Trudeau, The October Crisis, Campus Marxists, and Social History

     This October 5th marks the 40th anniversary of the kidnapping of British trade commissioner James Cross by the FLQ, which set off a series of events now cumulatively known as the October Crisis, surely one of the strangest autumns in Canadian history*. By now the details of the October Crisis are well-trod territory - confronted with a home-grown terrorist organization not only threatening to destroy the nation, but also forcing it to listen to their fevered, adolescent ramblings in the form of a "manifesto", Prime Minister Trudeau told the nation that bleeding hearts should go on and bleed and to just watch him (seriously, that interview is still one of that all-time greats. Hollywood couldn't have written it better). When the smoke cleared the War Measures Act was invoked, thousands of (mostly) French Canadians had been incarcerated, Minister Pierre Laporte was found dead in a trunk of a car, and the perpetrators were exiled to Cuba where they could continue to play-act the role of romantic freedom fighters to their little hearts' content.

     The implications that month had on the Separatist movement are well known and well covered, the actions of the Chenier cell signalled the ignoble end to the use of violence as a means to achieve political goals in Canada - we're far too genteel for all of that nastiness it would seem. Seeking a legitimate outlet for their grievances, those dreaming of independence turned to the Parti Quebecois, led by the eloquent and charismatic Rene Levesque. Six years later his Parti Quebecois would win the provincial election and by the end of his first term in office, Levesque would force Canada to witness its first referendum on secession.

    I don't want to really talk about all that though. Instead the upcoming anniversary reminded of a conversation I had in undergrad with some strident Marxists in the Sid Smith foyer. I was going to U of T when Trudeau passed away in 2000 and naturally his role in shaping Canada was being discussed at great length. Leaving my Intro to Art History class one evening I was nabbed by two Marxists who asked me what I thought of Trudeau. I gave what I thought was the standard answer: The Charter of Rights, Multiculturalism, Official Languages, Bilingualism etc etc. They nodded and then asked me what I thought about the October Crisis. Again I thought for a second and told them that it could be seen as an important step in Canada's growth into a proper nation. The Marxists, obviously waiting for this moment, bombarded me with information about the mass arrests during the Crisis. Their feeling was that it was all part of an organized plot to rid Quebec of leftists and the trade union movement. This piqued my interest and eventually I got them to admit that maybe the reason so many leftists and trade unionists were arrested was because significant numbers of them were also seperatists. I let them continue for a while and even bought one of their newspapers (seriously, The Worker's Vanguard is easily the funniest thing in print since the Weekly World News went online only. Do yourself a favour - go to a university campus nearby and buy one. You won't be disappointed), and went on my way. Ah, undergrad.

   For some reason that conversation has stuck with me. Not only because those Marxists were entertaining as hell, but also, upon further reflection I think my off-hand remark about the October Crisis has merit. The development of Canada from a British nation to a North American one is something I find endlessly fascinating. Students of Canadian history (or anyone who took Grade 10 history really) should be familiar with the touchstones: Statute of Westminster, Waiting a week to declare war on Hitler, Expo 67, Immigration reform, Patriation of the Constitution, Free Trade Agreement. By the time America was invading Iraq, Canada had reached the point where they not only turned down overtures from the United States but also England - something that would've been unimaginable 40 years earlier. I think the October Crisis has its place in this discussion.

     I think in a very real sense that the October Crisis can be seen in the same light as Expo 67 - both served to help Canada mature - in two different ways I think. First, I think a nation can be united in celebration as well as in conflict. The October Crisis was a homegrown crisis that had linked Canadians across the country in ways that few earlier events had. My French Canadian father was in the Navy during the crisis, and he was prevented from taking shore leave in Vancouver due to concerns about anti-French violence. This certainly wasn't an issue that was isolated to Quebec and maybe Toronto. I think the advent of television has a lot to do with this. Peruse the CBC archives and I think you'll grant me the comparison between this footage and the images from Vietnam our American neighbours saw on the nightly news. Television came along, and shortly thereafter Canadians were presented with the image of armed soldiers in the streets of Montreal. This was happening at home, in Canada, not halfway across the world. I would argue that this had as much a role in shrinking the size of Canada and lessening the impact of regionalism (or provincialism) as the more widely accepted (and decidedly happier) events of this era - Expo '67 and the Summit Series '72 did. After October 1970 it became much harder for a Canadian to think of themselves only as a British Columbian, or an Ontarian, or a Nova Scotian.

   Second, that October was Canada's experience with the decolonization movement that swept the globe in the 1960s. Not to suggest that the French experience in Canada is on par with Algeria or Mozambique, perhaps the Basque situation would be the best comparison, but the armed insurrection against colonial overlords was certainly part of the cultural zeitgeist. That Canada had its own such event connected it to the rest of the world, in a way that more formal international events (like the Pearson Solution to the Suez Crisis) never could. Acts of violence have a way of connecting the world - I'm thinking specifically of the international response to the September 11th attacks, that formal agreements never can. I think that the October Crisis brought Canada into the contemporary community of nations and made it a little more difficult to think of Canada as that British colony in America.

     Anyways, back to my original point - I think my offhand comment to those two Marxists was probably truer than I realized when I said it (I think at the time I was probably making a connection with "just watch me" and the bravado of Churchill or Kennedy). But I think that for Canada to become its own nation and not a British or an American one, it needed to see itself, and be seen, as an independent entity. The October Crisis was one of the key events that allowed that to happen.
 
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*actually now that I think of it - there's been a couple of strange autumns in Canadian history. The referendum in October 1995, King-Byng Affair in Oct 1925, Proroguement 2008, the Khaki Election of 1917. Not sure what that says about Canada - but surely it's something poetic.