Intro

October 5, 1970. Montreal: capital of Canada’s french-speaking Quebec province.

British Diplomat James Cross is discussing the day ahead with his wife while dressing, when the doorbell rings. It’s early for anyone to call on them, but when their maid opens the front door, a cheery delivery man declares, “Birthday present for Mr. Cross!” It’s a week late.

The maid doesn’t have a pen to sign for it. The delivery man helpfully reaches into his pocket to lend her his own but suddenly draws a revolver instead.

At that moment, two more men leap from hiding and dash up the front steps as the delivery man forces his way inside. One accomplice tears open the package and pulls out a machine gun.

Within seconds, the delivery man bursts into the half-dressed Cross’s bedroom, shouting, “Get down on the floor or you’ll be fucking dead!”

Cross wisely complies and lies down as the two others arrive. While the machine gunner keeps Mrs. Cross and the maid subdued, the others quickly dress Mr. Cross. As they shepherd him out of the house, his wife tearfully demands to say goodbye and kisses her husband farewell. Outside, he’s packed into the back seat of a taxi and disappears. (A, 205-6)

It's mid-afternoon when police find an unusual document stuffed in a downtown mailbox. It begins,

“Here are the conditions that the ruling authorities must fulfill in order to preserve the life of the representative of the ancient, racist and colonialist British system.” Cross has been kidnapped by the Front de liberation du Quebec or FLQ—a radical left-wing, French nationalist movement that seeks revolution and independence for French-majority Quebec from Canada by any means necessary. They’re demanding the release of 23 comrades imprisoned for indiscriminate bombings and robberies across the province over the last ten years. If the government refuses, Cross will die. (A, 220-221)

Five days later, Pierre Laporte—a top member of Quebec’s governing cabinet—is playing catch with his teenage nephew across the street from his house, while his wife dresses for dinner. Suddenly, a car comes screeching to a halt beside them, and two men leap out, rifles drawn, shouting at Laporte, “Get in the car. This isn’t a joke. Get in. Right now!” He quickly drops the football and complies. Then, as quickly as they’d appeared on the scene, the kidnappers vanish. (A, 233-234)

The isolated kidnapping of a minor foreign diplomat was urgent, but a second attack on the second-highest minister in Quebec's government was a terrifying turn. Not only were these terrorists far more organized and threatening than anyone expected, soon protests and strikes in support of the FLQ spread across Quebec, stoking fears that this crisis could spiral into full-blown insurrection. Many leading politicians implored the government to negotiate, to give in, release the prisoners, save the victims, and avoid revolution. (A, 235)

But in the midst of this nationwide panic, something happened that nobody expected, least of all in peaceful, tranquil Canada. A few days after Laporte’s kidnapping—for the first and still only time in Canadian peacetime history, with the lives of the two men still hanging in the balance—Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked martial law. All at once, troops came pouring into Montreal, freedom of the press was curtailed, civil rights suspended, and hundreds of people arrested.

The crackdown smashed support for the FLQ and terrified the kidnappers, but it also sparked fear and anger among law-abiding Quebecers who saw this move as a serious attack on liberty, which seemed as likely to save the victims as doom them. One such critic, reporter Tim Ralfe, confronted the Prime Minister on these policies…

“I go back to the choice you have to make and the kind of society you want to live in.”

“Yeah well there’s a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go on and bleed. But it’s more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don’t like the looks of …”

“At any cost? At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?”

“Well, just watch me.”

The FLQ

However shocking these particular kidnappings were, they didn't come out of nowhere. The FLQ had been terrorizing Quebec for nearly a decade. Since 1963, they’d robbed dozens of banks, detonated over 200 bombs, injured scores of innocent people, and killed six. (A, 1)

As one of their handbooks put it, “Since 1963, ever since the explosion of the first FLQ bombs, we have been in the first stage of revolutionary struggle [that] culminates in a general economic, political and social crisis.” (A, 188)

Violence was a natural resort for them. Their goal—the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada—had never found purchase at the polls. Quebec’s long-ruling French-aligned party, Union Nationale, was more interested in provincial autonomy than separatism, and they were ousted in 1960 by the language-agnostic Liberals, whose objective wasn’t a culture war but economic growth. (A, 5-9)

So, unable to win over the public, the FLQ rejected democracy, turning to a left-wing vision of utopian dictatorship baptized in a revolutionary bloodbath.

