Quebec Biker War ( ; " Bikers ' war " ) was a violent turf war that began in 1994 and continued until late 2002 in Montreal , Quebec , Canada between the Quebec branch of the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine . In March 2002 , the American journalist Julian Rubinstein wrote about the biker war : " Considering how little attention the story has attracted outside Canada , the toll is staggering : 162 dead , scores wounded . The victims include an 11-year-old boy killed by shrapnel from one of the more than 80 bombs bikers planted around the province . Even the New York Mafia in its heyday never produced such carnage , or so terrorized civilians . " In the early 1980s , a major biker gang in Quebec was the SS , a white supremacist biker gang led by Maurice Boucher and Salvatore Cazzetta , who dominated organized crime in the Pointe-aux-Trembles district of Montreal . A rift emerged between the two at the time of the Lennoxville massacre in 1985 as Cazzetta vowed never to work with the Hell 's Angels and founded the Rock Machine in 1986 with his brother Giovanni . Boucher by contrast , after serving a 40-month prison sentence for raping a 16-year-old girl , was impressed by the Lennoxville massacre , which proved to him that the Angels were sufficiently ruthless for his tastes and joined the Hell 's Angels , ultimately becoming the leader of the Quebec branch . The journalist James Dubro stated about outlaw biking in Quebec : " There always has been more violence in Quebec . In the biker world it 's known as the Red Zone . I remember an Outlaws hit man telling me he was scared going to Montreal . " The war began as the Hells Angels in Quebec began to make a push to establish a monopoly on street-level drug sales in the province in 1993 . In Quebec , most of the illegal drugs were imported by the Mafia while being distributed by the biker gangs to various street level drug dealers . The journalist André Cédillot , an expert on biker gangs in Quebec , stated in an interview : " The Mafia were in charge of importation and the Hells Angels were the distributors . Internationally , the Mafia has a better reputation than Hells Angels because the Colombians do n't trust the Hells Angels , but they do trust the Mafia " . In Quebec , the power of the Mafia was limited by the fact it was only open to those who were Sicilians or of Sicilian descent . In contrast , the bikers were , and remain , mostly French-Canadian . The Italo-Canadian Cazzetta was not a member of the Mafia , but he did have a close relationship with the Montreal Mafia , and as a result of his Mafia ties , the Hell 's Angels were unwilling to challenge the Rock Machine as long as he was leader . Cazzetta has often been described as controlling all of the organized crime in Montreal that was not controlled by the Mafia in the late 1980s-early 1990s
Lennoxville massacre
Lennoxville massacre
Quebec Biker War