I want to share with you my memory of the "October Crisis". Truth is, I was only 18 and had managed to get a very part-time job at a radio station in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.

Actually, I'd started at the radio station as a "High-School" reporter, in 1969. The summer of 1970 was great! My friend and I were hired to drive a man's car from KW to Calgary. Radio was our companion. We hitchhiked to Vancouver and flew back to Toronto. They had "Student Air Fare Discounts" in those days. I was working with people years beyond my age and they centered me about broadcasting.

Working for the radio station allowed me access to the 45s and LPs. So, on weekends, I would do weddings/parties, etc.

Saturday, October 17th, 1970 found me and my girlfriend doing a wedding in a small community, just outside of Kitchener-Waterloo. It wrapped at 1AM and by 1:45AM, Sunday morning, we were back in the car heading home, listening to "our" station. We were not hearing music!!!!!!! In those days, we were live, 24/7.

The overnight announcer was struggling, as Pierre Laporte's body had been found a few hours ago. I stopped at a phone booth and called the announcer and said, "Do you need help in the newsroom"? He said, "Yes".

We went directly to the radio station where I handled the phones, feeds arriving and the teletype machine and then, fed him the information.

Every phone call was recorded. People were calling up, crying. "What is our country coming to?" I heard sobs. This was moving.

You might ask, "Where was the news director - the major news voices"?

They slept through it all. After all, it was a weekend.

At 6AM, the shift change came. My girlfriend and I fell asleep on a couch. We'd had quite the night and an introduction that news does not take the weekend off.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to deal with an emotional situation like this.

Two years later, I was on-air, overnight, during the Munich Olympics. I was alone on the radio station.

In October 1970, I was 29, a working mother of two pre-schoolers, living in Ville Saint-Laurent, a lifelong citizen of Quebec.

For me, the October Crisis began on a fine autumn afternoon while my husband and I were on our way home from Glengarry County, Ontario, after buying a small country property -- a half-acre plus a rather decrepit 200-year-old square-log home.

The car radio conveyed the news of the kidnapping of James Cross.

And the world changed.

On the one hand, the kidnapping wasn't entirely unexpected. FLQ bombs and bomb threats had marked Montreal throughout the 1960s. And terrorism of all kinds was commonplace in those days.

But on the other hand, wasn't Canada a peaceable, reasonable country -- a country that could resolve its problems in a rational manner? Yes, francophones had legitimate grievances. Yes, they had been treated as "white niggers." But hadn't the Quiet Revolution initiated radical, fundamental change? Weren't francophone Quebeckers now on the way to becoming fully respected, finally on a par with the anglo elite?

In October 1970, I didn't fear the FLQ as such (they seemed so inept -- and fuzzy thinkers to boot). Rather, I feared the possibility of copy-cat actions. Remember the call to violence during that rally at the Paul Sauve arena? It made me fear for my children's safety -- so I welcomed the presence of troops in Montreal.

Then the murder of Pierre Laporte changed everything.

Virtually all of Quebec society (or so it seemed) instantly turned against the terrorists. Quebec's peaceable, compassionate nature came to the fore.

Sure, the War Measures Act might have been too blunt an instrument. Soldiers in the streets might have been a bit of overkill. Detention of 400+ (innocent?) citizens could be characterized as abuse.

But in the end, Quebec's essential nature enabled the province to move on and deal with issues in its own way -- successfully, I think.

In October 1970, I was a Grade 4 student in elementary school in Ottawa. I was dimly aware that something was happening; certainly the television was on all day at home, and my school friends talked about soldiers all over downtown. But out in the suburbs where I lived, we hadn't seen so much as a police cruiser go by.

At school, I was in the boys' washroom mid-morning one day when the principal came on the PA system to address us. I recall him saying that we must all stop and listen carefully to his important announcement, but the rest of the announcement didn't resonate with me. A minute later, however, when I stepped back out into the hall I was startled to step into the back of an armed soldier. There were several of them in the halls of our school, along with an alarmed-looking principal. It seems that there was an army cadets corp who used to meet at our school, and the military had been dispatched to secure the cache of cadets' drill rifles.

