Kanesatake chief remembers the chaos: 'They were out to kill'

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Serge Simon, now Kanesatake’s grand chief, was a 29-year-old welder when the Sûreté du Québec attacked Mohawk protesters in Kanesatake on July 11, 1990. He led a TV news crew behind the barricade to the Pines, a contested green space with a cemetery and lacrosse rink where the town of Oka planned an expanded golf course and condo development. Here is how he recalls the day’s events, in his own words:

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As we got to the lacrosse box, that’s when all hell broke loose.

I remember the smell of the tear gas. I remember choking on it and I wasn’t able to run anymore. The reporters are doing the same.

All of a sudden, we heard “pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop” on both sides, from the front of us and from the back of us.

So we just hit the dirt, except for this one stupid cameraman. He was standing there, looking around in disbelief. He said, “Is that gunfire? Is that gunfire?”

I grabbed him by his arm and pulled him into the dirt.

We heard those bullets whizzing by us. We heard them hitting the boards. We heard the trees getting hit.

The SQ, they were out to kill. I mean, you look at where the bullet holes were, they were chest and head height. So we were damn lucky not one of us was killed that day.

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Then later on, I started walking around, and it’s surreal. I’m watching everybody I knew in my community going completely bananas, in a complete rage. I see them hopping into the bulldozer. They’re crushing police cars. They’re flipping them over.

I see guys cutting down trees to make the barricade.

And I see these guys I know running past me, going to the main barricade.

When I got there, everyone was just flipping out. So I went over to the side of the barricade. I’m looking down the hill at the cops and there’s obviously something terrible that happened.

They had an ambulance there and the last thing I saw was the doors being shut. So I’m thinking, “What the hell happened? Who got it?”

A couple of hours later, we went back into the Pines, and I was standing around with a group of men I know and we’re leaning against a pickup truck, listening to CJAD.

And then we heard the news that a police officer had been shot and died.

We looked at each other with these big eyes:

“Oh frick, man, the army’s coming in here. The army is gonna come in here.”