Montreal's 'Night of Terror'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Montreal's police force went on strike for one day over pay in 1969, there was looting and rioting in the streets. But the city's problems leading to the unrest had been building for more than a decade. Organised crime, militant separatists and commercial rivalries all erupted on 7th October, just as police officers decided to protest that their pay was much lower than officers in other Canadian cities. Sidney Margles was a local reporter, and described the scene, and the underlying problems, to Rebecca Kesby.

(PHOTO: The scene at the Murray Hill Limousine garage as rioting left several buses on fire and damage to property, following a police strike in Montreal. Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds.
0:29.2	Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:39.2	Rebecca Kespi and today we go back to Canada in the 1960s and a moment when ongoing political
0:46.2	tensions, local commercial rivalries and the criminal underworld all erupted
0:52.0	into violence on the same day that the police force was on
0:56.0	strike in the city of Montreal the resulting chaos became known as
1:00.2	Montreal's Night of Terror.
1:02.8	On October 7th, 1969, the city of Montreal reached boiling.
1:08.8	On October 7th, 1969, the city of Montreal reached boiling point.
1:15.0	There were a number of problems had been simmering for a decade.
1:20.0	There was the French separatist movement that wanted the province of Quebec to be independent from the rest of Canada.
1:26.0	There were allegations of corruption at senior levels of leadership,
1:30.0	and there was a higher than average violent crime rate in the city.
1:34.2	Sydney Margles was a reporter with a local radio station.
1:37.8	The city was a city in turmoil since the early 60s when we had a movement that
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.