Yhis a question I have alawys had: Is the Mafia established in canada? I have never read anything about the mob in Canada…some reasons why I suspect that “La Cosa Nostra” never got a foothold in Canada:
-(1) Canada NEVER has national prohibition (of alcohol): this meant that the HUGE profits enjoyed by the Mob (in the USA), nebver were available to Canadian criminals.
-(2) Canada has a very small population (relative to the USA), so there just wasn’t as much prime territory available (in Canda) for the Mob to move in on.
-(3) I don’t think that Canada ever had a large emigrant population of Sicilian Italians-and the concensus was that most of the Mafia came from Sicily (the Neopolitan Camoora, and tha Calabrain gangs were NO match for the Mafia).
So, Canadian dopers: WHO handles the organized crimein Canada? I can’t imagine that the CBC will ever air a Canadian versionof “THE SOPRANOS”…or, is there a Mafiain Canada>
Inquiring mids want to know! 
Actually, it looks like the Mob is active in Canada. From this link:
That said, you don’t hear about them as much as you hear about the Hell’s Angels as far as organized crime goes. I’ll leave the debate about why that is to someone who knows what they’re talking about.
I thnk you’ll probably find well-organized crime pervasive in many countries even if it’s not readily apparent. All you have to do is read the newspapers and you can see how easily that certain crimes are being…BANG…aaaaaaaaarrrgggghhhhh
It has been done :
Omerta I
Omerta II Omerta III
and with regards to outlaw biker gangs :
The Last Chapter and its sequel
A relative of mine’s family was involved in Organized Crime In Montreal at one point…I believe his father went to jail for planning a bombing of some shop/building. He was pretty high up there if I’m not mistaken.
Of course the mob is in Canada. Toronto, Vancouver, Hamilton and Montreal all have large multicultural popualtions. If organized crime, which spans all ethnicities, means “Sicilian” to you, the Toronto area has perhaps 100,000 people who speak Italian at home as their first language, and far more who understand Italian or are of Italian descent. Naturally, this includes many Sicillians. I played for a “Southern Italian” soccer team growing up, know many Italians, and assure you the law abiding vastly outnumber the (very real) mafiosi. There are also French and English Canadian biker gangs, Chinese gangs, Triad and Yakuza societies, Vietnamese gangs, Jamaican gangs, etc. in Canada.
Doesnt that mean ‘your family’ was involved?
I live in Hamilton.
Yes, the Mafia is in Canada. Hamilton sits nice and comfortably in a line with Toronto, Montreal, and the US (Buffalo). We’ve had our fair share of ‘unsolved’ bombings (one just this week), businesses who manage to stay afloat despite the absence of visible customers, and bodies turning up in trunks of cars.
We made the mistake of trying to get drunk in (what was in retrospect obviously) a mafia bar in Montreal. It was the night of the last game of the world series. Every other bar was packed to the gills, and this one was empty except for a table-full of well-dressed elderly Italians in the corner. The service was awful to the point that it seemed they were trying to encourage us to leave. The nice men in the corner kept staring at us menacingly. We left after just one round.
It was an aunt’s husband’s father
More questions for our Canadian friends: since guns are more strictly controlled in Canada, are Mafia “hits” done differently? And, Canadian drug laws are more liberal than in the USA-does this mean that the Canadian Mafia focusses more on other activites?
Man, that “Omerta” series crackedme up! If only you could get Marlon Brando to play in it!
[QUOTE=ralph124c]
More questions for our Canadian friends: since guns are more strictly controlled in Canada, are Mafia “hits” done differently?
It would seem to me, after being saturated with mob movies and such, that a lot of times, people just ‘disappear’, don’t they? You never see too many of those inside job murders happen by shooting a guy and leaving the body. Don’t they cut off the hands and head to stop identification if the body is ever found? I don’t think guns laws would play much of a role either way, actually. I would imagine criminals avoid shooting people with their own registered guns.
Gun control up here is a funny thing… Criminals have guns, and can get them quite easily from what I understand (Maybe not in Nowhere, Saskatchewan but in populated areas there’s no problem). What we don’t have so much of is regular citizens wanting guns. We have some, for sure… there’s probably an NRA chapter up here, but on the whole there’s no undeniable right to bear arms, so we generally don’t.
‘Hits’ aren’t often reported as ‘hits’ unless it’s painfully obvoius (as a few years ago when a top figure head got hit). Normally, they are reported as a murder related to a shady business dealing. There are plenty of single bullets to the back of the head if that’s what’s still considered the standard.
I remember a particularily news worthy story about a hit that was a beating with a blunt object at a scrap yard a few years ago. And we had a house explode last week.
The OP misses something obvious- yes, Prohibition in the U.S. helped make the Mafia rich, but just where does he think the Mafia was smuggling liquor FROM?
They definitely had bases of operations in Canada!