Be good for your mom, do as she says, she knows what is best for you.
BERNIE GUINDON offers advice to daughter Sarah Hodgins
In the final decades of the twentieth century, plastic explosives, rocket launchers and automatic weapons replaced Saturday-night punch-ups as the preferred methods of settling outlaw biker disputes. Bikers were more likely to be found pumping weights in a gym than quaffing ale in a bar. The more dangerous the outlaw bikers became, the more they looked like average citizens.
It seemed nostalgic to watch Vagabonds president Donald (Snorko) Melanson snort up ungodly amounts of cocaine. “He used to make lines about two feet long,” an old friend and fellow Toronto cocaine trafficker said. “What a big nose he had. He was like a vacuum cleaner.” The more cocaine Snorko hoovered, the more paranoid he became. The fact that the forty-year-old owed Quebec Hells Angels about $900,000 for the product stressed him out and drove him to snort that much more.
Snorko’s body was found in a room he had rented in the Novotel hotel on Yonge Street in north Toronto on September 3, 1987, with two bullets in his head. The killing remains officially unsolved, but his old friend had no doubt about which of his former underworld contacts pulled the trigger. It had to be the Quebec Hells Angels, who would have entered the room with the promise of another deal, his old friend reasoned. If they couldn’t collect the debt from him, they could at least make him serve as an example to others. “Who else would do it? He owed them a big chunk of money.”
Some two hundred Harleys growled along Steeles Avenue West from the St. Paschal Baylon Church in what was the biggest Toronto biker funeral in memory. They rode in from as far away as Dallas, Edmonton and Chicago, and mourners wore the colours of the Lobos, American Breed, Penetrators, Scorpions and Outlaws. No Hells Angels were seen. The bikers at Snorko’s send-off were mourning the end of an era as well as the death of a friend. Being popular was no longer enough to keep you alive—something Guindon already knew all too well.
Back in the mid-1960s, the Satan’s Choice had held meetings in a second-floor apartment in Toronto. Now the club’s Toronto chapter met in a detached brick home in Riverdale with security cameras, a steel-reinforced door, a tall protective gate and fence, and high-powered quartz lighting for the front and back. Bikes were parked in the back, out of public view.
As the 1990s approached, the Ontario clubs were able to keep the Hells Angels out of the province by presenting a united front, much like the old Amalgamated Riders Association had blocked Johnny Sombrero and his Black Diamond Riders back in the early 1960s. A Canadian police Organized Crime Committee report from 1989 states that the Satan’s Choice, Lobos and Vagabonds clubs all co-operated in the operation of a lab for clandestine methamphetamine production. As long as the established clubs pooled their energy and kept a common front, it was tough for the Hells Angels to crack Ontario.
Meanwhile, Guindon and the Choice continued to recruit heavily, hoping to ensure safety through numbers. The danger hiding in those numbers was that they might contain subpar members who could easily be turned into police informers or traitors.
Cecil Kirby had disappeared into a witness protection program and was living under an assumed identity when he saw Ken Goobie on the other side of the street in Vancouver’s Gastown district. Goobie was wearing a long, dark coat, prompting Kirby to think his betrayals had just caught up to him. Goobie and Pigpen Berry often wore such businesslike clothing when heading off to do their most violent deeds in what Pigpen called “the dark side of town.” The executive-style attire helped them blend in and also concealed weapons.
Kirby saw no point in running. It was better to face his fate head on like a man than run ragged like a cornered rat. He crossed the street to meet his executioner face-to-face.
“Oh no, that’s all forgotten,” Goobie assured him. “I’m a lieutenant in the Salvation Army now.”
Goobie was known for his keen sense of humour, but he wasn’t joking. One of the toughest of the old Satan’s Choice was now an officer in God’s army.
Thank God, Kirby thought.
Goobie was the only member of the Choice to be lost to the Salvation Army. The Loners Motorcycle Club was a greater threat. In Ontario, some of the Satan’s Choice hived off to join the Loners, including Frank Lenti, Jimmy Raso and Brian Leslie Beaucage, one of the inmates involved in the killings in the Kingston Penitentiary riot.
Guindon didn’t let the defections get to him. Rivalries and personality disputes often caused biker chapters to splinter. “Maybe they were tired of the bullshit that was going on in our club. You can always feel there’s tensions somewhere.”
As it turned out, tensions were part of life in their clubs, too. Beaucage’s life ended in a Parkdale boarding house in Toronto. He was forty-three and had spent seventeen of those years behind bars. Considering how violently he lived, it was a miracle that Beaucage had lasted that long. Years before, he had been shot in the heart at a London, Ontario, strip club. His wife rushed him to hospital in time. This time, there was no hope of medical heroics. When his landlord saw the body, Beaucage’s head was almost entirely hacked off after he was stabbed repeatedly.
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Guindon heard that his old nemesis Johnny Sombrero and the Black Diamond Riders planned to attend a Sudbury baseball tournament on the Labour Day weekend of 1992. There was also talk that the BDR wanted to set up a permanent chapter in Sudbury, which the Choice considered their territory. The BDR had even already tried to recruit new members, right under the noses of the local Choice. Maybe Guindon and the Choice couldn’t hold off the Hells Angels and the Outlaws forever, but Johnny Sombrero and the BDR were another matter.