As the 1970 election approached, however, it seemed they were poised for an unexpected triumph.

A new party was surging in the polls—le Parti Quebecois—and they had one objective—independence for Quebec. Yet the polls were way off, and Quebec once again rejected independence, handing PQ less than a quarter of the vote. (A, 185-7) For the FLQ, this was confirmation of their radical worldview, and an invitation to escalate.

In February, police glimpsed what was coming when a traffic stop and search of a van yielded a sawed-off rifle, a human-sized basket, and pamphlets announcing the kidnapping of the Israeli Consul in Montreal. The van's driver was Jacques Lanctot. (A, 190) Though he was booked and charged for his plans, Lanctot was soon out on bail.

He found refuge with the members of his crew—or cell—of the FLQ, and they set to work on a new plot. This too, however, was foiled in June, when police raided a series of FLQ safehouses. Although Lanctot excaped, police found guns, ammunition, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of pounds of TNT, and—at one house—more pamphlets: these announcing the kidnapping of the US Consul. (A, 196-8)

It was a major blow for the Lanctot cell. License plates, hideouts, cash: all compromised. Two kidnapping plots foiled, and now they were hemmed in like never before. Lanctot decided they had to act fast, before it was too late. But one member of the cell objected: Paul Rose.

He argued that one false step now would be more devastating than ever, urging caution and patience. Rose wasn’t without support, but Lanctot stuck to his guns. In turn, the group split. Rose and his followers walked out, while Lanctot and the remainder carried on. Operation Liberation had begun. (A, 216)

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On October 5, Lanctot was once more behind the wheel: this time, a stolen taxi. In the back seat, face down, underneath a rug, hastily dressed, was James Cross. This was Operation Liberation.

Within minutes, they arrived at a nearby garage where accomplices were waiting with another car. Inside, they pulled Cross from the taxi, strapped a gas mask with blacked out eyes onto his face, and forced him into the backseat of another car. Lanctot and an accomplice departed to return the cab to the taxi company and leave their demands at a drop site while Cross’s new custodians sped away to a safehouse at 10945 Des Récollets. (A, 219-20) There, the kidnappers took Cross to a back bedroom, replaced his gas mask with a hood, and forced him to lie on a mattress on the floor. When he mustered the courage to ask his captors their intentions, they read aloud the FLQ manifesto and their first communiqué to police. While they stated their secessionist ideology,

their immediate demands were more limited: the publication of their manifesto, the release of 23 comrades from prison, safe passage to Cuba, five hundred thousand dollars in gold, and more. (A, 221) Of course, this was all in French, and Cross hardly understood it. He did, however, comprehend a couple sentences. “All these conditions and their fulfillment must be dealt with within forty-eight hours…The life of the diplomat depends therefore on the good-will of the ruling authorities.” (Demands)

When they finished, Cross replied stoically, “In that case, I must compose myself for death.” (A, 222).

Deepening Crisis

When Quebec's Justice Minister Jerome Choquette heard the demands, he began to panic. His boss, Quebec's Premier Robert Bourassa—the provincial Prime Minister, so to speak—was in the United States, working on trade deals (A, 236). Choquette didn't know what to do. His instinct was to negotiate but he knew he needed help, so he leaned on the national government in Ottawa. Their strategy: delay (A, 223).

Federal minister for external affairs Mitchell Sharp publicly declared that “this set of demands will not be met,” although he pleaded with the kidnappers for a more direct line of communication, holding out the possibility that some arrangement could be reached (A, 224-225).

The next day, October 7th, the kidnappers offered a 24-hour postponement of Cross’s execution, perhaps reading into Mitchell’s statement the good will they were looking for (A, 224). On the 8th, despite disagreements in the Canadian cabinet, the national radio station read out the FLQ’s manifesto, acceding to one of their demands (A, 224-225). The kidnappers took this as a win and delayed Cross’s execution once more, until 6:00pm Saturday, October 10th (Jenis, 226-227).

From Ottawa, their delay strategy seemed to be working perfectly, and it looked like Montreal's police were making headway. They arrested twenty-seven suspects, while informers named Lanctot as a possible kidnapper (A, 226).

But in Montreal, Choquette's panic was deepening. Cross's execution had been delayed, but it still loomed. Bourassa was still out of town, and the police efforts were frankly useless. The arrested suspects were dead ends, and knowing Lanctot was behind the attack didn't make finding him any easier.

