On the morning of Dec. 18, 1974, convicted rapist and drug addict Phillipe Laurier Gagnon quit his job at Pinecrest Foods in Calgary’s northeast and went to the garage he called home. Two days later — after sniffing more than 35 tubes of model airplane glue — the ex-con armed himself with a pair of rifles and sparked the biggest gun battle in Calgary’s modern history. When the smoke from more than 1,000 bullets and gas canisters cleared, one cop was dead, several officers were badly wounded and Gagnon was face up on the ground, his lifeless eyes staring into the winter afternoon sky..“There was no way he was going to get out of there alive,” recalled one of the 130 cops who were at the scene. “Even if he came out with his hands up, it was too late for him.”.Forever known as “Black Friday,” it was the sobering day Calgary police and cops from around the country were blasted into the modern world of urban warfare..Phillipe Gagnon was a loser. It was a fact the 26-year-old accepted and even immortalized on his body. In tattooist’s ink across his belly in bold words: Born to Lose, But Out to Win..Born in 1948, Gagnon grew up on a farm outside Edmonton, but had little contact with his family after he grew out of his teens. A drifter and a loner, he quit school long before graduation because, as he later told a prison shrink, he loathed authority..Gagnon’s first real brush with the bad side of the law came when he was busted for causing a disturbance at age 20..A scant three years later, Gagnon graduated to the ranks of the serious criminals and joined them in a federal pen when he received a three-year sentence for two counts of rape and one count of common assault. It was there a prison psychologist described Gagnon as having “resentative (sic) hostilities” towards all officials and as a “possible sociopath.”.Despite those qualities that would normally hold a con in good stead with other prisoners, life behind bars wasn’t easy for the convicted sex offender — it rarely is for rapists, those disdainfully dubbed as ”skinners” by other inmates. In the strange prisoner hierarchy, skinners are the lowest of the low, jailbirds hardly worth the saliva it takes to spit at them..Gagnon felt the heaviness of that mantle when his weight dropped drastically in Alberta’s federal Drumheller pen. The reason was brutally simple: his life was threatened in the prison kitchen and he never ventured back for meals..He was nothing but “skin and bones,” said Otto Sautter of the John Howard Society..“Having no friends, nobody would bring any food back to him,” he said in a 1975 interview with an inquiry board..Life wasn’t much better for Gagnon outside the joint when he was released on June 23, 1974. Going from job to job, co-workers repeatedly and stereotypically described the killer-to-be as a quiet man, something of a loner. Gagnon was often seen sitting alone during breaks, laughing and giggling at some unheard joke..Fast-forward to Dec. 20, 1974, when an obviously deranged Gagnon, foaming at the mouth, walked into the Ideal Grocery store at 1048 8 St. S.E. and attempted to buy six tubes of Testor’s model airplane glue. During the two previous days, Gagnon purchased more than 35 tubes of the same adhesive and Ideal’s owner, Rose Demelanaere, refused to sell him any more. She called the cops when Gagnon became aggressive..Const. Harvey Gregorash was at the scene an hour later, just in time to spot a red-nosed Gagnon walking the street on unsteady legs. Gregorash asked Gagnon to get in his cruiser so he could talk to him. “No way I’m getting into your f•••••• police car,” replied the ex-con. “I’m going home.”.The cop called for backup and followed the glue-head to the place he called home, a garage facing the back lane of 1034 9 St. S.E., which had been crudely converted into a suite. What police couldn’t have known at the time was a two-metre pit sat in the centre of the garage. It was an unknown fact at the time that would have deadly consequences..Gregorash knocked on the door of the garage, but got no response. Two others, Const. Mel Linn and Const. Tom Dick, soon joined the officer at the scene. The trio went into the garage after Gagnon..Once inside, the cops split up and Linn was the first to spot Gagnon..The drug-addled ex-con held a bag of glue over his mouth and nose with one hand. He held a rifle in the other..Never dropping the bag, Gagnon had a goofy grin on his face as he leveled the 30.06 hunting rifle at the startled cop and pulled the trigger..Click. A misfire..“He’s got a gun,” Linn bellowed in warning before diving for cover..Gagnon then pointed the rifle at Dick..Click..Dick squeezed four quick shots at Gagnon, and then dove for cover behind a fridge while Gregorash ducked behind a table..That’s when the uninjured, crazed gunman trained his rifle and squeezed another shot. The slug hit the top of the table, furrowed through the top layer of wood then lifted off and smacked Gregorash in the head, temporarily stunning the officer..”Harv, can you get out?” Dick yelled. “Yeah,” said Gregorash, his voice small and strange.“Let’s go for it,” Dick yelled..Linn, who’d made it outside the garage, came through the door and helped Gregorash to his feet and out the door to safety..Dick, in the first of many police acts of bravery that day, ran in the opposite direction to draw Gagnon’s fire..“I wasn’t trying to be a hero — I just wanted to give Mel and Harv a chance to find cover,” Dick later recalled..Dick fired the last two shots from his .38-calibre revolver and jumped over a fence. That’s when he felt a bullet smash into his butt. The slug lodged in the cop’s wallet, stopped by the thick leather and wad of cash — greenback protection provided by a recently cashed paycheque..Soon, the entire area was crawling with cops..As live reports boomed from the kitchen radios throughout Calgary, people were stunned..This was 1974 — no city police officer had been killed on the job in 40 years. Calgary was a society where people simply didn’t shoot police officers. But this guy, this Gagnon fellow, he meant business..Setting up a crude perimeter, several cops took turns on the bullhorn.”C’mon fella, it’s useless. Give it up.”