October’s bright blue weather: A letter to Lynne

Review article: October's bright blue weather: a letter to Lynne DENNIS DUFFY Dearest Lynne, When I told you I was trying to write this piece, you very sensibly questioned my qualifications for the task. Here I am, Canadian by choice rather than birth, living in Toronto and teaching English there, unable to speak French except for a few halting remarks and reading it slowly. So what am I doing reviewing a number of books on the October Crisis and, through them, attempting to comment upon those events? What, indeed. Well, I live here. Every Canadian went through something during those weeks and minutes. In principle, though thank God not in fact, my civil liberties were as curtailed by the imposition of the War Measures Act as anyone else's, and I, along with every English-speaking Canadian, will in the years ahead find myself called upon to support or dissent from whatever action our Government may take in defining and/or adjusting the nature of Quebec's participation in Confederation. I shall have to live with the prospect that Quebec may, if it wishes, depart from Confederation , which means that the country I shall be living in will be very different than the one I signed up for. Finally, all of us have to consider how we feel now about that month we spent in the Twentieth Century, an era of violence and vertigo from which we Canadians - or some of us - considered ourselves blissfully exempt. Since I suffer from Writer's Ailment , I'm going to do this in print. However, I can't go all the way in print. I can't maintain some image of knowledgeability and objectivity about processes I still feel shaky over. I have to write this as a letter to you, because I need the sense of Journal of Canadian Studies someone out there who won't let me fake it and who can accept the absence of boundaries between the personal and the public, the objective and the inner, the evaluative and the emotive. My one consolation, as I've told you, is that whatever I say that is simply too mad, naive or ill-informed will bring upon me sure and certain correction. But let the Carswell Plea serve as my justification for writing. As Sen. Hruska declared in supporting the qualifications of that jurist for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, mediocrities ought to be represented too. When I recall that period of fear and puzzlement, I become liberated from my fear of displaying my lack of expertise. For consider some of the things that happened to the knowledgeable, the skilled, the experienced , during October. Consider some of the things we saw which, had they appeared on a circus poster, we would have dismissed with a chuckle: - The Prime Minister of Canada, the man who got the State out of the Nation's bedrooms, proclaims an act which results in the detention of a noted Quebec entertainer for what appears to be no stronger reason than that she shared a bedroom with a left-wing publisher. Consider the possibilities. - The Premier of Quebec, a participant in the political life of his province during a time when terrorist bombers have evidenced few before-the-fact scruples in- placing charges in spots where the innocent would be dismembered, finds himself unable to believe that kids from his neck of the woods would be capable of carrying out the murder of a political associate. - The Montreal police show up at the Greek Consulate in their response to Mrs. Cross' call about the kidnapping of her husband. Later, they 51 will lose their way in answering a similar call from the house of Pierre Laporte. - The editor of Le Devoir, during a political hurricane, speculates upon the possibilities, should the position of the Quebec government further deteriorate, of strengthening that administration with the addition of new political elements to the cabinet, a step the Premier later takes in filling the portfolio once held by M. Laporte. The experienced politicians of Montreal and Ottawa interpret this suggestion of a Coalition government , a step often taken by parliamentary regimes in time of crisis...