Rizzuto's construction links traced to '60s Montreal

Before he reached the top of the Mafia in Canada, Nicolo Rizzuto owned a construction company that won municipal contracts in Montreal.

The late patriarch of one of the worlds most powerful Mafia clans was a municipal contractor 50 years before the authorities decided to investigate whether organized crime had a hold on the construction industry and public contracts in the province, The Gazette has discovered through an examination of municipal archives, and business and real-estate records from half a century ago.

Rizzutos resum included in his companys bidding documents at the time claims he even participated in the construction of Montreals cherished Expo 67, the Universal and International Exposition of 1967 that put the city on the world map.

The company, Grand Royal Asphalt Paving, also landscaped, paved and laid sewers and pipes in a dozen public parks in Montreal under four municipal contracts between 1963 and 1966 that The Gazette discovered in the citys archives. The search also turned up contracts that Rizzutos company bid on and lost, but a tally would require searching every municipal contract the city awarded during those years.

Grand Royal Asphalt Pavings resum also vaunted projects for the municipalities of Laval, Pierrefonds and St-Lonard and miscellaneous work for Ville de Jacques-Cartier, a town that was known as one of the most corrupt municipalities on the South Shore at the time and is today absorbed into Longueuil.

In fact, municipal, real-estate and business records trace Rizzutos career in the construction sector starting almost immediately after he arrived in Canada from Sicily in the 1950s to be the standard-bearer of his father-in-laws Sicilian Mafia clan, and ebbing around the time that he reportedly withdrew to Venezuela during a war with Calabrian rival Paolo Violi in the 1970s. Rizzuto returned to Montreal and seized control of the underworld after the 1978 assassination of Violi, who had succeeded Montreal Mob boss Vic Cotroni.

Rizzuto was killed by a snipers bullet while at home in Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough at age 86 in 2010. His son, Vito, who succeeded his father at the helm of the crime family, died of natural causes at age 67 in late December.

THE EARLY YEARS

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Rizzuto's construction links traced to '60s Montreal