He [Guindon] was like a big brother to everybody.
Former Satan’s Choice member STEVE (SLICK) MCQUEEN
In the face of the Outlaws’ and Hells Angels’ push north, Guindon faced a daunting task in rebuilding his Satan’s Choice, partly because he questioned the loyalty of some new Choice members who had joined up while he was in prison. “I was having my doubts as to how many were on my side,” Guindon said. “I figured geez, I’d have a helluva time rebuilding the club.”
Some rebuilding was sorely needed. In Toronto, the Iron Hawgs had patched over to the Outlaws in 1984, giving the American club a chapter in Canada’s most prosperous city. The Windsor area was lost for the foreseeable future after warlike Harry (Taco) Bowman of Detroit was elevated to the post of international president of the Outlaws. He would keep a firm grip on the Canadian city just across the Detroit River. Guindon visited Windsor anyway, displaying no warm feelings when he met up with Bill Hulko, former Choice president there. Hulko had bulked up considerably during his time in prison. “He had pecs bigger than my arms,” Guindon said. But he still had that left hook and wasted no time in letting Hulko know what he thought of the Windsor biker’s decision to patchover. “I socked him in the fucking head…He did nothing…I just wanted to see where his balls were. He didn’t have balls that fucking day.”
The Hells Angels were also on the move inside Canada. The club got its first Maritime chapter as the result of a bizarre accident. Walter Stadnick had graduated to the Angels in 1982. In 1984 he nearly died after his Harley was struck by a priest who ran a stop sign near Saint-Pie-de-Guire, Quebec, in his rush to see the papal visit. Members of the 13th Tribe of Halifax helped guard Stadnick as he recovered in Hamilton’s St. Joseph’s Hospital. In return, they were promoted to membership in the Hells Angels.
The Choice was bleeding members, and was a far cry from even the two hundred members who’d been holding down the fort during their president’s prison term. “A lot of guys went Outlaws,” Guindon said. “Others quit and got married. Some guys joined smaller clubs. Some guys went west, looking for jobs.”
Guindon wasn’t impressed with many of those who stayed behind and still wore the grinning devil patch of the Choice. They seemed lax about attending meetings or club runs. Some seemed to want a patch just to look tough. What Guindon wanted were members like Lorne Campbell and David Hoffman, who were comfortable in their own skin and who “had parts”—his term for “balls.” He didn’t want anyone who needed a patch on his back to make him feel like a man. “They think the patch is going to save their ass. That’s why a lot of guys join motorcycle clubs. They’ve got no balls.”
In an effort to reclaim some lost muscle, the Choice opened four new chapters in Ontario between 1985 and 1988, which gave them ninety-five members in seven chapters. That was a solid number, even if it was just a third of the Choice’s membership before Mother McEwen’s betrayal. Many of the members were enthusiastic cocaine traffickers, and the Toronto chapter specialized in moving the drug from Quebec to Alberta, home of Canada’s oil patch.
Some of the new members were solid, like ironworker Steve (Slick) McQueen, who joined the Kitchener chapter of the Satan’s Choice in 1986. McQueen was a jaunty man given to wearing a custom-made bowler hat and who bore more than a passing resemblance to actor Jack Nicholson. He was also a ferocious street fighter and could speak with authority about having an eye coming out of its socket because of a broken orbital bone while battling. He could speak with equal authority about inflicting that condition on an opponent.
McQueen respected Guindon’s reputation as a boxer. “I was a different kind of fighter,” McQueen said. “I did lots of street fighting in Hamilton.” He also fought as an underground cage fighter near construction sites around Fort McMurray, Alberta. “I fought in barns and different types of places,” he said. “That was craziness. It was a well-kept secret. I would always suggest, ‘Let’s make money. No rules. Just get up and get at it. Whoever wins gets all the money.’ ”
Like Guindon, McQueen wasn’t particularly large. He stood five-foot-nine and weighed about 180 pounds, but he had the fighting spirit of a wolverine. “Size don’t mean anything,” he said. “When they’re unconscious, they’re only as tall as they are thick.”
Like many members of the Choice, McQueen had some unresolved issues with his father. He ran away from home as an adolescent and made it all the way from the Niagara Peninsula to the Fraser Canyon of BC before he was caught and returned home. When police asked his father why he hadn’t filed a missing person’s report, McQueen’s dad told them they should try taking him into their own house for a week and then they’d be able to answer the question for themselves.
McQueen recalled being impressed with Guindon’s attitude at a motorcycle rodeo in Kitchener. Guindon struck McQueen as a proud, old-school biker, who was eager to participate in any event that was held, whether it was brawling for a chunk of a beheaded turkey or seeing who could ride the slowest without falling over. “There was Bernie, the living legend. He competed in every event. I don’t remember him winning anything, but he was a goer. He just wouldn’t quit.”
