A massive power struggle in the violent world of organized crime in southern Ontario is going on and Peter Edwards, who has authored 10 books on organized crime, in an article in Toronto Star on Monday reported that B.C.’s notorious Wolfpack alliance is involved in it.

Edwards, noting that some of the violence this year is blamed on “a culture clash between the old and the new,” added: “On one side are the aggressive young computer-friendly newcomers from B.C. and Quebec allied to a gang called The Wolfpack Alliance. On the other side are the old guard — the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] arm of the traditional ’Ndrangheta family of Cosimo (The Quail) Commisso of Siderno, Italy.”

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/national/entertainment/2021/10/26/1_5639003.html

TORONTO -- A new book detailing the links between Mexico’s drug cartels and the tech-savvy, diverse and widespread organized crime group in Canada known as the “Wolfpack,” was released Tuesday.
In “The Wolfpack,” authors Luis Horacio Najera and Peter Edwards use their decades of experience writing about organized crime, both in Canada and Mexico, to detail how organized crime operates in Canada after a group of millennial hotshot gangsters sought to fill the void left by the death of Montreal godfather Vito Rizzuto.

The Wolfpack, made up of an ethnically diverse, geographically distant hodgepodge of Canadian underground criminals, worked to bring in a steady supply of cocaine from El Chapo Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel to Canada through the ports and skies of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
“They're bonded by the internet, not by geography,” said Edwards, describing the Wolfpack in an interview with CTVNews.ca Tuesday. “Some are in Vancouver, some are in Montreal, some are in Toronto and it doesn’t really matter – they can move around.”
Edwards said that greatly distinguished them from the organized crime groups he wrote about decades ago that operated in a “geographic centre.”

An Overview of Organized Crime Across Canada

How different cities figure in the criminal underworld, as explained by the authors of The Wolfpack

You can get it done for very, very little,” Peter Edwards casually observes about taking out a hit on someone. “It’s not the biggest skill in the world, and guns aren’t that expensive. So, I mean, if you just want the guy dead and that’s your goal, it’s not that tough.”

Edwards, an author and veteran crime reporter for the Toronto Star, offers this as almost a parenthetical, in explaining the particular extra-ness of a Gen Y hitman who was getting paid tons of money to kill people — and then unwisely boasting about it on the internet.

Partly, he concludes, it’s a generational divide. “The smart old-timers, they don’t do a crime and then brag about it,” he says. “At least they don’t brag about it publicly.”

At one point in the show, they engage in a kind of lightning round, to draw for listeners what Jesse describes as “a map of organized crime in Canada.”

“I’ll name a place, and one of you just shoot out what the significance of that place is,” he says.

Here’s what Edwards and Nájera have to say about a variety of locations, arranged from east to west. Their remarks have been slightly edited.

Montreal

Peter Edwards: “Three hundred and eighty-five miles from New York City and traditionally a great place to smuggle, with very, very established groups. Once I talked to a Hells Angel in Ontario, and he said, ‘If it’s me and you, we can talk. If it’s me and you and Ontario, watch your mouth. If it’s me and you and Quebec, shut up and don’t look at me.’ So they’re taken seriously.”

Luis Nájera: “Yeah, Montreal is one of the most important places in Canada, and not only for trade. We know that the connection between New York and Montreal is massive in terms of organized crime. Even criminals in Mexico, they know where Montreal is. And one thing that particularly facilitates operations for Latin American cartels is there’s a large Spanish-speaking population in Montreal, because of the connection with French.”

Kingston, ON

Edwards: “That’s kind of grad school, for the people who go to Millhaven or Collins Bay [correctional institutions]. There’s a lot of connections made. Millhaven’s a tough place, nicknamed ‘Thrillhaven.’ Collins Bay’s nicknamed ‘Gladiator School.’ It’s a pretty tough place, but that’s kind of the older guys. Like a lot of the the older ones, once they’ve been through there, they decide that maybe it isn’t that much fun and maybe there are better things to do, and ‘I’ve got a little house and I’ve got a nice motorcycle and my wife loves me. Let’s just leave it at that. I don’t want to go back here.'”

Nájera: “And also now with this new wave of criminals coming to these kinds of prisons, it will be very, very interesting to see and to understand how these new dynamics and interactions between younger criminals happen while they’re in jail. It’s completely different than with the older guys, where one group has one area, the other has another area, and they don’t mix together. This new generation, they have a new way of integration and communication, and it’s going to be very, very interesting.”

Toronto

Edwards: “It’s got a bit of everything. There’s a lot of real estate, a good place to invest, but it’s got everything. I mean, like every kind of group is there and there’s something anonymous and you can live in a really expensive condo, do bad things, and nobody knows you’re there and have a nice, reasonably quiet life.”

