When Canada became a dictatorship: 50 years after Quebec’s ‘October Crisis’

October marks 50 years since Canada’s “October Crisis” of 1970, during which Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (father of the current PM) invoked the War Measures Act, suspended civil and democratic rights across Canada and sent thousands of troops to occupy Quebec. The government’s real purpose for this unprecedented act during peacetime was to suppress the struggle for national self-determination in Quebec, and to intimidate the working-class and democratic forces in Quebec and across Canada.