Every period has its leading contractors

James Accurso was just one of the entrepreneurs who dominated Montreal construction contracts during the last century.

Every period has had its leading contractors, and every leading contractor has bridged one period to the next.

For example, Miron Construction bid on sewer contracts in the 1940s against James Accurso’s and Nunzio Spino’s companies, and bid on some of the same contracts as Louisbourg Construction and Spino Construction into the 1970s.

In fact, Miron, Louisbourg Construction and Spino Construction were the only bidders on a 1972 contract to lay water mains on Pie-IX Blvd. and Jarry St. Louisbourg won.

Meanwhile, Miron Construction and Eastside Construction, a firm started under Spino in the late 1950s, bid on some of the same Montreal parks contracts in the 1960s as Grand Royal Asphalt Paving, a company that belonged to the future don of the Mafia in Montreal, Nicolo Rizzuto.

A real-estate record shows Miron Construction made a personal loan to Rizzuto for $1,777.50 in 1960, four years before his company began bidding on city contracts.

Before Accurso and Spino’s time, the dominant municipal contractors of the 1920s and 1930s were Janin Paving Co. and Sicily Asphaltum Paving Co. Ltd.

The latter firm had an ironic name given that it was founded in the late 19th century by a future mayor of Montreal who was of Scottish origin, James Cochrane. A construction contractor, he paved many Montreal streets even before forming Sicily Asphaltum Paving. He was no longer president of the company when he became mayor of Montreal in 1902, but city records show city council’s roads committee awarded contracts to the firm throughout Cochrane’s two-year term in office. He died in 1905.

City records show Sicily Asphaltum Paving bidding on road contracts into the 1960s.