BY Robin Mathews: In some ways, this book reads as if it could have come from the offices of The Deep State. Absences, and prejudices, and “readings” of events in the book point to the unquestioned acceptance (and support) of ‘the Official Story’, which now has more holes in it than a screen door….
The author warmly acknowledges a police officer from the Montreal Bomb Squad (a member of the Montreal Police) and the many other MPD officers he met who shared stories and documents with him pertaining to the times. That would be a gift to anyone writing on the subject.
None, it would seem, shares with him any stories arising from the extraordinary history of the policing of the October Crisis (1970). We know that in 1974 a young RCMP officer had a bomb go wrong he was, apparently, planting to blow up the front of the house of a fairly prominent Montreal grocer. The badly hurt RCMP officer, Cpl. Robert Samson, declared during his trial (1976) that he had done worse things … earlier, as a member of the RCMP….
That blew the lid off. And it began the suspicions and revelations that the RCMP had a great deal to do with illegalities in the October Crisis – including, perhaps, (?) the kidnap of both James Cross, British Trade Commissioner, and Pierre Laporte, Quebec Cabinet minister and acting premier of Quebec.
Unmentioned by D’Arcy Jenish, a most extraordinary set of happenings followed. In June, 1977 the Quebec government set up the Keable Commission (spending four years) to look into criminal activities of the RCMP. Quickly … in response … the federal government of Pierre Trudeau set up (July 1977) the McDonald Commission (spending four years) to inquire into ‘Certain Activities of the RCMP’ … meaning criminal activities. The McDonald Commission set itself in opposition to the Keable Commission which the Trudeau government attempted (and failed) to have named unconstitutional in the Supreme Court of Canada. And then in 1980 the Duchaine Commission was also set up in Quebec to look into the 1970 events (spending one year at work). All the Commissions ‘reported’ in 1981.
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One would think that in speaking with members of the Montreal Police – many, it seems, who had documents as well as memories – D’Arcy Jenish would weave into the fabric of his story tales of the role police (besides the Bomb Squad) – especially the RCMP - played in the Great Historical Event. Especially since RCMP wrong-doings were attributed by some to the promptings of the Canadian Cabinet! Not a word.
Claude Jean Devirieux, Radio Canada journalist (never referred to by Jenish), reports that RCMP top officer, John Starnes, told him (in anger) that the RCMP only undertook illegal acts under orders “from very high up”.
How many of the apparently ‘solid’ FLQ actors were RCMP plants (moles) will probably never be known. But one, at least, is almost certainly known … and he is not identified as such in the book by Jenish.
And so one might say of the book that its story is set in a make-believe world and is never permitted to touch reality. One item with a special sparkle that Montreal Police might want to tell is that [it is rumored] a few blocks in Montreal were set off by the RCMP, and the Montreal Police were ordered not to enter the area. The area turned out to contain the rue des Recollets address where the kidnappers held James Cross for 54 days. The organizers of the kidnap … it is said … didn’t want eager Montreal Police with contacts in the community to come upon James Cross and throw a monkey-wrench into the whole faked crisis….
Jenish may not want to report (rumour) “stories” of that kind. But he reveals himself (to my mind) prejudiced in favour of established power. That is revealed by his apparent insensitivity to major brutalities entered into by the Canadian State and its operatives. In support of those forces, Jenish writes: “although the regulations accompanying the proclamation [of The War Measures Act] were undeniably draconian, they applied only to the FLQ and any other group or association that advocated the use of force or the commission of crimes to bring about the change of government”. [p. 258]
That statement was shown to be flagrant nonsense when State forces violated the “regulations” and seized and jailed hundreds of innocent people as well as invading and ransacking private property of innocents and carrying off personal possessions from almost the very hour after the War Measures Act was imposed.
Moreover, when non-FLQ people (often on the Left) are reported to have objected to State violence and to have criticized the power of Corporate Capitalism in Quebec as at the root of the Quebec problem … Jenish appears to ridicule and demean them. He carries, moreover, what some might call his obvious prejudice into his handling of Pierre Vallieres, recognized as a key anti-Establishment theorist of the whole Quebec independence years.
Most readers believe the book by Pierre Vallieres, (called in English) White Niggers of America (1966), is a stunning historical, personal, sociological, political achievement central to the period. Readers know Vallieres wrote it standing up in a narrow New York prison cell balancing against a bed serving as a desk top … and then slipping the written pieces out of the prison to his lawyer.
Jenish dismisses the book as “one of the most inflammatory polemics ever written in Canada”. And, then, reporting on a speech Vallieres gave to students in Montreal on October 18, 1970 (that Jenish didn’t personally hear), Jenish writes that Vallieres “spoke with the same unhinged intensity as he wrote” (p. 245). “Unhinged”, we know, means ‘crazy’, ‘unbalanced’, ‘deranged’.
Unfortunately, that tone colors the narrative (at least for me). It is so present, I believe, that it also influences the presentation of fact. As far as I have been able to record over years, Pierre Trudeau was determined to impose the War Measures Act in 1970. (Much is written on the matter.) Quebec authorities were much more reluctant … and premier Robert Bourassa [not considered a strong personality at the time] who had to face the Quebec population if it was imposed … was reluctant to go along. Quite naturally. (Surely there were other possible, effective, less draconian actions – as many commentators since have insisted there were.)
It is argued by well-informed people that the requests for the imposition [ALL using the phrase “apprehended insurrection” – meaning ‘very possible’ because, of course, there was no insurrection] were written in Ottawa and sent to Quebec to be signed. Jenish turns that (almost universally accepted) history upside down and claims that Quebec wanted the War Measures Act and that Pierre Trudeau was reluctant to see its imposition. (The famous Trudeau “Just Watch Me” statement to a journalist in Ottawa doesn’t suggest a person who, a few days later, reluctantly imposed The War Measures Act! In the middle of the night.)
Finally, Jenish obscures or shows he doesn’t have readily available information when he deals with the murder in Paris on March 29, 1971 of the active felquiste, Mario Bachand. He reports that the matter of Bachand’s murder was raised among political exiles in Cuba a few months after his death because he was active in Canada in the McGill Francais movement and in more violent events ... and he intended to return to Canada and take up his FLQ work. Jenish writes a strange sentence. “The identity of his killers and their motive was a mystery then and has remained so to this day, since no one was ever arrested for the crime.” (p. 299).
To begin… because no one is arrested for a crime doesn’t mean that observers are incapable of attaching a motive for it. Powerful forces in Canada wanted an end to the FLQ … and Bachand wanted to return to Canada and reactivate it: motive. And, secondly, because no one is arrested doesn’t mean suggestions of the wrongdoers’ identity will not be voiced! Perhaps more importantly, Jenish ignores the meticulously researched book by Michael McLoughlin, Last Stop Paris (1998), which traces in remarkable detail the motivation, the preparation, the names [he puts forward] of the people he believes committed the murder of Mario Bachand, and … indeed … their whereabouts at the time he concluded his investigation and his book.
Michael McLoughlin’s careful study reveals a set of circumstances that fits, in many ways, with the (staged?) kidnap of James Cross, the imposition of the War Measures Act, and the tragic murder of Pierre Laporte. Anyone dealing with the dark subject of The Making of the October Crisis almost has to read Last Stop Paris. D’Arcy Jenish appears not to have done so.
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