Lest We Forget: the Cowardly Assassination of Pierre Laporte

October 17th, 2010 marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Quebec’s Vice Premier and Labour Minister, Pierre Laporte, by Paul and Jacques Rose, the cowards of the Front de Liberation du Quebec. Rest in peace, M. Laporte. We can never repay your sacrifice...or that of your wife and children, and the widow and children of your late brother Rolland, all of whom you were supporting at the moment you were abducted from your St. Lambert home by a bunch of pathetic pseudo-Marxists who had taken leave of their senses after watching too many screenings of The Battle of Algiers.

Paul and Jacques Rose, driving to Texas to buy guns for the cause, were surprised to hear of the kidnapping of British trade commissioner James Cross by their FLQ Liberation Cell brothers on October 5^th, 1970. They raced back home and grabbed you as you played football with your nephew. You, M. Laporte, who had been a journalist with Le Devoir from 1945 to 1961, determined to best the tyrannical Premier Maurice Duplessis. You, M. Laporte, who had been part of Jean Lesage’s Equipe de tonerre, who had helped to roll back la grande noirceur and ended up falling victim to its newer iteration. Who were these angry nobodies who had never done a thing to advance the people of Quebec, who confused the blowing up of mail boxes with positive political action?

On October 12^th, Prime Minister Trudeau, at the request of Premier Robert Bourassa, invoked the War Measures Act. Your letter to M. Bourassa, dated October 11^th, read:

My dear Robert,

I feel like I am writing the most important letter I have ever written.

For the time being, I am in perfect health, and I am treated well, even courteously.

In short, the power to decide over my life is in your hands. If there was only that involved, and the sacrifice of my life would bring good results, one could accept it...

You know how my personal situation deserves to draw attention. I had two brothers, both are now dead. I remain alone as the head of a large family that comprises my mother, my sisters, my own wife and my children, and the children of Rolland of whom I am the guardian. My departure would create for them irreparable grief, and you know the ties that bind the members of my family...

You have the power of life and death over me, I depend on you and I thank you for it.

Best regards,

Pierre Laporte

What would you think of the Quebec of today, a Quebec which virtually ignores your murder, a Quebec where a goodly number have convinced themselves the entire FLQ episode was some kind of federal conspiracy to discredit the independence movement? As if the independentistes needed any help in that regard, the truth being that some of the most revered of the separatists—their sainted Rene Levesque and his bombastic sidekick Jacques Parizeau—took advantage of the uproar caused by the kidnappings to talk about planning the “provisional government” of Quebec.

But Messrs. Levesque and Parizeau weren’t alone in mistaking their duties: as media analyst Raphael Cohen-Almagor later concluded, the media coverage of the crisis was a textbook example of irresponsible journalism in Quebec.

Influential segments of the French media served the interests of the terrorists and ignored the interests of the victims, as well as the interests of Canada as a free, democratic society. Journalists broke almost every ethical norm that is accepted during hostage-taking episodes; they did not hesitate to sensationalize and to dramatize the event, stirring up emotions in a way that hindered governmental operations...They gladly offered their services as mediators and messengers of the terrorists, disregarding their obligation to accurate reporting, and broadcast the terrorists' communiqués without the consent of the authorities. Through their extensive sympathetic coverage, French journalists not only provided a grand platform for the terrorists, but also legitimized their demands and actions...

And this media mischief and misinformation continues: a Radio-Canada documentary just days back repeats the lies that your murder was “accidental” and in fact the fault of the police, since you were supposedly still alive when they deposited you in the trunk of that car for the police to find (this despite the fact that the communiqué issued at the time spoke very plainly of your “execution”). And, the Felquist apologist continued, if a communiqué from Cross’s kidnappers, addressed to the numbskulls who held you, and urging you not be harmed, hadn’t been suppressed by the police, you would have been fine.

Oh, M. Laporte, to think, if only the police hadn’t been so devious, you might have lived…is it only in Quebec people lie to themselves this way?

Instead of bowing our heads in collective sorrow at the fact that you were strangled with your own religious medallion—surely a torturous and agonizingly slow method of execution!--the Quebec’s news media today celebrates instead the canonization of Brother Andre, the illiterate “man of the people” who “cured” the sick by anointing them with oil.

And the pathetic apologia for your kidnapping and murder—and the murders of 5 others, as well as the kidnapping of Mr. Cross—continues, as one of the authors of Quebec’s high school history text declares the FLQ never meant to hurt anyone. This despite their having perpetrated in excess of 200 violent crimes--including at least 100 bombings--that resulted in the deaths of six people!

But luckily for this next generation, according to history teacher and textbook author Raymond Bedard, the Quebec curriculum does not put a lot of emphasis on the October Crisis, perhaps 45 minutes of class time out of the entire school year.

They say those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. Dear M. Laporte, I am glad that, for you at least, that cannot be so. I wish you godspeed. You didn't deserve the treatment meted out to you. You didn't deserve it then, and you still do not now.

