From London to Ottawa, State terrorism in the history of Quebec: Difference between revisions

[[Image:Ferretti.jpg|thumb|Andrée Ferretti, writer, former vice-president of the RIN]]On October 16, 1970, at four O'Clock in the morning, [[Wikipedia:Pierre-Elliot Trudeau|Pierre-Elliot Trudeau]], [[Wikipedia:Prime Minister of Canada|Prime Minister of Canada]] proclaimed the ''[[Wikipedia:War Measures Act|War Measures Act]]'' and even before sunrise, the [[Wikipedia:Canadian Forces|Canadian Army]] which the day before had surreptitiously started to invade Quebec, officially occupied it under the terms of this law. At the same hour and in virtue of the same law, 242 people including several writers and artists, trade unionists and [[Wikipedia:Parti Québécois|PQ]] candidates in the preceding elections were arrested and sent to prison. The day was not over that tens of others experienced the same fate. In a few days, 465 people had been imprisoned, their houses searched and sometimes ransacked, their family frightened and in certain cases, their children left alone. They were almost all released without even being questioned. The 21st day of this demonstration of power, only 32 people were committal for trial, detained during several more weeks and finally released without undergoing trial, the Court declaring that there were no grounds for prosecution (''[[Wikipedia:nolle prosequi|nolle prosequi]]'').

The operation started under the pretext of the urgency to counter a sudden rise of the illegal acts and political violence of the [[Wikipedia:FLQ|FLQ]], while the members of the movement's cells exerting violence were already known and filed by the police force and could have been stopped by the sole means of usual police techniques, which is what in fact occurred a few weeks later, the evidence proves, after the passing of years, was a carefully planned undertaking. The real purpose of it was to terrorize the Quebec people and indirectly to crush the [[Wikipedia:Quebec independence movement|independence movement]] which raised to a level unequalled before their national conscience and their desire for [[Wikipedia:self-determination|self-determination]].

Because it is indeed what it is about. The simultaneous promulgation and application of the ''War Measures Act'' in October 1970 which made it possible for the Canadian Army to invade Quebec and the manpower of the [[Wikipedia:Royal Canadian Mounted Police|Royal Canadian Mounted Police]], the [[Wikipedia:Sûreté du Québec|Sûreté du Québec]] and the various municipal police corps to arrest without warrant and to imprison without specific charges hundreds of partisans of the Independence of Quebec, are not a mishap, an exceptional act which would have been caused by the political violence of the FLQ. In the tens of books and the hundreds of articles devoted to the history and the analysis of the [[Wikipedia:October Crisis|October Crisis]] published for thirty years{{Refl|1}}, it has been irrefutably demonstrated that the members of the various cells claiming membership to the FLQ were all, not only well-known to political and police authorities, but that they had been for several months and even, in certain cases, for a few years, the object of a constant shadowing and other forms of surveillance.

From where it clearly follows that the illegal actions of the FLQ, in particular the kidnapping of [[Wikipedia:James Richard Cross|James Cross]], commercial attaché to the [http://www.britishhighcommission.gov.uk/ High Commissioner of Great Britain] in Montreal and of [[Wikipedia:Pierre Laporte|Pierre Laporte]], Minister for Labour and Deputy Premier in the Quebec liberal government of [[Wikipedia:Robert Bourassa|Robert Bourassa]], were only the occasion desired and awaited by the Canadian government, then under the rule of Pierre Elliot-Trudeau, to move to action in order to strike, through the alleged necessity to combat an alleged clandestine movement, all of Quebec's independence forces. Those forces had just expressed their power of attraction in a brilliant manner, during the past elections of April 29, in bringing 24% of voters to cast their vote for the [[Wikipedia:Parti Québécois|Parti Québécois]], in spite of a fear campaign carried out by the establishment which did not hesitate to resort to the most dishonest tactics, including the famous "Brinks coup", to make the electors believe that an election of the PQ would induce a vertiginous fall of their standard of living. [[Wikipedia:René Lévesque|René Lévesque]] rightly qualified this threat of "[[wikipedia:economic terrorism|economic terrorism]]". Rightly also, in the evening of the election, he claimed with pride in front of thousands of militants who welcomed his remarks with enthusiasm: "This defeat resembles a victory". This comprehension of the event was entirely shared by all the political and economic community of Canada and federalist Quebec. A few months later, it gave a sign of it by promulgating the ''War Measures Act'', passing from economic terrorism to political and military terrorism which is one of the constants of the internal logic of Canadian history since the English Conquest. This terrorism forms part of the many processes of repression of the conquered nation. The State has recourse to it each time it catches this nation in the act of wanting to have an autonomous existence and before she does become capable to assume her sovereignty, even when the ''rapport de force'' involved does not justify it at all. Terrorism which, already, marked the passage of the British army on the banks of the St. Lawrence, during the War of Conquest. In the beginning was terrorism, could we say.

