserved.” It will surprise many to learn that even demonstrations that celebrated Laporte’s death were allowed to proceed.

Many Canadians don’t fully understand the grievances behind the crisis, but in an excellent column in the Ottawa Citizen, William Johnson explains that “if francophones were poorer than les Anglais, if the Catholic church held a rigid control over most of society and the education system was pre-modern, if families had too many children and les Anglais controlled most of industry, there was one explanation, one solution: Quebec was colonized and must be decolonized.” While Quebec terrorism has withered, Johnson says the decolonization theory is still evident in Quebec’s refusal to embrace the Constitution Act, the assumption that Quebec can secede unilaterally as a result of a referendum, and most importantly in the way it “has prevented Quebecers from considering other Canadians as fully their fellow citizens.”