Like the original Kings of Coke documentary back in 2022, two new sequels provide a fascinating snapshot of the West End Gang, the ragtag group of mostly Irish gangsters from Pointe-St-Charles and Notre-Dame-de-Gr\u00e2ce who helped make Montreal the bank-robbery capital of North America in the \u201970s.<\/p>\n
Both New Blood and The Legend of Rory Shayne debuted on Crave in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Hells Angels and the Italian Mafia, those are mythologies that are well-known in Montreal,\u201d said Nick Rose, writer-director of The Legend of Rory Shayne and the co-writer with Julian Sher of the original Kings of Coke documentary. \u201cBut there\u2019s a more chaotic structureless aspect to the West End Gang that makes them inherently more mysterious. Because they\u2019re not really a gang. It\u2019s more this gig economy of different criminal freelancers and so that\u2019s a great opportunity for finding untold stories or underreported stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adds Lewis Cohen, producer of the two new documentaries: \u201cPart of the structure of the West End Gang is they don\u2019t have a structure. There\u2019s something very formal about how the bikers work, how the Mafia works, so that\u2019s what made it harder to tell stories about the West End Gang, but it also made them harder to arrest. The other reason they\u2019ve escaped the same kind of media glare as the other gangs is because they\u2019re English. One of the reasons they were able to avoid a lot of police attention was because a lot of the cops didn\u2019t speak English and they didn\u2019t know these neighbourhoods, like N.D.G. and The Point.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Blood focuses on Gerald Matticks, the notorious crime boss who controlled the Port of Montreal for decades and was a longtime leader of the West End Gang. But the documentary is also just as much about the deadly biker war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine between 1994 and 2002. Matticks was a close associate and friend of Hells Angels head honcho Maurice (Mom) Boucher, and Matticks ended up getting arrested as part of the anti-biker Operation Springtime in 2001 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for trafficking narcotics. Matticks died in November last year.<\/p>\n
\t\tEditor\u2019s Picks\t<\/p>\n
Matticks, who came from The Point, was something of a folk hero in his old neighbourhood, helping local families, praised by local priests, even dressing up as Santa Claus at Christmas. All this in exchange for absolute loyalty, the filmmakers say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe literally had a researcher going around The Point last year, we thought we\u2019d bring up some of the neighbourhood mythology, and everybody knew Gerry to this day, but no one would go on camera to talk about him,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cIt was unbelievable. There\u2019s still a kind of omert\u00e0 in the neighbourhood. This was just before he died. He died during the edit.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something about the uniqueness of the West End Gang that inspires a certain fascination, Cohen and Rose say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just curious that there\u2019s this gang from Montreal that\u2019s all anglo,\u201d Cohen said.<\/p>\n
The Legend of Rory Shayne focuses on an extraordinary character who once pulled off a bank robbery in Montreal in 1979 by commandeering a helicopter, putting a gun to the pilot\u2019s head and forcing him to take them to a strip mall and wait while they robbed the bank. Shayne pulled off the bank job with a submachine gun.<\/p>\n
Rose has been fascinated by Shayne for years, writing a feature article on him back in 2018 for Vice Magazine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just trying to figure out what would possess someone to hijack a helicopter with a female accomplice, land it at a strip mall, (rob a bank) and actually get away with it,\u201d Rose said. \u201cI was interested in the psychology of that. \u2026 If you\u2019d put this in a scripted film, people would be like: \u2018This is too far-fetched, relax!’\u201d<\/p>\n
Rose has a law degree from l\u2019Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al. Though he\u2019s never practised, he has a long-time fascination with criminal law.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou realize there\u2019s this entire other world out there,\u201d Rose said. \u201cThere\u2019s just these super rich stories. It\u2019s a subculture.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s fascinating about the criminal world is it\u2019s like a mirror of society, a dark mirror, where you see so many things about human nature, friendship, greed, both darkness and light that get reflected in that universe in a pure way,\u201d Cohen said.<\/p>\n
Clearly, Cohen and Rose are fascinated by the history of Montreal\u2019s criminal underworld and they admit they are already thinking of potential further Kings of Coke sequels, notably charting the bloody Mafia wars here in the first decade of this century, including the murder of both Nick Rizzuto Jr. and his grandfather Nick Rizzuto Sr. Of course, it all depends on how many viewers catch these two new documentaries on Crave.<\/p>\n