Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Prologue
- 1 Mafia, Memories and Journeys
- 2 Wine, Cannabis and Ancestors: Rural Australia
- 3 Aspromonte, the Roots
- 4 From St Kilda to Kings Cross
- 5 Bombs, Bridges and Gold
- 6 North American Hybrids
- 7 The Port, the Sea and the Wrong Sun
- 8 ‘Ndrangheta City and Spiderwebs
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
6 - North American Hybrids
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Prologue
- 1 Mafia, Memories and Journeys
- 2 Wine, Cannabis and Ancestors: Rural Australia
- 3 Aspromonte, the Roots
- 4 From St Kilda to Kings Cross
- 5 Bombs, Bridges and Gold
- 6 North American Hybrids
- 7 The Port, the Sea and the Wrong Sun
- 8 ‘Ndrangheta City and Spiderwebs
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Index
Summary
On 22 July 1990, Domenico Sergi (Little Domenic, from Griffith, remember him?) – representative for Australia; Vincenzo Trento and Anthony Cipriani – representatives for Canada; and Eliseo Lazzarino for Belgium, met in Ardore (Reggio Calabria province). It’s defined as a ‘ndrangheta meeting.
10 August 2009, Apegreen Laundromat, Siderno.
Giuseppe Commisso: Here is a friend who came from Australia, he is from Nardodipace … please come in … compare! He is a friend of mine …
Domenico Antonio Vallelonga: Pleased to meet you, Tony Vallelonga.
Carmelo Muià: Pleasure is mine, Carmelo Muià…
Churches and funerals
‘Are you going to go there just to see a church?’
‘I have to start somewhere, that’s one of the addresses in the arrest warrant at the very least!’
A friend of mine in Toronto was genuinely questioning the rationale of that trip. But … I have to see the places, I need to see the spaces.
It was April 2017 and I was staying in Toronto. It took me pretty much two hours to travel to the site of the church on public transport; I hadn’t rented a car. I wish I had. I wouldn’t have had parking issues anyway, as in front of the St Clare of Assisi Catholic Church, on 150 St Francis Avenue, in Woodbridge, a large suburban community in the city of Vaughan, just north of Toronto, there is no scarcity of parking space. It was windy, just a few days earlier it had snowed in Montreal, and Toronto was ice cold, or at least it was for me, in April … one should feel spring, right? Right. Anyway, I had bought a new pair of snow boots, insulated and furry inside, so I was ready to face what to me was definitely still winter.
Being in Woodbridge at the time was somewhat strange. In fact, I didn’t really know what I was expecting to see. I arrived at a scenic bridge, crossed it and found shopping malls and a variety of commercial venues. The roads became larger the farther behind I left the shopping area. St Clare was a massive, white and brown building that looked very polished and very new. A lot of Woodbridge looks very polished and very new.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Chasing the Mafia'Ndrangheta, Memories and Journeys, pp. 135 - 162Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2022