At 11:35 PM 12/04/2007, you wrote:
>Late note: Hamilton? I wrote an outline that was
based in Kelowna!
>Half the first chapter had to explain where it was
and what it was...
I had a great uncle who operated a successful business school
in Kelowna. Ironically they were socialists, active in the
CCF and then NDP. They can't have been all that good at
politics, because Kelowna kept re-electing the avidly
right-wing Social Credit premier W.A.C.
(Wacky) Bennett, who ran the local hardware store. The
politics of B.C. make an excellent environment for
noir.
Hamilton on the other hand has a long history of organized
crime- Ontario's mafia was basically organized out of
Hamilton on the back of Rocco Peri's bootlegging operation
during prohibition days. His successor made his bones working
for New York's Bonnano family during Montreal's gangland wars
in the '50s, but still had the support of Buffalo's Magadino
family when he returned to take up power here in The Hammer.
I think his first prison term was in Auburn NY, for his part
in setting up the famous French Connection drug traffic
between Marseille and NYC. Johnny Pops was murdered about a
dozen years ago. It was believed he'd become vulnerable,
suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's disease. Local
mobsters were sent up as being responsible for the hit, and
that's when the bikers took over organized crime in
Ontario.
Hamilton was also home to the national president of the
Hell's Angels, who I think had risen through the ranks of one
of the city's street gangs (a training school for many local
gangsters.) He's currently in prison for murder, among other
crimes in connection to Montreal's biker wars, where over 200
people were killed fighting for control of the Quebec drug
trade.
Political corruption in Hamilton? Where to begin, but that's
where we start to turn a blind eye. At the early stage of the
Angels' push into Ontario, they held a "convention" at an
historic hotel in Toronto. Someone phoned the now ex-mayor
who came down for a photo-op, shaking hands with the bikers.
Everyone excused him as having been duped. He wasn't the
sharpest tack in the box, but still, I doubt he did much
without a paid administrator or two guiding him around. His
administration was tossed as a result of a public spending
scandal.
Still, as I and you say, all this and more is viewed as
exceptional, as in not characteristic. If there are fewer
murders in Canada than in the US, it's because more of us
quietly toe the line. Just my opinion.
Best, Kerry
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