Murray-Hill riot
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The Murray-Hill riot, also known as Montreal's night of terror, was the culmination of 16 hours of unrest in
Background
Police were motivated to strike because of difficult working conditions caused by disarming
The police wanted an annual salary for a constable to go from $7,300 to $9,200 and charged that policing in Montreal was more dangerous than in Toronto, with two officers being killed in the line of duty in 1968, and that the frequent rioting between French-Canadians and English-Canadians in Montreal in 1968 and 1969 added to the danger.[4] Between February 1968 and April 1969, there were 41 gangland murders in Montreal, which was more than in the previous 15 years combined, as a younger generation of French-Canadian criminals sought to challenge the power of the Mafia, which had traditionally dominated the Montreal underworld.[5]
To many, the monopoly held by the Murray-Hill company was symptomatic of Drapeau's rule, in which those with power and influence, but not others, such as the working-class taxi drivers, obtained favours from the city.[3] The Murray-Hill company's owners were English-Canadians, but most of the taxi drivers were French-Canadians, which added to the tension.[6] The taxi drivers had formed the Mouvement de Libération du Taxi (MLT) in September 1968 to protest their rage at the lucrative airport taxi route being monopolised by one corporation at their expense.[7] The Mouvement de Libération du Taxi was loosely linked to the FLQ, which argued that the French-Canadian working class of Montreal was being exploited by English-Canadian capitalists, which justified a violent revolution to make Quebec into an independent socialist nation.[8]
Civil unrest leading to the police strike
Overall, there were 75 murders in Montreal in 1968, which gave the city the reputation as the "murder capital of Canada."
March 1969 saw the outbreak of violent demonstrations by French-Canadians, who demanded for McGill University, a traditional bastion of Montreal's English-speaking elite, to be transformed into a French-language university. That led to counterdemonstrations by English-Canadians to keep McGill an English-language university.
In the first week of October 1969, the arbitration committee appointed by the city ruled that the police would receive a pay increase of $1,180, which led to the police going on an illegal wildcat strike.[4] Because of the financial investment in Expo 67 and the simultaneous bidding to host the 1976 Summer Olympics, the city of Montreal was already heavily in debt, which left little money for pay increases for the police.[14]
Riot
On the morning of 7 October 1969, all 17 police stations across Montreal were deserted as the policemen gathered at the Paul Sauvé Arena for what was called a "day of study."[15] The firefighters also joined in the wildcat strike.[15] The provincial government posted 400 officers from the Sûreté du Québec to Montreal in the morning, and Quebec Premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand called an emergency session of the National Assembly to pass a back-to-work law.[15] By the end of the day, the government had been forced to send another 400 Sûreté du Québec officers to Montreal to impose order.[15]
As the police were on strike, a crowd of disgruntled taxi drivers belonging to the MLT appeared outside of the City Hall at about 6 p.m. supported the police strike, and carried banners denouncing Drapeau as being corrupt.[3][15] After the rally, the taxi drivers formed a convoy, which was escorted by the Popeyes Motorcycle Club, the most violent of Montreal's many outlaw biker clubs.[10] Joining the convoy were journalists and members of the FLQ carrying banners demanding independence for Quebec.[10] On the street, the convoy encountered a Murray-Hill limousine, which was forced to stop.[10] The passengers and the driver were allowed to leave, and the car was then smashed to pieces by the taxi drivers and the Popeyes.[10]
The taxi drivers, the Popeyes, and the FLQ congregated around the Murray-Hill garage in
