Chris Oliveros's new graphic novel explores the origins of a Quebec separatist group that rose to national infamy in the October Crisis of 1970. An excerpt from the book is available at the end of this article.Artwork courtesy of Chris Oliveros
Chris Oliveros is the author of Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? Revolution in 1960s Quebec.
The FLQ (Le Front de libération du Québec) was created in response to the profound economic and social inequities suffered by the francophone majority in Quebec throughout the first half of the 20th century. These problems would be best addressed, according to the nascent group, not by political reforms but rather by means of violent revolution.
Ask anyone what they know about the FLQ and they might list some of the usual things: kidnappings, the death of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte, and Pierre Trudeau’s three most famous words: “Just watch me.” Those references all date from 1970, in what came to be known as the October Crisis. But what about what happened before then? The FLQ, after all, was founded in 1963. But, in English Canada at least, many of the basic facts remain largely unknown by the public. Besides a couple of books and a recent CBC podcast, historians have largely glossed over the pre-1970 FLQ period, while most schools across Canada barely touch on the topic.
The Globe and Mail's edition of June 3, 1963, reports on the arrest of FLQ suspects in a string of bombings.
For example, how many people are aware that the FLQ was founded by two recently arrived immigrants who were not Québécois? Or how about that time when the group decided to hold a de facto recruitment drive inside Da Giovanni, a well-known downtown Montreal restaurant that still exists today? It turns out that most of the prospective candidates were teenagers and all had to answer a survey with questions such as “Do you have any firearms?”, “Do you have access to a secret hideout?” and my personal favourite, “Are you willing to die for the cause?” Who can forget when the FLQ decided it would be a good idea to start a guerrilla army training camp deep in the woods, with the intention of starting an armed revolution in Quebec? Doesn’t ring a bell? That’s okay, because few other people have heard about it either.
It wasn’t always like this. When the FLQ started blowing up mailboxes in 1963, every detail of the attacks was reported by newspapers across the country. And when the first wave of FLQ members were arrested in June of that year, French and English dailies in Montreal devoted pages to the subsequent trial.
Perhaps the most extensive press coverage came toward the end of 1963, when Weekend magazine published a first-person account by Jeanne Schoeters, wife of FLQ co-founder Georges Schoeters. She provided a riveting and detailed account of a nascent revolutionary movement that would shake Quebec to its foundation for years to come. Ms. Schoeters described the day-to-day life inside the small apartment located in the working-class neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges in Montreal where she lived with her husband and two young children. Their kitchen was used by her husband to store boxes of dynamite and to mix batches of Molotov cocktails, while their baby and toddler slept in the next room. The cramped apartment was also the setting for the FLQ’s secretive first meetings, where she overheard one member proclaim, “We have to be willing to die, if necessary.” It was also here where her husband and other members collectively wrote the group’s first manifesto, where they would refer to themselves, without a hint of nuance, as the “suicide commandos of the FLQ.”
Remarkably, despite the extraordinary revelations of her account, not a single French-language book or newspaper has referenced it in the 60 years since it has been published. And in English-language media, only one book cited it, albeit barely, in two short sentences. All of this might sound baffling, if not for the reason that at least partially explains the astonishing oversight. The first part of the article had the misfortune of being published on Nov. 23, 1963. If that date sounds familiar, it’s because it was the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy – meaning everybody would have been distracted by the tragedy that had just occurred in Dallas. The second part of the article was published a week later, on Nov. 30, which in theory should have caught the attention of a few more readers. But I made the startling discovery that, in fact, another tragedy had occurred the day before: On Nov. 29, 1963, a jet departed from Montreal and crashed a few minutes later, just north of Laval, killing all 118 people aboard. At the time, it was Canada’s worst aviation disaster in history.
While the extraordinary bad luck of being on the wrong end of the news cycle may at least partially explain why the account of Jeanne Schoeters has been all but forgotten, what about everything else that happened with the FLQ in the 1960s? When Georges Schoeters took his own life while in exile in 1994, not a single news outlet in Canada bothered to cover it. The only official acknowledgment was a 45-word paid notice placed in a Montreal newspaper announcing a memorial service. Without a proper re-assessment of the first seven years of the FLQ’s activities, the October Crisis of 1970 only tells half of the story.