The principal saw me and simply told me to sit on the floor in the hall, not to move till he came back to get me. And here is my chief memory: the soldier who I had almost run into on exiting the washroom said, "Yeah, kid, sit down" and gestured with his rifle to the wall where I was to plant myself. I sat down without a word or a blink, and the soldier -distractedly, I hope- kept his rifle pointed at the wall, or, more precisely, right at me.

The military found what they needed, I suppose, and the soldiers departed, the principal directed me back to my homeroom, and I had an exciting story to tell that evening after school. My mother was appalled and my father -a major attached to DND headquarters downtown, was enraged. He told me years later that he spent several months trying to locate the soldier who would point his rifle at a child.

I remember the flag at half-mast days later when the body of Pierre Laporte was recovered, and I remember being confused and disquieted by the tears shed by both my teachers and my mother. But mostly, I still remember the muzzle of that rifle...

When people remember the October Crisis, many recall the reading of the FLQ manifesto on television, by newsreader Gaétan Montreuil.

Viewers were struck by the contrast between Gaétan Montreuil's impeccable Radio-Canada French, and the message he was reading.
The text employed coarse language. It called Pierre Trudeau une tapette - a faggot. It was angry, accusatory.

But it also spoke of the oppression of working class francophones. It was calling for a revolution, where francophones would take control of their destiny.

The entire message took 11 minutes to read. Gaétan Montreuil's 11 minutes of fame.

Gaétan Montreuil is retired now. He is 79 years old. He recalls that historic moment.

Listen to the FLQ manifesto, read on air on Radio-Canada by Gaétan Montreuil on October 8, 1970.

George Betts - Lascelles, QC

In October 1970, forty years ago this month, I was working on a salmon boat called the Klemtu, somewhere north of Alert Bay, off Vancouver Island.

It was my first job since leaving high school in Edmonton. The summer had ended, and the Klemtu was fishing in the long deep inlets with her sister boat the Berkely Sound. At night the two boats tied up together in a sheltered cove, and the men would gather around the galley tables to eat, and smoke, and drink. The radio reception was bad, there were no tape-decks or electronic entertainment devices, just the din of voices and the rocking of the boats on the quiet water.

That night, everyone was crowded into the galley of the Berkely Sound. Someone had called us on the two-way radio saying that martial law had been declared. We managed to tune in to a scratchy radio station, where the announcer was saying something about Quebec, the FLQ, the army sent in, Prime Minister Trudeau, apprehended insurrection.

Quebec was a long way off. I had been there in 1967 for Expo, but that was it. I was interested in politics, or so I thought, but had never heard of the Quiet Revolution. I knew about Viet Nam, Biafra, Prague, but nothing about Quebec. Trudeau was French Canadian. If he didn't know what was happening, who did?

It was forty years ago, but I still remember how quiet everyone was after the radio was switched off. Someone said "Jesus" under his breath, but that was all. No-one knew what to think. We all just sat in silence.

I went back to the Klemtu, confused and anxious, but mainly just confused. Wondering what was happening in our country out there somewhere in the dark.

Roushell Goldstein - Toronto, ON

I was born and brought up in Ottawa, but at this particular time, I was visiting Canada from Jerusalem, Israel where I had been living for two years.

The crisis was very evident everywhere in Ottawa: Armed guards and camouflaged jeeps cruised the streets of Sandy Hill where I lived (and where there were many embassies and residences of diplomats).

I thought I had left those images behind in Israel and yet here they were on my peaceful doorstep. It made for a bizarre and confusing sensation.

The night it was reported that Laporte had been murdered, I was returning from Montreal to Ottawa along the main highway. I was with my cousin, who was born in "Palestine". At the border (which had only ever been acknowledged before because the quality of the macadam changed from one province to the other - I won't mention which was better...), we were stopped.

We were told to get out of the car. Our trunk was opened and checked. We were asked for identification, and when my cousin produced his passport - there was some discussion amongst the soldiers in the cold night . Who knows what about. Perhaps being born in Palestine was an issue. Perhaps being Jewish was in issue. (And here, I recall the visceral ancestral unease that dark nights and borders conjure up.)

We were told to move on by the fully clad and armoured soldiers.

As we continued on towards Ottawa, a long caravan of jeeps (do I remember tanks too?) moved slowly in the other direction towards Montreal.