George McIntyre of Hamilton’s East End Parkdale Gang was at the same motorcycle rodeo. McIntyre had brushed up against Choice members in jails and at boxing matches. “Bernie’s always been the same. Good-natured straight shooter. He treated everybody the same. Wasn’t a bully. Didn’t like rats. His word was his bond, and he was a tough boxer.”
McIntyre noted that Guindon had definite ideas about how fights should be conducted: “He was Marquess of Queensberry rules…When the guy hit the ground, he didn’t go for putting his boots to his head. He had already made them look bad enough. He had respect for people…It was honour among thieves. Call it what you will.”
That weekend near Kitchener, McIntyre and McQueen found themselves competing against Guindon in an event called the “stick race,” which was an outlaw biker version of musical chairs. It started with a dozen motorcycles slowly driving around a big circle of tires. Each motorcycle had a driver and a man on the back. A man standing in the middle of the circle held eleven sticks. The “road boss” threw the sticks in the air and the men on the back of the bikes ran to fetch one. “Then it’s full-on fucking war and anything goes,” McIntyre said. “There’s no weapons involved, except the stick. You can do whatever it takes.”
Once a stick is secured, the passenger jumps back on his ride and races across the finish line. It should have been a good event for Guindon, since he carried a striker from Sarnia on the back of his Harley, who, McIntyre estimated, was about seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. “He was a Goliath,” McIntyre said. “He wasn’t a person. He was a place.”
That afternoon, it came down to just two teams vying for the stick race championship: Guindon and the massive Sarnia striker against McQueen and McIntyre. When the final stick was thrown, McIntyre saw he could easily out-leg the Goliath. “He was such a big three-toed fucking sloth.” However, McIntyre thought it would be bad form to win in this manner, since he was an invited guest and not a Satan’s Choice club member. So he did what he thought was the more polite thing: he drop-kicked, airplane-spun and body-slammed the Goliath into submission. McIntyre was just five-foot-nine, but he had beefed up to more than 220 pounds in the weight room. Years later, McIntyre still laughed at the memory of Guindon chewing out the Goliath after their loss: “You big fucking galoot! Look at the size of him! You had your chance to shine and you blew it!”
Despite Guindon’s furious outburst, McQueen was impressed with how accessible he was with club members, including newcomers like himself. “Anybody could talk to Bernie. It didn’t matter what your problem was. He was like a big brother to everybody.”
Guindon also displayed some surprising life skills. McQueen recalled taking part in a brawl in a Kitchener bar that left him with a huge black shiner that shut his left eye, and an ugly gash in his face. “You could see the bone in my forehead. It was opened up.” Going to the hospital wasn’t an option, because that would mean certain arrest. “Police were involved in the fight and they didn’t do so good.”
McQueen and other bikers regrouped in the local Satan’s Choice clubhouse, where Guindon was visiting. Guindon had seen plenty of ugly eye injuries in the ring and on the street. He was convinced that McQueen would lose the sight in his left eye if something wasn’t done soon. He sat McQueen down in a chair, and a mammoth biker from the Oshawa chapter held him from behind while another biker sat on his thighs. Then Guindon splashed whisky on McQueen’s face and commenced operating. He had no training whatsoever in medicine, but he’d practised stitching while in prison, doing petit point, and watched other boxers get stitched up. He reckoned he could handle the job as well as anyone in his circle.
First, he lanced the mouse under McQueen’s eye and then sewed it up with three or four stitches. Next came another ten or so stitches above his eye until the bone was no longer visible. “He did the sewing. He knew what he was doing,” McQueen said. “It was just like in the movies, buddy. They poured whisky on my face and started sewing me up. I was pretty much tethered to the chair by Bernie’s helpers. I’m far from handsome, but I have Bernie to thank for the sight in my left eye. Unless you run your hand over my eyebrow, you can’t tell.”
It was around this time that McQueen met his future wife, Lucy. His life got immeasurably better from that moment on, he said. “I’m still enjoying my marriage as much as I did in the first day I met her,” he said two decades later. “I won the wife lottery.”
When Lucy was almost killed in a car accident in 1994, McQueen did not hesitate to quit the club to be by her side. “You’re not allowed to quit, but I quit anyway,” he said. Some of the members gave him grief, but McQueen didn’t doubt for a second that he was doing the right thing. “It’s what any man is supposed to do. You’re supposed to take care of your family.”
McQueen knew he’d have to tell Guindon of his decision. He wasn’t sure what to expect. The president had been working hard to find good guys to rebuild the club; losing McQueen would be a blow to that effort.
“Go look after your family,” Guindon replied, perhaps respecting McQueen even more for making the tough call to leave and tell him face to face. “That’s the most important thing.”