Summary:In the first four episodes of this series, we examined the circumstances leading to the outbreak of the Quebec Rebellion; the Trudeau government’s initial efforts to suppress the FLQ uprising; the Waskaganish firefight; the surprise FLQ attack on Kearns; and the 1971 Sherbrooke bombing campaign. In this chapter we’ll review some of the critical battles between FLQ guerrillas and Canadian regulars during the autumn of 1971.

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The failure of the Sherbrooke bombing campaign left the FLQ at a psychological and tactical impasse as the summer of 1971 turned into fall. The guerrilla movement’s leaders had hoped the bombing offensive would give them in the upper hand in their struggle for independence; instead, it had set the insurgency back by weeks if not months. There was a distinct if contained sense of unease that the FLQ revolt might be over almost as soon as it had started. Something big was needed to revitalize the rebellion, and it was needed in a hurry. Otherwise. the thinking went among the FLQ leadership, the Trudeau government would simply sweep the rebels aside like dry leaves. This gloomy outlook was a sharp contrast to the defiant broadsides the insurgency’s propaganda arm was issuing to the outside world from underground printing presses at odd intervals.

It was around this time one of the bolder spirits in the ranks ranks of the FLQ guerrilla forces borrowed a page from the history of Quebec’s First Nations peoples and set up a woodland ambush for a CDF infantry patrol sent to hunt down his cell-- and in so doing upset the apple cart as far as the Trudeau government was concerned. Assuming their enemy would use modern guerrilla warfare tactics against them, the CDF troops were caught totally off-guard by the more 18th century- style methods their attackers employed when the shooting started. In a matter of minutes the patrol was wiped out almost to the last man.

When news of the ambush reached the Canadian Defense Forces general staff in Ottawa, their first reaction was one of nearly total shock. It wasn’t just the brutality of the attack or the high casualty toll that alarmed the generals; the FLQ insurgents had destroyed a government troop contingent that outnumbered them by at least two to one. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau shared their anxiety; if CDF losses kept mounting at this rate, the rebel forces might eventually win the war and Canada’s very existence would be jeopardized. For the next few days after the ambush the CDF general staff was at their individual and collective wit’s end trying to figure what, if any response could be mustered that would be sufficient to end or at least minimize the threat such attacks posed to the Canadian regular forces.

Their anxiety only got worse when a second CDF patrol fell prey to an FLQ ambush just 36 hours after the first such attack. The perpetrators of this ambush added a macabre new wrinkle to the tactic by throwing homemade petrol bombs at the unwary CDF troops; to a man the patrol was burned alive, and several acres of nearby woodland were also damaged by the fires the petrol bombs started. A CBC radio correspondent who visited the scene of the crime the next night said it resembled “a Hieronymus Bosch painting gone mad”. To this day, just over four decades after the fact, most citizens of and visitors to Quebec-- regardless of their ethnic background --make it a point to avoid the area in question as if it were radioactive even though the trees and other plant life have long since grown back.

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In late September of 1971, as the one-year anniversary of the start of the Quebec Rebellion was approaching, an RCAF reconnaissance flight west of Trois-Rivières picked up signs of human activity at two locations suspected by the Trudeau government to be hideouts for FLQ insurgent troops. The CDF general staff immediately ordered a follow- up mission in that area, and when the crew of the second recon flight came under heavy anti-aircraft fire, it confirmed Trudeau’s suspicions that the rebels were gearing up for a major push in the Trois-Rivières area. In response to these developments he ordered three of the CDF’s best ground forces divisions to attack rebel staging areas adjacent to the Trois-Rivières city limits.

Operation Blizzard, as the offensive was code-named by the CDF, was one of the largest military ground campaigns attempted by Canadian forces since the end of World War II. Indeed, it was the largest such offensive any military force had mounted in Canada since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. And neither Wolfe nor Montcalm had had to confront anything even vaguely resembling the kinds of weapons the FLQ and their CDF opponents would be bringing onto the battlefield. It was going to be a long and bitter fight for both sides.

