Foreigners think of Canada as a nation untouched by terrorism, and it’s true that we’ve been (mostly) spared the sorts of atrocities experienced in New York City, London and Bali, to name three relatively recent targets.
Yet even many Canadians don’t give much thought to the domestic terrorism we’ve been subjected to in the not so distant past:
The FLQ’s campaign of mayhem occurred in a previous generation; millions of us probably haven’t even heard of the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade, or just barely recall the Squamish Five.
We also assure ourselves that “terrorism never accomplishes anything anyway,” ignoring the obvious:
Quebec now gets trillions of dollars in glorified protection money from the ROC (the “rest of Canada”) lest those violent separatists get restless again.
The Brigade’s fire-bombing of “XXX” video stores ushered in tighter Canadian laws against porn, while the Litton Systems bombing cost them their contract to produce cruise missile guidance systems for the U.S. military.
