[3] He first came through New York City before moving on to Montreal, Quebec, then to New Brunswick to work in the coal mines, before finally settling on Railway Street in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1917.

[9] Papalia said of his father, in a 1986 interview with The Globe and Mail's Peter Moon, "I grew up in the '30s and you'd see a guy who couldn't read or write but who had a car and was putting food on the table.

[15] Papalia attended St. Augustine Catholic School on Mulberry Street, dropping out in grade 8 after he suffered from a case of tuberculosis that put him in a sanitorium for several months.

[29] The fact that Papalia refused an offer of a plea bargain from the Crown under which he would serve a lesser sentence in exchange for testifying against his employers gave him a reputation in the underworld as someone who could be trusted to observe omertà (the code of silence).

[29] When Papalia was released in 1951, he moved to Montreal for a stint, where he worked with Luigi Greco and New York City Bonanno crime family representative Carmine Galante in heroin trafficking.

[46] After police raids, Papalia started working with James McDermott and Vincent Feeley, two major figures in gambling, in several clubs throughout southern Ontario.

[47] Together with Alberto Agueci of the Magaddino family, Papalia contacted Antoine Cordoliani and Joseph Césari, two Corsican leaders of Le Milieu, to buy high-quality heroin.

Joseph Valachi, who also attended the same meeting in New York, and later turned informer, testified that he knew Papalia as a capo (boss) who dominated southern Ontario under the authority of the Magaddino family of Buffalo.

[57] The beating of Bluestein attracted much media attention, and the Toronto Star newspaper columnist Pierre Berton called the attack a "semi-execution" brazenly committed in public view.

[58] The 100 some witnesses to the beating were reluctant to come forward, but in May of that year Papalia turned himself in to police to take some heat off of the crime family, and he was sentenced in June to 18 months in prison for the assault.

[56] As Papalia entered the Toronto police station, he displayed his hatred of journalists yelling insults at the assembled reporters, being quoted as saying "look at the dirty rats.

[73] As Papalia was marched by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to the plane that was to take him to the United States, he shouted at the assembled reporters, "I'm being kidnapped!

[75] The "French Connection" case was described by Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney-general of the United States, as "the deepest penetration ever made in the illegal international trafficking of drugs.

[81] Had he been granted a new trial, Papalia then planned to ask to have the charges dismissed under the grounds that his guilty plea and the resultant negative publicity made it impossible to find an impartial jury to hear his case.

[83] Papalia's homecoming to Hamilton was a lavish affair as Railway Street was filled up with a vast assortment of parked Lincolns and Cadillacs as a number of the underworld figures of southern Ontario arrived to pay their respects.

"[91] On June 4, 1970, a NDP MPP, Morton Shulman, gave a speech at Queen's Park, that detailed the close friendship between Papalia and a locally prominent Oakville businessman with a long criminal record, Clinton Duke as well as with the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police Eric Silk.

[93] The photographs of Papalia entering the Old City Hall of Toronto to testify at the inquiry dressed in a trench coat and a fedora while smoking a cigarette made the frontpages of the Canadian newspapers.

[95] In August 1970, Papalia attended a crime summit in Acapulco representing the Magaddino family to meet with gangsters from Canada, the United States, France, and Mexico to discuss plans to take over the soon to be legalized casino industry in Quebec.

[99][98] Papalia remained close to American gangsters whom he often met in the resort towns of Turkey Point and Port Rowan on the shores of Lake Erie.

[105] In 1971, Stanley Bader, a disreputable Toronto stockbroker with a talent for swindling his investors went into business with Sheldon "Sonny" Swartz, who was the son of a Papalia family associate.

[107] On August 26, 1973, Swartz told Bader that the defrauded investors were from the Cotroni family who were planning to "maim" him, but that Papalia had stepped in to save him by agreeing to take $300,000 to Montreal.

[108] Bader believed these claims, saying he had noticed "strange" cars parked outside of his house at night, whom he felt were from Montreal, and agreed to hand over the money to Papalia.

[109] In 1974, Montreal mobsters Vincenzo Cotroni and Paolo Violi were overheard on a police wiretap threatening to kill Papalia and demanding $150,000 after he used their names in the $300,000 extortion of Toronto business man Stanley Bader without notifying or cutting them in on the score.

"[112] During the trial, Papalia who was angry that it was the policeman Robert Ménard who recorded him talking in the Reggio Bar twice challenged Mario Latraverse, the chief of the Montreal police's anti-gang squad, to a fight in the men's washroom in the courthouse.

"[132] The murder of Volpe in November 1983, together with the fact that Luppino had suffered mental decline in his old age, forced the Magaddinos to put Papalia in charge of southern Ontario again.

[137] Papalia always had his meetings with his men on the street, talking vaguely in words that were always open to interpretation while engaging in hand gestures to convey his real meaning.

"[124] Papalia was known for his hatred of outlaw bikers, whom he found to be intolerably stupid and crude, and, in the 1980s and '90s, made it very clear that he did not want a Hells Angels chapter in Hamilton.

Walter Stadnick, a Hamilton native and Hells Angel in charge of expanding them into Ontario, was forced to keep a low profile in his hometown as long as Papalia lived.

[155] In the 1990s, Mora borrowed $7.2 million from Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto and gave the bulk of the money to Papalia to open an upscale restaurant and nightclub in Toronto.

[169][36] Peter Edwards and Antonio Nicaso wrote that with the murders of Mora, Papalia and Barillaro over a ten-month period "created more space" for the Rizzuto family, which was then able to dominate Ontario.