Simard was a member of the Chénier Cell of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a group dedicated to the creation of an independent Marxist state out of the Canadian province of Quebec.
[1] As a member of the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale political party, he met Paul Rose and the two became involved in revolutionary activities in 1969 when Simard campaigned for the development of the French language in McGill University, one of Montreal's English-language universities.
During what became known as the October Crisis, on October 5, 1970, members of the FLQ's Liberation Cell kidnapped the British Trade Commissioner James Cross from his Montreal home as part of a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government and to establish a Marxist Quebec state independent of Canada.
Believing many others would follow in an uprising, their goal was to create an independent state based on the ideals of Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Simard wrote a book published in 1982 about the October Crisis titled Pour en finir avec octobre.