Canada's October Crisis escalates when Quebec Vice Premier Pierre Laporte is kidnapped by members of the Front de libération du Québec.

The October Crisis was a chain of political events in Canada that started in October 1970 when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross from his Montreal residence. These events saw Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoking the War Measures Act for the first time in Canadian history during peacetime.

Pierre Laporte was a Canadian lawyer, journalist and politician. He was deputy premier of the province of Quebec when he was kidnapped and murdered by members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) during the October Crisis.

The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) was a Quebec separatist terrorist group which aimed to establish an independent and socialist Quebec. Founded sometime in the early 1960s, the FLQ conducted a number of attacks between 1963 and 1970, which totaled over 160 violent incidents and killed eight people and injured many more. These attacks culminated with the Montreal Stock Exchange bombing in 1969 and the October Crisis in 1970, the latter beginning with the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross. In the subsequent negotiations, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ. Public outcry and a federal crackdown subsequently ended the crisis and resulted in a drastic loss of support for the FLQ, with a small number of FLQ members being granted refuge in Cuba.