Pierre Vallières (February 22 1938 – December 23 1998), was a founding member and intellectual leader of
the terrorist group, the Front de libération du Québec and a journalist and writer of militantly polemical essays and books in support of the Quebec sovereignty movement.
Born in 1938 in the east end of Montreal, he became a left-wing political activist at a young age and conducted a hunger strike at the UN headquarters in New York City to protest what he considered to be Quebec's plight. While there, he was arrested and convicted of manslaughter but later acquitted in a second trial in 1970. During his four years' imprisonment in New York, he wrote a number of works, the most famous (or perhaps notorious) of which was Nègres blancs d'Amérique, translated to English as White Niggers of America. This book compared the situation of French-Canadians in Quebec to that of African-Americans at the height of the latter's civil rights struggles. He also called for armed struggle.
During the October Crisis Vallières' terroist group kidnapped and murdered the Quebec Vice-Premier, Pierre Laporte. Arrested, he then renounced violence as a means to achieve Quebec independence and on October 4, 1972, under a plea bargain agreement, he received a one-year suspended sentence on three charges of counselling kidnapping for political purposes. He then resumed his career as a journalist, writer, and publisher.
While Vallières denounced Canada at every opportunity, the fifth estate, a CBC television investigative report, uncovered that he had been receiving in excess of $100,000 a year from the Government of Canada through its "Book Publishing Industry Development Program." In an interview with the CBC, Vallières indicated that he believed it was acceptable to use money from Canadian taxpayers to publish works that advocated the breakup of the country.
Pierre Vallières was also gay and spent his last few years living in Montreal's gay district.
He died of heart failure.