How ironic that I returned to Israel relating to my curious friends there how sombre, how tense, how unpredictable the atmosphere was on this visit.

I came back to Canada in 1973.

I feel blessed to be living in the most civil and caring country in the world. But the events of October and November 1970, signify how those civilities could be sacrificed in order to maintain law and order, taxing the tenuous trust and openness in our many and various communities. It's a constant balancing act for which we should be ever vigilant and responsible as citizens.

I will always remember that visit and the lessons learned.

The morning after the imposition of the War Measures Act, I took a plane from my home base in Montreal to Quebec City.  I was the Montreal Bureau Chief for the Time-Life News Service and had spent the previous week or so immersed in the events unraveling in Montreal since the kidnapping of James "Jasper" Cross, the British Trade Commissioner.

My briefcase was filled with my notes on the events, and copies of all the communiqués issued by the two cells of the FLQ.  The reason for the trip:  I was promised an exclusive interview with Robert Bourassa, the Premier of Quebec. 

I spent most of the day in an around the National Assembly, watching the politicians and the press try to make sense of the events that were unfolding.  At around dinner time, I was approached by one of Bourassa's aides who nodded and indicated silently that I should follow him.  In the hall we were joined by several very large agents of the QPF. 

We got into several dark cars parked under the portico and set out for the Winter Club in Quebec City.  We all made our way inside and downstairs to a private room.  Mr. Bourassa greeted me warmly and appeared relaxed, somewhat surprising given the circumstances.  I was given to understand that the Premier might have just had a swim, one of his daily plunges.

We sat around a large table along with a number of his assistants, including Jean Prieur who had previously worked for Pierre Trudeau (see the famous footage of Trudeau at the Jean Baptiste Parade when he was pelted from the street.  The man next to Trudeau, when everyone else had fled, is Prieur).

We talked about the events of the last several days, about strategy in light of the War Measures Act, about the fact that I could be arrested since I was "transporting" FLQ communiqués.  At the latter point, Bourassa laughed:  "Oh, Vince...they are not going to arrest someone from Time."   The QPF bodyguards were not laughing.

We chatted for over an hour, Bourassa eating his own plate of food, then proceeding to munch off the plate of one of his assistants and off mine.  Despite his wraith-like build, he showed all signs of having a healthy appetite.

I have read statements from others who said that the Quebec government was crumbling; that Bourassa was in a panic in the face of the FLQ action.  I have to confess I saw no signs of this.  He talked calmly and shrewdly about possible negotiations; how he would not use the Bishop who had been suggested as a go-between because it would give too much prestige to the group.  He had selected one of his lesser-known assistants to talk with those who claimed to be knowledgeable about FLQ activities.

He was careful not to criticize the Feds in our conversation, but seemed to view the WMA as simply a means to and end.

On the morning of the 17^th of October, flew back to Montreal.  As I was typing up my notes later that evening, I received two tips: One that a body had been found in Joliette (I believe the CBC was reporting this); the other that a body had been found on the South Shore. I asked a stringer to cover the Joliette end and I went to the small airport at St. Hubert.  

When I arrived on the street leading to Won-Del Aviation I found a crowd of reporters being held back by a young and obviously nervous QPF officer.   He was keeping everyone away from the gates of Won-Del.  I knew this had to be the right spot and decided that I was not going to miss being an eyewitness.  Dressed in my three-piece suit, I strolled past the startled young officer and made my way down the road.  He shouted "Arret, Monsieur" several times, but I was gambling that, despite the hysteria rampant in Quebec at the time, he would not shoot.  I made it to the gates of the aviation company and saw officers and technicians crowded around a beat-up Chevy in the parking lot.

After a period of time, an ambulance left, followed some time later by a tow-truck dragging the Chevy.  Pierre Laporte was dead and the "crise" moved into even darker territory.

Vince Carlin is currently the Ombudsman for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I recall that during the time of the October Crisis and soon thereafter, there was much discussion about leaving Montreal and heading down the 401 to Toronto.

In October 1970, I was a high school student in a solidly anglophone neighbourhood. Anglophone is a term that wasn't commonly used back then, as it is now. We didn't use the term Québécois either - that only came later - after the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976. It was the English and the French - as it had been, for generations before me.