Worse still, opposition leaders like le Parti Quebecois' Rene Levesque began turning up the heat on Choquette. Though Levesque denounced the kidnapping, he placed ultimate blame on the government for provoking the attack with its supposed brutal oppression of Quebec's French population (A, 223).

So, on Saturday, October 10th, as the deadline approached, Choquette informed federal officials that he’d scheduled a press conference that afternoon to announce Quebec’s openness to negotiation over the release of the “political prisoners” (C, 193-194).

This threw the federal government into a crisis. Ottawa remained strictly anti-negotiation. Any misalignment between them and Quebec would undermine all of their positions and endanger Cross. So with mere minutes to spare, Sharp got Choquette on the phone and asked him a single pointed question: was he absolutely certain that by saying this he could secure Cross’s release? This shook Choquette out of his panic. No, he told Sharp, he wasn’t certain of anything (C, 194).

Moments later, Choquette appeared at the press conference and delivered a message that shocked the public and the kidnappers. "No society can expect that the decisions of its governments or its courts of law can be questioned or can be erased by blackmail…this signifies the end of all social order” (A, 227). With that, Choquette shut the door on negotiation.

For hours, his hands wouldn't stop shaking, as he nervously awaited the kidnappers' 6pm deadline. He knew concessions didn't guarantee he could save Cross, but he feared that now he'd simply killed the man. Yet 6pm arrived without word from the kidnappers. Then 7pm. Then 8. Silence. This was now the second deadline the kidnappers had allowed to slip by. Perhaps they weren’t so serious after all.

Yet as soon as Choquette breathed a sigh of relief, his phone rang. His colleague and friend, Pierre Laporte, had been kidnapped.

Weeks earlier, after falling out with Lanctot, Paul Rose and his FLQ comrade Francis Simard hit the road and began driving all over the United States. They were there to raise money for the revolutionary cause—scamming creditors to generate considerable cash. On October 5th, they were in Dallas, Texas, where Paul and Francis had just paid a local $30 to buy some guns on their behalf, when they heard the news. James Cross had been kidnapped. Guessing the culprits, they rushed back to Montreal.

Two days and 1,600 miles later, on the evening of October 7th, they were outside Albany, New York when they came within range of a Montreal radio station, just in time to catch an unbelievable broadcast. They pulled to side of the road, a couple of listeners among millions. Simard described the moment in his memoir,

“[It] was something special… We knew the manifesto by heart. We'd helped write it. We'd fought over every word, for hours at a time, every comma, every sentence. Nobody talked. Nobody could have.” (A, 228-9)

Back in Montreal the next day, the two men holed up in a motel. Assessing the last few days’ events, they could see that Lanctot was losing. His ultimatum had proven flexible, revealing the weakness of his hand. Rose and Simard had to do something to tilt the balance, to convince the government that the FLQ meant business. (A, 229-30)

After three plots against foreign representatives, kidnapping another diplomat was off the table. But Rose had another idea; go for someone in Quebec’s governing cabinet. It was so bold, nobody would expect it, and better yet, one cabinet minister represented a Montreal area district. They checked the phonebook and found a Pierre Laporte nearby. It seemed too good to be true. The address was only a 10-minute drive from Rose’s safehouse at 5630 Armstrong. So they called the number. A woman answered. Is Minister Laporte at home? Yes!?

“We were amazed. Incredible… One of the most influential politicians in Quebec was at home!” (A, 230-1)

That evening, Paul collected his brother Jacques and got to planning the details, while Simard watched the safehouse overnight to ensure it wasn’t being staked out by police. The next day, the group got set up in their hideout and recruited one more accomplice: Bernard Lortie. The next evening, October 10th, they descended on Laporte's street.

Jacques Rose was driving, when Paul, sitting in the back seat with his rifle in hand, shouted, “There he is!” pointing at Pierre Laporte catching a football from his nephew. Jacques slammed on the brakes. (A, 223)

Not ten minutes later, the group returned to their safehouse. There, they took Laporte to a bedroom, blindfolded him, and bound him to a bed with handcuffs and a chained collar. (A, 259)

The next morning, Paul Rose dropped a communique in a trash can near a radio station and informed the staff via payphone. The message to the government, which they heard only over the radio broadcast, was clear; they had seven days to comply with the earlier demands of the Cross kidnappers before Laporte would be executed at 10pm October 18th. (A, 235)

Nobody was more against testing this ultimatum than Laporte himself, who penned a letter pleading with Bourassa, “My dear Robert…We are faced with a well-organized escalation that will not end until the political prisoners are liberated… Decide—my life or my death. I am counting on you and thank you for it.” (A, 236)

In turn, both parties holed up in 5630 Armstrong were delighted to hear Bourassa’s voice on the radio later that night, “We wish to save the lives of Mr. Laporte and Mr. Cross… We ask the kidnappers to enter into communication with us.”

