Black October
Black October looks back at Pierre Elliot Trudeau during the 1970 October Crisis. In response to the intensified violent action of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) and the group’s kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross and murder of Quebec Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte, Prime Minister Trudeau enacted the War Measures Act, which gave the government powers of arrest and detention without trial and provisionally suspended civil liberties.
This series imagines a broad historical and social context for Trudeau’s authorization of the War Measures Act. In making his decision on October 16, the Prime Minister was sustained by his cabinet ~ and surrounded by Machiavelli, St. Ignatius Loyola, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Réne Lévesque, Barbara Streisand and the Goddess Fortuna.
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