If we are to understand the strategy, policies and actions of the Canadian government to meet FLQ terrorism, the separatist threat generally, and the social and political disorder and conflict within Quebec society of the day, one must look carefully at what brought it about, the forces and events that motivated and shaped it. But how to do that?
Our approach is to focus on certain events shed shed light on the larger currents and issues. By analysis linked concretely by event, time and context to those currents.
The first of those events is the assassination of Mario Bachand. A mystery that for a quarter of a century seemed beyond solution. Hidden by an amorphous cloud of disinformation which, curiously, keeps reappearing, especially when there are attemps to solve the mystery. A recycling of the falsehoods that first appeared in the days after that 29th of March 1971, in a modest apartment in the Paris banlieue St-Ouen, two visitors, a young man and woman from Montreal, during lunch with Mario Bachand, pulled out a .22-calibre pistol and shot three bullets at his head. The third bullet into the top centre of his skull, to ensure his death.
A young man and woman had arrived at the luncheon carrying a pistol, possibly silenced, who had never before met their victim, then taking the trouble to fire three .22-calibre bullets to his head.
A note on investigation and senendipity
It was by chance that this author came across the mystery of the assassination of Mario Bachand. I had ealier brought a story to the CBC Fifth Estate about an accused Soviet spy within the RCMP Security Service, Leslie James Bennett. That story, too, had come by chance. While visiting my parents home in Ottawa, from my home in Vancouver B.C., I happened upon a book by Tom Mangold in my bookshelf. In the index was the code word “Tango”, referring to a Soviet spy within the RCMP, which knows the identity. That meant, I reasoned, that they knew that Leslie James Bennett was not a spy.
The CBC Fifth Estate investigation uncovered the real spy in the RCMP, Sgt. Gilles G. Brunet. The story compelled the Canadian government and the RCMP to clear Leslie James Bennett completely, and to pay conpensation for having destroyed his life.
The serendipity did not stop there. Following upon the Leslie James Bennett story, the CBC Fifth Estate asked me to consult documents in Canada’s National Archives about RCMP counterterrorism and the FLQ. Several weeks after beginning my reseach, an archivist mentioned that there was a large number of documents of the MacDonald Commission into RCMP actions during that struggle. There were, in fact, 125 boxes of documents that had been processed under the Access to Information Act by the Privy Council Office (PC), employing a team of officials from the related Departments and services, including External Affairs, RCMP, CSIS, National Defence and the Solicitor General’s Office. A transcription of testimony by the Director General Intelligence and Security(DGIS) of the RCMP Security Service had an intriguing passage that told of two meetings, 24 and 26 March, 1971, of Starnes, Solicitor General Jean-Pierre Goyer, and Deputy Solicitor General Ernest Côté. The last meeting attended also by RCMP Commissioner Higgitt. The meetings concerned a”grave and imminent threat abroad”. Close reading, later supported by interview, revealed that the supposed threat involved the FLQ, in Paris. Goyer said he had discussed the matter with the Prime Minister. Goyer ordered Starnes to conduct an operation to deal with the supposed threat. Starnes refused, saying it was hazardous and unnecessary. Goyer said he would consult with the Prime Minister. At the following meeting, on the 26th of March, Goyer informed Starnes that he had spoken with the Prime Minister about the matter, and that the Prime Minister had ordered that, “Unless there were strong arguments to the contrary, the operation should go ahead.” (Testimony John Starnes, NAC, RG 33/128, acc. 91-92/099, vol. 2, file C-36, pp. 4681-4700.)
In sum, the Prime Minister gives an order to the Solicitor General for the RCMP to conduct an operation, RCMP DGIS Starnes refuses to conduct the operation until direct intervention by the Prime Minister.
What was that about? I asked myself. Which led me to interview the ex-Deputy Solicitor General, Ernest Côté. After a casual discussion about the FLQ and related counterterrorism, I asked a little question. “The meetings of 24 and 26 March, of the Solicitor General Jean-Pierre Goyer and DGIS Starnes, and for the second meeting that including RCMP Commissioner Len Higgitt, were they about the killing of Mario Bachand?”
“Yes”, he replied.
Was the Prime Minister concerned about a particular threat from Mario Bachand or about the possibility he would return to Quebec and renew the FLQ?”
“Both”, he replied.
My belief is that there was no direct threat from Mario Bachand in Paris, that the idea was a construction to cover the real reason, that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the RCMP feared he would return to Quebec and start the FLQ again. There is, to my knowledge, evidence to the contrary.
I interviewed Ernest Côté on several later occasions. On each occasion he refused to speak further of the meetings of 24, 26 March 1971. “You want a clear statement from me”, he said. But John Starnes and I have been friends since 1944, and I won’t give it to you. And you have so much evidence that you don’t need it.”
He had no idea of the capacity of the Canadian medie to repeatedly recycle the cover story of the assassination of Mario Bachand, and obscure the truth.
The demonstration of 16 October 1968
In the afternoon of October 16, 1968, ten thousand students from McGill University, CEGEP Vieux-Montréal and the School of Fine Arts demonstrated their support for the striking students of CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel). They walked under grey skies in the heart of Montreal, from McGill along Sainte-Catherine Street to Saint-Laurent Boulevard, then up the St. Lawrence River to the University of Montreal arena. They are led by the CIS (Comité-indépendance socialisme), created by Mario Bachand, who can be seen directly behind the CIS sign. Two metres behind Bachand is Paul Rose, wearing a large black hat with a white ribbon, holding a cigarette in his right hand. Two years later, Paul Rose would lead the FLQ’s Chenier cell, responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Quebec’s Minister of Labour and Deputy Premier Pierre Laporte.
Among the demonstrators were a large number of people who played a role in the spectrum of activism in Quebec at the time. Student leaders. CEGEP students. Striking workers. Workers at the Lord Company, a steel company that had been on strike for several months, are visible.
It occurred at a time of violence and disorder unprecedented in the world.
There is no doubt that it is scenes like this one that have caused the RCMP, and Canadian and Quebec authorities in general, to be concerned about Mario Bachand. He was able to form radical movements, such as the CEI, and bring them to the streets. In the extreme, as Paul Rose’s presence shows, these events merged with terrorist violence.