Lucien Rivard

Few things are known about Lucien Rivard’s youth, but he will become known in the underworld for smalltime larceny, at first, and then because of his activities in drug and arms trafficking, up to the 50s when, with the blessing of the Cotroni family, he now controls the Canadian market for heroin. A criminal inquest led by Pacifique «Pax» Plante and a young Jean Drapeau (who will later become mayor of Montreal), will lead Rivard to move to Cuba. There, he will oversee the operations of three nightclubs and casinos with his associates, Jean-Baptiste Croce and Avisan Bistoni, both members of the Corsican clan. It is around that time that he will meet Paul Mondolini and Santos Trafficante jr. After being imprisonned briefly during Castro’s revolution — the well-known criminal lawyer Raymond Daoust will obtain his release —, he’s back in Quebec in 1958, where he will continue his illegal activities under the cover of Domain Ideal, a popular resort in Laval. On October 10, 1963, Michel Caron is arrested at the Mexican-Texan border. He poses as a tourist on holiday with his wife, but in fact he’s a courrier for Rivard. In his car are hidden 35 kilos of heroin, worth a million dollars a kilo, making this the second largest drug bust in US history, at the time. Caron will give his boss to the police and Rivard is arrested in June 1964 and incarcerated in Bordeaux, from where he’ll escape in the spring of 1965. Legend has it that he climbed the wall using a garden hose that was given to him fater he requested permission to water the skating rink on a night where the temperature was well above the freezing point. In actual fact, it has become known that he had the collaboration of some prison guards but that he made up a cover story so that they wouldn’t be blamed. He will be on the run for over four months, a time during which Robert F. Kenedy will personally try to obtain his extradition to the US to stand trial there. Rivard will use his political connections in the Liberal party to avoid extradition, which will lead to a political scandal culminating in the resignation of Guy Favreau, minister of Justice and heir apparent to prime minister Pearson. He will be extradited in September 1965, tried and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment. He will spend 10 years in a US jail and will come back in Quebec, where he’ll keep a low profile. Police say he kept on running he shady undertakings until his death, in 2002, at the age of 86.