The Making of the October Crisis

A definitive, mind-changing history of the October Crisis and the events leading up to it.

The first bombs exploded in Montreal in the spring of 1963, and over the next seven years there were hundreds more. There were dozens of bank robberies, thefts of dynamite and weapons, six deaths and, finally, in October 1970, came the kidnappings of James Cross, a British diplomat, and Pierre Laporte, a Quebec cabinet minister. The perpetrators were members of the Front de Liberation du Quebec, dedicated to establishing a sovereign and socialist Quebec.

Half a century on, we should have reached some clear understanding of what led to the October Crisis. But millions of words later, this has not happened. Too much attention has been paid to the Crisis and not enough to the years preceding it. And most of those who have written about the FLQ have been nationalists, sovereigntists or former terrorists. They tell us that the authorities should have negotiated with the kidnappers. They contend that Jean Drapeau's administration and the governments of Robert Bourassa and Pierre Trudeau created the October Crisis by putting soldiers in the streets of Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, by invoking the War Measures Act and by allowing the police to detain nearly 500 people without warrants and, in all but a few cases, without laying charges. Using new research and interviews with key figures involved, D'Arcy Jenish tells for the first time the complete story—from the spring of 1963 to the fall of 1970 and beyond. In a gripping narrative, this veteran journalist and master storyteller shows where the blame truly belongs. His work will change the way we view this dark chapter in Canadian history.