Matticks was born in the Goose Village section of the Pointe-Saint-Charles district of Montreal, the youngest of 14 children in a very poor family of Irish immigrants.
[4] The Matticks brothers were, alongside Patrick "Hughie" McGurnaghan, Paul April, Allan "The Weasel" Ross, Peter White, and Kenny McPolland, the principal lieutenants of Ryan.
[1] It was alleged by the Crown that on 14 October 1971 Gerald, along with his brother John Matticks, had kidnapped Allan Seller by dragging him into their car and shot him twice.
[1] One of the men who gave Matticks an alibi, an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), later joined the West End Gang.
[1] In 1973, Matticks was arrested along with his brother Richard on 15 charges of hijacking, theft and possession of stolen goods with the Crown alleging that, between 25 September and 27 October 1973, the Matticks brothers had in their possession several truckloads of frozen meat, alcohol, audio systems, cigarettes, leather goods, clothing, televisions, cosmetics and lingerie, which they were selling to people whom they met in bars who were all willing to buy on the cheap items that supposedly "fell off the back of a truck.
[7] In 1979, the Commission d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé (CECO) accused Gerry, Richard and Frederick Matticks of being the most aggressive and prolific truck hijackers in Montreal between 1972 and 1979.
[9] On 12 November 1979, Matticks together with his two brothers, Ryan, Fred Griffith and André "Sappy" Martin were indicated on charges of perjury for their testimony at the CECO together with 158 courts of theft and possession of stolen goods.
[3] On 15 November 1988, Matticks, along with his brother Richard and Normand Beauregard, were arrested while unloading a hijacked truck full of imported clothing worth $150,000.
[9] Increasingly prosperous, Matticks began investing in legitimate businesses and became the owner of a trucking firm, a cattle farm and a beef wholesaling company.
[12] At the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, Matticks would ride in a float and throw out dollars to the crowds, adding to his popularity with the people of Montreal.
His parish priest, Father Marc Mignault, has praised him for his generosity, saying that Matticks paid to have the leaking roof of his church repaired for free.
"[13] In 1992, when Allen Ross was convicted of drug charges in the United States, Matticks replaced him as leader of the West End Gang.
"[3] Canadian criminologist Steven Schneider wrote: "By the 1990s, Gerald Matticks was a millionaire with investments in various legitimate businesses including a transport company, a meat wholesaling business and a restaurant...All the while he was a cunning and circumspect drug smuggler, importing thousands of kilos of hashish and cocaine, which he wholesaled through his own network, supplying the elite of Quebec's underworld – the Hells Angels, the Rock Machine, the Rizzuto family, as well as Asian and Russian criminal groups.
[15] The Thor 1 had set sail from the South African port city of Durban, carrying several containers of hashish from Mozambique and Uganda.
[15] On 15 June 1995, the presiding judge, Justice Micheline Corbeil-Laramée, dropped the charges, saying the Sûreté du Québec detectives had engaged in "reprehensible conduct" by planting documents in Matticks's house.
[18] Reports in the media alleged that the Sûreté du Québec commissioner Serge Barbeau and other senior SQ officers had threatened the internal affairs detectives in charge of the investigation into L'Affaire Matticks.
[18] The fall-out from the Thor 1 affair was a royal commission headed by Justice Lawrence Poitras which criticized the Sûreté du Québec for routinely engaging in unprofessional actions such as planting evidence, threatening witnesses, and perjury.
[19] The commission's report presented on 30 December 1998 stated the Sûreté du Québec "routinely broke laws during its criminal investigations".
[18] According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) informer Dany Kane, the anonymous caller was Hells Angels Montreal chapter president Maurice Boucher, who had also bribed the Sûreté du Québec detectives to plant the evidence, as this would be a "win-win" for him.
[4] In November 2001, Pierre Primeau, a RCMP officer, testified to a committee of the House of Commons in Ottawa: "To become a [Coopers and Checkers] union member you need to be sponsored by someone who will vouch for you.
[29] The garbagemen were considered important by the West End Gang because their job required them regularly enter and leave the port on a daily basis while it was easy to smuggle drugs out in the garbage bags.
[7] On 7 December 2000, Matticks and Lekkes were observed meeting with Normand Robitaille of the Hells Angels' Nomad chapter at an Italian restaurant.
[27] One truck that left the port, supposedly full of Belgian chocolates, was stopped by the police and found to contain a ton of hashish.
[36] As part of Operation Springtime, the police seized the records of the Hells Angels, which showed that Matticks was one of their main suppliers of drugs.
[34] In Mattick's office at Viandes 3–1, the police found a refrigerator with a note-tag reading "Mom" (Boucher's nickname) and "Guy" together with two phone numbers.
[41] Lekkes signed a statement for the Crown stating that Matticks, who controlled the longshoreman's union at the Port of Montreal, had made profits of $22 million from smuggling drugs into the city and had sold the Angels at least 700 kilos of cocaine in the last two years.
[10] At his sentencing hearing, Gerald Mattrick's own lawyer admitted that his client controlled the port of Montreal and would demand a cut of anything illegal coming in.
[43] Lekkes later testified at other trials in 2002 and 2003 that he regularly took cardboard boxes containing about $500,000 in cash from the Hells Angels as payments to the West End Gang.
[36] Donald Matticks was accused of importing some $2.1 billion worth of drugs, consisting of 44 tons of hashish and 265 kilograms of cocaine in the years 1999 and 2000.
[47] In Montreal, Matticks is widely considered to be a folk hero, seen as the champion of the working class, and his conviction led to a campaign to have him released early.