At 5:35 AM on the morning on the morning of September 29th, 1971 the CDF’s ground force launched the first phase of Operation Blizzard. At first it seemed like the FLQ forces in the Trois-Rivières area would lose the battle right in its opening hours as the rebel forces fell back twelve miles behind their original positions in the face of relentless air and ground attack by the CDF. But the FLQ then surprised the federal forces by executing a surprise ambush on the CDF rear flank, catching the CDF troops off guard and putting them on the defensive. Air strikes were called in to slow the guerrillas down; in response, the FLQ fighters hastily dug World War I-style trenches and used them as shelters against the CDF jet bombings. From the relative safety of these trenches, they proceeded to unleash a furious machine gun fusillade against both the jets and the CDF ground troops; modern Canadian Department of National Defence casualty estimates regarding the Trois-Rivières engagement indicate that at least a quarter of the losses sustained by the CDF forces in the battle were a result of this machine gun barrage.

Around mid-afternoon on September 30th a fleet of UH-1 assault helicopters were deployed to bombard the FLQ lines with a series of rocket strikes. While a number of mistakes were made in the execution of the chopper attacks, those attacks were highly effective in putting the insurgents on the defensive. The rebels abandoned their trenches with the same haste in which they had dug them and started retreating again, this time towards the shores of Lake Maskinonge; not wanting to run the risk of letting the rebel forces escape to fight another day, the CDF troops followed them in hot pursuit. They finally caught up with their quarry just outside the town of Saint-Gabriel early on the morning of October 1st, leading to one of the most ferocious firefights seen in the Western Hemisphere in almost a century.

The Battle of Saint-Gabriel, also known as “les deux jours du larmes”(“two days of tears”) by Quebec residents, saw both sides in the engagement sustain losses that were horrific even by the savage standards of the Quebec Rebellion. The civilian casualties were much worse; Saint-Gabriel lost a third of its pre-war population during the battle, many of those deaths resulting from injuries sustained when a rebel rocket attack undershot the CDF infantry positions it was aimed for and instead hit a crowded apartment building a few feet away. The fear of incurring mass civilian deaths was precisely what had prompted CDF field commanders to decide against using air strikes on the rebel forces.

By noon on October 2nd many of the outlying neighborhoods of Saint- Gabriel were in flames; some of the fires were the result of artillery shells going off course, but many others were deliberate acts of arson committed by particularly fanatical FLQ fighters seeking retribution against certain local residents for the crime of being opposed to the rebels’ goal of a separate Quebec nation. Such tactics would serve to further undermine-- and eventually doom --the FLQ’s dreams for making Quebec an independent state. They would also spark a wave of criminal investigations by provincial and federal police authorities after one of the CDF squads near the city turned up evidence suggesting a local firebug had taken advantage of the chaos caused by the battle to set a few fires of his own.

Around 4:30 PM on October 2nd CDF troops encircled the last FLQ defensive positions outside Saint-Gabriel. Either unwilling or unable to endure detention in CDF custody, the remaining FLQ fighters inside those positions chose to blow themselves up with grenades; when they perished, they took more than three dozen CDF troops with them. Some eyewitness accounts of the explosions have suggested that a few of the FLQ insurgents who died from those grenades literally had their heads blown off. While those stories are hard to verify, this much is beyond dispute: the residents of Saint-Gabriel had their sense of security badly shaken by the fighting between FLQ and CDF forces near their town. It’s not entirely coincidence that in the decades since the Quebec Rebellion ended the town has seen a steady and considerable population drop as residents traumatized by the “two days of tears” continue to die off or move away.

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By mid-October of 1971 most objective observers had long since reached the conclusion that the guerrilla war would take a long time to resolve no matter which side ultimately won the conflict. The FLQ, however, still held out hope the civil war could be quickly ended in the rebels’ favor and prepared themselves to make one last attempt to do so before the coming of winter. This ambitious new offensive, today known in the history books as “the All Saints’ Day campaign” since it was launched the day after Halloween-- All Saints’ Day on the Catholic calendar --was aimed at drawing CDF forces into an ambush so ruinous the Ottawa government would then have no choice but to sue for peace and grant the FLQ’s demand for an independent Quebec. There was indeed an ambush looming, but the FLQ insurgents would be on the wrong end of it....

To Be Continued