For the better part of a decade Robert Lemieux was the flamboyant, public face of the Front de Lib?ration du Qu?bec (FLQ), never joining the terrorist organisation dedicated to Qu?bec independence but serving as its spokesman, negotiator, apologist and attorney.
Born in Montreal, the son of a French-Canadian father and a mother of Irish extraction, Lemieux was an early convert to the cause of Qu?bec independence. He was studying law in Montreal when the FLQ first attracted international attention in the early 1960s with a bombing campaign that targeted mailboxes and other public symbols linked with Anglo wealth.
After his 1965 graduation from McGill University, long a bastion of English privilege, the fluently bilingual lawyer joined the old-line law firm of O’Brien, Home, Hall, Nolan, Sanders, O’Brien and Smythe, one with as French-Canadian an imprint as its name indicates.
The following year Lemieux was tapped by Montreal’s Bar Association to defend FLQ members after the secret society resurfaced, this time with a philosophy oriented on class struggle to justify their actions. Arrested in New York at a demonstration in front of the UN held to protest political conditions in Quebec, the three were deported to face charges in Canada that their writings bore some criminal responsibility for the death of an innocent bystander in the second wave of bombings.
After he obtained an acquittal in a heavily publicised trial, his employers decided that Lemieux’s political leanings didn’t fit the desired profile. He was given six months severance and thirty minutes notice of termination.
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On October 5, 1970, the FLQ returned, adding kidnapping to their repertoire. Members of the Liberation cell seized British Trade Commissioner, James Cross, vowing to kill him if their demands were not met.
Five days later the Chenier cell abducted Quebec Labour Minister, Pierre Laporte, from his front garden while he was playing football with his teenage son.
In the weeks and months that followed, still an emotional touchstone with many Quebecers, Laporte was killed by his captors. His body was found in the boot of a car the day after his death. Martial law was declared and almost 500 citizens thought to be sympathetic to the FLQ, Lemieux among them, were rounded up and held without charge.
When negotiations were opened with the Cross kidnappers, Lemieux was their representative, often negotiating through the media and finally arranging the British diplomat’s release in exchange for Cuban exile for his captors two months after his abduction. When homesick kidnappers decided to return to face the music, Lemieux was their go-between, negotiating short terms on their behalf.
The members of the Chenier cell all went to jail for their involvement in the Laporte kidnapping and killing. Lemieux, after often clashing with the bench, was sentenced to thirty months for contempt of court.
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He served thirteen and after his 1974 release, relocated to Sept-Îles, a small city hundreds of miles upriver from Montreal, where he practiced labour and family law and, for a time, pumped petrol. Always politically active, he continued to be a staunch advocate in favour of Quebec’s autonomy and took up a number of aboriginal causes.
Lemieux, whose client list numbered some thirty FLQ defendants over the years, occasionally appeared in the Montreal courthouse, usually to advocate on behalf of accused with a decidedly nationalistic outlook, usually quickly returning to Sept-Îles.
For a short while in 2001 Lemieux advised Maurice “Mom” Boucher, president of the Montreal chapter of the Hell’s Angels, describing his client and his cohorts as political prisoners.
Lemieux is survived by two children.
Robert Lemieux, lawyer and face of the Front de Lib?ration du Qu?bec, was born in in 1941. He died on January 21, 2008, aged 66