Francis Simard
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Francis Simard, born 1946, of Montreal, Quebec, is a convicted murderer who was a member of the Chenier Cell of the terrorist group, the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). The goal of the group was to have the Canadian province of Quebec secede from Canada and become an independent Marxist country. Members of the terrorist group were responsible for the events known as the October Crisis.
As a member of the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale political party, he met Paul Rose and the two became involved in revolutionary activities in 1969 when Simard campaigned against the existence of McGill University, Montreal's English-language University. During what became known as the October Crisis, on October 5, 1970 members of the FLQ's Liberation Cell kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner James Cross, from his Montreal home as part of a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government and to establish a socialist Quebec state independent of Canada. On October 10, Francis Simard, along with Chenier Cell leader, Paul Rose and his brother, Jacques Rose and Bernard Lortie,kidnapped and then murdered Quebec Vice Premier and Cabinet Minister, Pierre Laporte. Believing many others would follow in an uprising, their goal was to create an independent state based on the ideals of Fidel Castro's Cuba.
On May 20, 1971, Simard was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Pierre Laporte. He would be given early parole in 1982. Since then, Francis Simard has made money by writing several books on the October Crisis.
In 1982, Francis Simard wrote a book about the October Crisis titled Pour en finir avec octobre. In 1994, Quebec film director Pierre Falardeau made a movie from it titled Octobre.
[edit] Bibliography
- Simard, Francis, Pour en finir avec Octobre, Stanké, Montreal, 1982.
