Between 1963 and 1970, the Front de libération du Québec, or FLQ, waged a campaign of bombings, robberies, and kidnappings aimed at achieving Quebec’s independence from Canada. Their radical actions reached a deadly climax during the October Crisis of 1970, when two British and Quebec officials were abducted within days of each other. British diplomat James Cross was held hostage for more than two months and eventually released, but Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte was found murdered, strangled in the trunk of a car. The violence forced Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to invoke the War Measures Act, granting sweeping police powers and marking one of the darkest and most politically charged chapters in modern Canadian history.