Someone called Kanesatake Perimeter Security (KPS), claiming a man had fallen into a pit on the old Sulpician property. The property was a school run by priests who converted Mohawks to Catholicism. When Kane Montour looked into the hole, he saw a young man staring back at him with unblinking eyes. Ronnie Gonzalez, 24, had been shot to death.
Two sources close to the investigation say Gonzalez was involved in a series of arsons targeting dispensaries on the territory. He was a paid arsonist. From June of 2024 to August 2025, there was an average of nearly two arsons a month at dispensaries in Kanesatake. The most dramatic saw Norman Théoret’s shop, the Sweet Grass Lodge, burned to the ground in August 2025.
The previous year, a man drove his car into the dispensary’s front porch and fired multiple rounds into the building before fleeing in a stolen vehicle. Théoret was shot twice in the entrance of his home in late 2025 and survived. Théoret lived thanks to community members who carried his body into a car and rushed him to meet the ambulance outside of town.
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The arsons came in the middle of a land deal involving Martin Robert, Hells Angels Quebec boss. |
Robert is attempting to purchase lakeside Mohawk property through his wife, Annie Arbic, a Mohawk from Kanesatake.
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The Kanesatake masion of Sharon Simon, nicknamed the Queen of Kanesatake, was torched in 2020. |
Cannabis shops are a big, cash-only business that the HAMC has been involved with at Kanesatake for years. Some of the larger dispensaries feature slot machines and booze cans. Hells Angels have been spotted outside some shops. The Green Room was the site of a gangland hit of Arsène Mompoint in 2021. Gary Gabriel and his brother Robert own the Green Room. Robert Gabriel, meanwhile, owns a dispensary, bar and casino called High Times, which is open all hours.
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Two people were injured after an explosion at a building on Rang Ste-Philomène in Kanesatake Feb 4, 2026. |
When cops arrived, they found a building behind the Medharma cannabis dispensary fully engulfed in flames. There were calls about a “loud boom” in the area before the fire.
Shots were fired in Kanesatake on May 7 at 1261 Rang Street. That’s the location of ‘Cookies & Kush’ an Indigenous-owned cannabis dispensary. This followed another drive-by shooting at a dispensary in April. Violence, always present at Kanesatake, is rising.
Last week, Quebec’s Public Security Minister said he was tabling an action plan to fight the rise of organized crime in Kanesatake. The reserve of 2,000 is under the thumb of organized criminals and that has been true for years. The ‘hands off’ approach of the governments of Quebec and Canada has turned Kanesatake into a gangster’s paradise.
Norman Théoret is one of 17 defendants in an illegal dumping scheme that saw construction companies unload thousands of tonnes of contaminated soil onto the territory’s shoreline.
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