Talk:Montreal Exchange

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The Montreal Stock Exchange bombing of 13 February 1969 was by Pierre Charette and Alain Allard, using a bomb prepared by Pierre-Paul Geoffroy. The Geoffroy 'reseau' comprised two four-man cells. One cell included Geoffroy, Charette, Allard and Pierre-Paul Lacourse alias Maltais). This cell was responsible for most of the 58-or-so bombings in Montreal during 1968 and the first months of 1969. The second cell included Normand Roy, Michel Lambert, Jean-Marie Roy (brother of Normand) and Jean-Raymond Langlois.

Two days after the arrest of Geoffroy, Charette and Allard fled to New York. In May they boarded a flight to Miami, and highjacked it to Cuba, where they would spend several years. In Havana they met Raymond Villeneuve, who had arrived in November 1968. Mario Bachand, who had no connection to the Geofferoy reseau, left Montreal for Havana in April 1969, following a trumped-up police charge to neutralize him before the McGill-francais demonstration of 29 March 1969, of which he was a principle organizer.

Neither Villeneuve nor Bachand had any involvement in the Stock Exchange bombing. To that extent, the article on the Montreal Exchange is incorrect.

The second cell of the Pierre-Paul Geoffroy reseau was in reality created by the RCMP Security Service, and Normand Roy and Michel Lambert were operatives under the control of the RCMP. It appears that Jean-Marie Roy and Jean-Raymond Langlois were dupes, unaware of the RCMP connection. What the RCMP motive was is not clear but it likely was political manipulation and 'intoxication' to discredit the Quebec separatist movement by linking it with FLQ terrorism. In any case, this is a most interesting episode in the history of the FLQ and of RCMP counter-terrorism. One of the interesting questions that arise is whether or not Pierre Trudeau, Minister of Justice at the time, sanctioned the operation.

The Montreal Exchange bombing greatly shocked the public, making arrests necessary. The members of the Normand Roy (RCMP) cell dropped out of site, and their existence was not made known. Roy and Lambert ended up in Algiers, arriving November 6 1970, where they established the Delegation Exterieur du FLQ (DEFLQ), which included Raymond Villeneuve, Denyse Leduc (girlfriend of Normand Roy) and one or two others. The DEFLQ was in reality a creation of the RCMP, to spy on the FLQ outside of Canada and to spy on other revolutionary groups in Algiers. It is not clear if Villeneuve was an RCMP operative or if he was a dupe.

Roy and Leduc murdered Mario Bachand in Paris, 29 March 1971, in RCMP operation "Whitelaw", which had been ordered directly by Prime Minister Trudeau and which had been planned for several months, beginning January 1970. The final order to go ahead with the operation was given in two meetings, 24 and 26 March 1971, the first attended by Solicitor-General Jean-Pierre Goyer, Deputy-Solicitor General Cote and Director General of the Security Service, John Starnes, the second attended by them and also RCMP Commissioner Len Higgit. It marked a milestone in the history of RCMP counter-terrorism and in the history of Canada, being the first known instance of Canadian state assassination. There is a great deal about the history of the FLQ and of RCMP counterterrorism that remains to be explored; regretably, and curiously, none on the academic specialists and other 'experts' on terrorist and related matters have shown interest in that history.

Reference: Michael McLoughlin, "Last Stop,Paris: the assassination of Mario Bachand and the death of the FLQ" (Toronto: Viking, 1998).

Mishkax28 21:44, 2 May 2006 (UTC)