Murray-Hill riot


The Murray-Hill riot, also known as Montreal's night of terror, was the culmination of 16 hours of unrest in Montreal, Quebec during a strike by the Montreal police on 7 October 1969.

Background

Police were motivated to strike because of difficult working conditions caused by disarming FLQ-planted bombs and patrolling frequent protests. Montreal police also wanted higher pay, commensurate with police earnings in Toronto. In addition, the Mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, who had been elected as a reformer who had promised to "clean up the city" by cracking down on corruption, turned out to be no different from his predecessors, leaving many people disillusioned. Drapeau's focus on grandiose projects such as Expo 67 instead of trying to improve the daily lives of Montrealers had also added to the frustration. The journalist Nick Auf der Maur wrote that by 1969 amongst the working class of Montreal that there was a feeling that Drapeau only cared about building the gleaming, modernistic skyscrapers that dominated the city's skyline while being indifferent to their concerns and needs.
The police wanted an annual salary for a constable to go from $7,300 to 9,200, charging that policing in Montreal was more dangerous than in Toronto with two officers being killed in the line of duty in 1968 while the frequent rioting between French-Canadians and English-Canadians in Montreal in 1968 and 1969 added to the danger. Between February 1968 and April 1969, there were 41 gangland murders in Montreal, which was more than 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. Overall, there were 75 murders in Montreal in 1968, giving the city the reputation as the "murder capital of Canada". The holiday of Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day on 24 June 1968 saw rioting by Quebec separatists, angered by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's city visit – Trudeau's federalism had made him into a bete noir for the separatists – followed by demonstrations by junior college students demanding more placements in the universities and taxi drivers protesting against the monopoly of the Murray-Hill company's taxis and buses at the Dorval Airport.
To many, the monopoly held by the Murray-Hill company was symptomatic of Drapeau's rule, where those with power and influence obtained favors from the city of Montreal that were denied to those without power and influence, such as the working-class taxi drivers. The fact that the owners of the Murray-Hill company were English-Canadians while most of the taxi drivers were French-Canadians added to the venom. The taxi drivers had formed the Mouvement de Libération du Taxi in September 1968 to protest their rage that the lucrative airport taxi route was monopolised by one corporation at their expense. 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, thus justifying a violent revolution to make Quebec into an independent socialist nation. On 30 October 1968, roughly a 1,000 MLT-led-or-inspired protesters blockaded Dorval airport with 250 taxis, burning Murray-Hill company vehicles at opportunity. As a show of support for the taxi drivers, the FLQ had planted a bomb in a Murray-Hill bus and had blown up the home of one of the owners of the Murray-Hill company in Westmount.
In the first six months of 1969, there were 93 bank robberies in Montreal compared to 48 bank robberies in the first six months of 1968. In January and February 1969, the FLQ staged 10 terrorist bombings in Montreal, and between August 1968 and February 1969, there were 75 bombings linked to the FLQ. In February 1969, the FLQ set off bombs at the Montreal Stock Market and at the offices of the Queen's Printer in Montreal. March 1969 saw the outbreak of violent demonstrations as French-Canadians demanded that McGill University, a traditional bastion of Montreal's English-speaking elite, be transformed into a French-language university, leading to counter-demonstrations by English-Canadians to keep McGill an English language university. The leader of the 'Operation McGill Français' protests was ironically a part-time Marxist political science lecturer from Ontario named Stanley Gray who could barely speak French, but who declared that McGill must become a French-language university to end "Anglo-elitism", rallying support from the Quebec separatist movement. Over two weeks of clashes and protests, McGill was reduced to chaos as Quebec separatists stormed into the meetings of the McGill's Senate and administration chanting such slogans as "Révolution! Vive le Québec socialiste! Vive le Québec libre!". The climax of the 'Operation McGill Français' protests occurred on the evening of 28 March 1969 when a 9,000-strong group of Quebec separatists led by Gray tried to storm McGill, and clashed with the police who had been asked by McGill to keep Gray's group off the campus. In September 1969, rioting broke out in the St. Leonard district between Italian-Canadians and French-Canadians with differing opinions of the language issue. Italian immigrant parents had kept their children from school to protest the fact that the language of school instruction was now French instead of English, and on 10 September 1969, a group of 1,500 French-Canadian nationalists attempted to march through St. Leonard's Little Italy district to protest the school boycott. Upon arrival, the marchers were attacked by the Italians, leading to a night of violence on the streets.
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, leading to the police going on an illegal "wildcat" strike. Because of the financial investment in Expo 67 and the simultaneous bidding to host the 1976 Olympics, the city of Montreal was already heavily in debt, leaving little money for pay increases for the police.

