The Day Montreal Had No Police
On October 7, 1969, an illegal strike led to anarchy in Quebec’s largest city.
Like for many other countries and nations, the ’60s were quite an interesting decade in the history of the province of Quebec. Due to the many sociopolitical changes occurring during that time, the era was named the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille). However, some events that transpired at the time were anything but quiet, or calm, or peaceful. Here is one of those episodes.
In 1960, Jean Drapeau was elected mayor of Montreal for the second time — he would go on to be mayor for 29 years in total. He had great ambitions for the city: he wanted it to become a world-class metropolis. At the time, Toronto had already surpassed Montreal in size and was growing in prestige.
Let Toronto become Milan. Montréal will always be Rome. — Jean Drapeau
Jean Drapeau was described as a visionary and is now mostly remembered for the many projects his administration carried out that had a significant impact on Montreal’s infrastructural development and international reach. He was instrumental in the development of the city’s metro system and the expansion of Dorval airport (now Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport), among other things. He was also responsible for two of the greatest events ever held in the city: the 1967 World Exposition and the 1976 Summer Olympics.
However, the Drapeau administration was far from perfect. A few flaws were still hiding behind the spectacular ideas, namely the problematic relationship between the administration and its police force.
In the meantime, economic, social and political changes across Quebec resulted in a stronger sense of identity and self-reliance for French-Canadians living in the province, now referring to themselves as Quebecois, and a rise of nationalism. Separatist groups started to come forward and call for Quebec’s political independence. But one of these groups, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) [Quebec Liberation Front], a Montreal-based Marxist-Leninist extremist group, used violent terrorist attacks to make their voices heard. Between 1963 and 1970, the group carried out over 200 attacks. Bombs were set off in places such as McGill University, the Montreal Stock Exchange and Jean Drapeau’s residence.
During the ’60s, Montreal was the most violent city in Canada. In 1969 alone, over a hundred protests were held in the city, and would often turn to riots.
It is thus in a tense political climate that Montreal’s police force, which already had a tough relationship with the city’s administration, had to maintain the peace in the metropolis. However, a decision from the city to impose one-man patrol cars and suspend their financial contribution to the pension fund of municipal employees was the final nail in the coffin. On the morning of October 7, 1969, 3,700 police officers went on strike. The strike was illegal since the right for police officers to strike was abolished in 1944. All but 40 non-unionized staff members attended the union meeting and held a “study session” that would go late into the night. As they had their own conflicts with the city, 2,400 firefighters joined the strike in solidarity, though they still provided their services to the population.
Police stations were left empty. In the afternoon, no one was patrolling the streets of Montreal, a city where over 1,2 million people lived in the late ’60s.
The city administration begged the population to remain calm and to go home directly after work. In the absence of mayor Jean Drapeau, the first reaction of Lucien Saulnier, president of the city’s executive council, was to ask the provincial government to call in the army as soon as possible. After many hesitations, the government sent in the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) [the provincial police] in the early evening. This proved to be pretty ineffective since SQ’s police officers usually patrol suburban and rural regions and know very little about Montreal. The army did end up being called in and got to the city in the middle of the night. By that time, it was too late.
Amidst the chaos going on throughout the city, the Mouvement de libération du taxi [Taxi Liberation Movement], a group of taxi drivers and owners of small taxi companies whose leaders were, for some, members of the FLQ, decided to hold a protest against the Murray Hill taxi and bus company, who had a monopoly on departures from the Dorval airport. The protest got out of control and turned to a riot. To prevent someone from setting off an explosion at the company’s garage, which would have resulted in many casualties, a SQ police officer dressed as a civilian, corporal Robert Dumas, intervened and ended up being fatally shot.
At night, Quebec’s National Assembly adopted a special act that forced police officers in Montreal to go back to work. After sixteen hours of absence, on the morning of October 8, 1969, the Montreal police force was back to patrolling the streets of the city alongside soldiers, who stayed for several days. For police officers, the strike was somewhat of a necessary evil since they got the working conditions they were requesting all along. It also led to the creation of the Communauté urbaine de Montréal [Montreal Urban Community, nowadays known as the Greater Montreal], which meant that suburban cities surrounding the metro area also had to pay taxes which would in turn fund the city’s police and fire departments.
Aside from the death of Robert Dumas, the strike also resulted in two people injured, 456 robberies (including 9 bank robberies) and 32 hold-ups, as well as 2 million dollars in damage due to sacking and looting [which, adjusted to inflation, would be over CAN$13 million or US$ 9 million].
While this historical event may not be well-known to most people in Quebec, one may argue that it is part of a culmination to a much more significant and painful chapter in the province’s history: the 1970 October crisis. Indeed, almost exactly one year after the illegal police strike, army intervention was again required in Montreal after members of the FLQ kidnapped two government officials and killed one of them. This was the first and only time the War Measures Act was invoked during peacetime in Canadian history. This invocation was met with a lot of criticism from nationalists and civil libertarians alike. By the ’70s, separatist terrorism in Quebec had pretty much disappeared.
And although this all happened 50 years ago, these events are still fresh in Quebec’s collective memory. They serve as a reminder that anarchy is never truly that far away…
Sources / To learn more
“Jean Drapeau”, on The Canadian Encyclopedia
“Quiet Revolution”, on The Canadian Encyclopedia
“Front de libération du Québec”, on The Canadian Encyclopedia
“October crisis”, on The Canadian Encyclopedia
Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal [in French only]
“Montréal en otage : policiers et pompiers font la grève”, from TV show Tout le monde en parlait [video in French only]