The late 1960's and early 1970's was the time when French Immersion schools were just being introduced - my younger brother was in one of the first cohorts. Some school administrators in the English community must have felt that more needed to be done to prepare children for the reality of living in Quebec.

I know I shared this view, even as a teenager, growing up in an insular community.

My awareness of the gulf between the English and the French was definitely heightened by the events of October 1970, but in my case it had a deeper root, emerging from my time in primary school, when a small group of parents, including my own, hired a Parisian-born French teacher so some of us could have extra-curricular French classes. They were definitely onto something because I recall not being able to understand much of what I heard being spoken on the bus by other Montrealers, whose mother tongue wasn't English, when I travelled with my class to Man and His World at Expo '67.

In 1970's high school French class, we were taught primarily by staff whose command of the French language left much to be desired. How was it that the school board couldn't find adequate French-speaking teachers, when we were living in a province where the majority had French as their mother tongue?

So, over all, my strongest recollection of the events of 1970 is of the variety of personal choices that ensued - and the ones I then made - to stay, become fully bilingual and enjoy everything Quebec has to offer.

Lyn Henley - Calgary, AB

I was in my first year of high school at Macdonald High School in St. Anne de Belleview and I lived on Lakeshore Drive in Baie D'Urfé on the West Island of Montreal.  I was 13 years old.  My parents always thought it was important to know what was going on in the world so we always watched the news at night; it was required viewing, they got the paper every day and my Dad used to listen to the radio in the evening or watched the 11 o'clock news as well as the 6PM news.  He also watched the Today show from the states in the morning before my Mom drove him to the train to his work in downtown Montreal at DuPont of Canada. If something happened he thought I should know about, he would stick his head in my room in the morning or at night and give me a single statement "you should see this"! As a result of this I did watch the (then) latest coverage and was witness to the first news reports about Martin Luther King's assassination and the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy in the hotel.

The evening Pierre Laporte was killed, he did exactly that.  He knocked, opened my door and said "they found Pierre Laporte's body in the trunk of a car" and closed the door.  I was shocked and scared.  Prior to that, most people in Montreal were afraid - mail boxes had been blown up and people were actually crossing the street to avoid them.  Reports of these crazy people who wanted to drive all the English people out of Quebec were being reported and everybody was very tense.

I have explained to people where I live now and many, many years later in Calgary - who thought the War Measures Act was an infringement on their freedoms - which it was for sure- in the rest of the country; but for people who lived in Quebec it was welcomed.  We were scared; people were looking over their shoulders, avoiding mail boxes, noting cars in parking lots, watching the neighbours and generally being on edge about everything.  

In my high school we had two bomb scares where students were sent home (a whole class in their gym "rompers") and everything was shut down while a team of army/police checked the building for anything.  One afternoon it was reported that Paul Rose was seen on the campus of Macdonald College (shared campus where my high school still is) and suddenly we had army tanks and vehicles rolling down Lakeshore Drive and helicopters in the air.  It was on the minds of everyone, all the time consistently.  When Pierre Trudeau said "just watch me," a lot of people in Montreal were sighing with relief, and we were watching.
People in the rest of Canada have NO idea what kind of stress was being experienced by regular folk going about the business of their lives in Montreal.  
I realize that the rest of the country could not possibly understand the nerves and concerns of those of us in Quebec but it was real.

My 13 year old brain and recollection still remembers being scared sh**tess!

Mary-Sue Haliburton - Ottawa, ON

In my memory the October 1970, events are not separate from the preceding situation. What I remember most is reading about the postman who was injured by a mailbox bomb, which might have been a year or two earlier. I was very upset by that. Didn't several such incidents take place before the kidnappings?

Also, the aftermath has been long, and I wonder what students are learning about it in school. I recall back in the 1990s a discussion on a local "bulletin board" -- remember those? (pre-www; can't remember the details) A young man in Gatineau mentioned the FLQ in a supportive tone. Eventually it came out that he didn't even know that Pierre Laporte had been killed -- nor even who Pierre Laporte was. Since I remembered all that (being in university at the time) I asked him, "what are they teaching you in school instead of history?"

I wish I could remember the reply. Anyway I suggested he should look up the newspaper files. What's wrong with the present memorializing of the October crisis is not discussing what was going on in the two years leading up to the kidnappings and the murder -- or accidental killing if that's what it was.

