The Virtual Historian

Le Devoir

30 years ago, the FLQ : Why ?

Louis Fournier
Journalist for the radio station CKAC during the October Crisis, and author of the book FLQ - Histoire d'un mouvement clandestin published by Éditions Québec-Amérique in 1982 and reprinted by Lanctôt Éditions

Le Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) now belongs to our history, but we should not forget that it also belonged (in tragic ways) to our own lives. Thirty years after the October Crisis of 1970, we still wonder how we lived through a ten-year period of political violence, which culminated in two kidnappings and the death of one hostage by the FLQ, and made Québec a hot spot in North America. Nine people dead, including three FLQ members, around 200 bombings, multiple bank and weapon robberies, political actions and writings, and, more importantly, the kidnapping of two political figures, the first ones in Canada, which led to the proclamation of the War Measures Act and the suspension of civil liberties. How did we get there? Why did a few hundred young and older militants, many from working class, participate in a terrorist organization and then found themselves in prison for several years?

Why did this happen here in Québec, in a small nation of about 7.5 million people today, 80% of who have French as a first language and refuse to die? To ask the question is to already find some answer.

Despair and hope

The FLQ organization was created in 1963 from despair and hope by a bunch of young ideologists supporting the independence of Québec. The political violence was the expression of a feeling of urgency and impatience, of a mix of activism and revolutionary romanticism. It was a "fuite en avant," a catastrophic move.

The FLQ was born out of a specific and explosive political and socioeconomic context of the 1960s in Québec and elsewhere. Political violence in Québec was no different from that of other countries, including the U.S. with the Black Panthers, Latin America with guerillas, Ireland with the IRA, the Basque country with the ETA, and so on. We may disagree with the terrorist actions of the FLQ but still recognize that the movement can be analyzed and explained. As former PQ leader and Premier René Lévesque once put it, "terrorism is the living symptom of a disease; it is not its main cause."

He also said, "if we keep the same society, we will get the same things. We need deep reforms to eliminate the FLQ." It is a long and arduous work. Due in part to the rise of the Parti Québécois and its elections as a government in 1976 and also social reforms, major progress has been achieved. But the fight is not over. Will it ever be over for this small French-speaking nation in North America?

During the 1995 Referendum of October 30, 49.4% voted for the YES side, in favour of the PQ independence project. Over 60% of Francophones voted YES. Almost 2.5 millions of Québécois voted for independence while there were only a few "separatists" in the 1960s when the Rassemblement pour l'Indépendence Nationale (RIN) was created. In 1995, Québec almost became a country, a true country. Will next time be the right time?