Billy Diamond (May 19, 1949 – September 30, 2010[1]) was the Chief of the Waskaganish, Quebec Cree from 1970 to 1976,[2] the Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees from 1974 to 1984, and a successful businessman who founded Air Creebec.[3][4]
Diamond was elected Chief of the Cree Nation of Waskaganish at the age of 21.[5][2] On November 11, 1975, he signed The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement with the Canadian government.[6] Using funds from the settlement, he created Air Creebec, Cree Construction Company Limited, and Cree Yamaha Motors.[4] For his outstanding achievements, Billy Diamond was appointed as a Chevalier into the Ordre National du Quebec in 1987.[7] On March 19, 1990, Diamond was a guest on 100 Huntley Street.[8]
Diamond died at the age of 61 from a heart attack. In accordance with his instructions, his tombstone reads: "Gone to a meeting - will return."[9]
A journalist once called Chief Billy Diamond the Lee Iacocca of the North. Indeed, it is hard to visit Northern Québec without being touched by the work of this Cree business and political leader. You can fly in on Air Creebec, the airline he founded; stay in a home built by the Cree Construction Company Limited, which he started; or drop by Cree Yamaha Motors to test-drive a boat. He was born in 1949, in the bush just outside the Waskaganish First Nation in Québec that he now heads.
I became chief of our Cree community when I was 21. ... Four years later I became the first Grand Chief of the Cree Grand Council. I used this position to help my people develop. We modernized the villages, built housing and schools and encouraged health and economic development. I was very successful in this position. But like all successes, it had its drawbacks, especially in my personal life.
Billy Diamond, chief of Waskaganish (then Rupert House), had never met the chiefs from the other villages. His only network outside his village was made up of young Cree from the other James Bay communities with whom he had attended residential and secondary school in Ontario. They were bright young men like himself and when they finally learned of the giant hydroelectric project that would destroy their traditional hunting and trapping lands they knew that they had to do something. However, their isolation left them unable to gather and to discuss possible solutions.
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