Francis Simard, (June 2, 1946 – January 10, 2015) was a Quebec nationalist and convicted murderer. Simard was a member of the

Chenier Cell A chenier or chénier is a sandy or shelly beach ridge that is part of a strand plain, called a “chenier plain,” consisting of cheniers separated by intervening mud-flat deposits with marsh and swamp vegetation. Cheniers are typically 1 to 6 ...

of the

Front de libération du Québec The (FLQ) was a Marxist–Leninist and Quebec separatist guerrilla group. Founded in the early 1960s with the aim of establishing an independent and socialist Quebec through violent means, the FLQ was considered a terrorist group by the Canadia ...

(FLQ), a group dedicated to the creation of an independent

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

state out of the Canadian province of Quebec. Members of the group were responsible for the events known as the October Crisis. As a member of the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale political party, he met Paul Rose and the two became involved in revolutionary activities in 1969 when Simard campaigned for the development of the French language in McGill University, one of Montreal's English-language universities. During what became known as the October Crisis, on October 5, 1970, members of the FLQ's

Liberation Cell The Liberation Cell was a Montreal-based cell that was part of Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) revolutionary movement in Quebec whose members were responsible for a decade of bombings and armed robberies in the 1960s that led to what became ...

kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner James Cross from his Montreal home as part of a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government and to establish a Marxist Quebec state independent of Canada. On October 10, Francis Simard, along with Chenier Cell leader, Paul Rose and his brother, Jacques Rose and Bernard Lortie, kidnapped and then murdered Quebec vice premier and cabinet minister Pierre Laporte. Believing many others would follow in an uprising, their goal was to create an independent state based on the ideals of Fidel Castro's Cuba. In 1982, Simard described the murder of Laporte as "a sincere gesture to show that what we were saying was not just words." On May 20, 1971, Simard was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Pierre Laporte. He was given parole in 1982. Simard wrote a book published in 1982 about the October Crisis titled ''

Pour en finir avec octobre Pour may refer to these people: * Kour Pour (born 1987), British artist of part-Iranian descent * Mehdi Niyayesh Pour (born 1992), Iranian footballer * Mojtaba Mobini Pour (born 1991), Iranian footballer * Pouya Jalili Pour (born 1976), Irania ...

''. In 1994, Quebec

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

Pierre Falardeau made a movie from it titled ''

Octobre ''Octobre'' is a 1994 Quebec film directed by filmmaker and noted independentist Pierre Falardeau. It tells a version of the October Crisis from the point of view of the Chénier Cell, the FLQ terrorist cell who in 1970 kidnapped and murdered Qu ...

''. Simard died of a ruptured aneurysm in Montreal on January 10, 2015.

References

Bibliography

*Simard, Francis, ''Talking it out : the October Crisis from inside'', Montreal, Guernica, 1987 (translated by David Homel) *Simard, Francis, ''Pour en finir avec Octobre'', Stanké, Montreal, 1982. {{DEFAULTSORT:Simard, Francis 1946 births 2015 deaths Front de libération du Québec members People from Montreal Canadian people convicted of murder People convicted of murder by Canada Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Canada Canadian prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment People paroled from life sentence October Crisis Canadian people convicted of kidnapping