Rock Radio Scrapbook

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Talent: JOHNNY ONN
Station: CJME Regina
Date: October 16, 1970
Time: 19:36

Wanted poster from the "October Crisis"

It was one of the darkest periods in Canadian history, a time of terror and tension. It has come to be known as the "October Crisis."

The nightmare began October 5, 1970 when armed gunmen burst into the Montreal home of senior British trade commissioner James Cross and kidnapped him. It was the first political kidnapping by the FLQ (Front de Libération du Québec), a radical separatist group that first made headlines in the 1960s with a campaign of violence to promote their cause of separation of the province of Quebec from Canada. They left a ransom note demanding the release of 23 so-called political prisoners, $500,000 in gold and safe transport out of the country.

On October 10, another FLQ cell kidnapped Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte from in front of his home in Saint-Lambert, Que. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau responded by declaring the War Measures Act, which outlawed the FLQ and gave police sweeping powers to search, arrest and detain without warrant. But on October 17 there was shocking news from the FLQ: they had murdered Laporte and left his body in a trunk of a car near a military base in St. Hubert, Que.

Pierre Laporte (1921-1970)

Cross avoided a similar fate when he was released December 4 after negotiations with his captors, who were given safe passage to Cuba. They later returned to Canada to serve relatively light jail sentences. Laporte's kidnappers were tracked down and jailed but all were free by the early 1980s.

This aircheck of CJME Regina was made on the day the War Measures Act was declared. You'll hear Bruce Northum with the news and Johnny Onn spinning the hits on his midday Top 40 radio show.

Hear CJME from October 16, 1970 here.

(The Don Shuttleworth Collection)
 

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