The first writer of the manifestos of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), Jean-Denis Lamoureux, died Sunday of a long illness at the age of 79. A fervent independentist, he put his words and his ideas at the service of the revolutionary movement before experiencing, in a second life, a long career as a journalist within the Montreal Journal and To have to.
His journey as a communicator began when he was not yet twenty years old. In the early 1960s, he spawned with the Communist youth, the Rally for National Independence (RIN), then the original members of the FLQ.
He honed his first weapons as a communicator within this last collective. It was he who wrote the very first FLQ manifesto, articulating the movement’s commitment to “social revolution”.
This manifesto will not be disseminated by any media. “He was very disappointed,” recalls the To have to his friend Louis Fournier.
Jean-Denis Lamoureux’s clandestine journey quickly came to an end when, in 1963, the police arrested him along with 22 other active members of the FLQ.
New life
Previously known as Denis Lamoureux, he begins a new beginning after his time in prison as Jean-Denis Lamoureux. A certain Pierre Péladeau hired him in 1965 for his Log founded the previous year. The young journalist rose through the ranks to become general manager at the Quebec newspaper. “He is a young man who went from being a member of a terrorist movement to a career in the world of journalism,” relates Louis Fournier, who underlines his “remarkable” career.
Still a “discreetly” separatist, Jean-Denis Lamoureux returned to active politics by accepting an offer from René Lévesque. He became its director of communications in 1983. “He understood that it was not through violence that we were going to achieve national independence”, testifies the friend of the deceased.
His role in the government also sends him to the general delegation of Quebec in Brussels. It was “one of the positions he was most proud of,” recalls another longtime friend, Paule Beaugrand-Champagne. She speaks of him as a man “passionate” for the independence of Quebec and endowed with “great competence”.
The brouillamini that gripped the Parti Québécois during those years sent him back to his role as a journalist, this time to the To have to. From 1988 to 1993, he worked as desk manager. He did not abandon his militant side, however, becoming president of the journalists’ union for a few years.
Jean-Denis Lamoureux will end his career as a journalist at the same address where he began, as head of the “One” for the Montreal Journal.