All indeed started at the end of the summer of 1759, when the troops of [[Wikipedia:James Wolfe|Wolfe]] disembarked on the [[Wikipedia:La Côte-de-Beaupré Regional County Municipality, Quebec|Côte de Beaupré]] set fire to the villages under the dismayed eyes of their disarmed inhabitants, incapable to defend them. Across, on the Southern Coast, from [[Wikipedia:Saint-Vallier, Quebec|Saint-Vallier]] to [[Wikipedia:Lévis, Quebec|Lévis]], other soldiers invaded villages from behind their cannons, placarded on the doors of churches the Proclamation issuing the fall of New France and hung in front of their house the few daring ones who protested, such as, Captain [[Nadeau]] of [[Wikipedia:Saint-Michel-de-Bellechasse, Quebec|Saint-Michel]]{{Refl|2}}, "to have tried to raise his fellow-citizens against us", as recorded in the campaign log of a so-called [http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=36111 Knox], captain of squadron in the army of His British Majesty which carried out its War of Conquest of New France following the usual rules.

(Because there of course was a War of Conquest. All the denials à la [[Wikipedia:Jacques Godbout|Jacques Godbout]] and other hawkers on our big and small screens of a cession by France to Great Britain without any opposition from Canada won't do it. It took place and it lasted nearly four years. It started in 1757, with the arrival to power in London of [[Wikipedia:William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham|William Pitt]], an avowed francophobe. This statesman, determined to extend the hegemony of the British Empire, as well in America as in Asia, hastened to yield to the pressures of the Anglo-American colonies which hardly tolerated the vicinity of a French and Catholic Canada and were ready to engage battle against it, for it was considered an important and importunate competitor on the markets. It lasted more than two years during many confrontations won in hard battles by the French and ''Canadien'' forces though considerably lower in numbers, until the British army, strong of 63,000 men, definitively got on top at the end of the summer of 1759, and after [[a long siege]] made them experience defeat on the [[Wikipedia:Battle of the Plains of Abraham|Plains of Abraham]]. The War of Conquest nevertheless did not end until a year later, in September 1760, with the [[Articles of Capitulation of Montreal|capitulation of Montreal]] and the surrender of all the country. It is only three years later, on February 10, 1763, that the [[Treaty of Paris of 1763|Treaty of Paris]] ratified the ''de facto'' situation created by the defeat of the soldiers and militiamen of [[Wikipedia:Louis-Joseph de Montcalm|Montcalm]] and [[Wikipedia:Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal|Vaudreuil]] at the hands of the British invader).

The War of Conquest accomplished and the act of cession ratified, the British and then later the Canadian Parliaments, were not constantly in need of deploying their military and police forces against the conquered and later annexed nation to subject it and alienate it. It was generally enough for them to have recourse to legislative measures and economic policies which were unfavourable to her, in order to maintain their domination, as well as constitutional coups: the [[Act of Union of 1840|Union]] of [[Wikipedia:Upper Canada|Upper]] and [[Wikipedia:Lower Canada|Lower Canada]], in 1840; the [[Wikipedia:Patriation|patriation of the constitution]] in 1982, for example. However, under the British regime, the State, at least twice, in 1810 and 1837-1838, repressed through violence the attempts of the ''Canadiens'' - who will identify as ''Canadiens français'' only with the coming of the Union, obliged to identify as such, the conqueror having appropriated to the very name of the conquered people - to exercise their rights and to take their destiny in their own hands. Under the Canadian federal regime, the State three times had recourse to the army to subdue movements rebellious to its imperialists and centralizing policies, in 1870-1885, in 1918 and 1970.

Although from the 1800s, it formed a majority in the [[Wikipedia:Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada|Legislative Assembly]], the ''Canadien'' Members of Parliament remained powerless to really exert the power held, in fact, by the [[Wikipedia:Executive Council of Lower Canada|Executive Council]] and the [[Wikipedia:Legislative Council of Lower Canada|Legislative Council]], both in the hands of the [[Wikipedia:Château Clique|English Party]]. The ''Canadien'' MPs could only make obstruction to the bills unfavourable to the interests of the majority of the people. In 1810, the MPs of the [[Wikipedia:Parti canadien|Parti canadien]] refused to vote the budget. In order to counter this opposition, [[Wikipedia:Governor General of Canada|Governor]] [[Wikipedia:James Henry Craig|Craig]] dissolved the Legislative Assembly for a second consecutive year. Under the pressure of the English Party, he had the newspaper ''[[Wikipedia:Le Canadien|Le Canadien]]'' seized, the principal support of the parliamentary action of the ''Canadien'' MPs, and its editors were arrested and imprisoned. He held new elections to prevent the population from returning the same elected officials to the Parliament, and with the intention to terrorize, he deployed military contingents in the streets of Montreal and Quebec during election days.

