A few hours ago, James Dubro tweeted that Papalia—Johnny Pops's brother—passed away. See

https://twitter.com/jamesdubro/status/456906616919425024

@jamesdubro: Frank Papalia the mobster I think of the "colourless mafioso"cf wth his older brother Johnny, died.his terr=unions,biz fraiud, scams, fronts

I'll provide a link to the obituary notice shortly.

As promised:

http://www.canadianobituaries.com/frank-papalia-obituary-april-15-2014.html

His brother was Ontario’s pre-eminent Mafia boss, but long-suffering Frank Papalia was still his keeper

Adrian Humphreys | April 18, 2014 | Last Updated: Apr 18 7:13 PM ET

Frank Papalia became brother John’s underboss, the second most powerful position in a mob clan.
Frank Papalia, the former mob underboss and long-suffering brother of Ontario’s pre-eminent Mafia boss, has died in a Hamilton nursing home at the age of 83.
Mr. Papalia found himself with a front row seat as a witness to many of the most momentous events in Canada’s underworld history – from the effects of Prohibition to the famed French Connection heroin smuggling ring, from the Americanization of the mob to its attempts at legitimacy through corporate ventures – as he aided and abetted his brother, John “Johnny Pops” Papalia, who dominated organized crime in Ontario from the family’s base on a cluttered street in the centre of an old, working class Hamilton street.
Throughout his life, Mr. Papalia always lived in the significant shadow cast by his notorious older brother, John, who earned the nickname “The Enforcer.”
Although often seen as the smart one, Mr. Papalia seemed to accept his place with John as the boss and took his place at John’s right hand as the underboss of John’s empire and as the dutiful brother within the family.
“Johnny was always the limelight and Frank did what Johnny told him to do. Frank was his buffer. He would screen people for him. He’d protect Johnny. If you wanted to talk to Johnny you’d go see Frank,” said Joe Fotia, a retired Detective Staff Sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police’s intelligence branch.
“When John was in jail, which was a fair amount, Frank was the one to look after all of the ventures.”
Mr. Papalia was born in Hamilton into a family already rooted in the Mafia. His father, Antonio, and mother, Maria Rosa Italiano, had immigrated to Canada from Delianuova, a village in Italy’s southern region of Calabria. Both sides of the family were involved in Calabria’s insular underworld before relocating.

When John Papalia, shown circa 1961, was in jail, Frank oversaw the family's affairs.
Moving to Hamilton, the Papalia patriarch Antonio worked for one of Canada’s first mob bosses, Rocco Perri, the self declared “king of the bootleggers,” during Prohibition. Moving up the ranks, Antonio Papalia made enough cash to buy some of the houses near his family’s home on Railway Street, that would become synonymous with the mob.
In 1930, the year Frank Papalia was born, Rocco Perri’s wife, Bessie, herself an integral part of the criminal empire, was shot dead. Antonio Papalia was almost certainly involved. When Perri himself disappeared in 1944, the Papalia family thrived in the new regime.
Frank Papalia was a budding boxer in his youth. He spent more time in the boxing club, in the basement of a grand Catholic church on Sherman Avenue North, than in the classrooms of Hamilton’s Catholic schools.
“Frank Papalia used to box. I was training him at the time and he was a pretty good fighter, pretty good. Frank was a good fighter. When he fought, he fought for St. Ann’s,” said Rudy Florio, an old Hamilton boxer and boxing impresario who grew up in the same neighbourhood.
“When I would run the boxing show he fought a couple of main bouts for me,” he said. “Frank Papalia was a real fighter.”

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By the age of 18, short and weighing 126 pounds, his prowess earned him a press notice for a 27-fight winning streak.
But if boxing was a career dream for Mr. Papalia, his family’s history seemed to make that impossible. By the time he was headlining boxing matches, his brother, John, six years older, was already running with a tough crowd of fledgling gangsters in Toronto.
In the mid-1950s, John Papalia emerged as the representative in Canada of Buffalo’s then-powerful La Cosa Nostra family in Canada, under the thunderous rule of American Mafia boss Stefano Magaddino.
That position brought power, money and immense police attention. It is widely accepted that Mr. Papalia became John’s underboss, the second most powerful position in a mob clan, akin to vice-president.
The family’s name had huge resonance in the city, said Ken Robertson, a retired chief of Hamilton police who made his name on the force as the mob’s chief opponent.

“I always remember walking the beat as a young constable and came across Frank, Rocco and Dominic [two other Papalia brother] and Johnny Papalia at the Royal Connaught,” Mr. Robertson said, referring to downtown Hamilton’s old landmark hotel. Their long, dark Cadillacs were illegally parked out front.
“I started issuing parking tickets to these Cadillacs and I remember them coming out and saying ‘Don’t you know who we are?’ I remember saying ‘I don’t give a shit, get these cars out of here.’ I think that was a sign that things were changing and that the mob was not going to be allowed to run things.”
Over the next few decades, Mr. Papalia almost always appeared at John’s side in photographs, such as when John was arrested for Toronto’s notorious Town Tavern beating of gambling kingpin Maxie Bluestein in 1961; when John returned to Canada from a long prison sentence in the United States as a mastermind in the French Connection heroin ring in 1968; when John was called to testify at a royal commission into police corruption in 1970; and when John was arrested for extortion in 1974.