At 10am the next day, Paul Rose dropped another envelope near the radio station. Inside: a communique authorizing Robert Lemieux to negotiate on their behalf and another letter from Laporte addressed to Bourassa.

“I have just heard your speech. Thank you. I expected nothing less of you… I hope to be free and back at work in 24 hours.” (A, 237-8)

War Measures

One could argue the negotiations were doomed from the start. The Quebec government had agreed to them hesitantly and only after much debate. Choquette, who’d wavered on the 10th, rejected any negotiation by the 11th, while Bourassa, returned from abroad, favored rapprochement. According to the diary of then-cabinet minister William B, “Choquette threatens to resign. As the discussion continues, he walks out of the room” (B, 230).

In the end, Bourassa opened talks but was willing to offer only limited concessions to the kidnappers: safe conduct for them out of the country and parole recommendations for five of the 23 prisoners they sought to free (B, 40).

Robert Lemieux had to be released on bail to serve as the kidnappers' representative, as he'd been jailed for obstruction of justice after holding pro-FLQ press conferences and telling the kidnappers to "hang in there" on public radio (A, 238-239). And when he heard the government's terms, he went right back to his antics, hosting more press conferences where he denounced the government as unwilling to engage. By the 15th, he organized a demonstration of some 3,000 people, who marched through Montreal chanting, "FLQ! FLQ! (B, 69-70)

The threat of further kidnappings already demanded heightened security around officials and foreign dignitaries. Now, such large-scale street protests exacerbated demands on police, leaving only a handful of officers free to search for Cross and Laporte. Not only was the rebellion growing by the day—ever larger, ever more serious—the government was stretched thin, and the deadline on the men’s lives was fast approaching.

Feeling the pressure, Bourassa tried turning the tables with a deadline of his own . He gave Lemieux six hours to accept the government's original proposal: exile for the kidnappers and parole for five prisoners (B, 162). Lemieux, however, smelled desperation (B, 141-142). So he refused. But Lemieux's instinct was wrong. Whatever divisions had plagued the governments in Montreal and Ottawa in the ten days since October 5th, by now their hearts had hardened. In the early hours of October 16th, Bourassa sent Prime Minister Trudeau a missive requesting the nuclear option: the War Measures Act (B, 162-163).

For days, Quebec and Ottawa had been discussing its use, but Trudeau, himself a son of Quebec with a background in trade unionism and political activism, was reluctant (B, 161, 171-174). The act wasn't just arcane and meant to be used only in wartime—a legal relic from World War One—it went far beyond what was necessary. If invoked, it would grant the government exceptional powers to censor speech, arrest without cause, seize property, and assume control over much of the economy (D).

In Trudeau's words, "the powers conferred by the Act are much larger than the actual situation requires, despite the gravity of the events" (B, 86)

Yet, when push came to shove, and Bourassa's formal request came in on October 16th, Trudeau did as requested (B, 163).

Within the hour, the War Measures Act was in force for the first and still only time in Canadian peacetime history. Within mere hours more, the army arrived in Quebec (B, 163).

Though Trudeau took great pains to limit his own power and the effect of the War Measures Act—promulgating a set of regulations alongside it that limited its application only to the “unlawful association” of the FLQ and placed troops deployed to Quebec under the authority of local officials, not Ottawa—there was no changing what this was: martial law (A, 258). And though Trudeau exercised this restraint out of seemingly genuine concern for civil rights and the health of Canadian democracy, once on this path he remained firmly committed to it.

When the head of an opposition party accused Trudeau of “using a sledgehammer to crack peanuts.” Trudeau replied that “Peanuts don’t make bombs, don’t take hostages…As for the sledgehammer, it was the only tool at our disposal” (B, 108).

Huddled around the TV in 10945 Des Recollets, Lanctot and his gang did not like what they were seeing. They expected the weak Quebec government to fold and submit to their demands, but now troops were streaming into Montreal.

