Popeyes Motorcycle Club

The Popeyes Motorcycle Club was founded by Michel Langlois and Roger Calve. Some sources say that the club was established in 1951, while others claim that 1964 was the year of the club's foundation.

The Popeyes MC had a total of 7 chapters. They were located in Drummondville, Gatineau, Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Sorel-Tracy, and Trois Rivieres.

The Popeyes were regarded to be the most violent outlaw biker club in Quebec, and were notorious for engaging in gratuitous and sadistic violence, which is part of the reason why they were later chosen by the Hells Angels for recruitment. They had the reputation for being the most prosperous and the most violent motorcycle club in Montreal.[3]

In the early 1970s, the Popeyes began working as "muscle" for the Dubois Brothers, a prominent crime family in Montreal. Popeyes members initially worked as assassins and later on as drug dealers. They also became involved with the Montreal Mafia.[4]

From 1968 up until 1970, a short but violent turf war for control of the drug trade went between the Popeyes Motorcycle Club and Devil's Disciples, another Canadian outlaw biker gang (unrelated to the US-based group of the same name).[5]

A violent confrontation that involved roughly 100 people, both members of the Popeyes and the Devil's Disciples, occurred on June 1st of 1968. The skirmish involved the use of chains and baseball bats and left 4 belligerents seriously wounded.

On June 17th, 1968, a knife fight breaks out between both gangs after a group of 10 Popeyes MC members blocked the road on Fabre Street in Jacques Cartier while 8 members of the Devil’s Disciples were riding there. The engagement led to the death of 18-year old Devil’s Disciples member Jean-Yves Picquet who would later die of stab wounds.[6]

In May of the following year, Popeyes Motorcycle Club member Pierre Boucher was stabbed to death by 3 members of the Devil’s Disciples, including Andre Bureau. An autopsy report yielded that Pierre Boucher sustained a total of 58 knife wounds as a result of the stabbing.

By 1975, for the Devil's Disciples had disbanded after 15 of their members had been murdered by one criminal group or another.

With Satan's Choice MC being backed by the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, a rival of the Hells Angels, it caused conflict between them and the Popeyes MC, who were allied with the Hells Angels. This led to a two-year war between Satan's Choice and the Popeyes which resulted in the death of at least one Popeyes patch-holder and the injuries of many Satan's Choice members.[7]

Police in Montreal were phoned in July of 1970 following an apparent gunfight that took place between the Popeyes Motorcycle Club and another club. Police later questioned 13 members of the Popeyes at their Montreal clubhouse where three shotguns and a machete were discovered.

During the month of August in 1976, A group of 50 Popeyes members were arrested after they had been involved in trashing a hotel. Among the group members is their President, Yves Buteau.

The Popeyes were patched over by the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in 1977 to form the Hells Angels Montreal chapter (a.k.a. the North Chapter), establishing the very first Hells Angels chapter in Canada. However, only a fraction of the Popeyes members were considered worthy of wearing the Hells Angels kutte and gang colors.[8][9][10] A total of 35 members are believed to have patched over, the rest being either not interested or not up to the standard that the Hells Angels required. The North Chapter, itself, consisted mostly of former Popeyes members.[11]

Notorious Hells Angels hitman Yves "Apache" Trudeau was initially a member of the Popeyes MC until they were absorbed by the Hells Angels. At 22, Trudeau joined the east-end Montreal chapter of the Popeyes Motorcycle Club, which started off his criminal career.[12] He would later go on to commit over 40 murders while a member of both the Popeyes and the Hells Angels.

Other Popeyes members that later became famous Hells Angels include Laurent "L'Anglais" Viau, Normand "Billy" Labelle, Denis "Le Cure" Kennedy, Laurent “The Englishman” Viau, Jean-Pierre “Matt le Crosseur” Mathieu, Jean-Guy “Brutus” Geoffrion and Michel "Sky" Langlois. Trudeau, Langlois and Viau would all play a role in the infamous Lennoxville massacre that would spark the violent Quebec Biker War.[13][14]