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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Violence, politics mix occasionally

Some rare instances in Canada's history

By: John Ward

Posted: 09/6/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

OTTAWA -- Whether or not the fatal shooting outside the Parti Québécois victory party turns out to be related to politics, it serves as a pointed reminder that politically motivated violence in Canada is real -- if rare.

Orderly transitions to power after peaceful elections are the norm in this country. But there have been moments in the past when extremists turned to guns and bombs to make their points.

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The 19th century saw rebellions in Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1837 and 1838 and the Red River Rebellion and the Northwest Rebellion in Manitoba in 1870 and 1885.

In 1868, Thomas D'Arcy McGee was notoriously gunned down on an Ottawa street while returning to his rooming house just two blocks from the Commons chamber.

There was bloody labour strife in many cities in the early decades of the 20th century, with the Winnipeg general strike a standout. But that dust eventually cleared and political and labour struggles focused on ballots, not bullets.

Compared with the United States, where political violence seems ever ready to surge to the surface, Canada is a tranquil pond. But extremism has never disappeared.

Peter Graefe, a political science professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, said political violence faded from the Western World in the last 100 years or so.

"You had this kind of grand compromise, where the working classes of the 19th century got a share of the pie," he said in an interview. "The political radicalism of the left, which fed some of the earlier political violence, died out."

The ruin of fascism in the Second World War made violence on the right wing untenable, he said. Generally, violence was seen as unacceptable.

Not that it died off completely. The FLQ mailbox bombings of the 1960s gave way to the 1970 October Crisis and the murder of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte. That anger was tamed into the Parti Québécois, which fought its battles on the hustings.

There were lone nuts in Canada, as well. Much like Tuesday night, the spectre of Quebec separatism was very much in play in 1995, too, when a knife-wielding intruder managed to get inside the prime ministerial residence while Jean Chrétien and wife Aline were in their bedroom.

The couple's locked bedroom door kept the intruder -- reportedly dismayed by the result of the 1995 referendum, which the No side won by a whisker -- at bay by, behind which Chrétien later said he had armed himself with a soapstone carving.

In 1966, a man killed a security guard and blew up three American air force jets undergoing repairs at an Edmonton aerospace firm in what was supposed to be an anti-war protest.

In 1965, a disgruntled Paul Joseph Chartier walked into the Parliament Building in Ottawa carrying a bundle of dynamite which he apparently planned to toss into the Commons. But his bomb exploded in a washroom off the chamber, killing him and his plan to become prime minister.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 6, 2012 0

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