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We are frozen with fear!

The body of Quebec’s Minister of Labour has just been found in a car in the St. Hubert Airport parking lot near Montreal. He has been strangled with the chain of the crucifix hanging around his neck.

There is a collective gasp of horror as the radio is turned up in the crowded dining room of the Caswell Motor Hotel in Sudbury.

It’s October 17, 1970, tanks and armed soldiers patrol the streets of Montreal. Troops guard the homes of diplomats and MPs in Ottawa as the FLQ terrorizes the Country.

As a broadcaster very vocal in my criticism of the FLQ and the separatist movement and heard widely throughout Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec I have received several death threats and on one occasion electrical power to our home is mysteriously cut for several hours. But Prime Minister Trudeau has just declared the War Measures Act and seems to have the situation under control so when Kitty’s mother offers to baby-sit for a couple days we set out to attend a friend’s funeral in Sudbury with admittedly more than a little trepidation.

Big mistake.

As we hurriedly race back to our hotel room and throw clothes into suitcases the phone rings. It is Jean Gobiel my next-door neighbour and friend back on the Carmen Road about as mile south of Wakefield.

Jean is the brother of Charlotte Gobeil, a well-known CBC-TV broadcaster and sometimes girlfriend of Prime Minister Trudeau. Charlotte is a staunch federalist. Jean is an avowed separatist and makes no bones about it. As you can imagine he and I have had many a debate, sometime heated over that!

“Lowell, Jean Gobiel here.” There is a slight pause on the phone. “Listen you had better get your children out of that house. There are some crazy people saying some crazy things!” I stop breathing. “What crazy people? Where are they? What do you mean?” My heart pounds. Kitty’s face is chalk white. “Crazy people is all,” he replies. “I have to go.”

We immediately phone home. Kitty’s mother answers the first ring. “Ella,” I say with as much calm as I can muster, “get the girls out of that house right now. Get them into your car right now and drive to your place in Ottawa. Don’t worry about clothes. Don’t worry about anything. Just get them to hell out of there right now. We’ll be home as soon as we can.”

As it turns out Ella knew something was wrong when Jean phoned her just a few minutes earlier to get our phone number in Sudbury. She already has six-year-old Lianne and eight year old Danielle dressed and ready to go. All she says is. “Don’t worry, they’ll be safe.”

She was right. Thank heavens!

I have no idea if my daughters were in any danger. I can only assume that Jean was tipped off that someone was suggesting the Green family might be easy targets for kidnapping or worse.

Prior to October 17, Jean and I had developed a fairly close relationship. But after that date, he became distant and dropped out of our lives.

What became of him I do not know.

Both my little girls are middle-aged women today, one of them a mother herself and neither of them have anything but vague memories of that hurried flight from their home.

To this day, when I think about it, that phone call still sends shivers down my spine but the nightmares about it, which occasionally plagued me, stopped the minute I started writing this book.