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Soon after, as the story was pieced together last week, Schoeters was drawn to the cause of French Canadian separatism. Most of the separatists he met disagreed with his thesis that revolutions always bring solutions. But he did find a few like-minded souls-an unemployed newspaperman, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. messenger, the son of a prominent Quebec attorney, a draftsman and a proofreader. Early this year several of them founded the FLQ and decided that something dramatic was necessary to win Quebec's masses to the separatist cause.
Death in a Garbage Can. One of the first dramatic acts was to set fire to the women's washroom in the Mount Royal railroad station outside Montreal last February. "The revolution has started," said one of the arsonists as he watched the flames. They then sent a communique to Montreal newspapers declaring their mission: "To completely destroy, by systematic sabotage, all the symbols of colonial institutions." From arson the band moved to bombing-the creation of public impact by dynamite. FLQ targets were such "colonial" institutions as armories, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and army buildings. On April 20 an army recruiting center nightwatchman was killed when he attempted to remove a bomb planted in a garbage can outside the building. Four weeks later a Canadian army bomb expert was maimed when a bomb in a mailbox exploded in his face.
Last week Schoeters and his associates were being held for questioning, and a coroner's inquest of the watchman's death was scheduled to reopen. If Quebec's "liberators" are found criminally negligent, at least six "suicide commandos" will probably stand trial for murder.