SPVM Beating Habs Fans for Celebrating. This Is a Pattern.

SPVM riot police beat Canadiens fans celebrating a playoff series win Sunday night. The photographs document it. The behaviour is not new.

All photographs in this article were taken by William Wilson Photography, an independent photojournalist, Montreal.

The Montreal Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 in Game 7 Sunday night in Tampa, advancing to Round 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2021. Tens of thousands of fans had packed the Bell Centre to watch the away game on the arena’s screens. When the final buzzer sounded, fans flooded the streets outside, chanting and dancing. Dozens of rounds of fireworks went into the air. This is what a city celebrating a playoff series win looks like. It is not a riot. It is not a public safety emergency. It is people being happy.

SPVM riot police moved to disperse the celebration without warning. Officers charged into crowds of fans and beat them with shields and batons. Hundreds of officers on bikes and in riot gear chased fans through the downtown core for about an hour.

According to photojournalist William Wilson Photography, who documented the events in real time, every time a group of fans converged to celebrate, police descended on them, beating them with batons and kicking them until they moved on.

Even before the game was over, social media was already flooded with videos of SPVM riot cops marching in formation through downtown Montreal — not for a protest, but in anticipation of a celebration by joyous hockey fans.

Wilson’s photographs capture an absurd and unsettling series of events. In one striking image, a young fan who lost his shoe while fleeing from charging riot police is pinned against a parked car as an officer looms over him, baton raised.

Another photo freezes the moment an officer delivers a mid-air kick to the same young fan, now sprawled on the ground, still attempting to retrieve his shoe.

In another photo, two fans wearing Canadiens jerseys are seen on the pavement — one helping the other to their feet after both were knocked down by riot police.

In the background, a riot officer stands to the side — not watching the scene or holding position, but laughing at the two hockey fans struggling to stand after being forced to the ground.

That image is a document. It tells you what the SPVM thinks of the people it is supposed to serve. It tells you the deployment Sunday night was not reluctant crowd management — it was enjoyable to at least some of the officers conducting it. And it will not produce accountability, because it never does.

No officer was held accountable after 2021. No officer will be named, suspended, or charged after Sunday. The SPVM will issue a statement describing the intervention as a proportionate response to public safety concerns, and the cycle will continue uninterrupted into Round 2.

Wilson’s written account confirms: officers moved in without warning, charged fans with shields and batons, and chased groups through the downtown core for approximately one hour, beating and kicking anyone who stopped to regroup.

CBC Ran the SPVM’s PR Piece Two Days Before This Happened

On May 1st — two days before Game 7 — CBC published a piece on how the SPVM and the city were preparing for potential playoff celebrations. Montreal police Chief-Insp. David Shane was quoted directly, acknowledging that interventions involving chemical irritants were “unfortunately always a possibility” but expressing hope they wouldn’t be needed. The city spokesperson said the priority was finding “a fair balance between the public enthusiasm around the playoffs and the safety of the public.”

They knew a Game 7 watch party was happening. They knew tens of thousands of fans would be downtown. They deployed riot police anyway. The question isn’t whether this was a spontaneous overreaction from individual officers — it was a planned deployment that produced documented beatings of people celebrating a hockey game. That is the operation the SPVM’s own spokesperson pre-announced two days before it happened.

This Is Not New. This Is Exactly What the SPVM Does.

In June 2021, after the Canadiens beat the Vegas Golden Knights to advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1993, the SPVM gassed celebrating fans outside the Bell Centre without warning. One fan described it: “Some people were doing some bad things but everybody was just jumping and they started shooting it at us. I thought it was another firework and I had something in my eyes but when I saw everybody start running, I knew it was the cops.” Fifteen people were arrested, sixty tickets issued — while police acknowledged the chemical agents hit ticket-holders exiting the arena and children.

William Wilson has been documenting this pattern photographically for a decade. His images cover the SPVM attacking protesters at Rad Pride in August 2024, brutalizing Montreal Pride protesters days later, deploying tear gas at the anti-NATO demonstration in November 2024, and meeting mourners marching for Abisay Cruz; a 29-year-old father who was killed by police last year, with pepper spray and arrests.

In a piece for The Rover, Wilson put it plainly: “The violent behaviour of the SPVM is not exceptional — it is the norm in the City of Montreal.”

The fans Sunday night were not protesters. They were not demonstrating. They were not blocking anything. They were celebrating a hockey win in the street.

The SPVM beat them anyway. The only thing that changed from the 2021 pattern is that this time the photographs are sharper and the documentation is immediate.

Round 2 Starts Wednesday. The Pattern Will Continue.

The Montreal Canadiens play the Buffalo Sabres in Round 2 starting Wednesday, May 6th. If the Habs win another series, or another game seven, or even a playoff game in a close series, tens of thousands of fans will flood downtown Montreal again. The SPVM will deploy again. The same officers, the same tactics, the same preannounced “fair balance” framing from city hall, the same photographs of people in hockey jerseys being beaten by officers in riot gear.

The question the photographs from Sunday force is not “was this excessive?” It is “why does this keep happening and why does nothing change?” The answer is that the SPVM operates without meaningful accountability to the people it polices. Its use of force against protest crowds, playoff crowds, and anyone else downtown after dark has been documented, reported, and photographed for over a decade — and the institution has faced no structural consequence for any of it. The laughing officer in Wilson’s photograph is not an outlier. He is the institutional product of an organization that has learned there are no costs to this behaviour.

The Habs advanced. The city celebrated. The police beat people for it.

Go Habs go.

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