.No response..“Come on out with your hands up and you won’t be shot.”.No response..Yet another try. “Come on out, son. Come on out and you won’t be hurt and you’ll be out for Christmas.”.No response except for the loud report of the glue-sniffer’s rifle..Tragically, Gagnon’s volley of shots left Det. Boyd Davidson, a 43-year-old father of five, dead, shot in the head..Davidson was hidden behind a garage adjacent to the one where Gagnon was holed up. The officer would occasionally poke his head and shoulders from around the corner and fire several rounds from a shotgun in an attempt to blow holes through Gagnon’s garage door. Police weaponry just wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the walls of the garage that had been constructed from the hardened timber of an old train box car..Few bullets actually went through the garage walls, and Gagnon avoided those that did by simply ducking down into the grease pit..The eventual openings in the door created by Davidson’s blasts were used by other officers to fire tear gas into the building. In all, 67 canisters of gas were fired. While red, teary-eyed cops outside felt the effects, it didn’t faze Gagnon. (Medical experts later theorized “touluene,” the active ingredient in the 40 tubes of airplane glue Gagnon inhaled, had an anaesthetic effect on his tear ducts and membranes, making him immune to the gas)..Gagnon must have seen Davidson because when the cop retreated to safety behind the garage, the killer fired. The high-powered bullet from the deer rifle went through the two corner walls of the garage and struck Davidson in the head, killing him almost instantly. The force of the slug lifted the 350-lb cop into the air and dropped him about three metres from where he originally stood..A fragment from the same slug hit another officer, Kit Sylvester, in the neck. The cop fell to the ground, his life’s blood pumping in staggered bursts from the wound..Another Calgary officer, Roy Evans, saved Sylvester’s life when he rammed his forefinger directly into the hole, effectively stopping the blood flow until medical help arrived..Yet another shot and another officer was shot in the head..Falling, Det. Nick Graham thought: “Well, if this is dying, at least it doesn’t hurt.”.A high-velocity bullet fired by Gagnon had blasted through two police cruisers and taken out part of Graham’s skull. Moments earlier, the seasoned police officer was carrying tear-gas canisters, boxes of shotgun shells and more ammunition to two officers directly in the line of fire behind their cruisers..When he got behind the car, Sgt. Ben Robinson looked over.“For Christ’s sake, Nick, keep your head down.”.“Don’t worr—”.At that moment a bullet went through the four windows of both police cars before it hit Graham in the front of the head. Graham fell face down in the dirt, more than half his body now exposed to the gunman..Realizing Graham could easily be shot again where he lay, Robinson instantly covered the fallen cop’s body with his..”Nick,” pleaded Robinson.“Nick, please don’t die on me.”.Robinson’s tears drenched Graham’s exposed neck while Robinson used his own body as a shield..“Benny.” Graham’s voice.”Get the f••• off my back, you’re killing me.”.Surprised Graham was alive; Robinson and a rookie cop pulled the injured cop to his feet and walked him away..“Jesus, Nick, you’ve got a terrible hole in your head,” Robinson said. No one had bandages, but a rookie helping support Graham offered his clean T-shirt, which was ripped into a large strip and wrapped round Graham’s head..By the time trio reached the ambulance, the gunman was shooting at it..Less than a football field’s length away, a crowd gathered near a seedy downtown hotel. They too had radios and every time another cop was reported shot, a cheer went up from the throng..In a span of moments, one highly respected veteran officer lay dead, seven others were wounded, and all the police firepower into the gunman’s garage hadn’t silenced him..More officers crowded the scene, wanting to help fallen colleagues, taking up positions round the garage, adding to the firepower. Cops were hiding behind telephone poles, garages, cars and buildings, all firing their sidearms at will into the backyard and garage of the hideaway’s house. Many brought deer rifles from home..The scale of the gun battle was incredible: Gagnon fired at least 70 shots, his high-velocity bullets going through walls and police cruisers to kill and wound officers who were quickly learning they had nowhere to hide. It was later established more than 60 officers had been directly in the line of fire, and at least 40 had emptied weapons, shooting 976 bullets at Gagnon’s garage..Police knew they were in a battle that might take days to finish and cause more casualties or death. Finally, feeling they had few other options, cops called in the Canadian army. After a hurried telephone call to DND in Ottawa, an armoured personal carrier (APC) with three soldiers inside was dispatched from Calgary’s Currie barracks in the city’s southwest..With Gagnon’s bullets pinging off it, the APC systematically began destroying the garage, taking out one corner, and then another. In the chaos, the military machine drove over and flattened police cruisers and filled with tear gas after crushing canisters under its tracks. But it flushed Gagnon out..With a knapsack of ammunition on his back and a blazing rifle in each hand, the gunman made a mad dash from the garage. He ran only a few steps before he was cut down in a fusillade of police bullets..An officer ran over to Gagnon’s still body and put his service revolver to the gunman’s head and began to squeeze the trigger..A sergeant grabbed the officer’s hand.“Forget it,” he said.“It’s over.”.That terrible day saw one officer lose his life, and left seven others wounded..,.The entire episode played out in just two short hours, but following Black Friday, Calgary police instituted the the elite Tactical Unit, a Canadian version of the U.S.’s SWAT.Other police services across the country took note and instituted their own changes..Mike D’Amour is the British Columbia Bureau Chief for the Western Standard..,.mdamour@westernstandardonline.com
