WI: P.E. Trudeau assassinated by right-wing yank in late 70s

he was a french-canadian nationalist but not a separatist. His views seemed to be more to reinforce provincial prerogatives. He is quoted as saying something along the lines of "we have not entered confederation only to leave it but to grow within it". To put it another way, he identified as a pan-french-canadian, not a quebecois specifically.

Like many conservatives of his generation, he feared an independent quebec since it would undoubtedly be an areligious republic.

Thanks very much for that.
 
More for entertainment, since these people were hardly mainstream in Canada at the time, but if anyone is curious about what hardcore Canadian nationalism looked like in the mid-70s, here is some old journalism from the Canadian Liberation Movement...

Between the Anti-imperialist Day banner and the Progressive Youth Movement banner we proudly carried three flags, the flag of the Upper Canadian Patriots, the flag of the Lower Canadian Patriots and the flag of the Canadian Liberation Movement which leads the struggle today against U.S. imperialism.

We were “escorted” by a motorcycle and a city police cruiser, top light flashing all the way. It was a tribute to the Ottawa anti-imperialists that the police and the government should take our struggle so seriously!

Jim Brown led the way, megaphone in hand, to provide a running commentary for the many passersby. He explained that we were demonstrating against 137 years of treason by the sellout government of Canada. He told the people that only 2% of the books and magazines sold in Canada today are Canadian and that under those conditions, the tax concessions made by the government to foreign publications constitute treason. “We have collected a large stock of Time and Reader’s Digest in a campaign to clean up and we are going to burn them on Parliament Hill in the Centennial Flame.”

Yankees shocked!

Marching along Laurier Avenue towards the National Defence building, two cars backed up to make way for us, but a third car tried to force its way through. We noticed that it had New York licence plates and the spontaneous cry arose “Yankee Go Home.” The car came to a stop and its occupants showed shock and astonishment. The natives of their most dependable colony were beginning to rise up against them!

They go onto demand a halt to the cuts in defense spending, since Canada will soon need its army to fight off an American invasion.

Yeah, I could imagine these guys going majorly off the deep end if some American redneck shot the PM, even if they didn't much care for the PM in question.

link
 
I think the main impact would be due to the fact that a canadian politician had been assassinated, something unknown in canada. If it was found that he truly was unhinged and not part of some large conspiracy, nothing much would change beside increased security.

Politicians have been assassinated in Canada. Okay, maybe just the one guy, but it has happened, and to one of the founding fathers of Confederation no less. I double dare you to guess who it was without resorting to Google. :p
 
Politicians have been assassinated in Canada. Okay, maybe just the one guy, but it has happened, and to one of the founding fathers of Confederation no less. I double dare you to guess who it was without resorting to Google. :p

Can I play, too?

Thomas Darcy Mcgee, I believe. Assassinated by a Fenian.
 
There was also of course Laporte, though that wasn't an out-of-the-blue assassination. Plus, that guy in the 80s(Lortie?) who wanted to shoot up the Quebec National Assembly, but unfortunately(for him) showed up on a day when they weren't sitting, and had to content himself with taking out some of the legislature staff.
 
Politicians have been assassinated in Canada. Okay, maybe just the one guy, but it has happened, and to one of the founding fathers of Confederation no less. I double dare you to guess who it was without resorting to Google. :p

I stand corrected. Mind you, the fact most people couldn't name it is probably an indication of how little an influenced it had.

I really think you would need some sort of pattern before people would be affected.
 
Last edited:
There was also of course Laporte, though that wasn't an out-of-the-blue assassination. Plus, that guy in the 80s(Lortie?) who wanted to shoot up the Quebec National Assembly, but unfortunately(for him) showed up on a day when they weren't sitting, and had to content himself with taking out some of the legislature staff.

Lortie was an ultra-federalist who was part of the army and yet no one in the maintream sovereignist movement ever associated his actions with either the federal government or federalists as a whole. The guy was found to suffer from mental problem so again, I don't think a lone gunman from the US assassinating the prime minister would any real impact.

This is just like the attempted assassination of Pauline Marois during her victory celebration didn't result in any backlash against the anglo-quebecker community despite one person dying.
 
Last edited:
Pasquin wrote:

This is just like the attempted assassination of Pauline Marois during her victory celebration didn't result in any backlash against the anglo-quebecker community despite one person dying.

Well, in terms of the mass psychological impact, I think there might be a difference between an assassination attempt, even one that takes out collateral, and a successful assassination. It would be the difference that exists between public recognition afforded to the name Giussepe Zangara, versus that afforded to the name Lee Harvey Oswald.

And at the time that Richard Henry Bain allegedly carried out his attempt, Marois was the leader of a not-excessively popular political party, fronting a political agenda that had had its last heyday in the mid-90s.

On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the Milk-Moscone murders in 1979. I daresay that there aren't too many gay people(or straight people for that matter) in San Francisco who wouldn't recognize the name Dan White, nor have pretty intense opinions about what he did. Even without the farcical judicial outcome. And there was indeed a pretty strong outpouring of resentment against the SFPD and other perceived institutions of anti-gay bigorty in SF.

Not saying that Canadian attitudes toward an American assassin of PET would be all the way over on the "Dan White" end of the spectrum, but probably closer to that than to Richard Henry Bain.
 
Top