Guindon had never gotten over the image of Sombrero gloating as Guindon and fellow Golden Hawks clubmates fled across the field at the Battle of Pebblestone decades earlier. He wasn’t about to let any fresh insults from Sombrero slide. Then a lone Satan’s Choice member in Sudbury was cornered by Sombrero’s group. “He had his colours on and we took his colours off him,” Sombrero recalled.
Guindon’s group showed up hours later in cars, with knives and guns, two-by-fours and, of course, baseball bats. They attacked Sombrero and some of his boys in the parking lot of the Sorrento Motor Hotel, and by the time the last bat was swung, eight members of the BDR were in hospital. “There was about forty-five of them,” Sombrero later recalled. “Attacked seven of us. They shot two of us. They shot him in the guts and shot me in the face.”
The incident became known in biker lore as “Sudbury Saturday Night,” a tribute of sorts to the Stompin’ Tom Connors song of the same name. The action finally addressed the shame of the Battle of Pebblestone and ensured that Johnny Sombrero would never set up a BDR clubhouse in Sudbury.
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By March 1986, Suzanne Blais’s marriage of twenty-five years had ended. Guindon was proud of her for having hung in there until her kids had grown up. He urged her to remember the good times, for there had been some, and to try to forget the bad times, even though there had been many.
“He beat me up several times,” Suzanne later said of her former spouse. A big problem was jealousy. “He’d accused me of doing things I wasn’t doing. So finally, I said, ‘If I’m being accused of it, I might as well do it.’ So I went to see Bernie.”
As she settled into single life, Blais offered a temporary place in her home to a man she knew through her job at Stelco. He was leaving his wife and needed somewhere to stay until he got back on his feet. Then he just wouldn’t leave.
Finally, after much pressure, he agreed to a departure date. On the day he was supposed to leave, Guindon rode up at seven in the morning in full Satan’s Choice gear and told him, “I’m here to make sure you leave by five o’clock.”
The man left on time, after cooking them a nice meal and taking a photo of Suzanne sitting on Guindon’s lap, smiling.
Suzanne and Guindon still weren’t a couple. Whether it was Harley’s stepmother or someone else, there was always at least one other woman in Guindon’s life. Suzanne wasn’t about to put her life on hold waiting for him to change. She remarried on February 10, 1994, at the Old Mill in Toronto, and her new husband didn’t seem jealous when Guindon attended the wedding. He gave them a leather art piece of a sad-eyed clown lying on a bench, which he had made himself. Later, the new husband helped Guindon apply for a guaranteed income supplement.
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Guindon’s daughter Sarah Hodgins was eleven years old in 1995. She yearned to meet up with her father. She had old photos from when she lived in Oshawa, back when she was perhaps three or four years old, but she had no real memories of him. She decided it was high time they become reacquainted. Her mother and Harley’s stepmother connected and agreed that Sarah should get some daddy time.
Guindon, Harley’s stepmother and Harley all drove up to Callander, Ontario, about 87 miles north of Oshawa, to pick up Sarah. Once back in Oshawa, Guindon took Sarah for a twenty-minute ride on the back of his Harley. There were no wheelies, just a restrained tour about town with her dad. “That’s one of my biggest memories,” Sarah said. “It was the coolest thing.” Even as she was getting to know the club’s leader, she knew nothing about Satan’s Choice. “I just thought he was the guy with the motorcycle,” she said.
Her new-found half-brother, Harley, was friendly but rough. Harley was her big brother by just three weeks but he asserted authority over her. He told her something about taking boxing lessons and was being “just a little shit disturber. Testing me.”
She was taken aback by what happened when she told her dad that Harley wasn’t playing gently. “I remember him giving me shit for tattling on Harley,” she recalled. Asked if Harley got in trouble for his roughness, she replied, “God, no. Not at all.” Instead, she was told in no uncertain terms what was expected of her in her father’s household: “Quit being a rat.”
That aside, the visit was a success. Harley felt like a long-lost brother and love found its way amidst the scrapping. Guindon was a daddy with a motorcycle, and Harley’s stepmom couldn’t have been more welcoming. Not long after Sarah returned home, she got a letter from her father, dated September 15, 1995.
Dearest Sarah
Thank you ever so much for the beautiful motorcycle sun catcher. I heard you picked it out yourself, too. We have it on our living room window, so we can look at it & think of you every day. We also have a collage of family pictures & we were hoping you could send us a more recent photo of yourself to add to our collection.
It is a shame that you are so far away. We heard that you’ve been in Oshawa but we keep on missing you. Next time try & call before you come & maybe your mom will bring you for a visit.
By now you must be in grade five. How do you like it so far? Maybe you could send us a letter once in a while to let us know how you are doing. It would be nice if you could come to visit maybe for March Break or for some time next summer. We’ll have to make some plans with your mom.
