Last Stop, Paris: The Assassination of Mario Bachand and the Death of the FLQ

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Michael McLoughlin, 1998 - True Crime - 320 pages

On March 29, 1971, a Canadian was found brutally murdered in a  small Paris apartment. The victim, François Mario Bachand, was a radical member of the separatist Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ), the terrorist group that had been causing havoc in Canada, planting bombs and carrying out kidnappings. Bachand served a jail term in the early 1960s, and after his release he was considered a loose cannon, heartily despised by many associates. It was widely believed that the FLQ had killed one of its own.

Twenty years after Bachand died in Paris, author Michael McLoughlin came across a single document in the National Archives of Canada that shed an eerie new light on the circumstances of Bachand's death. The murder, McLoughlin discovered, was not so simple after all. And the deeper he dug, the more complicated - and disturbing - the case became.

Last Stop, Paris analyzes the shocking circumstances surrounding Bachand's murder. McLoughlin carefully reconstructs the secret meeting that determined Bachand's fate and the events that led to his assassination on the March day in Paris. It also follows the movements of  the FLQ and the RCMP Security Service, and reveals the close international connections that tied revolutionary groups of the later 1960s and 1970s - from Cuba to Europe to the Middle East - to underground agents of the CIA, MI5, and French intelligence.

A revealing look at the international web of terrorism and government intelligence, Last Stop, Paris is an explosive examination of the secrets, betrayals and violence that characterized the most tumultuous period in Canada's recent history.

 

Contents

Under a Paris Sky
1
Virtue Requires Terror
7
The Statue of Liberty
43
Here We Bend Iron
57
The Long Fall
85
The Gathering Storm
107
Just Watch Me
129
The Foreign Delegation
159
Reason Over Passion
187
Unfinished Business
238
Bibliography
297
Copyright

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About the author (1998)

Michael McLoughlin has devoted five years to investigating Bachand's murder. His inquiries have taken him across Canada, interviewing FLQ members, government officials, and members of the RCMP Security Service. In Paris, he spoke with high-level members of the French security service, DST, and the French intelligence service, SDECE (now DGSE). He also spoke with officers of the Brigade criminelle de Paris who investigated the murder of Bachand, and senior officials at 36, Quai des Orfèvres.

McLoughlin has been a story consultant for CBC Radio's "As It Happens," and for CBC TV's "Fifth Estate" for its segments on security and intelligence issues. 

After two years of inquiry, he uncovered the secret Health Canada report that detailed the extent of arsenic pollution in Yellowknife, N.W.T. and it's health effects. He brought the report to "As It Happens", which led to the 1975 story which  forced to government to undertake a further health and environmental study. Related research continues to this day, as authorities and Yellowknife residents face the problem of how to deal with the presence of some 230, 000 tons of arsenic beneath the surface of what was Giant Gold Mine. 

In 1991, he became aware that Leslie "Jim" Bennett, a RCMP Security Service officer, a civilian who was head of the Soviet Desk, who in 1972 had been accused by the RCMP of being a KGB "mole," was entirely innocent, and that the RCMP had covered up the identity of the real Soviet spy in the Service. McLoughlin presented his findings to CBC Fifth Estate, which led to the 1993 program on the affair that identified the mole. The government was compelled to exonerate Bennett, pay compensation and restore his reputation.

McLoughlin discovered the story in Last Stop, Paris while acting as a researcher for a book on Canadian intelligence services.

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