Is it necessary to recall how, after having militarily crushed the active movements of rebellion in its colonies of Upper and Lower Canada which demanded a [[Wikipedia:responsible government|responsible government]], the State carried out its war of repression only in Lower Canada, by setting fire to some villages of which those of [[Wikipedia:Saint-Eustache, Quebec|Saint-Eustache]] and [[Wikipedia:Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, Quebec|Saint-Benoît]], while elsewhere plundering and setting fire to the farms of the inhabitants favourable to the movement, by confiscating the goods of the combatants, by raping many women found alone in their homes, not to mention the exiles, the deportations and hangings. Is it necessary to underline the cause of the difference in the treatment applied to the rebels of the two colonies. Who is unaware that the political demands of the Anglo-Saxon patriots of Upper Canada were mainly founded on objections that were of an economic nature, while those of the ''Canadien'' patriots were economic, social and as well as political and were all determined by the national question. It is because the main objective of the ''Canadien'' patriots was the independence of Lower Canada, considered the only means of freeing their nation from the political and economic domination of the English industrialists, merchants and financiers of the colony supported by all the authorities of the colonial State, that this State was devoted to terrorist acts useless to ensure its military victory, but necessary to break in the conquered people any will to keep up the fight.

(Still, although these rebellions failed and the Lower Canadian movement was completely crushed, the revolt of the ''Canadiens'' continued to frighten the British authorities which ordered a vast investigation into its causes and dispatched Lord [[Wikipedia:John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham|Durham]] on the premises to carry it out. In his [[Wikipedia:Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839)|report]] published in January 1839, the investigator not only recognized the existence of the French Canadian nation, but alloted the responsibility of the disorders to her national conscience and her desire for self-determination. To prevent it from causing trouble again, he proposed the carrying into force of policies designed to make her into a minority and to [[Wikipedia:cultural assimilation|assimilate]] her. Then came the ''coup de force'': The Union of Upper and Lower Canada sanctioned by [[Wikipedia:Victoria of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria]] on July 23, 1840. This was the inauguration of the process of annexation and confinement of the French Canadian nation in constitutional, legal, political, demographic and economic gears which marginalized her, subjected her to foreign interests and alienated her. A prelude to the [[Wikipedia:Canadian Confederation|federative union of 1867]] which, under the name of "[[Wikipedia:Confederation|Confederation]]" - abusive denomination since the purpose of it was never the association of politically sovereign communities -, presided to the destinies of the French Canadian nation which, today, in Quebec, constitutes the majority of the Quebec people, majority which aspires to independence and fight for its advent.)

The history which leads to the bloody repression of the second rebellion of the Whites and the [[Wikipedia:Métis people (Canada)|Métis]] of the North West, and to the hanging of [[Wikipedia:Louis Riel|Louis Riel]] is a long one. It started in 1868, when Canada bought from the [[Wikipedia:Hudson's Bay Company|Hudson's Bay Company]] the vast territory which today comprises the three Western provinces and the North West territories, to make it a colony of Ottawa. The inhabitants who had not been consulted reacted badly to this annexation. The Métis and the White, in majority Catholic and French-speaking, united to request laws and powers which would guarantee them their territorial, linguistic and religious rights. Under the leadership of Louis Riel, they established at [[Red River]] a [[Wikipedia:Provisional government|provisional government]], drew up a "[[Métis Bill of Rights|list of rights]]", requested the opening of negotiations with Ottawa. This first battle, after many violent adventures, lead to the creation of the [[Wikipedia:province of Manitoba|province of Manitoba]], in July 1870. The Quebec population had supported the movement and had requested the government of Ottawa that it negotiates with Riel clauses which would add to the list of rights the linguistic and school equality between French and English. The British of the region, supported by the Ontarians did not understand things the same way. There was no question of letting a French-speaking and Catholic province develop in the heart of the Prairies and thus open the door of the West to French Canadian emigration from Quebec. They were opposed to the amnesty of Louis Riel whom they accused of murder, put a price on his head, after he had been exiled. They ceaselessly attacked the Métis who, dispossessed of their lands and without a leader, left Manitoba to settle further West where they were victims of the same troubles and persecutions. In 1885, they recalled Louis Riel and the history was repeated. But vis-a-vis an army of 8,000 men supported by guns and machine-guns, the troops of Riel succumbed quickly, the villages and the farms of the Métis were plundered and set on fire and the inhabitants driven back even further West. Riel surrendered, underwent a [[Wikipedia:Trial of Louis Riel|trial]] in front of an English and Protestant jury who found him guilty of [[Wikipedia:High treason in the United Kingdom|high treason]] and condemned him to death by hanging. All this operation once again, beyond its immediate causes, was carried out against French Canada. It was a question of making it clear to the population of Quebec that Westward expansion was to be the fact of English Canada and to serve its sole interests of any and all order.