From the 1960s to the 1990s, the Gang de l’Ouest led cocaine trafficking in Montreal and made it an essential relay for the supply of the American market. The kings of coke by Julian Sher recounts how Irish bank robbers became kingpins who had even infiltrated the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
Posted yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
We don’t spontaneously think of the Irish underworld when we think of organized crime in Montreal, but rather of the Italian mafia and criminal bikers. The organization would indeed have lost feathers since the arrests carried out in the wake of Operation Loquace, 10 years ago. However, there was a time when the Gang of the west led very widely in town.
The kings of cokedirected by Julian Sher, a former producer of The Fifth Estate on CBC, recalls the glory years of this criminal clan closely associated with the Irish community in southwest Montreal. Years marked by daring robberies, brutal murders and a nerve that surprised even American police officers assigned to the fight against drugs.
The documentary of just under 90 minutes, co-produced by Urbania and presented on Crave from November 7, begins with the murder of criminal lawyer Sidney Leithman in May 1991. He was well known to the police, to resume the essay: he represented the mafia, the Colombian cartels and was so close to the Irish underworld that Frank “Dunie” Ryan had offered him a Claddagh ring as a token of friendship.
PHOTO FROM THE DOCUMENTARY KINGS OF COKE
Frank “Dunie” Ryan, in the small photos, was the leading head of the West Gang.
This murder is the pretext for a return to very turbulent years, when some called Montreal “the most criminal city in North America”.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the metropolis was indeed grappling with serious problems of bank robbery, which made it the “capital of the hold-up” in America.
The Irish underworld is very active in this field. “We could rob three banks a week”, summarizes a former member of the West Gang in The kings of coke. It was also the era of tough cops like Robert “Shotgun” Ménard and André Savard, who is interviewed in the documentary and who led the charge against the perpetrators of the spectacular “Brink’s Robbery” during which, in 1976 , nearly 3 million were stolen from an armored van.
Big ambitions
The West Gang, led at the time by Frank “Dunie” Ryan, is not limited to robberies. The organization is ambitious and, in particular thanks to the control it exercises over the port of Montreal, will become a major player in the importation and redistribution of cocaine in Canada and the United States, recalls the documentary.
The desire to impose himself in a major role is all the more evident under the direction of Alan Ross, who, in the 1980s, begins to do business directly with Colombian cartels. Unheard of for a Montreal criminal organization at the time, underlines an American police officer then assigned to the fight against drugs.
The West Gang’s feats of arms are impressive. Gold, The kings of coke be careful not to glorify these criminals.
This critical distance manifests itself, among other things, in the direct exposure of the brutality of these gangsters. The visual archives used by the documentary filmmaker are often raw and bloody: it was the era of newspapers like Hello Police and Photo Fontwhich were dedicated to criminal cases, but the images of the television channels are also very striking.
The documentary concludes with the journalistic and police investigation that led to the discovery of the corrupt RCMP officer who facilitated the gangsters’ business and seemed to make sure the cops are treading water. The greed and the thirst for power, as we also saw during the Charbonneau commission, can sink anyone.
The kings of cokeon Crave, starting November 7