The Gastown riot, known also in the plural as Gastown riots, also known as "The Battle of Maple Tree Square", occurred in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. ...

, British Columbia, Canada, on August 7, 1971. Following weeks of arrests by undercover drug squad members in Vancouver as part of a special police operation directed by City hall, police broke up a protest smoke-in in the

Gastown Gastown is the original settlement that became the core of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and a national historic site and a neighbourhood in the northwest section of the Downtown Eastside, adjacent to Downtown Vancouver. Its hi ...

neighbourhood. The smoke-in was organized by the

Youth International Party The Youth International Party (YIP), whose members were commonly called Yippies, was an American youth-oriented radical and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the late 1960s. It was founded o ...

(Vancouver Yippies) against the use of undercover agents and in favour of the legalization of

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various t ...

. Of around two thousand protesters, 79 were arrested and 38 were charged. Police were accused of heavy-handed tactics including indiscriminate beatings with their newly-issued riot batons. They also used horseback charges on crowds of onlookers and tourists. A commission of inquiry into the incident was headed by Supreme Court Justice Thomas Dohm. The Inquiry cited the Yippies as instigators of the Smoke-In, calling them "intelligent and dangerous individuals," but was highly critical of the police's conduct and described the incident as a police riot. The Gastown riots are commemorated in a two-story-high 2009 photo mural called ''Abbott & Cordova, August 7, 1971'' by local artist

Stan Douglas Stan Douglas (born October 11, 1960) is an artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Douglas' film and video installations, photography and work in television frequently touch on the history of literature, cinema and music, while examining ...

, installed in the atrium of the redeveloped

Woodward's Woodward's Stores Ltd. was a department store chain that operated in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, for 101 years, before its sale to the Hudson's Bay Company. History Charles Woodward established the first Woodward store at the corner o ...

Complex.

References

{{Vancouver 1971 riots 1971 in Canada 1971 crimes in Canada 1971 in British Columbia Cannabis culture Yippies Riots and civil disorder in Canada History of Vancouver