Word: bourassa
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...This will be the most important election in Canada's history," declared Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa. Hyperbole aside, last week's Quebec elections did involve something less parochial than the issues that normally dominate the politics of provincial Canada. At stake: whether Quebec would remain in the Canadian confederation...
When the returns were in, Bourassa's Liberal Party had buried the separatist opposition, winning 102 out of 110 seats in the assembly. Despite the landslide, the separatist Parti Québécois did score a victory of sorts. By winning six seats, it became the official opposition in the assembly and gained about 30% of the total popular vote...
...vesque, 51, a brilliant journalist who left the Liberals because of their strong support of federalism. Although the péquistes enlisted an impressive array of French-Canadian intellectuals as assembly candidates, the momentum of the campaign gradually swung to the Liberals, whose slogan, Bourassa construit (Bourassa builds), was a not too veiled hint that Lévesque destroys...
...year before the proclamation of military rule, tension increased markedly in Quebec. Vallieres' book was declared illegal in Canada and its author was arrested on charges of sedition. Labor protest intensified considerably, and Premier Bourassa promised that 100,000 new jobs would be created by 1971. The provincial government stepped up its prosecution of suspected FLQ terrorists; one man whom police arrested, Pierre-Paul Geoffroy, pleaded guilty to 120 incidents of bombing in order to prevent the authorities from prosecuting others in the FLQ for those incidents. Geoffroy is now serving a 12,000-year sentence in a Quebec jail...
...government was wild with rage. The disappearance of Cross, though painful, had not hit home nearly so hard as the abduction of Laporte, a powerful political figure and a personal acquaintance of both Bourassa and Trudeau. Justice Minister Jerome Choquette immediately offered to negotiate a safe-conduct passage abroad for the kidnappers in exchange for the return of the two hostages. Lemieux responded by lauding the FLQ as "the most progressive, devoted, and generous element of Quebec youth, perhaps even Quebec society." And many Montreal youths joined in the response. The 7000-student University of Quebec voted to close indefinitely...