There was no internet, no cell phones or texting, no Craigslist, Sunday shopping, no spending with bank cards, so what you had in your pocket was what you'd spend.
For some people, including ex-cons Gilles Laliberte, 21, and Richard Racine, 23, that left little else but drinking and violence.
The two young men had already spent much time in prison. Racine had been released just two months earlier after serving three and a half years for armed robbery and refusing to testify. Laliberte had even more recently been freed five and a half years into his eight year sentence on charges of attempted murder and armed robbery (although admittedly by that math he would have been a minor at the time of the crime).
Racine - who was on medication to control his bad temper - had a girlfriend named Debbie Hughes, 18. She had been drinking with the two for a while on Friday night but she was unhappy that she found Racine with a gun. She rather sensibly left Racine's apartment to stay with a friend at 1925 Plessis but the two showed up there at 5 a.m. Saturday morning and stabbed resident Leonard Corbin, 23, an unemployed dishwasher, to death in the kitchen of the apartment.
They threatened to kill his roommates Anne-Marie Desharnais, Lucienne Papineau and Kostas Patsavos as well but were talked out of it.
The two warned everybody not to report their murder and then forced Hughes to come with them as they left, but they let her go free after they all walked down to Ontario St.
Police picked the two of them up at Racine's aunt's house on Des Erables at 7 p.m. that evening.
Racine was sent to a prison in Laval where he attempted to kill himself and failed. He tried again and succeeded. He was just 24.
It's unknown what happened to Gilles Laliberte, but an inmate by that name fought for the right to have a gay conjugal visit with his cell-mate in 2001. It was refused, as conjugal visits are not allowed for fellow inmates.