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The phone in the airport warehouse rang at 11:14 p.m. The guard on duty, 24-year-old David Braham, answered it and listened as a gruff voice on the other end asked if his man had arrived there yet.

“His man,” the caller explained, was an Air Canada employee who had been sent to pick up some de-icing fluid from the freight shed. Without it, flights would be delayed; there would be hell to pay.

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The two were still on the phone when Braham heard a knock at the warehouse door. He set the phone down and went to the door, where he was met by a man wearing an Air Canada uniform. Your boss is looking for you, Braham told the man as he motioned to the phone.

That’s when the man pulled out a gun. “This is a robbery,” he said.

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The April 17, 1974 heist at the Ottawa airport was the largest gold theft in Canada’s history, with Paddy Mitchell, Stephen Reid and Lionel Wright making off with six bars weighing 5,100 ounces and worth more than $750,000, the equivalent today of about $4 million. The robbery ignited the criminal careers of the three, lifting them from small-time petty thieves to international bank robbers and, eventually, drug traffickers. Their quick and efficient robberies, with one of the trio — usually Reid — often wearing a stopwatch around his neck, earned them the nickname The Stopwatch Gang. They had a reputation for politeness during their robberies, and for not hurting anyone.