Sometime in the past week I heard a report that the police actually knew who had done it before the War-Measures act was invoked, but they didn't tell the government, in either Quebec City or Ottawa. If the elected officials responsible for government had known that, would they have implemented the extreme policing measures? Did you see that report and do you know who wrote it and how reliable that information is? If it's true, then a decision taken in secret by some police chief(s) obviously had a huge effect politically. I wonder what their intention was, and what they thought as Trudeau handed them the powers they obviously wanted.

The rise of the PQ as a legitimate party was the final and more positive outcome. This gives Quebecers the right to work for sovereignty peacefully. It's better than having letter bombs and manifestos and mass arrests.

And all during that FLQ campaign of small-scale terrorism and the ongoing referenda and debates, I've always wondered whether Canada would still exist even for my lifetime. I still wonder. I'm still surprised that it does, and I don't feel I can take it for granted. But in the back of my mind there's the fact of my having a Quebec birth certificate. Would I be considered a dual citizen?

Would Quebec even let me in? Even though my university-literary formal French is rusty, it would probably come back well enough through immersion. And I listen to Rock Détente in the evening... Songs are a good way to keep at least some of the vocabulary I learned active.

Lots of questions to which I hope I don't have to learn the answer.

Marie Thompson - Halifax, NS

Sunday Drive - October 18, 1970 - Ottawa

It was a crisp cold Sunday afternoon. The sky was clear but the light in the late afternoon was more like late November or early December.

I don't recall whose idea it was. To go for a drive, that is. It was something we often did. Us kids would drag our feet and reluctantly throw ourselves into the back seat of the car. Sometimes we'd go to the Canadian Museum of Natural History - the dinosaur museum we called it - in the big stone castle at the bottom of MacLeod Street. Or if we were really unfortunate, my mother would persuade my father to take us to the National Gallery. It was free. The best part was the cafeteria at the top of the building overlooking Elgin Street and the Rideau Canal and the eastern edge of Parliament Hill. We'd get a soft drink and maybe a piece of cake.

On this day there was no specific destination, except to drive somewhat aimlessly through downtown Ottawa.

There were soldiers in the streets.

We didn't know where we would find them, but my parents seemed to feel it was necessary to bear witness. For us kids it was a novel proposal. Of course, we'd seen the Changing of the Guard on Parliament Hill. We'd shivered in the November cold at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day watching the the military tributes to the veterans who'd fought for Canada. But soldiers on patrol? With guns? What would THAT look like?

I was 16 and in Grade 10. I'd followed the events in Quebec. The kidnappings. For seven years my family had lived in Hull - anglos in a paper mill town with civil servants who crossed the bridges every day to their English language jobs. My parents had chosen it because they could buy a new home for their growing family a lot more cheaply than in Ottawa. For the most part we had a good time in Hull: made friends with our neighbours, threw snowballs at the kids from the French schools who threw them right back. But every once in a while we'd be reminded that we spoke French poorly or not at all. And we knew of the occasional quiet, but persistant talk of separatism.

I remember driving through Rockliffe Park that Sunday. It's the ritzy, expensive enclave for diplomats and the wealthy of Ottawa. Here were the soldiers. The light was very thin that afternoon. I don't remember the colours of their uniforms - only that their silhouettes were dark and their guns unmistakable. No FLQ cell would penetrate the cordon they'd thrown up around the embassies in Ottawa.

I didn't know anyone who lived in Montreal or Quebec City. They seemed exotic and exciting places to me. Very different from our nice, safe, boring suburb where we now lived in west end Ottawa. As we drove home through the darkening streets of that cold October day I felt sad. Sad for Pierre Laporte's family. But sad for us too. How was it possible to have our Sunday dinner now as if nothing had happened? As if there were no soldiers on the streets. But we did.

Doug Hooper - Vancouver, BC

My wife (Nancy) and I were living in Montreal during the October Crisis. One evening we were driving to the Montreal West Curling Club to meet her parents. This was before Pierre Laporte was found. We were stopped by an armed forces personnel carrier. Soldiers jumped out of the vehicle, fully armed, and held us at gunpoint. Several questions later we were let go.

