First of all: a word about my book.

Ten years have past since the publication of my essay, DE DALLAS À MONTRÉAL, La filière montréalaise dans l'assassinat de JFK*. Even if it got good reviews and a fair distribution in Quebec, Canada, this book didn't reach the American public neither the JFK assassination researchers community. I’ve never care too much about international publishing success, since I wrote the book in order to humbly share information that were overlook by American writers. But I still think that a few important pieces of the JFK assassination puzzle may be found in Montreal.
So, De Dallas à Montréal main originality was to show how Dallas’ crime of the century was related to Canada biggest political scandal: the Rivard Case. A complex affair, the Rivard Case started in October 1963 with a massive heroin importation from Mexico to the United States. Its principal actor, Lucien Rivard, a prominent Mafia captain was both a drug and arms smuggler and a financial backer of the Liberal Party of Canada.

During the late fifties, in Montreal, Rivard was one of the top officer of Jos Bonanno, the head of an important New York Mafia family. But what is more significant relatively to the JFK assassination is the fact that Rivard was an associate of Santos Trafficante, Jr. in Havana casinos and that he was smuggling arms in Cuba. According to the House Selected Committee on Assassinations, Rivard was one of Castro prisoners for whom Jack Ruby did negotiate in 1959. This fact wasn’t published in HSCA’s report since Rivard’s name was only reproduced in HSCA’s volumes of testimonies. But in 1981, in his book The Plot to Kill the President, G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the HSCA, flatly stated that Rivard was one of the prisoners that Jack Ruby tried to get released in 1959. Years after the publication of my book, and after Rivard’s death, his widows confirmed to a Montreal film producer that Rivard indeed was in contact with Ruby.

In 1964, after the JFK assassination, Rivard and Bonanno were jailed in Montreal, awaiting extradition to the U.S. Their attorney and high officers of both the Canadian Department of Justice and tthe Immigration Department offered bribe to the lawyer representing the United State in the two extradition cases. The scandal that followed finally forced the resignation of Canada Minister of Justice, Guy Favreau.

More to come in the Blog…

Maurice Philipps

* French title translates as: FROM DALLAS TO MONTREAL, The Montreal Connection in the JFK Assassination.