The Amateur Revolutionaries: A Reassessment of the FLQ

Although Canada has experienced a wide variety of forms of political terrorism, only the FLQ's attack on federalism has earned a lasting place in Canadian historical memory, a place achieved without attaining its goal of an independent Quebec. Using new sources, this article explains this conundrum by reassessing the effectiveness of the FLQ's campaign. It will demonstrate that the very thing that constituted the FLQ's only success - its ability to project an illusion of strength sufficient to convince the federal government that a popular insurrection was developing in Quebec - masked its singular failure: organizational weakness and poor strategic judgment. These prevented the FLQ from achieving its goals and were the hallmarks of its status as 'amateur revolutionaries'.