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Dec 31,2006 - Jan7,2006 |
Canada’s Al Capone
Part 6 - Rocco Perri rose in Hamilton as the boss of all bosses
By Antonio Nicaso
Originally Published: 2001-06-24
Hamilton — At the end of last century Platě was little but some mud and brown bread. It was a piece of land, a yellow-gray spot situated at the bottom of a valley, at the foot of the Aspromonte in the Reggio Calabria province, inhabited by men degraded by misery, who spent most of their time sitting on the parapets of bridges or on the doorsteps of houses.
Not yet at the crossroads of kidnapping, but even at that time "crooked caps" were dreaded and respected, like the few notables who, from the beginning of time, lived off the poor.
"Vogghiu fari na casa di duluri — li porti e li franesti di suspiri — e tossicu li mura e i ciaramidi (I want to build a house of pain — with doors and windows made of sighs — and venomous walls and roof tiles)," would sing old peasants, prisoners of resignation. Those poor devils had known nothing but mud and brown bread, all the while dreaming of America, Australia… an escape from misery.
It was in one of those houses, mostly single-floored, uneven, misshapen, blackened by time and eroded by wind, rain, fire, earthquakes, with roofs ill-covered with tiles and every sort of junk, that on December 27, 1887, Rocco Perri was born. He was to become one of the most powerful bosses of the North American underworld.
Perri emigrated to Canada with his family in 1908 after spending five years in the U.S. and worked first in a stone quarry in Coulbert, near Parry Sound, in Ontario, then for the Canadian National Railways, the company that had been awarded the contract for building Canada's railway network. He also did a stint as a construction worker in Trenton, and then worked in Hamilton.
In 1912 he moved to Toronto where he rented a room in a house owned by a Jewish family. Instead of finding a job he fell in love with his landlady, Besha (Bessie) Starkman, who was married to baker Harry Tobins and was the mother of two girls, Lilly and Gertrude. United by a strong passion, Rocco Perri and Bessie ran away together from Toronto in the hopes of finding a new life far away from his past.
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