The Stony Monday Riots

Despite whatever mild-mannered reputation Ottawa may have, the city’s history is rife with roughneck tales of debauchery, riots, and malfeasance going back decades. Here are a few examples of tales seldom told that could easily change your mind about this city and its residents.

In the early 19th century, the construction of the Rideau Canal brought large numbers of recently arrived Irish Catholic labourers into the area. After the canal was completed, and with increased unemployment in the region, the Irish Catholics became restless and revived old animosities with the French, English, and Protestant Irish. A group of disgruntled Irish known as the Shiners began to wage campaigns against French raftsmen and the Protestant fraternal order the Orangemen, escalating from street fights and bar brawls to a series of assaults and murders in 1837 (this period of Ottawa Valley history, 1837-1845, became known as the “Shiners’ Wars”). The end of the Shiner terror came when their leader, Peter Aylen, left Ottawa for Aylmer after a series of particularly brutal attacks, but tensions among the various groups remained.

Most of the affluent Englishmen who lived in Uppertown (now Centretown) were Tories, while the French and Irish were Reformers. The Tories spent much of the 1840s incensed at the Reformist-minded politics of Lord Elgin, then Governor General of Canada. After riots started in Montreal, where Tories burnt down the Parliament Building located there, Elgin was prompted to look for another capital for Canada. When His Lordship announced plans to visit Bytown in September of 1849, the people of Lowertown began preparing a royal welcome. Uppertowners, meanwhile, argued that Elgin should be ignored, and a meeting was called in the Byward Market to discuss the situation. The gathering on September 17 erupted into another riot. Stones were thrown, mayhem broke out, and one person was shot on what became known as “Stony Monday.” The British militia was called in to block the Lowertowners from advancing into Uppertown the following day, and the riot was dispersed.

Stopwatch Gang

The Stopwatch Gang, led by Ottawa’s own Paddy Mitchell (who grew up in Little Italy), Stephen Reid (of Massey, Ontario), and Lionel Wright, are perhaps Canada’s most infamous bank robbers. The trio, whose orchestrated meticulous heists never took longer than 90 seconds, robbed more than 100 banks and armoured cars during the 1970s and 80s in the United States and Canada. Their most notorious job was a 1974 gold heist (worth $750,000) at the Ottawa airport, earning themselves a place on the FBI’s most-wanted list. The gang’s exploits were detailed in several movies, including Point Break (1991) and The Heist (2001), as well as in the book The Stopwatch Gang (1992) by Toronto Sun reporter Greg Weston, and in Mitchell’s own memoir, This Bank Robber’s Life, which he wrote in prison and sold over the Internet. While still in jail, Reid wrote his own book, a semi-autobiographical novel titled Jackrabbit Parole. Through this book he met his editor, West Coast poet and writer Susan Musgrave, and in 1986 they married while he was still imprisoned. Upon his release a year later, he and Musgrave attempted to live a quiet life on Vancouver Island, and had a child as well. He appeared as a rifle-toting security guard in a 15-second cameo (as well as acting as the film’s bank heist consultant) in the independent movie Four Days (1999). Unfortunately, in the spring of 1999 in Victoria, BC, his heroin addiction resulted in a return to crime and a botched robbery and shootout; currently, Reid remains in prison. The leader of the gang, Patrick “Paddy” Mitchell, called “North America’s most famous, most successful and, especially, most likeable bank robber of our time” by his son, grew up on Preston Street in Ottawa, and died of cancer on in 2007 in a US prison while serving a 65-year sentence. Wright served his sentence, and according to a 2005 report from the CBC, worked as an accountant for Corrections Canada. The gold from the airport robbery in 1974 was never recovered.