Lanctot had one worry on his mind — they could be preparing to storm their hideout. So he penned a new letter to the government he hoped could hold them at bay. At 10am on October 17, the police received the message which promised,

“The death sentence against James Cross is suspended indefinitely…[unless] the fascist police discover us and attempt to intervene. As for Pierre Laporte, the Chenier cell…will make its decision known shortly.” (E)

As well as a warning to police and a change of position, the message was a suggestion to Laporte’s kidnappers that they follow the same course.

5630 Armstrong

But while Cross was generally at ease in captivity—spending his days reading Agatha Christie novels—the same could not be said for Laporte.

His captors were utterly unprepared. They had no money. The only food they’d stocked up was canned spaghetti. Their leader, Paul Rose, was gone: fled into hiding two days earlier after a close brush with police. (A, 259)

Meanwhile, Laporte wasn’t merely cuffed and chained by the neck to a bed; by October 16th he’d been blindfolded for 6 days straight. He desperately hoped Bourassa would negotiate his release, but when news arrived of the war measures act, according to his captor Francis Simard, “Laporte cracked…He stopped talking, he didn’t react. He was lifeless, like he wasn’t there. It was like all hope was gone. He was crushed.” (A, 260)

That night, as Laporte’s kidnappers watched more troops stream into town on TV, Laporte’s silence broke with a loud crash coming from his room. His captors rushed in and found Laporte—still blindfolded but slipped free from his restraints—blindly wriggling his way through a broken window. Jacques Rose and Francis Simard pulled him back inside. The glass had sliced into his wrists, hands, and chest.

They patched him up as best they could, while he begged to be taken to a hospital. They adamantly refused but attempted to calm him down.

“We took off his blindfold. He didn’t even look at us. His head slumped on his chest. The tension in the house was unbearable…We were on the point of bursting into tears.”

They didn’t know what to do, so the third captor still at 5630 Armstrong, Bernard Lortie, left to find Rose and seek his guidance.

Lortie didn’t return that night. Or the next day.

Jacques and Simard were on their own and faced with a terrible dilemma as the deadline loomed.

“We went through a period of indecision. You don’t know what to do…You have to decide or you’ll lose your mind…Kill Pierre Laporte…or release him. Kill him. Release him.” (A, 262)

While chaos set in at 5630 Armstrong, the government was restoring order to Montreal's streets: using the War Measures Act to arrest Lemieux and other FLQ leaders and to cancel a march in support of the kidnappers (B, 75, 88). Le Parti Quebecois and others lambasted the act but for its proponents, vocal opposition was proof of the act's success. The FLQ was shut down while every other right and privilege of citizenship was untouched. Even the PQ’s top lawyer admitted this, writing, “the War Measures Act, and the Regulations which implement it, do not prevent us at all from pursuing any of our activities” (B, 90).

Even better, the Act was popular, with one survey showing 89% of English-speaking Canadians supporting it, while French speakers, the very constituency the FLQ had hoped to incite with their terrorism, sat at 86% (B, 103). At the same time, the troops keeping the peace freed up hundreds of officers to rejoin the search for the kidnappers. All seemed to be going smoothly.

That is, until in the late hours of the 17th, when a Montreal radio station received word from the FLQ: “Pierre Laporte, Minister of unemployment and assimilation, was executed at 6:18 p.m. this evening…You will find the body in the trunk of the green Chevrolet…at the Saint-Hubert [airport] base” (B, 142).

Police found Pierre Laporte's body just as described. He was, by all accounts, a loving husband, a devoted father, and a dedicated public servant (B, 138). Before his time in office, he’d been an investigative journalist, doggedly uncovering the abuses of preceding governments, a muckraker and a rabble-rouser in his own right (F). The FLQ radicals should have respected him. His great crime was that when he criticized his government, he sought to improve it, not burn everything down.

Although what exactly happened inside 5630 Armstrong remains unknown, most accounts agree that Jacque Rose and Francis Simard were the only two men present and that—following seven days in brutal conditions and the government's break-off of negotiations—Laporte snapped and was strangled to death in a brawl with his captors (B, 141). It was not a calculated action, yet the kidnappers — now killers — attempted to spin it that way, as an “execution,” to fortify their own position. But they were now well out of their depth. The next day, October 18th, a tipoff from a neighbor pointed police, finally, to the house at 5630 Armstrong (A, 263).

