Bouchard was born in Montreal, the son of a Second World War veteran who served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and as a policeman with the Sûreté du Québec.
[1] Bouchard grew up in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district of Montreal and speaks his joual (Quebec French) with a strong working-class accent.
[4] Bouchard recalled that when he saw members of the Popeyes wearing their grey jackets, he would beat them as he told them: "What did we tell you last time?
[5] Bouchard stated the principle rivals of the Popeyes, namely Satan's Choice and the Devil's Disciples, were no-where close to be the same level of viciousness displayed by the Popyeyes.
[4] The journalists Julien Sher and William Marsden described Bouchard as a man weighing 149 pounds with a "compact, lean" look and a very combative streak.
[5] Bouchard has accused the police leaders of ignoring the Hells Angels, which led to the rapid growth of the gang as the main criminal syndicates in Montreal.
[3] In the early 1980s, Bouchard first encountered his archenemy, Maurice "Mom" Boucher, who was a member of a white supremacist biker gang called the SS.
[10] Bouchard developed a grudging respect for the West End Gang, whom he stated "weren't thugs selling drugs on the street like the French and the Italians...
[17] Bouchard stated that when the Quebec biker war started in 1994, it was not regarded as a major issue by the Montreal police.
[18] Bouchard told the Montreal journalists Julian Sher and William Marsden: "I'll tell you honestly, the department didn't give two shits.
[19] Bouchard stated that it was only after the 11 year boy Daniel Desrochers was killed by the shrapnel from a Hells Angels planted bomb that the department became serious about the biker war.
[20] Members of the Hells Angels intimidated members of the police forces in the small towns of Quebec along the St. Lawrence River by talking about the families of the policemen arresting them, leading for Bouchard to personally lead raids dressed in his full dress uniform with his name prominently displayed to show that he was not intimidated.
[24] On 4 December 1997, Bouchard was in Big Bertha as the police mobile command bus is known in Montreal, when he received a call for help from a policeman at a strippers' agency while in the background a man was heard to say "You think you have enough guns to shoot all of us?".
[26] Bois told one of the arresting detectives, also an immigrant from Peru, Mike Vargas, that he knew who was the gunman who had killed the prison guards.
[31] A group of Hells Angels were in the corridor of the courthouse milling around and one of them took out a camera to start taking photographs of the policemen present.
[31] When the jury announced its verdict, Boucher was acquitted on all counts and was carried out of the courthouse on the shoulders of the other Hells Angels as a conquering hero.
[33] As he took his seat, he remembered: "We heard an uproar and as I turned to my left it was like Moses had parted the water, and who did we see coming through the crowd – Mom Boucher in full colours, escorted by his henchmen.
[37] On 26 April 2000, the loan shark André Desjardins was murdered in the parking lot of Shawn's, a restaurant where he was supposed to be meeting Boucher that day.
[38] Boucher denied knowing anything about the murder and with a notable lack of emotion said it "a sad thing" his friend Desjardins had just been shot down and "if I hear anything, I'll call you".
[38] By the year 2000, Bouchard felt increasing pressure from even people who knew only casually to take action against the Hells Angels.
[40] In October 2000, the Crown Attorney France Charbonneau undid double jeopardy and won an appeal against Boucher's 1998 acquittal under the grounds that instructions that Justice Jean-Guy Boilard had given the jury were defective and biased towards the defense.
[40] However, the Sûreté du Québec wanted the honor of arresting Boucher, leading Bouchard to tell the police chief: "Fuck if you think the SQ is picking him up.
[43] Bouchard had assigned two detectives, Louis-Marc Pelletier and Michel Tremblay, to see if it was possible to match a list of suspects in various murders provided by the informer Dany Kane with DNA evidence.
[44] By February 2001, Bouchard's Major Crimes Unit had enough evidence to charge 42 Hells Angels with some 23 counts of first-degree murder.
[46] At 4:30 am on 28 March, Bouchard arrived at the police headquarters at Place Versailles to organise the Operation Springtime raids and first informed his officers, who had been kept uninformed until them to prevent leaks.
[47] By the end of the day, the Montreal police had arrested 128 people, mostly members of the Hells Angels and their puppet club, the Rockers.
[48] Bouchard took charge of the interrogations and remembered feeling amused as various Hell Angels such as René Charlebois broke down in tears at the prospect of life imprisonment.
[48] Bouchard thought that the first one arrested to make a deal would be Gregory Woolley, the Haitian immigrant who served as the president of the Rockers and as a black man was not allowed to join the Hells Angels proper.
[48] Bouchard noted that the Hells Angels and Rockers arrested insisted on smoking cigarettes and drinking from Styrofoam cups, which they discarded, allowing the police to seize the items to search for DNA samples.
[49] When Boucher was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder at his second trial on 6 May 2002, Commander Bouchard was playing golf when he heard the news.