Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe is right about the controversial recital planned next week in Quebec City to observe the 250th anniversary of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The FLQ Manifesto is undeniably part of Quebec's history. It is a text that evokes a particular time -- one that, in fact, does so splendidly, evoking the feverish, fetid atmosphere of the late Sixties with a suddenness and a brutality that makes one glad those days were so long ago. It is perfectly proper that the manifesto should be recited as part of a general airing of important historical texts, as it was once recited to help save the life of James Cross, the still-living British diplomat kidnapped by the Front de liberation du Quebec on Oct. 5, 1970.
Indeed, we would go further. Under duress, the manifesto was deliberately given a flat, affect-less reading on Radio-Canada by reporter Gaetan Montreuil. Montreuil's performance can be seen on the CBC website; watching it now, one is almost moved to regard his resistance to any hint of sarcasm, whimsy or anger as a gesture of quiet heroism (or even, perhaps, a lesson for the modern journalist in dutifulness). But why not give the manifesto a proper dramatic debut today? Let's have it delivered with all the savage, sneering, race-supremacist spirit in which it was written.
Lay it on us thick. If the grandiose denial by the shabby, deranged Marxists of the FLQ that they are "neither Messiahs nor modern-day Robin Hoods" does not induce hysterical laughter; if their pronouncement that they are "washing [their] hands of the British parliamentary system" is not met with outraged catcalls; if we cannot look at one another and smile in relief that the prediction of "100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized" turned out to be nothing but tourtiere in the air; well, then, the manifesto is not really being given its due.
Such a presentation would, if nothing else, be an act of honesty -- and there is no oversupply of honesty in Quebec, even now, when it comes to the October Crisis. Mr. Duceppe may be right that the FLQ Manifesto is part of history, but comparing the self-justification of a gang of terrorist murderers to such items as Lord Durham's Report suggests that the BQ leader's picture of history may not be without some strange distortions. Moreover, there is history, and then there's history. Pierre Laporte's surviving family is still grieving; is still forced to reckon with the incomplete justice that was visited on Mr. Laporte's murderers; and still has to read bizarre, repulsive locutions like the one Rheal Seguin used in Monday's Globe and Mail.
The actions of the FLQ's Chenier cell, Mr. Seguin tells us in a column, "led to the death of " the labour minister. Apparently Mr. Seguin could not bring himself to state the plain truth -- that the poor man was strangled, for no higher cause than to spread fear and uncertainty in the streets of Quebec -- and perhaps he still entertains the preposterous old folkloric belief that Laporte somehow contrived to asphyxiate himself while trying to escape. Not that it makes the slightest difference, in law or morals, to the fact of murder; but in 2009, remarkably, that still seems to be a slightly unclear and even contested point in parts of Quebec.