The West End Gang () is a Canadian organized crime group in Montreal, Quebec. An Irish mob group originating from the Irish-Canadian ethnic enclave of Pointe-Saint-Charles in the 1950s, the majority of the gang's earnings were initially derived from truck hijackings, home invasions, kidnapping, protection rackets, extortion, and armed robbery, with its criminal activities focused on, but not restricted to, the west side of Montreal. The West End Gang came to prominence via a series of high-profile bank robberies between the 1950s and the 1970s, a period when Montreal was known as "Bank Robbery capital of North America". Due to the gang's control of illegal activity at the Port of Montreal, it moved into drug trafficking and became one of the most influential criminal organizations in Canada.Kings of Coke tells the tale of Montreal's infamous West End Gang Brendan Kelly, Montreal Gazette (8 November 2022)
Over the years many members have been murdered or convicted of murder, most notably the 1984 assassination of one time West End Gang boss Frank "Dunie" Ryan.Irish Mob Boss Matticks Loses Battle With Cancer In Canada Scott Burnstein, GangsterReport.com (20 January 2015) Subsequent revenge killings weeks later are believed to have been organized by replacement leader Allan "The Weasel" Ross. Under Ross' leadership, the West End Gang formed a partnership with the Cali Cartel, transporting large quantitites of cocaine into Canada from the United States. After Ross was convicted in 1992, leadership of the West End Gang was assumed by Gerald "Big Gerry" Matticks.
History Origin The West End Gang originated as a network of loosely affiliated Irish-Canadian gangsters in Montreal.Montreal mobster Alan Ross called for a bloody reckoning Tu Thanh Ha, The Globe and Mail (30 August 2018) The gang, which emerged in the 1950s, was known at first as the Irish Gang, and the name West End Gang seems to have been adopted in the late 1970s. A disproportionate number of the gang's members come from the predominantly Irish working-class Pointe-Saint-Charles district of Montreal. Other West End Gang members are from the Goose Village and Griffintown neighbourhoods. Additionally, bars and motels in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district have served as headquarters and meeting places for members of the gang.
Describing the origins of the West End Gang and how it differs from the other prominent crime groups in Montreal, the journalist Julian Sher said: "The thing about the Hells Angels and the Mafia is those are global organizations... The West End Gang could only be born and thrive in this city and in a particular neighbourhood of this city. They had no desire to take over Toronto or even the north of the city. This was such an English-Montreal product. It's like Fairmount Bagels". On the significance of the gang's ethnic makeup and the location from which it merged, Julian explained: "One of the reasons the West End Gang was able to thrive is that they were able to some degree to fly under the radar, in a largely French city with a largely French police force. The West End Gang came out of a community that was doubly marginalized. They're an English minority in a French city, but they're also poor and they're Irish in English Montreal. They're poor in a largely middle-class anglophone community. The Lachine Canal and the Ville-Marie Expressway could've been a fortress wall".
Bank robbery From the 1950s to the 1970s, Montreal was known as the "Bank Robbery capital of North America" as Montreal had more bank robberies than any other city in North America. The journalist D'Arcy O'Connor used as an example that in the six months between January-June 1969, Montreal had 51 bank robberies with only a quarter with the thieves being arrested, while the city of Los Angeles had 36 bank robberies in the period January-June 1969 with 60% of the thieves being arrested. The West End Gang were some of the most successful bank robbers in Montreal in this period. Montreal's status as the "Bank Robbery capital of North America" was largely due to the light sentences handed by Quebec courts, which normally gave only 5 years in prison for convicted thieves as compared to the 20 years in prison normally handed down by American courts, which allowed the gangs of Montreal to build up a cadre of experienced thieves. The largest bank robbery ever in Canadian history adjusted for inflation, namely the theft of some $20,000 in cash from the vault of the Brockville Trust & Saving Company in Brockville on 4 May 1958 was a joint operation of the West End Gang and the Cotroni family. Commander André Bouchard of the Montreal police stated about the West End Gang that they: "...weren't thugs selling drugs on the street like the French and the Italians...They had the best safecrackers and the best hijackers. Some of those guys were sixteen years old and today they're still at it".
Typical of the West End Gang members were William "Billy" Morgan who was born in poverty to Irish-Canadian parents in Montreal in 1935 and grew up in a broken home, leading him to boast in a 2008 interview: "I was a thief by the age of seven". Being placed "in care" in various foster homes, Morgan joined the West End Gang as a teenager and boasted: "Back then, I could open any lock or crack any safe and I did a lot of that. I had a knack for it".
