An Irish mob group originating from the Irish-Canadian ethnic enclave of Pointe-Saint-Charles in the 1950s, the majority of the gang's earnings were initially derived from truck hijackings, home invasions, kidnapping, protection rackets, extortion, and armed robbery, with its criminal activities focused on, but not restricted to, the west side of Montreal.
Due to the gang's control of illegal activity at the Port of Montreal, it moved into drug trafficking and became one of the most influential criminal organizations in Canada.
[6] Under Ross' leadership, the West End Gang formed a partnership with the Cali Cartel, transporting large quantitites of cocaine into Canada from the United States.
[5] Describing the origins of the West End Gang and how it differs from the other prominent crime groups in Montreal, the journalist Julian Sher said: "The thing about the Hells Angels and the Mafia is those are global organizations...
[14] Commander André Bouchard of the Montreal police stated about the West End Gang that they: "...weren't thugs selling drugs on the street like the French and the Italians...They had the best safecrackers and the best hijackers.
[15] Typical of the West End Gang members were William "Billy" Morgan who was born in poverty to Irish-Canadian parents in Montreal in 1935 and grew up in a broken home, leading him to boast in a 2008 interview: "I was a thief by the age of seven".
[15] Being placed "in care" in various foster homes, Morgan joined the West End Gang as a teenager and boasted: "Back then, I could open any lock or crack any safe and I did a lot of that.
[18] The most successful robbery committed by the West End Gang in Montreal was the theft of some $2,275,884 in cash together with golden Olympic coins worth $5,000 from a Brinks armored car took on 30 March 1976.
[22] Savard heard rumors that the West End Gang leader Frank Ryan had placed a $50,000 contract on his life, which caused to live under armed guard for some time afterwards.
[23] Under Frank Ryan's leadership, the West End Gang moved from local rackets, bank heists and truck robberies into cross-border drug smuggling.
[24] The West End Gang initially began to import significant quantities of marijuana and hashish[6][25] before Ryan and Allan Ross started smuggling large shipments of cocaine[6][25][26] into Canada from Florida as the drug's popularity increased in the early 1980s.
[27] The West End gang developed important contacts in the United States,[6] South America[26] and Europe, with some members working out of Florida.
In 1997, the federal government disbanded the National Ports Police as a cost-saving measure, which has greatly aided the work of the West End Gang.
[38][39] He was lured into an adjoining motel room by Paul April, a French-Canadian associate who told Ryan that an attractive young woman waiting to have sex with him there.
[40] April and an associate of his, Robert Lelièvre, who was armed with a shotgun, planned to tie Ryan to a chair and force him to reveal where he had hidden his fortune before killing him.
[43] On 25 November 1984, Trudeau and his occasional accomplice Michel Blass dropped off a TV set with fifteen kilograms of C-4 plastic explosive hidden inside, along with a VCR and a video tape of Hells Angels Forever to the apartment where April and Robert Lelièvre were hiding.
[8] Also in the apartment that day were Gilles Paquette, a petty criminal, and Louis Charles, a professional bank robber who had met April while they were imprisoned together at Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary.
[8] Ross paid for the murders by erasing a large drug debt owed to the West End Gang by the Laval chapter of the Hells Angels.
[41] Phillips was invited to drink with West End Gang member Billy McAllister at the Victoria Station bar on rue de Jean Talon in Mount Royal on 25 March 1985.
[27] On 15 May 1992, Allan Ross was convicted in Gainesville, Florida of conspiring to import and traffic in at least 10,000 kilograms of cocaine and more than 300 tonnes of marijuana between 1975 and 1989, for which he was sentenced to life in prison.
The group often collaborates with the Montreal Mafia and the Hells Angels in enormous drug shipments and remains one of the most powerful and profitable criminal organizations in the country.