One of the founders of the Front de Liberation du Québec (FLQ), Gabriel Hudon, died on Saturday at the age of 80. He was one of 23 “political prisoners” whose release was demanded by the FLQs responsible for the October 1970 kidnappings.
Gabriel Hudon was an industrial designer in 1961 when he joined the Rally for National Independence (RIN), then a new kind of political pressure group. In February 1963, this son of a longshoreman, originally from the working-class district of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, chose the path of political violence. Inspired by the rise of decolonization movements around the world, including the FLN in Algeria, he laid the foundations of the FLQ.
“Gabriel Hudon and Raymond Villeneuve are the two real founders of the FLQ, with the intellectual and philosophical help of Georges Schœters”, explains journalist and historian Louis Fournier in an interview with The duty.
At its height in the late spring of 1963, the Quebec revolutionary movement had about thirty active members. The group multiplies the bombings, making one victim, Wilfred O’Neil, the night watchman of a Canadian Army recruiting center.
This first FLQ was dismantled by the police in June 1963, after a few months of activity. Gabriel Hudon is sentenced to the heaviest sentence, ex aequo with Villeneuve, or twelve years in prison. However, he was released on parole at the end of 1967, in the months following the Universal Exhibition held on Île Sainte-Hélène.
But Hudon returns behind bars in June 1970 for an armed robbery at the credit union of Saint-Calixte, in the Laurentians. In October of the same year, he appeared with his brother Robert among the “political prisoners” whose release was demanded by the FLQ, in exchange for the British diplomat James Richard Cross and the Quebec minister Pierre Laporte.
It was from his cell in the Bordeaux prison that Gabriel Hudon witnessed the disintegration of the “Front” in 1971. He took the opportunity to write an autobiographical account, It was only a beginning, or The short story of the first steps of the FLQ. The book, prefaced by the former head of the RIN, Pierre Bourgault, was published in 1977 by Parti pris editions.
Upon his release from prison, the ex-Felquiste joined Quebecor editions. He also holds the position of production manager of the magazine Taxxi. Gabriel Hudon was again arrested in 1998 in connection with a drug trafficking case. “It was a very difficult moment, explains his widow Hélène Descheneaux to the Homework. Knowing Gabriel, he did not spawn in such circles. He hated that. »
Rather discreet, the former felquiste had retired to Montebello in Outaouais. He had refused to participate in the documentaries made as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the October crisis.