Closing In

When they arrived, it was abandoned, although they found Laporte’s bloodstains, draft communiques, and other signs of the kidnappers' presence, including a scrap of paper with an address on it:

3720 Queen Mary Road (A, 264). Finally, after over 1,600 searches, the police had a concrete lead. Within a week, they’d staked out the Queen Mary Road building. Just days later, they determined that one of the residents was an associate of Jacques Rose (A, 264-265). So they settled in, waiting for a sign of their targets.

Meanwhile in Ottawa, the War Measures Act had quieted things down enough to offer the government some breathing space, an opportunity to take stock and decide their next steps. As Trudeau had acknowledged, the Act went beyond what was strictly necessary to prevent an FLQ-led insurrection. That had been the impetus for the regulations he’d promulgated alongside the act, yet he was still inclined to go further in limiting his own emergency authority. On November 2nd, Parliament passed a new act, the Public Order Temporary Measures Act, which empowered the government to focus exclusively on the FLQ and took the more extreme powers of the War Measures Act off the table (A, 285). Despite their critics, it was clear the government wanted to return to normal order as soon as possible.

But that couldn’t happen until Cross was recovered and the kidnappers brought to justice.

On November 6th police took a major step in that direction.

After watching the building at 3720 Queen Mary Road for several days, two detectives knocked on the door of apartment 12. A man’s voice answered, [one second!] which struck them as odd — after all, the FLQ associate they’d been watching was a woman. Stranger still, no one came to the door. The police knocked again, more vigorously. Finally, a woman let them in (A, 266).

The police entered, but at first they saw no trace of the man they’d heard. Then, searching the bedroom, they found him under a pile of blankets: Bernard Lortie, one of Pierre Laporte’s kidnappers. Finally: progress (A, 266).

Though they'd only caught one of the kidnappers, the police were so close they could smell the rest. Or, a police dog could have, because hidden behind a false wall in the closet, Paul Rose, Jacques Rose, and Francis Simard were holding their breath, trying not to make a sound. When they heard the police leave the apartment with Lortie, they slipped out (A, 267). The search for Laporte’s killers would go on.

Meanwhile, Cross remained in captivity. On November 7th, the day after they caught Lortie, the police on the Cross case met, only to admit that despite their best efforts, including trailing Jacque Lanctot’s pregnant wife, they were no closer to finding their targets (A, 273).

But that changed ten days later, when police found a car traceable to Jacques Cosette-Trudel, one of Cross’s kidnappers. Following a scrap of paper inside indicating the address of a moving company, they discovered his and his wife’s residence. After finding a mother-daughter pair living there, the police began tailing the duo and eventually followed them to a meetup with the Cosette-Trudels who in turn led them to 10945 Des Recollets on December 1st, 1970 (A, 274). James Cross had been held for 57 days, but police had finally found the hideout.

On the 2nd, police apprehended the Cosette-Trudels outside the apartment. Under interrogation, the couple finally gave up the key piece of information: Cross was inside (A, 276). The next day, police barricaded the street. Seeing this, the kidnappers threw their final communique out the front door. All they asked for now was safe passage and someone to negotiate on their behalf. Lemieux, after all, was in jail, so they got an old-guard Communist, Bernard Mergler, who, as it happened, despised the FLQ but was prepared to work on behalf of the Cuban government, which had agreed to take in the kidnappers (A, 277).

Mergler was able to arrange a deal. On December 3rd, the kidnappers exited the apartment with Cross and Mergler, stopping only to argue whether it would be too bourgeois to bring their TV with them. From there, trailed by the police, they drove to an agreed-upon airstrip. Cross’s kidnappers handed him to Cuban representatives, boarded their plane and took off. After 59 days, James Cross was finally free (A, 276-280).

Yet Laporte's killers too remained at liberty. After their incredible dodging of the police on November 6th, they criss-crossed the countryside, staying with supporters and under the floorboards of barns through cold winter nights 280-281). Nearly two months passed until, at the end of December, police searched a farmhouse just Southeast of Montreal. Excessive laundry and other signs suggested more than the bachelor homeowner were living here. After two more fruitless searches, the farmer finally told them that the Rose brothers and Simard were holed up in his basement—literally. Police went downstairs and hauled the three men out of a den dug out beneath the floor (A, 282-286).

Despite a long-running FLQ claim that they would fight the Canadian government “unto the death,” none of the terrorists ever did.

