Word: separatist
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...years ago, he was regarded by many Canadians as something of an enfant terrible; brash, controversial, a dilettantish leftist who had even visited Communist China. But gradually, he oozed his way to the core of the political establishment, promising the nation that he would deal with Quebec's blossoming separatist movement in a way that would unify Canada, not rend it apart...
Finally, though, sheer virility won out. Two weeks ago, in a stunning tour de force, he drove the country into a state of martial law, stripping its people of all civil liberties and airlifting thousands of federal troops into the streets of Montreal. The object: to crush an underground separatist band known as Front de Liberation du Quebec...
WHAT TRUDEAU challenged, in effect, was a separatist movement in Quebec that had begun in the early '60's and was rapidly gaining strength and respectability in electoral circles as well as in terrorist cliques. One of the early groups, the Parti Quebecois, had attracted a significant province-wide following and won nearly 25 per cent of the popular vote in Quebec's elections last April. Another party, the two-year-old Front d'Action Politique, had been threatening to topple the administration of Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau in the municipal elections last Sunday...
...idea of an independent, French-dominated Quebec goes back to 1759, when the British defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham and made Canada a part of the empire. Over the next 200 years, the separatist notion reappeared periodically but never really became a movement...
...vesque and his colleagues are moderates committed to electoral democracy. At the same time that his ideas were gaining prominence a different breed of separatist was developing: disaffected radicals committed to violent action. In 1962, these activists created the Front de Libération du Québec. They systematically began planting bombs in mailboxes, robbing banks, setting fire to government buildings. Kidnaping is their latest weapon. "There is no difference between the F.L.Q. and the liberation movement of Palestine, of Viet Nam, of Black Power," says F.L.Q. Leader Charles Gagnon...