Crowds began to smash windows and loot stores.[3] In particular, the crowds targeted a high-end restaurant owned by Drapeau, Le Vaisseau d'Or, which was thoroughly trashed and looted.[3] Also targeted were pick-up points owned by the Murray-Hill company, McGill University, and the Montreal offices of IBM.[3] Gangs of masked men, armed with guns, began systematically robbing the banks, but most bankers had made certain the day before that there was only a minimal amount of cash on hand and so limited their losses.[15] One branch of the Banque d'Épargne that failed to do so lost $28,845, as three masked men smashed their way in.[15]
The Montreal Gazette reported on 8 October 1969:
"Fires, explosions, assaults and a full-pitched gun-battle kept Montrealers huddled indoors as the reign of terror brought the city to the edge of chaos and resulted in the call for the Army help..... Hundreds of looters swept through downtown Montreal last night as the city suffered one of the worst outbreaks of lawlessness in its history. Hotels, banks, stores and restaurants around the Ste-Catherine-Peel Street axis had their windows smashed by rock-tossing youths. Thousands of spectators looked on as looters casually picked goods out of store-front windows."[20]
Many of the young French-Canadians who looted the stores claimed to be striking against the economic domination of Montreal's English-Canadian minority and chanted separatist slogans.[6] Despite that claim, the looters did not distinguish between stores owned by French-Canadians and those of English-Canadians. By the end of the day, over $500,000 in goods had been looted from various stores, and 100 people had been arrested.[18]
Government response
As the riot was ongoing, the
Aftermath
When order was restored, 108 people had been arrested. The inability of the City of Montreal to manage its police force was a driving factor behind the creation of the Montreal Urban Community in 1970.[21] As Montreal could not afford a pay increase for the police, the provincial government resolved the issue by creating a new police force for the entire Island of Montreal, the SPCUM, which ensured that the wealthy suburbs of Montreal would participate to the costs of policing the city.[22] The SPCUM became the SPVM in 2002, following the 2000 municipal mergers. Murray-Hill also lost its monopoly at Dorval Airport.
The incident radicalized Marc Carbonneau and Jacques Lanctôt, who then took part in the October Crisis.[23]
See also
- 1981 Milwaukee police strike
- 1971 NYPD Work Stoppage
References
- ^ Knapp, David (October 8, 1969). "1969: Montreal's 'Night of Terror'". CBC News.
- ^ Dougherty, Kevin (October 7, 1999). "1969 police strike left city in chaos". The Montreal Gazette.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Auf der Maur 1972, p. 15.
- ^ a b c d e Sancton 1985, p. 108.
- ^ a b c d e Petersen 1970, p. 243.
- ^ a b c d Morton 1999, p. 256.
- ^ Palmer 2009, pp. 236 & 351.
- ^ Palmer 2009, p. 236.
- ^ Palmer 2009, p. 351.
- ^ a b c d e Jenish 2018, p. 171.
- ^ a b c Jenish 2018, p. 164.
- ^ Jenish 2018, p. 174.
- ^ Jenish 2018, p. 175.
- ^ Sancton 1985, p. 111.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Jenish 2018, p. 170.
- ^ Palmer 2009, pp. 236–237.
- ^ Jenish 2018, pp. 171–172.
- ^ a b c d e Jenish 2018, p. 172.
- ^ Dougherty, Kevin (October 7, 1999). "1969 police strike left city in chaos". The Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
- ^ "History Through Our Eyes: Oct. 8, 1969, police strike, chaos follows". The Montreal Gazette. 8 October 2019. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
- ^ Dougherty, Kevin (October 7, 1999). "1969 police strike left city in chaos". The Montreal Gazette.
- ^ Lightbody 2005, p. 424.
- JSTOR 23609791.
Sources
- Auf der Maur, Nick (1972). Quebec: A Chronicle: 1968–1972. Toronto: James Lorimer.
- Lightbody, James (2005). City Politics, Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Jenish, D'Arcy (2018). The Making of the October Crisis. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.
- Morton, Desmond (1999). A Military History of Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
- Palmer, Bryan (2009). Canada's 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Petersen, Virgil (1970). "Crime". Encyclopedia Britannia Yearbook 1970. University of Chicago Press. pp. 241–245.
- Sancton, Andrew (1985). Governing the Island of Montreal: Language Differences and Metropolitan Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
External links
- "Montreal's 'night of terror'" (Windows Media; HTML). CBC Digital Archives. Retrieved 2008-03-20.