ABSTRACT
In October 2014, just days apart, two acts of terrorism were perpetrated in Canada. 1 In each case, the perpetrators were described as ‘radicalised’ individuals influenced by extremist Islamic ideology but without formal links to known terrorists or terrorist groups. Within a broader global terrorism context dominated by discourse about Islamic State (IS) and concerns about the training that ‘home-grown’ radicals or extremists might receive by participating in conflicts overseas, the attacks highlighted once more the difficulty in pre-empting individually perpetrated attacks even when they are relatively crude and raised the spectre of the threat posed by individuals returning home from overseas conflict zones better trained and better equipped to carry out acts of violence. Of course, this was reinforced by the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ attack in Paris in January 2015. In order to lend perspective to these concerns, in this chapter I want to explore the longer-term trends in individually perpetrated acts of terrorism in the United States and Canada.
