One of the first members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), Pierre Schneider, died Saturday evening of lung cancer. He was 78 years old.
Originally from Outremont, this son of a unilingual English-speaking father and a French-speaking mother joined the FLQ at the beginning of 1963, after having campaigned for the Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale (RIN). In particular, he participated in the deposit of a dozen bombs in the post office boxes of the Westmount district, this high place of the Anglo-Quebec bourgeoisie, causing one serious injury among the deminers of the Canadian Armed Forces.
“Pierre Schneider and Jean-Denis Lamoureux wrote the first FLQ manifesto in 1963,” explains historian and former journalist Louis Fournier in an interview with THE Duty. A manifesto, the particularity of which is that it had been published nowhere! “.
Arrested with his accomplices in June 1963, the young revolutionary took advantage of his release on bail to flee to the French archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon in the hope of reaching Cuba. However, he was captured on the way to Boston after flying to Maine alongside his comrade Mario Bachand.
Extradited to Montreal, Pierre Schneider is serving a three-year prison sentence for his clandestine activities. At the Leclerc establishment, which he compares to Dante’s circles of hell, he “delivers his body” to an influential inmate in exchange for his protection, as he will reveal in his autobiography. boom baby boom (Quebec America, 2002).
Released at the end of 1965, the former FLQ member took advantage of his passage through the prison system to become a judicial reporter. He rolls his bump in the written press, in the Photo Font in particular, before being appointed executive Montreal Journalof which he directed the Arts and entertainment section at the turn of the 2000s.
Established in the Laurentians, the retiree has become an active member of social networks, where he has regularly commented on the progression of his illness. Pierre Schneider said he was the direct source of inspiration for the character of “Bozo les culottes”, this FLQ bomber immortalized by singer Raymond Lévesque in 1966.
On March 28, Pierre Schneider announced his imminent death in a video on Facebook, which caused confusion about the time of his death. His departure was finally confirmed on Sunday by the family of the deceased.