How The October Crisis Affected Canada

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There have been a great deal of events and people that helped shape Canadian identity today. One of these events that I have chosen to write about is the October crisis of 1970. This event/crisis took place in the province of Quebec, mainly in the Montreal metropolitan area. Everything started when British Trade Commissioner James Cross, and Quebec Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte were kidnapped by members of the political-left wing party, “Front de Libération du Québec” (FLQ). A couple days after they were kidnapped, the government received a letter from Pierre Laporte begging for his life. On october 17, the body of Pierre Laporte was found in the trunk of a car at the airport in St.-Hubert, Quebec. On December 3, 1970 James Cross was released after police discovered where he was being held. Cross had lost weight, but said he was not physically harmed or abused. Although only one of the government officials was killed in the incident. It is considered to be the most serious terrorist attack carried out on Canadian land (Historica Canada).…show more content…
As the October crisis was one of the countries first real terrorist attacks, the government learnt more on how to prevent the same events from happening again in the future. As you can see we have not had any more considerable terrorist attacks since then, so it has proved to be effective in the preventing of future events relative to this. It was also the first use of the War Measures Act (which lead to improving the entire act and the creation of the Emergencies act) (Kaitlin,1). Lastly, Pierre Trudeau's gained more respect and support for his response to the crisis. Critics today argue that Trudeau’s response was extreme and dangerous, but if you asked most Canadians living in Canada at that time they would tell you that he did what needed to be

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