War Measures Act remembered

As the saying goes, history depends on who writes it.

And on Saturday, the Société St. Jean Baptiste took its turn on a part of Canadian history that remains one of the most divisive when it comes to its interpretation.

The organization unveiled a monument marking the 40th anniversary of the imposition of the War Measures Act. It was erected outside their Montreal headquarters on Sherbrooke St. W.

The monument lists the many names of people who were jailed without cause during the 1970 October Crisis. The long four-sided list is surrounded by bars, a symbolic prison, a reminder of dark days experienced mostly in Montreal. The War Measures Act was imposed by the federal government on Oct. 16, 1970, after members of the Front de liberation du Quebec kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross on Oct. 5, and Pierre Laporte, Quebec’s labour minister, on Oct. 10. Laporte was eventually killed by his abductors. The War Measures Act also followed a long series of FLQ bombings carried out over seven years. It gave police the authority to arrest suspects at will and detain them without having to charge them with a crime. In all, 497 were arrested and only 18 were convicted of being accessories to the FLQ.

Over the decades that followed, debate has continued over whether the War Measures Act was a gross overreaction to the FLQ on the part of then prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

The eight guests who spoke at the unveiling -including Daniel Waterlot, who was jailed for three months in 1970 and the vice-president of the foundation that raised money for the monument – were entirely on one side of that debate.

Former Quebec premier Bernard Landry said he was "shattered" when the federal government imposed the War Measures Act.

"Do you know what you call the actions of those people? It’s called psychological and tactical terrorism. That is what they did," Landry told more than 200 people who gathered for the unveiling.

Landry remembered how his aunt reacted when army helicopters flew over St. Jacques de Montcalm, a quiet town in the Laurentians and Landry’s birthplace.

"The doors of the helicopters were open and we could see the soldiers with machine guns in their hands," said Landry, for many years an MNA with the Parti Quebecois. "My aunt Gertrude, who was one of our supporters and whose son was one of our candidates, said: ‘I can’t follow you anymore. I’m scared of the war.’ "

Bloc Quebecois MP Serge Menard was the only speaker to refer to the violence that led up to Trudeau’s decision.

"James Cross obviously never merited what he went through during the long confinement he suffered through. Pierre Laporte did not deserve to die," Menard said. "Nothing can justify the crimes that started the October Crisis."

But those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, Menard added, while criticizing what the police did with the powers they had under the War Measures Act -in particular for letting known FLQ supporters go free so they could be kept under surveillance while many innocent people remained behind bars without ever being charged with a crime.

Included on the monument is the name of the late Nick Auf Der Maur, a former Gazette columnist and city councillor. In a column published before the 25th anniversary of the October Crisis, Auf Der Maur wrote: "(On) Oct. 16, the federal government, acting on what it said were requests from both the Quebec government and the city of Montreal, invoked the War Measures Act and arrested about 495 people, none of whom had anything to do with the kidnappings but were for the most part agitators, troublemakers, big-mouths and so on. That, of course, included me."