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Feb 15 1982 - The world's largest offshore oil-drilling rig goes down in Hibernia, Grand Banks, Newfoundland. None of the 84 members of the crew survived.

April 24th 1971 - Tommy Douglas steps aside as leader of the New Democratic Party.

Front de liberation du Quebec
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The first two segments of this video provide a litany of some of the numerous bombings and robberies enacted by the Front beginning in the early Sixties, including the explosive maiming of Walter Leja, the funeral of Wilfred O'Neill, and the successful targeting of the Montreal Stock Exchange.

In the fall of 1970 the FLQ enacted two political kidnappings that quickly brought an end to its years of activity; British diplomat James Cross was taken from his Montreal home in early October, and Quebec politician Pierre Laporte less than a week after, following the broadcasting of the manifesto of the FLQ, which is also shown here.

By October 13th the federal government was deploying troops in Montreal and Ottawa and getting ready to invoke the War Measures Act; the forth segment in this video gives responses on the streets of Montreal to the unfolding political drama.

By October 17th the federal government had coordinated its emergency powers with the Quebec and Montreal authorities to flush out and jail the FLQ membership - a fifth and final segment provides some footage of those operations.

December 5th 1970. Two days after being released by the FLQ, British diplomat James Cross talks with the media for a few minutes about his captivity. Cross was kidnapped October 5th.

Two news segments from April and September 1981; the first concerns a coalition attempt by all the provincial leaders except Bill Davis and Richard Hatfield (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland), to take control of the constitutional renewal process from the federal government. Following his unexpected but successful return to power in early 1980, and his defeat of Rene Levesque and his Parti Quebecois government referendum on the question of Quebec's sovereignty and association with the rest of Canada, Pierre Trudeau once again, as he had many times over the years as prime minister, attempted work towards an agreement with the rest of the first ministers on patriation; when this latest attempt again came to nothing, Trudeau did something no prime minister before him had considered: he made a declaration to bring home the BNA Act unilaterally, without provincial consent - he would include an amending formula and also ground a charter of rights in the fundamental document; and this is what spurred the creation of the Gang of Eight, who variously took Ottawa to court over this position until the case went up to the consideration of the Supreme Court of Canada, which in late September of 1981 judged that though the prime minister was technically within his authority to take such action, to do so would be a contradiction of the tradition of compromise and common grounds found between the prime minister and premiers of Canada since the time of Laurier.

So with all this around them, on November 5th 1981 nine provincial leaders and prime minister Trudeau finally came to agreement, a feat that had eluded first ministers in Canada for more than fifty years, in what was generally considered to be the last effort for a long time to reach a deal on the constitution.

April 15th 1980 - coming to the end of its mandate to govern, Rene Levesque and the Parti Quebecois announce the date and details of their referendum to empower them to negotiate anew the relationship between the nation of Quebec and the rest of Canada. In the House of Commons in Ottawa, prime minister Trudeau declares that even with a win for the Levesque side, it would be a theoretical contradiction for the federal government to accept the legitimacy of such a basis for such negotiations; short of taking extra-legal measures, Quebec can only ever negotiate with the federal government as a province of Canada.

February 1984 - Pierre Trudeau resigns as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. A second news clip from June of the same year shows Trudeau bidding farewell at the party convention that would select John Turner as the new leader.

May 20th 1980 - the Oui side loses the referendum on assigning a mandate to the Quebec government to renegotiate the terms by which it associates with the federal government.

March 16th 1983

Two days of constitutional discussion concerning the broad issue of native rights.

February 1980 - Fabien Roy and the last stand of the Social Credit Party of Canada.

Toward the end of overcoming the increasingly interminable intransigence of provincial governments toward constitutional reform, the Prime Minister announces a plan to carry out the matter unilaterally. (June 1978)

November 1975 - Brian and Mila Mulroney interviewed for Brian's running for the next year's leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to replace Bob Stanfield. Joe Clark would win the mantle, but Mulroney would ouster him in 1983, and become Prime Minister the next year until 1993.