What a feeling! We are so fortunate to be living in a democratic society because for the one small moment in Canadian history all our freedoms and rights were revoked. It was necessary to do but we sure felt its impact.

Connie Gunn - Montreal, QC

I remember every minute of it. It was terrifying. I lived in Montreal Est and was 12 years old. My french friends kept kidding that they would kidnap me.

The song "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen being interupted by news bulletins.

At school, we had one hour daily sessions with Mr. Yule (best teacher ever) teaching us history as we were living it.

My school having regular evacuations due to bombs.

I finally understood why Mom worshipped Pierre Elliot Trudeau; he would save us all!!!!"

I began to see René Levesque in a different light. He changed from the big bad wolf to a nice man that was just on the other side.

Watching them open the trunk of that car with Mom and Gran was one of the saddest and scariest days of my life.

Halloween was cancelled!!!

I was an anglophone (despite having a very pure laine last name - Boivin) and 17-year-old living in the very west island community of Lachine, a suburb of Montreal during the FLQ crisis. I had graduated from John Grant High School and was attending a secretarial school in downtown Montreal.

Since 1967, Montreal was becoming a less welcoming place for the Anglophones. The summer of 1968 saw a French Canadian family moving into our close knit cul de sac street. They were truly the first ones really as the Poiriers who lived up the street, spoke English and half their children were attending the English language schools. One of their sons was my off and on again boyfriend. We didn't know any other French Canadians - we certainly were never exposed to any militant ones, even my French teachers were Anglophones. The bombs and the FLQ seemed to be happening in another part of my world. The west end of Montreal at that time was a very English speaking community. In fact Montreal was the largest English speaking city in Canada.

Outside of the Poiriers, the only other people on my street who could speak French were the Daleys who were originally British. In the neighbourliness of the times, several of the women tried to welcome them into the community by bringing them over some food; the Mom refused to allow them into the house and the children were told not to play with any of the English kids. The two solitudes had arrived in our street. She did talk to the Daleys because they spoke French and were not really Canadian. Everyone was shocked.

Bombs going off were becoming more commonplace and my father's employer was indicating that they were going to close down because of the violence. Even the Sir George William University student riots in 1969 added to the tension. We were hearing more and more that Anglophones should leave Quebec. That summer my mother narrowly escaped a bombing downtown. A bomb went off where she normally waited for my Dad to pick her up but that day had decided to have him pick her up elsewhere. At the time I did not know that my parents had decided to leave.

I remember how terribly silent my little street was over the kidnappings. There was a feeling of isolation from the rest of Canada, a feeling that outside of our family - who were urging us to get out - nobody cared. Every one of my friends' families were talking about leaving. There was so much tension. Messages aired by the FLQ were hateful. At my father's workplace there were many French Canadians who were now not speaking to my father. It was a grim time. I can only tell you that when Trudeau announced the War Measures Act, there was only relief in our household as no one seemed to know what the FLQ would do next. Would the violence escalate? Then one day, as my entire family with 2 sisters, 15 and 11, were driving to Fairview Shopping Mall, we saw the tanks on the train coming into Montreal. We passed many trucks carrying the military into Montreal that day. An absolute silence descended and we returned home to put on the television. My parents had been very worried about me riding the bus downtown to attend classes during this time but were feeling more safe knowing that the military was to brought in to guard each government building and banks. But it didn't seem like Canada - it seemed so despicable to have our country failing to prevent the kidnapping of a foreign diplomat - especially when threats had been received. When LaPorte was found dead, we all were horrified.

When it finally ended and the terrorists were sent to Cuba, we were glad to hear that they were gone from the country. But the Quiet Revolution was not so quiet anymore. Everyone on our street who could find employment elsewhere in Canada was planning to leave. Even the Poiriers left to Florida! We moved that spring, my father selling the house for less than what he paid for it and buying a house in a small town in southern Ontario for more. He has just recently sold that house to enter a retirement home. Given that he sold for $142,000 and his old house in Montreal would have sold for about $300,000 - it turned out to be a costly move but my family had very little choice but to move. The writing was on the wall and my father was the only wage earner in the household - an anglophone male in his late 40's. His employer offered him a job at a lower rate of pay and responsibility in Ontario - it was a lifeline.