Deep down inside, Frank was a gentleman. He didn’t like violence and a lot of the other mob things
While John drew significant criminal convictions, spending about a quarter of his adult life behind bars, Mr. Papalia avoided prison, although not charges.
In 1981 he was found guilty of refusing to take a breath test after he was pulled over one evening in a planned police operation to secretly place a wiretap inside his Cadillac.
That wire, in turn, led to a sex scandal.
Police heard Mr. Papalia on that wiretap talking to his Toronto lawyer about procuring a woman for him to have sex with. Police secretly watched as he gave $100 and a room number at a hotel to Shirley Ryce, a wayward housewife who had become a mistress to the Hamilton mob. An officer dressed as a waiter and delivered a cheese tray to the room to confirm who was inside.
When Ms. Ryce was confronted by police, she admitted Mr. Papalia had given her money to provide sexual favours for the lawyer. Mr. Papalia was charged with procuring a prostitute. In a plea bargain, he was convicted, instead, of obstructing justice and simply fined.


Shortly after, he was charged with conspiracy to defraud the government after a probe of his home insulation business, which was drawing federal subsidies through the Canadian Home Insulation Program, designed to prompt homeowners to reduce energy consumption. After more than 10 years in a legal quagmire, the charge was dropped.
“I remember when I arrested him and I put him in handcuffs, Frank didn’t like the idea that he should be in handcuffs because he kind of felt he was a different kind of criminal and should be treated differently,” said Mr. Robertson.
“He never understood that as far as I was concerned they were really street hoods who got away with doing what they did because the police never challenged them; because organized crime, in some cases, had been allowed to run rampant.
“But they weren’t above the law. I put him in handcuffs and marched him downtown [to the police station] and it was a pleasing day for me, but I’m sure it was not such a great day for Frank Papalia.

Half of the dozen homes on Railway Street in Hamilton are or have recently been sold, including the vending machine HQ of the Papalia family. It is from a vending machine company office and warehouse at 20 Railway Street that John "Johnny Pops" Papalia ran his criminal empire for fifty years and it was in the parking lot of 20 Railway Street that he was gunned down in 1997.
“Deep down inside, Frank was a gentleman. He didn’t like violence and a lot of the other mob things,” said Mr. Robertson. “Frank was in behind the scenes and it was really quite incredible how John was the profile Papalia and Frank became the senior statesman of the family. I think Johnny held the profile but I think, in the end, Frank was the brains of the Papalia family.”
Mr. Papalia concentrated on trying to legitimize the family’s assets through business ventures. In 1954, he founded a hat store, called Frank the Hatter, but later moved into more sophisticated enterprises.
Ron Sandelli, who retired as the officer in charge of Intelligence Services for Toronto police. said it was impossible to investigate John without bumping into his brothers.
“In all of the work we did on John, Frank was always around. He seemed to be more of the business side of the family’s affairs,” said Mr. Sandelli. Mr. Papalia was involved in real estate, home renovation, beer tap leasing, auto body shops, and vending and arcade machines. The corporate papers never had John’s name on them, usually Frank’s and often their close cohort, Bruno Monaco’s.

For John, being a mean son-of-a-bitch came naturally, but Frank had to work at it
His company placed thousands of cigarette vending machines around southern Ontario before regulation ruined that gold mine. They switched to food dispensers, pinball machines and coin-operated arcade games. One former client of the Papalia’s pinball business says that at Christmas, Frank and Mr. Monaco would show up at his office with a case of Canadian Club whisky as a gift.
Mr. Papalia also ran an exclusive, members-only night club in the centre of the city, the Gold Key Club, where gangsters and prominent citizens rubbed shoulders over cocktails and terrific live music.

Marv Elkind, a former driver for Jimmy Hoffa and various mobsters, remembers Frank Papalia as a nice guy who had to work at being vicious.
But to criminals, he was always seen as a mobster.
“On the street, everyone answered to Frank and then Frank answered to Johnny,” said Marvin “The Weasel” Elkind, who knew the Papalia brothers growing up and later infiltrated their Railway Street fortress wearing a police wire after becoming a career police informant.
“For John, being a mean son-of-a-bitch came naturally, but Frank had to work at it,” said Mr. Elkind. “He was as miserable as John, maybe more so because he worked at it. He tried to prove to everyone he was as bad as his brother. Frank — even when things were going good — tried to be tough about it.”

The Papalia’s prominence in the underworld died when John Papalia was shot dead in 1997 on the same street where he was born, killed by a gangland rival.
“When Johnny left, all the power left with him,” said Mr. Fotia. “You may be in during the glory with the boss, but when the boss goes, you disappear with him.”
For Mr. Papalia, his legacy in the city’s history will forever be tied to his notorious brother and the mob but for those closest to him, there is another legacy that will be hailed.
“Over the years I got to know Frank because we listened to the wiretaps, followed him around. I basically shadowed him for over five years of his life. I got to know a few things about him,” said Mr. Robertson.
“I got to know that he loved his daughter Rachael unbelievably. And I’m sure today the family is feeling bad. Frank had a strong bond with his daughter. As tough a guy as he was and a member of organized crime, he always really cared about his daughter.”
Mr. Papalia had a slow physical and mental decline over ten years and was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He died April 15. A funeral service is scheduled for Tuesday at the same chapel where his brother John was eulogized.

R.I.P Frank a very family orientated respected man.

After being instructed to look into Frank Papalia, and the timing of his death related to what has happened in and around Hamilton. I found this cool article, not really informative about what’s been going on, but still neat.

https://www.thespec.com/news-story/...milton-mobster-frank-papalia-s-old-home/