The FLQ and the Quebec October Crisis
Exiled for Life?
On Nov. 6, police acting on a tip raided the hideout of the Chenier cell and arrested Bernard Lortie. The Rose brothers and Simard managed to escape -- and promptly delivered a taunting communique that belittled police for their ineptitude.
Meanwhile, for weeks the government had been negotiating with the Liberation cell through a lawyer. In early December they reached an agreement: freedom for Cross in exchange for passage to Cuba.
The trade commissioner, who had been held in a house in Montreal North, was freed on Dec. 3. Soon, Jacques and Louise Cossette-Trudel, Marc Carbonneau, Yves Langlois and Jacques Lanctôt and his wife and child boarded a Canadian Armed Forces airplane that delivered the Liberation cell to Havana and Fidel Castro.
The Canadian justice minister vowed they were being exiled for life. He would be proven wrong.