'Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow': The 1966 Bombing on Parliament Hill and Lone-Actor Terrorism in Canada

Dr Steve Hewitt (Birmingham) - When a lone-actor terrorist, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, attacked Parliament Hill in Ottawa in October 2014, there was little recognition that his was not the first such attack at the heart of Canadian democracy. In May 1966, Paul Joseph Chartier took a homemade bomb into the public gallery of the House of Commons intending to use it to kill Members of Parliament. Instead, he blew himself up in a washroom outside the public gallery.

This research, part of a larger book project examining the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism in Canada, will examine Chartier's background and motivation and the wider history of lone-actor terrorism in Canada. Ultimately, the talk will argue for the importance of historical research as a tool for understanding and contextualizing terrorism in order to encourage resiliency and limit overreaction in the face of attacks in the present.

Steve Hewitt is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Birmingham. He has written extensively on security and intelligence, both in the past and present, and is the author of four books, including Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer and Spying 101: The RCMP's Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917-1997. He is also a past president of the British Association for Canadian Studies.