MONTREAL, (Reuters) – A masked gunman shot dead one person inside a Montreal theater where the leader of Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois was celebrating a narrow election win in the Canadian province, police said today.
The shooting eclipsed news that the Parti Quebecois had pipped the ruling Liberals in yesterday’s election and would have to be content with a minority government, effectively ruling out another referendum on breaking away from Canada.
Pauline Marois, newly elected as the first female premier of Quebec, had just told a rally of supporters the province would one day be independent when her bodyguards rushed her from the stage. She later returned to finish her speech.
The incident was shocking for Canada, where murder levels are around a third of those in the United States and political violence is extremely rare.
Montreal police said a man around 50 years old had entered the back of the Metropolis theater just before midnight (0400 GMT Wednesday) with a rifle and a handgun and shot two people. Police said a man in his 40s died on the spot, another was taken to hospital in a critical condition.
RDI television showed pictures of police subduing a large man with a rifle who was dressed in a black cape and a black face mask.
He appeared to shout in French the phrase “The English are waking up.” Marois had promised to strengthen laws designed to ensure the dominance of the French language, which has worried some in the minority English-speaking community.
“We are appalled by this violence,” said Carl Vallee, a spokesman for federal Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
La Presse newspaper cited security sources as saying Montreal police had cordoned off a truck they suspected contained weapons. Other Canadian media outlets said the dead man was a technician at the theater and the badly wounded man was a driver of the PQ campaign bus.
