I read..err..thumbed through Boum Baby Boom (published 2000, in French) by former FLQ bomber-turned Journal de Montreal editor, Pierre Schneider, who was among those responsible for, among other things, the terrorist bomb in a mailbox at Landsdowne and Westmount Avenue that maimed Walter Leja.
So what transformed this academically gifted kid from Outremont into a fanatical terrorist?
Pierre's mother was an alcoholic who suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized at the St. Jean de Dieu (now Louis Hippolite Lafontaine) Hospital.
Pierre's ever-present maternal grandpa, Octave Laberge influenced young Pierre. Octave, a bureaucrat in the provincial civil service, was a practicing Catholic and big fan of Lionel Groulx. Pierre – whose gripes about really being named Peter – admired his grandpa Octave, who quizzed him often on the history of Quebec.
Pierre’s father Arnold understood French but only spoke English. For an unspecified reason, Pierre strongly disapproves of his father.
Arnold quit jazz music for his family, Arnold agreed to his wife’s demand stop seeing his sister. Arnold allowed his wife to be treated by quacks even though he disapproved of this route she had chosen. Pierre still speaks badly of Arnold.
And yet Arnold seems to have made great sacrifices to raise his children, something the childless, alcoholic, separatist, terrorist Pierre Schneider might not appreciate.
My father’s name was Arnold. He’d lived his whole life in Montreal without learning a word of French. He was the grandson of German immigrants, and specialized in the graphic design of coins. He’d gone to school with Irish Catholics at St. Patrick’s English school, and hadn’t learned a word of his ancestors, which I know little about. My paternal grandfather came from Germany and worked at the Canadian mint. (p. 23).
Father was a musician, he quit music under pressure from mom, who couldn’t tolerate his jazz music, which was seen in a dim light at the time... Forced to choose between his family and his art, he gave up and resigned himself to his growing family. He was an artisan in a print shop. I remember him at six a m drinking coffee and smoking, sometimes vomiting from anxiety before waiting for the bus to work.
I’d see him and realize I was ashamed of this man who made me feel so sorry for him with his old coat. I was ashamed because he couldn’t speak the language of my friends, because he had no car, no money, no cottage. Much later I realize we were living at the poverty line and had it not been for grandpa’s house we’d have been very poor, it’s sad enough to make you cry and makes me sick to the highest degree. Very young, I swore that I’d never become like him and allow myself to be exploited.
Pierre and his father Arnold would clean up the house together on weekends because mom was too sick to do it. His father took him to see his mom after she had been given electro-shock therapy. Pierre rode on the bus with his father who was devastated by the experience. Pierre's aunts gossiped that Arnold should not have brought his son Pierre to see his mom in that state.
During all those schools years in Outremont I was always aware of my ethnic origins and my German family name, which made me feel different. I admit that I felt shame for my family name which reminded me too much of my German descent, even more becuase World War II, where Hitler committed paroxysms of horror, had just finished.
How I wished to be called Tremblay or Gagnon like everybody or almost everybody in this close knit province. I even dreamt about adopting my grandparent’s name, Laberge, but changing names wasn’t as common at that time, a time when even mismatched couples had all the trouble in the world divorcing.
My differences seemed even greater because I grew up in a bourgeois neighbourhood where many rich people lived, doctors, lawyers, judges, politicians, who lived in splendid homes and mansions.
The young Pierre Scheider was working at Radio Canada, participating in the public burning of Canadian flags and looking for dynamite from construction sites to commit separatist terrorist attacks.
One day my buddy Jean-Denis had a brainstorm, which would catch the public’s attention. He announced that the official creation of the TRPQ (Revolutionary Tribute of the Quebecois People)...to judge and condemn "traitors of the nation." (p.76)
And here's what he thinks about Westmounters.
After the attack of military symbols of their domination we would now show them our determination in exploding dynamite two steps from their little castles, in the middle of this area that the residents enriched themselves at the expense of the Quebecois, who they exploited odiously as cheap labour and natural resources.
Of all the FLQ operations of that period, I think it’s the famous Westmount operation that marked the decisive moment in the popular perception of our action. It’s the one that had the most impact but also that which was the most poorly perceived, that which made us look like dangerous lunatics ready to sacrifice innocents, women and children to triumph in our cause.
Schneider then spent some time in jail and then started hanging around the apartment of Paul Aubut, a recently-divorced federalist lawyer. The eye-opening libertine parties that went on there often involved people from cops to hookers.
He was hired at Allo Police where he worked as a reported on the criminal underbelly for several years until lawyer owner Raymond Daoust died.
Throughout this he was an alcoholic and attended a lot of AA. He was married between 72 and 76 and has a ton of other heterosexual sexual activities on the go (even tho he looks awfully dainty in his photos).
Frank Cotroni once warned him over cognac not to write about the personal lives of gangsters. Dede Desjardins' henchmen were about to kill him for making a drunken insult, but resist at the last moment.
Schneider got two investors on board to set up a paper called Special Police. It gets 40,000 readers, but overhead costs are high. The Gazette noted that Schneider was a former FLQ terrorist and Schneider’s investors pull out, claiming that they can’t risk having business links to a convicted terrorist. Special Police goes bankrupt.
Schneider gets some work here and there. He impregnates his young girlfriend and is thrilled, but she aborts and he’s so devastated that he’s suicidal and gets brought in for treatment. He’s never suicidal again.
In 1985 he worked for the PQ in St. Henri but his candidate lost. He penned a book and just as it was about to run the editor died. He refused to allow a new editor to publish it and realizes that he acted irrationally.
Schneider then got work at the Journal de Montreal writing news. He grumbles about the loss of the 1995 referendum which he blames on cheats. He has a stroke, recovers, quits smoking, becomes Entertainment editor and is happy. He concludes that his only way to escape his demons is through writing.
Westmount's Nathalie Fay has been doing her utmost to uphold that ol' Westmount tradition of trying to make it as a Hollywood starlet. Fay, now in her 26th year, had a role in Will Farrell's Old School in which she played Mindy, whose line was "Hi Mitch!" Mitch was played by Luke Wilson. Fay grew up around Victoria and Sherbrooke, I believe with one franco parent and one less so. She has been in Los Angeles for five years. She's in town for Christmas.