In the 1960s, West End Gang hitman Richard Blass was involved in minor fights with many Mafiosi, particularly those related to Frank Cotroni and brothers Joe and Vincenzo Di Maulo, all of whom received death threats from Blass.Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, pp. 270
Several of the West End Gang robberies led to deaths. In an attempted robbery of a branch of the Bank of Montreal on the Beaver Hall Hill on 3 May 1971 led to a shoot-out with Raymond Lynch of the West End Gang being shot dead by the bank security guards together with an innocent by-stander Corrado Festa who was killed when he was caught in the cross-fire. On 12 September 1973, a group of West End Gang thieves led by William "Billy" MacAllister attempted to rob a Brinks armored car that again led to a shoot-out that led one of the Brinks guards, Claude Vienneau being shot and bleeding to death on the street as the robbers fled with some $278,000 in cash from the armored car. The most successful robbery committed by the West End Gang in Montreal was the theft of some $2,275,884 in cash together with golden Olympic coins worth $5,000 from a Brinks armored car took on 30 March 1976. In April 1976, the Montreal police formed a special squad known as the "Rubber Duck Squad" led by detective André Savard whose sole task was to hunt down those involved in the Brinks robbery of 30 March 1976. On 14 May 1976, a West End Gang member involved in the Brinks robbery, John Slawvey, was killed in a shoot-out with Savard who was attempting to arrest him on charges of robbery. On the night after Slawvey's killing, Savard was phoned by the lawyer Sidney Leithman who told him: "There's a lot of talk going and I think you should be careful, André. There's a lot of people not happy and you can push only so much...call this a warning if you want, but be careful and take care". Savard heard rumors that the West End Gang leader Frank Ryan had placed a $50,000 contract on his life, which caused to live under armed guard for some time afterwards.
Move into drug trafficking Under Frank Ryan's leadership, the West End Gang moved from local rackets, bank heists and truck robberies into cross-border drug smuggling. In the 1970s, the gang took control of the Port of Montreal, which allowed them to import narcotics. The West End Gang initially began to import significant quantities of marijuana and hashish before Ryan and Allan Ross started smuggling large shipments of cocaine into Canada from Florida as the drug's popularity increased in the early 1980s.Notorious West End Gang leader Allan (The Weasel) Ross has died Paul Cherry, Montreal Gazette (24 August 2018) The West End gang developed important contacts in the United States, South America and Europe, with some members working out of Florida.
In 1980, Allan Ross was convicted of possession of a narcotic for the purposes of trafficking and sentenced to a 23-month prison term.
Since that time, the gang has formulated ties to the Montreal Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, the Hells Angels, and Colombian cartels. The three Montreal organizations (West End Gang, Montreal Mafia, Hells Angels) make up the "Consortium" (similar to New York City's "Commission") and, together, the three groups' leaders fix the price of drugs for the wholesale and retail markets. The majority of the drugs smuggled through Montreal are ultimately retailed in the United States, with the small remainder being distributed across Canada. Police estimate that over a 15-year span from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the gang trafficked more than 40 tons of cocaine and 300 tons of hashish, with an estimated street value of $150 billion. In 1997, the federal government disbanded the National Ports Police as a cost-saving measure, which has greatly aided the work of the West End Gang.
Murders Patrick "Hughie" McGurnaghan, a cocaine dealer who sourced the drug from Frank Ryan, accrued a $100,000 debt to Ryan, partly because he used much of the cocaine he was supposed to be selling. When McGurnaghan cheated Ryan on a drug deal, Ryan contracted the Hells Angels hitman Yves "Apache" Trudeau to kill him. On 27 October 1981, McGurnaghan was driving his Mercedes-Benz along Melville Avenue in Westmount with two male passengers when Trudeau detonated a car bomb planted underneath the hood, killing McGurnaghan and seriously injuring a passenger.The perks of the biker Dan Burke, Maclean's (21 April 1986) How Canada's Most Prolific Hit Man Turned Informant on the Hells Angels Patrick Lejtenyi, Vice (26 September 2017)
On 13 November 1984, Frank Ryan was in his office at the Nittolo's Jardin Motel in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, a motel and restaurant he owned which was a regular meeting place for West End Gang members.Frank Peter ("Dunie") Ryan, Leader of Montreal's West End Gang AmericanMafia.com (October 1999) Gangs of Montreal, Episode 3: The West End Gang and the robbery of the century Monique Beaudin, Montreal Gazette (18 November 2019) He was lured into an adjoining motel room by Paul April, a French-Canadian associate who told Ryan that an attractive young woman waiting to have sex with him there. April and an associate of his, Robert Lelièvre, who was armed with a shotgun, planned to tie Ryan to a chair and force him to reveal where he had hidden his fortune before killing him. Ryan resisted and threw a chair at Lelièvre, who then shot him in the chest. As Ryan lay dying on the floor, he was shot again in the head with a .45 handgun. By killing Ryan, April and Lelièvre erased a $200,000 drug debt they owed him.