Nájera: “Toronto is somehow similar to Panama City. When I went to Panama City a few years ago, I had some good conversations with people there, and they told me, ‘Well, this is pretty much kind of a hub for organized crime. They respect each other here. They talk. They do business. Sometimes they don’t get along well, but they know that bringing a lot of attention from the police to the city is not good for all of them. So they try to do business and kind of stay with a low profile.’ Sometimes here in Toronto, like we presented in the book, there’s people dying — and well, that’s part of the job description if you want to be a mobster.”

Woodbridge, ON

Edwards: “Very, very big in the ‘Ndrangheta, the one strain of Mafia, and very politically interested and very interested in real estate and business. Very well-dressed and kind of older.”

Hamilton, ON

Edwards: “Pretty rough-and-ready old Mafia, leaning towards New York State. Some very tough guys out of the East End, and right now, really key people are gone and it’s a bit up for grabs. It’s had a flavour of corruption for a while now. The Hamilton stories just go really deep and really far back. Even the criminals don’t quite get all that’s going on. But there’ve been some big ones, you know: Musitano, Violi, Luppino, Papalia — you know, big, big names. And it’s the closest big city to New York State: when you’re heading down there, that’s where you go. And there have been some unsolved murders that are organized crime, that are kind of statement murders. I mean, a lawyer got murdered for putting someone into a witness-protection program. It hasn’t been solved, and you’d think it’d be pretty simple.”

Burnaby, BC

Nájera: “Very interesting point of connections, and unfortunately, a place where several members of organized crime groups in the area have been murdered.”

Edwards: “And not a big Mafia presence. Like, it’s open territory for other groups that aren’t Mafia.”

Vancouver

Nájera: “Another extremely important port of entry for drugs and whatever you want to bring into Canada or take out to other places. Sometimes it’s complex how relationships between criminals work there, but I guess it’s part of the size of the business. In the past, you had one group controlling the whole thing. Now, they have to learn how to work together somehow. For instance, in Vancouver, you have Hells Angels, you have Independent Soldiers, you have the Red Scorpions, you have several groups working together and sometimes fighting together. But Vancouver is very, very interesting.”

Edwards: “And the Mafia doesn’t have a real presence there that counts for much.”

Nájera: “Also, Vancouver, at least in the past, was kind of a safe haven for the families of drug lords from Mexico. They enjoy sending their families there because of the safety and they don’t drag a lot of attention from the police. And of course, because of the nature and so on. They like to send their family there for the four seasons.”

Accused Hells Angel killer almost faints in court

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/...el-killer-almost-faints-in-court-4811571

The Wolfpack: Niagara’s “Millennial mobsters”

https://thevoiceofpelham.ca/2021/12/11/the-wolfpack-niagaras-millennial-mobsters/

How Mexican Cartels Settled in Canada

https://insightcrime.org/news/how-mexican-cartels-settled-canada/

that was a great interview good find...looking to read the book.

Nice interview for real.
Wonder who are the players in montreal and toronto that are part of the wolfpack.

I think an irish gangster from montreal is affiliated

Link below is to an article by retired Halton Regional Police Service Sgt. Stephen Metelsky. This is the first of a four-part series he's writing about Sukhvir Deo.

Alleged gangster’s Oakville paradise — cocaine, cartels and carnage
https://www.insidehalton.com/opinio...le-paradise-cocaine-cartels-and-carnage/

Six alleged Wolfpack gangsters accused of running DTES drug ring

https://vancouversun.com/news/local...6d27ece-405a-403b-92df-2fe712f3e01d/amp/

Part 2.

Alleged gangster’s Oakville paradise: Cocaine in a suitcase
https://www.insidehalton.com/opinio...oakville-paradise-cocaine-in-a-suitcase/

^^^^
Link to part 3 is below. Article contains good details about the connections between Joe Catroppa, Dean Costanza, Pat Musitano, and Angelo Musitano.

Alleged gangster’s Oakville paradise: The undercover ruse
https://www.insidehalton.com/opinio...s-oakville-paradise-the-undercover-ruse/

^^^^
Link to part 4 is below. Article contains several paragraphs about Project OTremens.

Alleged Gangster’s Oakville Paradise — Hitmen and Murderous Carnage
https://www.insidehalton.com/opinio...e-paradise-hitmen-and-murderous-carnage/

The Dean Costanza Homicide: Six Degrees of Separation in the Underworld
https://www.insidehalton.com/opinio...17e1e38-5713-52b8-8bc5-711e8d83e707.html

https://vancouversun.com/news/crime/a-third-of-b-c-homicides-are-gang-related-heres-why


A third of B.C. homicides are gang-related: Here’s why

https://vancouversun.com/news/crime...ds-guilty-to-drug-trafficking-conspiracy

Brothers Keepers gangster pleads guilty to drug trafficking, conspiracy

Police say the Brothers Keepers emerged in 2017 and immediately came into conflict with rival gangs, including the Red Scorpions, the Hells Angels, the Wolfpack, and the United Nations.

Love or hate them but street gangs always have the coolest names.