Only a handful of my high school friends remained in Montreal and I lost touch with most of them. My very old high school is now shut down and slated for demolition to make way for condos. It was a huge diaspora which we never seem to talk about in Canada. The move was very difficult for me and my sisters. We had been in Montreal since 1960, having moved there from Northern Ontario. We did not leave out of any sense of choice, but because we had to. Since I now live in Ottawa, I have visited Montreal on a number of occasions and when I do, I drive by my old house. I am not an especially nostalgic or emotional person and am always taken back at how much sadness I feel when I see that house and how much I have to visit it each time I am there. That feeling that nobody in Canada cared about us that I had at the time comes back each time I see it.

I listened to the interview this morning with James Cross. Thank you for running it. They were terrorists plain and simple. They hurt many people - the pain of Mr. Cross and his family , our collective pain, never seems to be recognized. It almost seems surreal that it happened in my country - to Canadians.

My wife and I were landed immigrants to Canada, from England, and we arrived at (then called) Malton Airport in Toronto at 1.45pm on Monday October 5, 1970. So for us, the October Crisis was our first introduction to this new country where we were going to live. Our immediate thoughts were "oh my goodness, what have we got ourselves into !"

After a couple of days at the King Edward Hotel we went to stay with some friends of my Uncle ( more on this later) in Etobicoke who had recently moved there from Montreal, and their daughter had just started as a student at McGill University. So, as you can imagine, the ENTIRE conversations at their house and around the dinner table were about the happenings in Montreal. They were obviously most concerned for their daughter's safety.

One of the main reasons we had come to Canada to live was that one of my Uncles and his family, including my cousins, had lived in Canada in the late 50's ( I think) and early 60's, and he had told us a great deal of the wonderful life they experienced in Toronto, Winnipeg and lastly in Montreal. The significance of my Uncle was that he was a diplomat with the British Government while in Canada, and was one of James Cross's predecessors. So this brought the whole affair that much closer into our lives, even though these two young immigrants (ie. us) had only just arrived in the country.

We still have vivid memories of the massive troop deployment and security presence in Montreal. These were some of our first images of life in Canada from the ground.

We have lived in Canada happily since then, for 40 years.

Gail Desnoyers - Lachine, QC

It was a scary time.We lived in Ste.Therese and the military were stationed in Boisbriand just north of us. At night there were loud helicopters overhead with powerful lights and trucks full of soldiers in our quiet suburb.

When they were looking for James Cross the police asked the population to report anything strange that they saw. One night a truck dropped off a wardrobe size cardboard box acroos the street from our house in a vacant lot...just the size of one human being!! I called the police feeling kind of silly and they arrived within minutes, sirens, lights flashing and guns drawn. Right out of the movies. They circled the box..kicked it then opened it ..to find it empty.

Whew!! I was alone with four kids...Interestingly enough almost everyone on our street was an English-French marriage. Your name and the language you spoke or school you went to became significant in those days.

Gary - Longueuil, QC

I was 18, living in Pointe-Claire and had just left Sea Cadets and joined the Naval Reserve.

Twice a week I was in uniform and three of my most poignant memories... The first, living close to Dorval airport, there were jeeps and regular force personnel everywhere. The mayor's house on St. Louis was flood lit and troops were around all the time.

The third thing I vividly remember was on my way in to H.M.C.S. Donnacona (in uniform twice a week) on the corner of de Maisonneuve and Drummond streets. If I stood waiting for a bus, inevitably a covered army vehicle would drive by and would stop and pick me up. I'd hop into the back and was told to be mindful of the submachine guns stowed under the seats. I knew well about them, as I had just finished my General Military Training at CFB Windsor Park in Halifax that summer.

The Naval Reserve back then were not called into service for deployment; it was reg force army only if I remember correctly.

I had a friend who wanted to join reg force navy, and wanted me to sign up with him. I declined as I was debating at the time thinking seriously about going to Concordia University, which was choice I had gladly made.

I remember the mailbox bombs. It was a very troubling time for us all.

