Looting, rioting and robberies break out when police officers stage a 16-hour strike in Montreal. //

Montreal is in a state of shock. A police officer is dead and 108 people have been arrested following 16 hours of chaos during which police and firefighters refused to work. At first, the strike's impact was limited to more bank robberies than normal. But as night fell, a taxi drivers' union seized upon the police absence to violently protest a competitor's exclusive right to airport pickups. The result, according to this CBC Television special, was a "night of terror." Shattered shop windows and a trail of broken glass are evidence of looting that erupted in the downtown core. With no one to stop them, students and separatists joined the rampage. Shop owners, some of them armed, struggled to fend off looters. Restaurants and hotels were also targeted. A corporal with the Quebec provincial police was shot and killed at the garage of the Murray Hill limousine company as taxi drivers tried to burn it down. //

According to a 1999 Montreal Gazette retrospective, the 3,700 members of the Montreal Policemen's Brotherhood walked off the job over pay issues. They were asking for higher salaries in line with those earned by police in Toronto.
The late 1960s was an especially demanding period for Montreal police, who were regularly called upon to disarm bombs planted by separatists and patrol over 100 protests yearly.