Conclusion

Cross’s kidnappers expected a heroic welcome in Cuba. Instead, they became prisoners themselves, unable to leave their lodgings without Cuban authorities' say-so. After a while, they gained some freedom of movement, but found themselves aimless (A, 287-288). They left for France, hoping to find home there (A, 310-311). This, too, was unsatisfying, and by the decade's end, the kidnappers trickled back into Canada. Facing justice, they pleaded guilty but begged for leniency—were years of exile not punishment enough? Their judges, shockingly, agreed (A, 316-319). None served more than three years in prison (B, 234-235).

Laporte’s killers, however, went straight to trial. Paul Rose began his by insisting that Lemieux represent him. Yet Lemieux was on trial for his own complicity. So Rose chose to represent himself. After calling the judge a “whore of the establishment” and insulting the court and jury an additional twenty-nine times, he was ejected from the courtroom (A, 290-294). He received two life sentences. Simard received one, while Lortie received twenty years and Jacques Rose, eight (B, 234-235).

The government was not a well-oiled machine during the crisis. It was a composite of many different men, riven by disagreements. Some officials wavered in the face of the attack, wondering if the best thing to do was just capitulate. Yet they never did, remaining committed to their values.

One of these values was liberalism, opposed to the FLQ’s ethno-nationalism. For the FLQ, French Quebec was irreconcilable with the rest of Canada. Yet for Trudeau and like-minded members of his Liberal Party, distinct cultures inhabiting the same national borders was simply resolved by shared equality under the law, combined with mutual respect for existing differences. In 1971, Canada adopted a formal recognition of multiculturalism, acknowledging the multiplicity of her citizens' origins while retaining a commitment to consensual government, individual freedom, and political equality.

Another of the essential governing values was federalism, tested by the FLQ and the PQ's separatism, which asserted that Quebec was an occupied territory subject to Ottawa's whims. The controversial political theorist Carl Schmitt wrote that the “sovereign is he who decides the exception.” In this case, the exception was the War Measures Act, and if it had come from Ottawa alone, the FLQ and PQ would have been—in some way—vindicated. But the burden of invoking the act was borne as much by Montreal as Ottawa. The troops deployed to Quebec were placed under the authority of its civil officials. This was what made a free Quebec, not dreams of separatism.

Finally, we’re left to tangle with the issue of the War Measures Act. On the one hand, it was essential to the triumph of law and liberty, yet it came at real cost to the same in the form of nearly 500 arrests—which some reasonably feared a prelude to tyranny. It’s tempting to attribute the act’s success to its design. After all, it required Parliament's consent to remain in force and guaranteed compensation to those wronged under its auspices. Indeed, over 100 people were later compensated for wrongful detention. But more important than any of that was Canada's democratic culture: strong enough that leaders and public servants went above and beyond what was required to restrain themselves even when granted the opportunity to seize exceptional powers.

This is the key point. Exceptional circumstances can call for exceptional responses. What stands between freedom and the abyss of tyranny is so often not rules or regulations or laws but trust: a social compact between free men and women and their leaders which demands accountability and restraint, particularly in moments when the boundaries must be superseded.

Canada's culture creates the sense of incongruity at the heart of this story—the apparent contradiction of martial law in such a docile, polite country—yet it also explains how they resolved it. Canadian democracy didn’t survive the October Crisis by chance; it survived because it had good leaders because it had an exceptionally strong democratic culture, one that could endure an emergency without destroying its constitution or the civil rights of its citizens. Although it was an ugly and tragic affair, Canada succeeded in the October Crisis, and the conduct of Canadian citizens and leaders—their care and their fortitude—are as good a standard as one can find for the conduct of officials in crises anywhere.

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Sources

A. D’Arcy Jenish, The Making of the October Crisis: Canada’s Long Nightmare of Terrorism at the Hands of the FLQ, (DoubleDay Canada, 2018).

B. William Tetley, The October Crisis, 1970: An Insider’s View, (McGill-Queens University Press, 2007).

C. Mitchell Sharp, Which Reminds Me…: A Memoir (University of Toronto Press, 1994).

D. Bill C-2, An Act to confer certain powers upon the Governor in Council and to amend the Immigration Act, SC, 1914, c 2. https://primarydocuments.ca/war-measures-act-sc-1914/

E. Liberation Cell of the Front de Liberation du Quebec, “Reaction of the FLQ to the Invocation of the War Measures Act,” 17 October 1970. (link)

F. Marion Scott, “October Crisis: Who Was Pierre Laporte, Really?” in the Montreal Gazette, 13 October 2020.