Oka Crisis - Crisis

Crisis

On July 11, the mayor asked the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), Quebec's provincial police force, to intervene with the Mohawk protest. He claimed there had been criminal activity at the barricade. The Mohawk people, in accordance with the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, asked the women, the caretakers of the land and "progenitors of the nation", whether or not the arsenal which the warriors had amassed should remain. The women of the Mohawk Nation decided that the weapons should only be used if the SQ fired on the barricade and to use them as defensively as possible.

A police emergency response team swiftly attacked the barricade by deploying tear gas canisters and flash bang grenades in an attempt to create confusion in the Mohawk ranks. It is unclear whether the police or Mohawks opened fire with gunshots first, but after a 15-minute gun battle, the police fell back, abandoning six cruisers and a bulldozer. The police's tear gas blew back at them. Although an initial account reported that 31-year-old SQ Corporal Marcel Lemay had been shot in the face during the firefight, a later inquest determined that the bullet which struck and eventually killed him, impacted on his "left side below the armpit, an area not covered by bullet-proof vest".

The situation escalated as the local Mohawks were joined by natives from across Canada and the United States, together refusing to dismantle their barricade. The Sûreté du Québec established their own blockades on highway 344 to restrict access to Oka and Kanesatake. Another group of Mohawks at the nearby location of Kahnawake, in solidarity with Kanesatake, blockaded the Mercier Bridge at the point where it passed through their territory, thereby sealing off a major access point between the Island of Montreal and Montreal's heavily populated South Shore suburbs.

At the peak of the crisis, the Mercier Bridge and Routes 132, 138 and 207 were all blocked, creating substantial disruption to traffic and anger as the crisis dragged on. A group of Châteauguay residents started building an unauthorized, unplanned four-lane highway around the Kahnawake reserve. After the crisis, the Quebec government finished the highway, and it is now part of Quebec Autoroute 30.

The federal government agreed to spend $5.3 million to purchase the section of the pines where the golf-course expansion was to take place, to prevent any further development. This proposal left the Mohawks outraged, as the problems that led to the situation had not been addressed. Ownership of the land had simply moved from one level of government to another, and not to the Mohawk.

Frustration at traffic due to the bridge and road blockades was occasionally expressed as racial hatred. Residents of Châteauguay burned an effigy of a Mohawk warrior while chanting "sauvages" (savages). Radio host Gilles Proulx raised tensions with comments such as, the Mohawks "couldn't even speak French". These remarks inflamed tempers that had been running especially high from comments preceding this crisis, including those by federal Member of Parliament for Chateauguay, Ricardo Lopez.

When it became apparent that the Sûreté du Québec had not contained this escalating situation, the government brought in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who were also unable to contain the mobs and chaos associated with the blocked traffic; ten RCMP constables were hospitalized on August 14.

On August 8, Quebec premier Robert Bourassa had announced at a press conference that he had invoked Section 275 of the National Defence Act to requisition military support in "aid of the civil power", a right available to provincial governments. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was reluctant to have the federal government and, in particular, the Canadian Army, so involved. Under the act however, the Solicitor General of Quebec, under direction from Premier Bourassa, had the right to requisition the armed forces to maintain law and order as a provincial responsibility; this move had precedent in Canada, including two decades earlier during the October Crisis.

The Chief of the Defence Staff, General John de Chastelain placed federal, Quebec-based troops in support of the provincial authorities. Some 2,500 regular and reserve troops from the 34 and 35 Canadian Brigade Groups and 5 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group were put on notice. On August 20, a company of the Quebec-based Royal 22e Régiment, (known as the "Van Doos," an Anglicized pronunciation of the French "Vingt-deux," or number 22) led by Major Alain Tremblay, took over three barricades and arrived at the final blockade leading to the disputed area, and reduced the size, from 1.5 kilometers to 5 meters, of a no man's land originally implemented by the Sûreté du Québec to the barricade at the Pines. Additional troops and mechanized equipment mobilized at staging areas around Montreal, while reconnaissance aircraft staged air photo missions over Mohawk territory to gather intelligence. Despite high tensions between military and native forces, no shots were exchanged.