Montreal mafia?
December 31st, 2009
Say it ain’t so. The mafia is in Montreal. Who could believe it? Even after reports some months ago of corruption in the contracting of the city’s construction jobs, there must have been a few Pollyanna’s who still assumed the best.
Well, if you’ll pardon the macabre allusion, perhaps the cold-blooded murder, on a Montreal street, of the senior (active) member of the Rizzuto family this week will underscore the unfortunate reality of the city’s entanglement in organized crime.
If we look back more than a few years, back to the early 1950’s – when my parents arrived there – the picture was of a city perhaps more corrupt, if more quaint in its corruption. Montreal was a kind of sin-city north, known for its stylish jazz clubs and various diversions of the flesh, absent from the rest of Canada, and contrasting sharply with dourly Presbyterian Toronto. Despite his later reputation, new mayor Jean Drapeau was the new broom who was to sweep the city clean of the corrupt patina of his predecessor Camillien Houde.
That Drapeau succeeded, at least in providing the city with modern infrastructure (now crumbling 50 years later) and over-reached in his penchant for bread and circuses - from the massive success of Expo 67 to the disastrous 1976 Olympics – cannot be disputed. Beneath the superficial changes, the underworld undercurrent remained.
I recall an instance when, as a child of perhaps seven or eight, I was with my parents at a Portuguese bakery near St. Lawrence Blvd. While we stood in line, a non-descript gentleman barged to the counter and had a short conversation with the owner. Visibly uncomfortable, the baker reached into the till and handed the man a wad of cash. Asking what had gone on, my father explained to me (in German) that the baker was giving protection money to the interloper.
Compared to the sophistication of today’s criminals, what I witnessed was an almost quaint anachronism. Now that, particularly the drug trade, has spread organized crime across Canada, no city can claim innocence. But, just as Montreal has a certain je ne sais quoi in other areas, the recent mafia-related stories suggest that the more things change there, the more they remain the same.
These stories make it hard to deny a culture of corruption that has existed for as long as anyone can remember, and simply re-surfaces from time to time. If you don’t believe it, ask Mr. Rizutto.
P.S. Look for the awful Stupidism in the Toronto Star headline to the Rizutto story. Hint: Mr. Rizutto is not “reportedly dead”.
