Chaotic blockage of Montreal tunnel, including hammer-wielding man, followed COVID-19 protest

Video captures protest inside Montreal tunnel A driver captured a tense protest inside the Lafontaine tunnel, including a man with a hammer who bashed several cars.

Montreal — When Quebec's premier eased Montreal’s 8 p.m. curfew on Tuesday, some people were ready to take credit: those who blocked a major urban tunnel on Sunday in a protest that police say was incredibly dangerous.

Chaotic videos captured people roaming the north end of the L-H Lafontaine tunnel, part of the highway system that connects downtown Montreal with the South Shore, wearing matching sweatshirts that said “F*** Legault.”

The incident, which police are still investigating, happened after a major protest in Montreal that involved thousands of people. It's the latest odd twist in a COVID-19 protest movement that's only gaining steam, one year in, as frustrations grow on both sides.

In the videos, at one point a man uses a hammer to bash at apparently random cars stopped in the tunnel.

“Believe it or not, that put pressure on the government,” a bearded man said in a follow-up selfie video on Tuesday, referring to the tunnel protest and explaining that he was one of the protesters.

The same man appeared in another self-filmed video on Monday, dressed in a pretend prison outfit, including a striped cap, delivering a speech about how the curfew is putting Quebecers “in prison.”

All the tunnel videos were published by a Facebook page that calls itself the “Observatory of conspiratorial delusions of Quebec” and says it's meant to be a comedic safety valve for the pressures of the last year, though it's gotten increasingly serious.

The page is followed by about 25,000 people, and its founder told CTV that he created it last July simply to let people have it out—to air conspiracy theorists’ views, and give others a full chance to argue back.

“I originally created it to give people space,” the person, who didn't provide his name but said he's a man in his mid-thirties who lives in Trois-Rivières.

“It is a kind of safe space, at the same time being a means of venting.”

Most videos are found by the founder through his own research, he said, while some are submitted.

FRUSTRATION WITH POLICE

This week, in the wake of the big protest, many seemed to lose patience with the venting and move to action: they tried to identify the “gremlins” blocking the tunnel, whose faces can be seen in the videos, and mass-emailed the information to police, urging them to act.

“We can easily identify a few participants in this not-super-brilliant action,” wrote the founder. “I’m hoping that they will at least be met by the competent authorities…. the culture of impunity so enjoyed by this movement must end immediately.”

Quebec provincial police said Tuesday that they responded to the tunnel blockage at about 6:30 p.m. on Sunday and are still investigating. It was an unusual and risky move, they said.

“Walking in those lanes is really, really dangerous,” a Surete du Quebec spokesperson told CTV News.

“Some cars were blocking the lane and people were walking into the tunnel,” she said, according to witness statements.

Some cars were also damaged, she said. The incident lasted about five minutes.

Police have opened an investigation to see if it was linked to the earlier protest, but it’s “too early to say,” she said.

They haven’t made any arrests yet. The spokesperson said she can't confirm what's part of the investigation, and whether investigators are considering the videos of the event, but "they are looking at everything we have -- all the witnesses."

Online, the protesters said they didn't break any laws. Police said it's forbidden to walk in the interchange or on the province's highways.

"It's illegal to be walking in a highway or in a tunnel," the spokesperson said. "That's why it's illegal, because it's dangerous.. it's really dangerous because of the speed limits."

Quebec’s COVID-19 numbers have been hovering around a third to a quarter of what they were in the height of the post-holiday wave, and the government already eased restrictions last week in much of the province, leaving only Montreal and the surrounding areas with an 8 p.m. curfew.

Premier Legault made a similar curfew change for the Montreal area on Tuesday, while still leaving the red zones officially classified as red.