Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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When viewed in this light a few things become clear. In the first place both the United States and the South American countries have many more university protests than Canada. They also have or seem to have more violence within their societies. The United States’ crime rate is one of the highest in the world as is that of most South American countries. South America has her violent guerilla bands, America has the Bl ack Panthers and the Weathermen, a para-militant group within the militant S.D.S. structure to say nothing of the conservative’ mili- tants such as the members of the Ku Klux Klan or the John Birch Socie- ty. Canada has only the F.L.Q. And thus it would seem that the U.S. is much more prone to violence than Canada and it is only, perhaps, when these assorted questions and facts are viewed in the light of location and type of violence that the answer becomes clearer. For the South American terrorists are fighting, literally fighting in every sense of the word, for revolutionary goals. They want to destroy their present gov- ernment or be granted certain demands that they consider of prime importance. They are a unified cohesive force within their individual frameworks and they are driven by any means possible to obtain their goals. , , , This is a unique system, not matched anywhere else in the New World, not in the U.S. nor Canada. However, I feel that the disparity is greater between these guerillas and the various militant American groups than between the guerillas and the F.L.Q. For many of the American groups, while professing a desire to see America destroyed they themselves benefit from it. They are, perhaps, from middle class families and rely upon their society for sustenance and their luxury while bitterly criticizing it. Theirs is a type of wish ful- fillment in which they wish to have things all their own way but do not want to jeopordize their lives or living standard by preaching their phi- losophy. The other militant groups I feel who do believe in what they say to the extent of carrying out such violence as kidnapping and mur- der are too diffuse. They are spread out among two hundred million people and as a result, their ideas and actions all become watered down, absorbed by the mass. However, in Canada the F.L.Q. is not diffused. They are concentrat- ed in one province, and in this province they are surrounded with peo- ple of the same cultural background as their own; people who are in a sense alien and antagonistic to those people whom the F.L.Q. are trying to destroy. For the F.L.Q., I feel, fall into the second category of militant groups. They are not, like the Weatherman, trying to have their cake and eat it too, to benefit from society but also destroy it, they are rather like the Black Panthers, fiercely believing in their cause and all it stands for. However they re not so diluted. They are not spread over three thousand miles; they live among three and a half million people, most of whom have sympathetic tendencies toward them. 12

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POURQUOI CANADA? The most startling fact concerning the recent wave of terrorism and kidnapping in Montreal, is, I feel, that it happened in Canada. Most Canadians, 1 wonld guess, are walking around shaking their heads, not so much at the fact that this tragedy is happening, for such things have become almost commonplace today, but rather at the fact that it hap- pened in a country which most of them would think of as much less prone to violence than the United States. And at first glance it does indeed seem an anomaly that the United States with all its violence, with all its campus, race and protest riots, would not have had this type of happening while Canada, sometimes called a restrained version of the U. S., would. To try to understand this, one must, I feel, look for other examples of this kind of activity in other countries. The example that leaps to the eye when this is done is not another country but another continent: South America. It seems to be a political fact of life in the countries of that continent that foreign diplomats or local politicians are liable to be kidnapped and or murdered at any time. In fact it was in South America that the tough, no giving in to the kidnappers’ policy was developed, a policy which is even now being practised here in Canada. The question that arises almost inevitably at this point is why is it Canada that is following in South America s foot- steps rather than the U. S. ? What have South America and Canada got that the States doesn’t have ?

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And thus here is, I feel the answer as to why Canada experienced these kidnappings before her violent neighbor. She only has that com- bination of cultural differences, language difficulties and concentra- tion of her people in Quebec. These kidnappings and murders, horren- dous as they are, nevertheless point out some valuable lessons to Cana- dians and Americans alike. This perhaps is the final answer to those who had wanted to confine the Negroes to certain areas of the U.S., where this fatal concentration would soon build up. This also shows us perhaps that campus disorder and student protests are not as serious indicators of trouble as they look. Certainly they have not produced anything like this except in cases where they were, in fact, treated as serious problems as at Kent State. And so 1 feel that more attention should be paid to less noticed facets of our own society such as the F.L.Q. The publicity has all been about such things as the riot at Sir George Williams while the real action has been going on secretly and quietly in the homes and meeting places of the F.L.Q. Perhaps we ought to realize that it is not always in the external symp- toms of dissent which often act as a valuable safety valve, that the trou- ble lies; it is also in the slow and silent buildup of hatred and other emotions which eventually and inevitably culminate in a tragedy. j. b. robinson 13