Montreal's Irish Mafia

The True Story of the Infamous West End Gang

D'Arcy O'Connor

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781443427814
• eBook ISBN: 9781443427388

From the early days as hired muscle for the Italian and Jewish mafias, tunnelling into bank vaults in the '50s and '60s, to the legendary truck heists and bank stick-ups in the '70s, Montreal's Irish mafia-otherwise known as the West End Gang-has managed to pull off some of the most daring and complicated robberies and smuggling operations in Canadian history.

Criminals of every stripe inhabit these pages, from violent stick-up men and drug dealers such as the MacAllister Brothers, to "King of the Port" Gerry Matticks and his highly complex importation schemes, as well as the charismatic "King of Coke" Dunie Ryan, his assassin, Paul April, and his successor, Alan "The Weasel" Ross. Through research and interviews with police investigators, convicted gang associates and others, journalist and author D'Arcy O'Connor narrates the genesis and rise to power of one of Montreal's most colourful and violent gangs: Montreal's Irish mafia.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Irish Invasion
• 2 “Most of His Children Turned Out to Be Thieves”
• 3 Calabrians and Sicilians
• 4 Montreal’s Jewish Mafia
• 5 The Emergence of the West End Gang
• 6 The Murderous Decades
• 7 Bank Robbery Capital of North America
• 8 Digging for Treasure
• 9 The Crime of the Century
• 10 The Rubber Duck Squad
• 11 Follow the Money
• 12 An Uncommon Thief
• 13 The King of Coke
• 14 The Death of Dunie Ryan and Its Fallout
• 15 The Emperor of Coke
• 16 The MacAllister Family
• 17 Gerald Matticks: King of the Port
• 18 The Bloody Biker War
• 19 The RCMP’s Largest Drug Seizure
• 20 The Gelding of Montreal’s Italian Mafia
• 21 Tobacco: The Mob’s Latest Addiction
• 22 Montreal’s Modern Street Gangs
• Bibliography
• About the Authors
• Copyright
• About the Publisher