---------------

References:

Raphael Cohen-Almagor. The scope of tolerance: studies on the costs of free expression and freedom. London: Routledge 2006. p.235

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/flq-didnt-mean-to-kill-people-quebec-author-105014434.html

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/terrorists/flq/index.html

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Extremist+makeover+edition/3588195/story.html

"Have you ever seen a bus full of the English blow up?"

Moulin à paroles, this weekend’s Quebec City hot-air-a-thon marking the 250th anniversary of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, was organized following the cancellation of a re-enactment of France’s defeat, an event denounced by sovereignist groups as federalist propaganda (and hey, who knows propaganda better than some of these guys!).



Perhaps the organizers are still willing to accept, at this late date, additional submissions? I offer the following, from the Front de libération du Québec’s No.3, March 1969 issue of Victoire [all texts taken from Gerard Pelletier’s The October Crisis. Translated by Joyce Marshall. Toronto/Montreal: McLelland and Stewart Ltd, 1971. 247pp.]



THE FLQ WILL KILL



…In a little while the English, the Federalists, the exploiters, the toadies of the occupiers, the lackeys of imperialism—all those who betray the workers and the Quebec nation—will fear for their lives and they will be right.

For the FLQ will kill.

…Our present cells will look like amateurs when our elite groups go into action.

Have you ever seen a bus full of the English blow up?

Have you ever seen an English library burning?

Have you ever seen the president of a Yankee corporation under fire?

Have you ever seen a pellet micro-bomb?

Have you ever seen a miniature incendiary bomb?

Have you ever seen a can explode on the shelf of a supermarket in the British quarter?

Have you ever seen a Protestant church burning?

Have you ever seen Westmount without telephones or electricity and with its water supply poisoned?

Have you ever seen sharp-shooters ambushed on roofs, shooting down traitors?

Be sure you soon will!!! [Pelletier, p.224]



I’m a writer researching the FLQ era for a novel I’m working on. And though I grew up in Montreal during that time, I was shocked at the true accounting of the FLQ’s handiwork, hundreds of crimes including:



From 1963 to 1967…about 35 bombs, most of them low-powered.

From 1968 to 1970…50 to 60 bombs, most of them high-powered (There were also some super-bombs, among them one composed of 141 sticks of dynamite, which was intended to destroy a section of Metropolitan Boulevard…[perhaps Montreal’s equivalent of the Gardner; Pelletier, p.79]



The bombs were set in mailboxes, at textile companies, on bridges, at radio stations, at union headquarters, on the McGill University campus, under statues of Queen Victoria, in Central Station. Trains were derailed. Not to mention the dozens of armed robberies that netted the group tens of thousands of dollars, electronic and military matériel.



These guys were not just a bunch of university loudmouths (though some were that, too). They were terrorists who trained in Jordan with Palestinian commandos. Eight months before the October Crisis, two FLQ members in a panel truck were arrested with a sawed-off shotgun and a communiqué announcing the kidnapping of the Israeli consul.



Perhaps Moulin à paroles will appreciate this apologia of René Lévesque’s, offered in the aftermath of the October Crisis, from La Presse, p. A6, November 9, 1970:



…there are certain things that make people turn to crime in Quebec. I am not excusing anyone and I will never applaud the assassination…[of a man M. Levesque knew and worked with for decades!]. But it can be explained. If we keep the same kind of society, we will have the same kind of thing…The police and the army will have to leave some day and Trudeau’s filthy tricks will not prevent all sorts of other kidnappings. [Pelletier, p. 180]



Trudeau’s filthy tricks? The mind boggles.



If there’s a humour section, perhaps this gem will suffice:



We do not terrorize our people; on the contrary, the Front de Liberation du Quebec is a vast front of love and fraternity.



La Cognée, official organ of the FLQ, May 1964



It is hurtful in the extreme to the memories and the dignity of the dozens of people who risked their lives--who were hurt, maimed or killed--during the FLQ’s reign of terror.



Perhaps Moulin à paroles would like to close its “Hommage au FLQ” section with this from La Presse of October 19, 1970 [Pelletier, p. 102]:



DECES



LAPORTE, Pierre, Hon. A Montréal. Le 17 octobre 1970 à l'âge de 49 ans, est décède, l’Honorable Pierre Laporte. Ministre du Travail et de l’Immigration, gouvernement du Québec. Époux de Françoise Brouillette. Père de Claire et Jean. Les funérailles auront lieu mardi le 20 octobre 1970. Le convoi funèbre partira du Nouveau Palais de Justice No 100, rue Notre-Dame, Est, pour se rendre à l’église Notre-Dame de Montréal où le service sera célèbre a 4 heures. Et de la au cimetière de la Côte-des-Neiges, lieu de sépulture. Parents et amis sont priés d’y assister sans autre invitation. S.V.P. pas de fleurs. Dons au Camp Françoise Cabrini seraient grandement appréciés au 4285 boul. de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montréal 215.



May his memory be for a blessing.