Doug Grant - Kitchener, ON

In October, 1970, I was a graduate student at McMaster University in Hamilton.  It is difficult to describe quite how incensed I was at the proclamation of the War Measures Act, and I expressed those emotions in a caustic letter to the late Pierre Trudeau.  Among the phrases I used was that I would never "forgive nor forget" his overreaction.  A few days later, an unmarked black car appeared outside my home near the university.  It was quickly confirmed to be a stakeout when a marked RCMP car appeared, and the occupants of the two cars had a shouted conversation.  I had never seen an RCMP vehicle in Hamilton before that day.  However, in May of 1971, on the day that Trudeau was scheduled to visit Hamilton, I looked out the window at 7 am half expecting another stakeout, and was only mildly surprised when I saw another unmarked car with two male occupants in plain clothes parked in the same place.   At the time, I was desperately trying to finish my thesis, and so resisted the temptation to take them on a wild goose chase through back streets.  However, I did record their license number, and was able to confirm (as one could at the time) that the car was indeed registered to the Hamilton detachment of the RCMP.  I still wonder what exactly they suspected I might do which would have represented a threat to Trudeau.  In any event, he lived another 29 years, but went to his grave unforgiven, by me at least.

Sally Morrow - Ottawa, ON

I was in the hospital awaiting the birth of my daughter and suffering some complications so they were keeping an eye on me. One of the medications they gave me caused itching on my hands and arms which kept me up all night listening with earphones to a little radio I had. I was in a room with three other women, Around 2 am I heard Pierre Trudeau announcing the death of Pierre Laporte. He sounded like he was about to cry and was so angry. His voice was shaking. He declared the War Measures Act into effect, but all I heard was "War". I turned on the overhead lights in the room. "Wake up" I said. "Trudeau has declared war on Quebec!" They looked at me sleepily and with some annoyance and told me to turn out the light so they could go back to sleep. I couldn't believe it - as an immigrant from the U.S. where people talking about war in the middle of the night was pretty important! I always tell this story to show that I had a way to go before I could call myself a true Canadian! Teresa was born in the Grace Hospital in Ottawa. I was in labour all day - I watched Trudeau's helicopter fly to Montreal for Laporte's funeral and return that evening to Parliament Hill from the window in the labour room.

Susan Sturman - Toronto, ON

Ron Romanowski - Winnipeg, MB

In October 1970, I was in a cell of the FLM: Front for the Liberation of Manitoba.  Inspired by Quebec's separation movement, my friends Jerry and Joe and I were politically precocious sixteen-year-old high school students who were inspired to read and study and write about what was going on in Quebec.

We had already shocked our conservative parents with our rock music, clothes and refusal to attend church but they did not know at all about our studies of Marx and Engels, and liberation movements around the world, especially the one that was closest and most exciting, that of Quebec. We lived in North End Winnipeg, the historical hotbed of English Canadian radicalism; after all this had been the headquarters of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and we still had communist members on city council and the school board.

In the spring of 1970, we three had formed a cell to read about and study liberation. It was so much in our political blood at that time. And we read and studied and wrote about all that we could find with our complete teenage energy.  Then came October and we were riveted to the TV set, radio and newspapers. The violence and subsequent martial law imposed by the federal government shocked us to the core. In a panic, worried about being arrested, we decided to destroy all we had written. Perhaps we overreacted but we thought what we were doing was prudent at the time.

Today I am still active in politics but the NDP is as radical as I get. But I sometimes wonder what might have been for Quebec, Canada, and for us. Below is one of my poems from that time that I saved:

from The Book of Genesis According to Karl Marx

Against a truck pulled over on the highway shoulder,
she with the pallid face,
she was buying bodies again
not just those waiting on river banks to cross over
but the living walking with much to live,
on the coldest day of the year
the economy had struck midnight,
the intent moon radiated cold
and nothing but automatons could reply:

in eternal swaying moving prayer
to the cosmic power of dollars, dollars, dollars
into the empty eager eyes
of work-hungry penitents,
Boss Moon had come thieving again

work damns all without respite
alone, he stood on the highway, not chosen
bereft of job, body spared today but in want
if not Boss Moon then Boss Adam,
day being as corrupted as night,
beyond plague, flood, kingdom, landholder, capitalist

Adam committed the primal oppression
forcing labor upon his own children
Eve wanted to share, but sharing would not do
together they derailed creation, work damns all

Lawrence Wilson

Josy Britton - Grand Bend, ON

Carole Lieberman- Vancouver, BC

Joseph Schreiber - Calgary, AB