Chénier Cell

The Chénier Cell was a Montreal-based cell of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorist group in Quebec whose members were responsible for a decade of bombings and armed robberies in the 1960s that led to what became known as the October Crisis. The Chénier cell was named after the rebel hero of the Lower Canada Rebellion Jean-Olivier Chénier.

History

As part of a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government and to establish a socialist Quebec state independent of Canada, on October 10, 1970, five days after the FLQ's Liberation Cell kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Richard Cross from his Montreal home, members of the Chénier Cell kidnapped Vice-Premier of Quebec and Labour Minister, Pierre Laporte. The kidnappers approached Laporte while he was playing football with his nephew in his front lawn and forced him into their vehicle at gunpoint. 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 October 17, the day after the Government of Canada invoked the War Measures Act, the Chénier cell announced that they had executed Laporte. He was found strangled in the back of a stolen motor vehicle abandoned near the Saint-Hubert airport, south of Montreal. In late December, four weeks after the kidnappers of James Cross were found, Paul Rose and the kidnappers of Pierre Laporte were located in a country farmhouse basement in Saint-Luc, Quebec. They were put on trial and three were convicted for kidnapping and murder while Jacques Rose was convicted of being an accessory after the fact.

Known members

• Paul Rose
• Jacques Rose
• Francis Simard
• Bernard Lortie

See also

• History of Quebec
• Direct action