In the summer of 1997 in
Montreal, a club called Café So had a roster of punk bands playing one night. Local punks planned to attend, and overwhelmed the club's capacity, leading management to shut its doors and to refuse re-entry to any who left, leaving a crowd of around two hundred punks milling about in the parking lot. Fearing violence, the club management called the police to
disperse the crowd. Arriving in
full riot gear, the police formed a line across the street, coincidentally forming a
protective barrier around a
Dunkin' Donuts (a photograph of which was gleefully published in most newspapers the next day).
Angry that the police were preparing to engage them when they had done nothing wrong, the crowd of punks moved down St. Laurent Street, smashing shop windows as they went. The police followed in a skirmish line, never engaging the crowd of punks. Upon smashing the window of a Société d'Alcool some six blocks later, the punks grabbed as many bottles as could be conveniently reached through piles of broken plate glass, and finally dispersed.
In the following days, many punks came forward to tell the media that they were miscast and abused, that those responsible were a minority, and mostly from other cities. Local punks collected money amongst themselves, eventually raising several hundred dollars, which they donated to local merchants whose windows were smashed to repay some of the damages.