Pierre Vallières

Who was Pierre Vallières?

Pierre Vallières, was a Québécois journalist, and writer. He was considered an intellectual leader of the Front de libération du Québec.

Vallières was born in the east end of Montreal, Quebec, but grew up in Ville Jacques-Cartier, on the south-shore of Montreal, an area considered one of the most disadvantaged of the metropolitan region. He became a left-wing political activist at a young age and conducted a hunger strike at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to protest what he considered to be Quebec's plight. While in New York, he was held in the Manhattan House of Detention for Men before being extradited to Canada, where 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 of which was Nègres blancs d'Amérique, translated into 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.

In 1970, during the October Crisis, the FLQ kidnapped and murdered the Quebec Vice-Premier, Pierre Laporte. The following year, Vallières renounced violence as a means to achieve Quebec independence and on 4 October 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.