He challenged me and I knocked him out. I told his girlfriend that if she woke him up, I’d knock her out too.
BERNIE GUINDON on customer relations at his resort
While in prison, Guindon had a new idea about how to make a legitimate living after he got out. He planned to establish a high-end trailer park where bikers could camp, drink beer and ride their Harleys. He also hoped to attract many people who he considered “common citizens.” Guindon had his eye on a campground near Parry Sound, which he first spotted while out of prison on a pass. He had a smooth-talking partner who wanted in on the idea, but neither of them had the money yet. They did, however, have a name for their camp: Shan-gri-law, for the mystical, happy valley described in Lost Horizon, the 1933 novel by British author James Hilton.
In an attempt to raise money to purchase Shan-gri-law, Guindon and his partner ventured into real estate. They found a house they could fix up and resell, and bought it without a down payment by convincing the seller to add five thousand dollars to the selling price. It worked. Then they repeated the process several more times. “I swear on my patch that it was totally legit,” Guindon said. Next, they branched out and set up a seafood shop on Ritson Road near Highway 401 in south Oshawa, called Frog’s Fresh & Frozen Sea Products. “I didn’t know shit about it,” Guindon confessed. “I liked surf and turf.”
Through the seafood and the houses, they scrounged up enough money to finally buy the Shan-gri-law, which offered more than 175 acres of private campsites. Their plan for the grand opening was to bring in John Kay and Steppenwolf, whose song “Born to Be Wild” became the ultimate biker anthem after it appeared in the movie Easy Rider.
Kay in person wasn’t as much fun as his song. He seemed businesslike and a bit detached when he arrived, and Guindon wasn’t about to act like some giddy fan-boy. “I don’t like bugging people if I know they’ve got a job to do.”
Kay wasn’t impressed with the wooden stage that Satan’s Choice members had built on the property, and he refused to perform on it. Lorne Campbell, one of Guindon’s most loyal supporters in the Choice, stood up for the boss in the way he knew best. He stepped in, telling Kay, “All of your vehicles and instruments stay here. You can fuck off if you want.’ ” Kay played.
After the concert, Kay departed while some of his band stayed on and partied with the bikers and some of their female friends. Their tour was over and it was time to cut loose and celebrate. Steve Earle, the Grammy Award–winning country star from Texas, was far more accommodating than Kay and didn’t grumble when he played Shan-gri-law. “He was a pretty good guy, normal type of guy,” Guindon said. Things also went more smoothly with promotions like Kickass Country, a country jamboree; amateur boxing and charity toy runs.
Shan-gri-law was fun, but as a business, it was falling short of Guindon’s hopes. For one, the public didn’t feel welcome, and two, bikers worried that letting their guard down in such an obvious spot would leave them vulnerable to an ambush from enemies. That left few actual customers to pay Guindon’s bills. “We were hoping that we were going to get civilians. Hardly anybody showed up.”
The guests who did arrive often made Guindon re-examine whether his future really lay in the hospitality industry. Weasels kept poaching the chickens that Guindon raised for eggs and meat, and some customers treated the livestock even worse. Guindon ordered one wannabe biker to stop taunting his chickens and retire to his tent. “I did this with authority in a way the dumbest SOB would understand. He challenged me and I knocked him out. I told his girlfriend that if she woke him up, I’d knock her out too. The next morning, he came and apologized.”
In an attempt to be family friendly, Shan-gri-law had a petting zoo. One of its residents was a goose nicknamed “Dog.” “He acted like a watchdog. They are quite a watchdog, those things.” The goose attacked little Harley and spat on him and put up a spirited fight when Guindon rushed to his son. That was the end of the goose. “We ended up eating him.”
The pygmy goat and the dog in the petting zoo caused fewer problems, while the boa constrictor occasionally slithered away and hid. “My dad would have to give a red alert,” Shanan recalled. “ ‘If anyone finds a ten-foot snake…’ ”
Determined to make a go of the camp, Guindon soldiered on. He sweated to clear trees to expand the camp’s usable property. One day, he hooked a chain from a tractor onto a stump and then let out the clutch. “As soon as I let the clutch out, that sonofabitch was on top of me. The steering wheel went right on my chest.” Infuriated, Guindon thought he was going to die. He didn’t talk to God. He stayed conscious by cursing the teenagers who worked there and who should have done the job themselves and now should at least be saving him.
His chest was in great pain and his left arm seemed paralyzed. He struggled to get his feet under an axle in hopes he could push the tractor off himself. A few of his young employees finally showed up and managed to pile up logs under the tractor to relieve the pressure. After about twenty minutes, he was freed but near death. Emergency workers arrived and inserted a tube into his lung to drain it.
“The nurse cut him open so he could breathe, because he was coughing up blood, and took him to Huntsville Hospital and gave him twenty-four hours to live,” Harley said. His left lung was punctured. Six ribs were broken. “And he said fuck you to the doctor. ‘I’ll be out of here in a week.’ Then he went home…He basically refused to die.”
Once home, Guindon couldn’t make a fist with his left hand and his left arm felt as stiff as a canoe paddle. He built a contraption with coat hangers and elastics that helped his hand recover.
He was barely out of the contraption when he got involved in a fight with a camper that centred around Angel. The man pulled a knife on Guindon, who put him hard against a wall. The incident landed Guindon briefly in jail again for assault. Shortly after he was released, he tested his fist with a left hook on a familiar face—his business partner’s. “He didn’t give a shit who he went over to get ahead,” Guindon said of him. “I finally gave him a shot in the jaw and told him to stay away. He left.” With that, Guindon did three more months in jail for assault, while the doors closed for good on Shan-gri-law.