Canada: "This Very Sorry Moment'

There are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go and bleed . . . It is more important to keep law and order in society than to be worried about weak-kneed people . . . Society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power.

—Pierre Trudeau

THROUGH the week Canada's Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, pondered the most difficult decision of his career. On the surface, the threat that confronted Canada, hardly seemed to merit the label "parallel power." Still, the terrorists of the minuscule Quebec Liberation Front (F.L.Q.), with about 100 hard-core members, had openly defied the government by kidnaping two high-ranking officials and threatening to execute them. First, Trudeau called out thousands of armed troops to stand guard in major cities. Then, because he feared that the Quebec separatist movement (see box following page) would be significantly strengthened and federalism gravely weakened, he decided to move even more forcefully. At week's end, he declared all-out war on the terrorists.

To combat those who "are seeking the destruction of the social order through clandestine and violent means," he invoked Canada's drastic 1914 War Measures Act. Only twice before, during the two world wars, had the act been put in force; it had never been applied in peacetime. Backing up Trudeau's dramatic action was a proclamation by his Cabinet that "insurrection, real or apprehended, exists."

The F.L.Q. evidently saw Trudeau's move as a challenge that could not be ignored. In responding to the challenge, the terrorists amply justified the Prime Minister's description of them as "a new and terrifying type of person." Less than two days after the War Measures Act was proclaimed, the terrorists murdered at least one of their hostages and offered little reason to hope for the survival of the other.

Tipped off by an anonymous caller, police were directed to a message from the terrorists declaring: "In the face of the arrogance of the federal government, we have decided to move into action." With the message was a map that led authorities to a parked taxicab in the Montreal suburb of St. Hubert. In the cab's trunk was the blood-covered body of Pierre Laporte, 49, Quebec's Labor Minister. He had been shot in the head. Still missing was James Cross, 49, British Trade Commissioner in Montreal. It was Cross who was first kidnaped two weeks ago when his maid unwittingly let two terrorists into his home, mistaking them for deliverymen. For his release, the terrorists demanded $500,000 in gold bullion, the freeing of 23 F.L.Q. members from prison, and safe passage for them to Cuba or Algeria. When the government firmly refused to meet the terrorists' terms, the F.L.Q. responded by grabbing Laporte from the lawn of his home.