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". The firefighters also joined in the "wildcat" strike. The provincial government posted 400 officers from the Sûreté du Québec to Montreal in the morning while the Premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand called an emergency session of the National Assembly to pass a back-to-work act. By the end of the day, the government had been forced to send another 400 Sûreté du Québec officers to Montreal to impose order.
Steven Pinker, the psychologist who was born and grew up in Montreal recalled how the wildcat police strike unfolded:
“As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters.”

As the police were on strike, a crowd of disgruntled taxi drivers belonging to the Mouvement de Libération du Taxi appeared outside of the City Hall at about 6 p.m. supporting the police strike, carrying banners denouncing the Mayor, Jean Drapeau, as being corrupt. After the rally, the taxi drivers formed a convoy that were escorted by the Popeyes Motorcycle Club, the most violent of all Montreal's many outlaw biker clubs. Joining the convoy were journalists and members of the FLQ carrying banners demanding independence for Quebec. On the street, the convoy encountered a Murray-Hill limousine that was forced to stop. The passengers and driver were allowed to leave, and then the car was smashed to pieces by the taxi drivers and the Popeyes.
The taxi drivers, Popeyes and FLQ congregated around the Murray-Hill garage in Griffintown, protesting against Murray-Hill's monopoly at the Dorval International Airport. Attempts by the Sûreté du Québec to stop the procession towards the garage were stopped by striking Montreal policemen. Many of the taxi drivers were armed with Molotov cocktails, intent upon burning down the Murray-Hill company's garage. At the Murray-Hill headquarters, young people began to throw rocks and bricks through the windows, followed by Molotov cocktails. A sniper opened fire, leading one demonstrator to return fire. The Murray-Hill security guards were armed with 12-gauge shotguns, leaving several people seriously injured. One young man drove a Murray-Hill cab and drove it into a row of five limousines and three buses. The eight officers from the Sûreté du Québec were surrounded by the taxi drivers and as a journalist from La Presse wrote: "were shouted down, roughed up, had their caps thrown into the air, and their badges ripped off". Sûreté corporal Robert Dumas was killed by shots fired from the roof by security guards and the owner's son. Buses were overturned and burned. As the situation at the Murray-Hill garage escalated, the bulk of the Sûreté du Québec officers in the city were ordered to go there, leaving the rest of the city exposed.  
Crowds began to smash windows and loot stores. In particular, the crowds targeted a high-end restaurant owned by Drapeau, La Vaisseau d'Or, which was thoroughly trashed and looted. Also targeted were pick-up points owned by the Murray-Hill company, McGill university and the Montreal offices of IBM. Gangs of masked men armed with guns began to systematically rob the banks, through most bankers had made certain the day before that there was only a minimal amount of cash on-hand, limiting their losses. One branch of the Banque d'Épargne that failed do so lost $28,845 dollars as three masked men smashed their way in.  
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."
Many of the young French-Canadians who looted the stores claimed to be striking against the economic domination of Montreal's Anglo minority, leading them to chant separatist slogans. Despite this claim, the looters did not distinguish between stores owned by French-Canadians and English-Canadians. By the end of the day, over half a million dollars worth of goods had been looted from various stores while a hundred people were arrested.

Government response

As the riot was ongoing, the National Assembly of Quebec passed an emergency law forcing the police back to work. Under the "Aid to Civil Power" provision of the British North America Act, the Premier of Quebec, Jean-Jacques Bertrand, requested that the federal government deploy the Army to Montreal. Soldiers were rushed from Valcartier to Montreal to patrol the streets to impose order. The troops sent to Montreal were from the Royal 22nd Regiment, better known as the "Van Doos", Canada's most famous French-Canadian regiment and one of the most decorated in the Army overall. The deployment of the Army shortly after midnight ended the chaos and violence, bringing back order to the city, to the relief of most of its residents.

Aftermath

By the time 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. As Montreal could not afford a pay increase for the police, the provincial government created a new police force for the entire island of Montreal, which ensured that the wealthy suburbs of Montreal would pay for the costs of policing in the city, thus resolving the issue. Murray Hill also lost its monopoly at the Dorval airport.

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