American Deserters Committee

The American Deserters Committee of Montreal, Canada concerns members of American Armed Forces who deserted their posts and went to Canada. The deserters were aided in their efforts by groups such as Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, the Revolutionary Union, The Resistance, American Friends Service Committee, War Resisters League and the Committee for Peace and Freedom.

ADC was formed by a group of politically active deserters in December of 1968, claiming affiliation with a Paris-based group called the Second Front International. ADC members included both deserters and their spouses and girlfriends, and welcomed other expatriate Americans who shared their views. Though ADC retained almost total ideological independence, it received the bulk of its funds from the Montreal Council to Aid War Resisters, which, in turn, received most of its funds from the Canadian Council of Churches.

ADC operated a hostel for newly arrived deserters (sometimes housing up to 20 men at a time), and published a newsletter called ADC Times. By the early summer of 1970, friction within ADC began to emerge over the group's inner circle of founders and colleagues, who had begun calling themselves the "Central Committee." The Committee was seen by many as increasingly autocratic and undemocratic, adopting a radical, Marxist agenda, and discouraging dissent. In addition, it had allied itself with Quebec's separatist Front de Liberation Populaire (FLP), a nonviolent and implicitly Marxist organization, which campaigned for an independent and ideologically progressive Quebec. Though most ADC members were at least sympathetic to the FLP agenda, many feared that allying ADC (which had a few dozen members) with FLP (which had thousands of active supporters) benefitted neither group, while tarnishing the images of both.

These problems were still under debate when, in October of 1970, a more radical group of separatists (using the name of the underground Front de Liberation du Quebec, or FLQ) kidnapped British Trade Commissioner Harold Cross, and issued a series of demands. A week later, a second group, also claiming FLQ affiliation, kidnapped and murdered Quebec Transportation Minister Pierre Laporte. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau responded by imposing de facto martial law in Quebec, with several hundred suspects arrested within hours, in pre-dawn raids. The next morning, a hand-written sign appeared on the door of the ADC offices, reading "CLOSED DURING THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF QUEBEC." ADC's leadership went into hiding, and the original ADC effectively ceased to exist. It reemerged briefly, then formally merged with the Montreal Council in 1971, under the new name of The American Refugee Service.