Summary:In the first five 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; the summer 1971 Sherbrooke bombing campaign; and the “Two Days Of Tears” battle between FLQ and CDF forces near Saint-Gabriel in the fall of 1971. In this chapter, we’ll look back at the FLQ rebels’ botched “All Saints’ Day” offensive of November 1971 .

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As the fall weather turned steadily colder in Quebec in late 1971, foreshadowing the onset of winter, the FLQ was preparing to make its biggest roll of the dice so far in its year-old war for an independent Quebec. Despite the bitter defeat it had sustained at the Battle of Saint-Gabriel, the rebel organization still thought it could force an early end to the conflict and compel the government of then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to accept peace terms favoring the insurgents. Of all the miscalculations the guerillas made over the four years they sought to make Quebec a separate state, this was one of the most serious ones; it would cost them substantial amounts of men and materiel and set their operational plans back at least a year.

Known as “the All Saints’ Day offensive” or “All Saints’ Day campaign” because it was commenced on November 1st-- All Saints’ Day on the Catholic calendar and thus an important holiday in primarily Catholic Quebec --this new attack was meant to demoralize the CDF’s troops in Quebec to such a degree that they would refuse to fight any longer and leave the Trudeau government with no choice but to agree to the FLQ’s demand for an independent Quebecois nation. Three days before the offensive was set to begin, an anonymous threat phoned in by an FLQ diehard to the offices of the Montreal Gazette warned the public to expect “earth-shaking events that will change Canada as we know it”.

At the time the All Saints’ Day offensive was commenced, the conventional wisdom among CDF intelligence experts held that the FLQ rank and file was united in supporting its leadership’s decision to mount the campaign. However, documents uncovered since the end of the Quebec Rebellion reveal that the FLQ lower ranks were in fact deeply divided on the wisdom of the All Saints’ Day operation. A series of coded dispatches between cell leaders and the FLQ upper echelons that pertained to the All Saints’ Day campaign was recovered by CDF troops from a safe house northeast of Sherbrooke in the final days of the rebellion; stored in the Canadian Defense Department archives under a “top secret” heading for over thirty-five years and only recently declassified, these papers draw a portrait of a movement at odds with itself over the All Saints’ Day offensive. At least one senior FLQ commander actually threatened to resign his post rather than take part in what he considered essentially a suicide mission.

The basic strategy for the first phase of the All Saints’ Day campaign involved a three-pronged feint directed towards the city of Saguena. It was anticipated that such a thrust would bring CDF forces rushing to stop the apparent attack; this was meant to pave the way for the second phase of the offensive, which was for FLQ guerrilla forces to swoop down on the unsuspecting CDF soldiers in a pincer movement and cut them to pieces in a series of “human wave” attacks that it was hoped would break the CDF’s will to fight once and for all. Unfortunately for the rebels, the CDF general staff had started to anticipate the FLQ might attempt just such an operation and were shrewdly rearranging their ground forces to meet the ambush attempt head-on when it came...

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...which it did just after dawn on November 1st, 1971. Considering that the insurgents had no armored vehicles and very few heavy weapons at their disposal, the first phase of the assault did remarkably well; the guerrillas managed to encircle two CDF infantry battalions as well as halt an attempt by mechanized units to break the center of the FLQ lines. But about six hours after the attack began the rebels’ fortunes abruptly turned sour as CDF airborne troops found and exploited a weak point in the FLQ’s rear flank. While the insurgents were preoccupied with trying to push back the airborne units, conventional CDF infantry troops struck the rebel forces on the left wing of their attack front; from there the insurgents’ already precarious situation deteriorated still further as air strikes tore ever-widening gaps in their forward lines.

By first light on November 2nd the FLQ forces in the area were in a state of serious disarray; had the CDF side made more effective use of its air support elements, the insurgents could very well have been put on the defensive for keeps. As it was, the remnants of the rebel attack force retreated toward Lac Albanel, leaving the government side to count its dead and both sides to face the reality that the war was going to continue at least into the spring of 1972. For the insurgents it was a bitter pill to swallow; they’d staked a great deal on the All Saints’ Day offensive, only to see their gamble fail with disastrous results. They were extremely fortunate the offensive’s failure hadn’t broken the back of their rebellion. As it was, the rebel forces would be limited to mostly defensive operations for weeks if not months.

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New Year’s Day 1972 was observed under the watchful eyes of the RCMP and the CDF reserves. An anonymous note written by someone close to the FLQ leadership threatened to attack public holiday gatherings in retaliation for the arrest of two dozen known FLQ sympathizers the week before Christmas Eve. The anticipated attacks never came, but the provincial and federal authorities were still nervous about what might happen; the Sherbrooke bombing campaign was still fresh in the minds of many police officials. Having had time to process the lessons of the Sherbrooke bombing plot’s failure, top Canadian law enforcement officials figured, the FLQ might very well be getting ready to start a new more successful series of bombing attacks elsewhere in la belle province-- possibly even take another crack at Sherbrooke.

The real security threat, however, would start to emerge after Valentine’s Day from the barrel of FLQ snipers’ rifles....

To Be Continued