[1] Police were motivated to strike because of difficult working conditions caused by disarming FLQ-planted bombs and patrolling frequent protests.
[2] In addition, Montreal Mayor 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 and left many people disillusioned.
[3] The journalist Nick Auf der Maur wrote that by 1969, the working class of Montreal had a feeling that Drapeau cared only about building the gleaming modernistic skyscrapers that dominated the city's skyline and was indifferent to its concerns and needs.
[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.
[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.
"[5] Rioting on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day on 24 June 1968 was triggered by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's, their bête noire, visit to the city angering Quebec separatists.
[4] On 30 October 1968, roughly 1,000 protesters were led or inspired by the MLT, blockaded Dorval Airport with 250 taxis, and burned Murray-Hill company vehicles when they were presented with the opportunity.
[4] The leader of the protests, a part-time Marxist political science lecturer from Ontario named Stanley Gray, ironically could barely speak French but declared that McGill must become a French-language university to end "Anglo-elitism" and rallied support from the Quebec separatist movement.
[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] 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 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.
[18] 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.
[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.
"[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.
Under the "Aid to Civil Power" provision of the British North America Act, Quebec Premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand requested for the federal government to deploy the Canadian Army to Montreal.