I’m sorry for missing your birthday & etc. I’m very forgetful to say the least at times & [name omitted] keeps a list of dates for me to remember but she didn’t have your date. I think it might be Aug. 15? If so sorry again my fault. Let me know & I’ll make sure not to forget next year.
I’m trying to keep myself busy building bikes so I do spend a lot of time in my workshop. I also spend a lot of time riding my Harley & going to Club functions & etc so I do keep busy.
[Name omitted] goes out to work & I stay with my son Harley. He is in grade 4 & he can be quite a handful. I hope you get along well with your mom & help her out around the house. You are very lucky to have a mother that loves you so much & takes such good care of you. Harley & some of your step sisters are not that lucky & I help those children out a little more because without me, they would not have the guidance that only a parent can give. This doesn’t mean that I love some more than others, it only means that I must try to spend more time with them when they need it.
We had not had much time together because you are so far away. Please don’t think that you are forgotten. Nothing could be further from the truth. We think of you all the time & wonder how you are too. Hopefully we can have you come visit & you will get a chance to see Grandma Lucy while you are near. Your Uncle Jack had two heart attacks last year but he has quit smoking & is doing much better now.
Please don’t forget to send a letter & a picture if you have one. I love you very much & miss you always. Be good for your mom, do as she says, she knows what is best for you. Good behaviour at school is very important to you so that you will learn skills that will help you later in life.
We will look forward to hearing from you soon. Until then, we will miss you. Please do take care of yourself & do your best at home & school.
Say hi to your mom and Michelle.
Love Always & Forever
Dad & [name omitted] XOXO
Harley xo
Harley’s stepmom encouraged more visits, and sometimes Sarah stayed for over a week. The Guindons tried to make their home as peaceful and welcoming as they could. Once, when Sarah’s mom was en route to pick her up, Harley’s stepmom noticed a hooker standing on “her corner.” “I had to go out and walk the hooker up the street to get her away from my driveway before her mom showed up,” she said. “Since then, I’ve acquired a high-pressure hose. You should see those gals run when I pull it out.”
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Guindon remained under constant police surveillance. A paid police agent with a lengthy record that included fraud and theft convictions approached Guindon at the bar of the Dynasty strip club in Oshawa and asked to speak with another biker. The agent later testified: “He [Guindon] asked, ‘Why?’ and rubbed his finger against the side of his nose. I said, ‘Yeah, could you help us out?’ ” The agent also testified that another patron later came to his table to discuss a drug deal, and the evening concluded with the purchase of a quarter ounce of cocaine for four hundred dollars in a pizzeria parking lot.
Guindon was charged in April 1992 after a ten-month investigation by Durham Regional Police and the OPP called Project Overhaul. The police agent said under cross-examination by defence lawyer Howard Goldkind that he never dealt directly with Guindon over drugs. The police agent also dismissed Guindon as someone who might have mattered in the area at one time but now was just an “old has-been trying to make ends meet.” The trial ended in July 1994 with Guindon being found not guilty of trafficking drugs. But the investigation was a reminder that he was still squarely on the police radar.
A month after the trial ended, Guindon and Harley’s stepmother climbed onto his Harley. He’d heard that an old Choice member named Greg Bradley was dying of cancer in Moncton, New Brunswick. Bradley’s pain was so intense and unrelenting that he slept with a gun by his bed in case he couldn’t handle it any longer. Guindon often needed long rides on his motorcycle to sort out his life. Sometimes the rides were to get away from things, but this time he was going to confront the problem head on: he was driving to Moncton so that he could give his old friend one last ride on a Harley. The fact that Guindon was short on money didn’t stop him.
One night during the ride to New Brunswick, a Mountie stopped by their motel room and asked him for an autograph, which threw him for a loop. The long ride gave Guindon a chance to reflect on friendship, loss, the absurdity of life and how some things just feel good. It was also a chance to get away from some of the phantoms that seemed to be constantly following him. Harley’s stepmother described Guindon on that ride as “Quiet, quiet. We did a lot of miles. When things bothered him, he got on the bike and went for a ride.”
Sometimes, to get away, Guindon climbed on his Harley and went to visit his daughters in places like Winnipeg and Northern Ontario. Other times, he rode south for adventure. During extended hauls, he and Harley’s stepmother brought a saddlebag each for clothes and a “beer box” for maps, her purse and various emergency items and tools. For longer trips, they also carried a suitcase on top of the beer box. Halfway down the road, they’d mail their dirty laundry home to lighten the load and make room for souvenirs. “We never passed anyone on the side of the road broken down without offering help,” Harley’s stepmother said. “He was a very good man in many ways. Others might argue, but I know different.”
When Guindon rode south, he taped a map over the Satan’s Choice sticker on his gas tank to cut suspicion at the American border. During one trip to the United States with Harley’s stepmother, they stopped at a ceremony where a priest was blessing motorcycles. The priest became animated when he saw the grinning devil of the Satan’s Choice crest on Guindon’s gas tank. The man of God couldn’t shake the holy water fast enough onto the grinning devil’s face. “He stood there just whipping it,” she said. “He emptied it out on the patch.”