The memory of that kiss clings to summer and youth although now, generations later, both have slipped into fall. October in Canada means harvest, Thanksgiving (the second Monday), and a scary Halloween. Those of us who remember the past fondly, who love history and Quebec and the Quebecois, remember also the October Crisis and the fear it engendered, then and now, that the world as we knew it might end, that Canada might break up. As the first kiss changes an individual, the relationship between Quebec and other provinces helps define Canada. The possibility of change in this relationship, the fear that Quebec does not want to be involved any longer, wants out, is as confusing and disturbing as the end of a first-love affair.
The October Crisis of 1970 changed everything. Between 1963 and 1970, dozens of people had been injured and at least two killed as a result of terrorist activity, including over 200 bomb attacks, by the FLQ (Front de Liberation du Quebec), a sect advocating violence to achieve political and social reform in Quebec. Then, on October 5, 1970, an FLQ cell kidnapped James Cross, a British diplomat, the trade commissioner to Montreal. Negotiations were in progress when a second cell of the FLQ, on October 10, kidnapped another politician, Pierre Laporte, the provincial Minister of Labour and Immigration.
The Quebec government asked the federal government for military assistance (October 15). Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, agreeing that the nation was in the midst of an "apprehended insurrection," invoked on October 16 the War Measures Act, virtually putting Canada under martial law, with the RCMP and the Canadian Army acting on direct orders from the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Ottawa. On October 17, the body of Pierre Laporte was found in the trunk of a car near St. Hubert.
On the authority of the War Measures Act, over 450 suspected Quebec "liberationists" were arrested and held without the usual legal protections. In early December, police found the hideout where James Cross was being held and his safe release was negotiated; his kidnappers were exiled to Cuba. About a month later, those who had kidnapped and killed Laporte were arrested and, eventually, convicted of murder.
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