Thank you for the tips, antimafia, however we have mined all those resources to death. You are right, the digital search goes back to 1987, and most of what we are talking about goes 1950-1980, maybe 1985.

Joe Gentile himself fled the country in 1977/78 on word that he was about to be indicted, and the rest of his merry crew began collapsing soonafter.

We don't want to go any further than the mid-1980s....while there are stories there and extending to today, they are about Montreal-based guys who essentially run a small branch office if you can even call it that.

We wanted to tell the story of the Vancouver family that had its own boss and ran its own affairs. I'm not interested in trying to pore over the details of who has done what for Montreal out here. The Montreal family has been written about lots lately and plenty more comes out on them all the time. The interesting story is that there was this family here on the West Coast, that nobody knew of and now no longer exists, but for 30+ years wielded lots of influence out here.

A lot of the portrait I've put together is of a man who was quite beloved in this community. To a "T", every single former neighbour of these guys I have spoken to, including Gentile's, will say that they were great neighbours, and in Gentile's case could count on the occasional bottle of his home made wine. I spoke to one woman who knew Gentile and who recalled a story of how he angrily dismissed a couple of men from his table one evening for having sworn in the presence of a woman.

If I can bind it all together, it will make for an interesting story.

I do have a copy of Making Connections and have pored over every inch of it.

I will admit I haven't tried mining out the Globe & Mail - that could work, although we have a bit of a bias against them out on the Coast...we tend to believe that they don't really cover our news anyway so I'm not sure to what degree that would be worth my time.

Thanks for the tips.