Credit: Stan Douglas, Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 (2008) [For a full story on this image, visit the Walrus]

Prompted by articles in the Georgia Straight, an alternative newspaper in Vancouver, hundreds of youths had converged on Maple Tree Square in the popular area of Gastown in downtown Vancouver in the summer of 1971. For the previous week, writers Kenneth Lester and Eric Sommer had been promoting the gathering to protest drug laws and recent drug raids in the area (Operation Dustpan). Hundreds of young people, many described by the media as hippies, had assembled in the square; some were smoking pot, others playing music or just wandering around. By 10:00am, combined with people on the street, the crowd had expanded to almost 2000. Inspector Abercrombie, who was the senior officer in charge at the scene, decided to clear the crowd after receiving false reports of windows being broken. He ordered the crowd to disperse within two minutes. When his first warning was ignored, Abercrombie ordered four policeman on horseback with riding crops to disperse the throng. They were followed by police officers in riot gear supported by plain clothes officers scattered among the crowd. Absolute pandemonium broke out. People coming out from stores and restaurants in Gastown found themselves caught up in a battle between police and youths, some of the latter throwing rocks, pieces of cement and bottles. Abercrombie quickly realized he was faced with a riot in the making.

Combined with police reports, it is possible to reconstruct some of incidents following Abercrombie’s order to clear the streets:

1. Officers on horses driving people into doorways and pinning them there while they lashed out at them with their sticks;
2. A young woman being dragged, screaming, by two officers who held her by the hair and one arm, about 100 yards over broken glass to a waiting wagon;
3. A police officer struck on the right leg, just below his knee, by a large chunk of cement. The crowd jeered as he staggered;
4. A young woman marching towards a group of officers shouting “You might as well take me too.” They took her. As they shoved her into the wagon, bent over so she was almost touching her toes, an officer shoved his riot stick into her seat, pushing her inside;
5. A young man cut down by a blow to his kidney area from a stick. As he slumped on the street a young woman knelt beside him crying;
6. Another youth held down on a parking lot and struck three times with a policeman’s stick. Still another boy loaded into an ambulance. He had a bloody bandage on his head;
7. A bottle flying out of the crowd and shattering between an officer’s legs. He sprinted into the crowd, raised his stick, but did not strike with it;
8. A man approaching an officer in a police line and asking permission to go by because he’d lost his wife. He was allowed to pass;
9. An elderly Chinese woman picking vegetables out of the shattered plate glass from her grocery store window;
10. Police horses galloping down sidewalks filled with pedestrians, scattering them in all directions;
11. Rocks, stones and bottled thrown at police by gangs of youths who roamed streets within six block of Maple Street Square;
12. Youths and middle aged men and woman dragged, lifted and thrown into the rear of waiting paddy wagons;
13. No police badges or numbers on officers uniforms;
14. Numerous groups of youths shouting obscenities;
15. Police entering shops and restaurants to grab people who ran from the streets;
16. Several plate glass window in stores smashed;
17. Pools of blood at several locations throughout the Gastown area;
18. Riot equipped police standing guard outside the public entrance to the police station at 312 Main. [Source: Vancouver Sun, 9 August 1971.]

The Gastown Riot was a product of tensions between the police and youth, particularly over the use of illegal narcotics. The 1971 report of the British Columbia Federation of Labour's human rights committee lamented the “hatred which has been stirred up against the rebellious young people in our society. ...Irresponsible politicians (most notably the Mayor of Vancouver and some Aldermen), columnists and open-line commentators continue to resort to the worst form of demagoguery which stirs up hatreds and divisions in our community.” The B.C. Civil Liberties Association was at the forefront of this debate. It was one of the only NGOs in British Columbia that closely watched police activities, and it came to the defence of youths in the aftermath of the riot. The riot also became a symbol for groups like the BCCLA which were demanding the creation of a civilian review system for public complaints against the police. A proper complaints system was a major issue for civil libertarians in the seventies, and within a decade their demands would be met in British Columbia, Ontario and several other provinces.

Further Reading

• Dominique Clément, “An Exercise in Futility? Regionalism, State Funding and Ideology as Obstacles to the Formation of a National Social Movement Organization in Canada," BC Studies (Summer 2005, No. 146): 63-91. 
• British Columbia, 1971. Report on the Gastown Riot.