It was a culture shock. It was gloomy. Rusting away.
HARLEY GUINDON on Millhaven Institution
Harley Guindon looked out from the courtroom prisoner’s box in early 2007 and saw his father giving him the finger. The extended middle digit came after Harley pleaded guilty to extortion with a firearm, two counts of forcible confinement and two counts of assault causing bodily harm. For this, he was sentenced to a prison term of five years.
Seeing his father’s gesture was a troubling sight in an already unpleasant environment. But for once, Harley knew something his father didn’t. “He was unaware that my lawyer, Alan Richter, had advised me during trial that the Crown was charging me with attempted murder if I didn’t take a plea bargain,” Harley later said. “To me, I had no choice. The rat…got on stand during the preliminary hearing and said I shot him. How do you fight that?”
At this point, Harley had been held inside the Lindsay jail for almost two years awaiting trial, after initially being charged with attempted murder. He faced the possibility of ten years on the attempted murder beef and another twelve for the related charges. That added up to twenty-two years and he was only twenty-one years old. Five years seemed like a bargain, especially since he might be released on parole before that.
The Crown agreed to drop charges against some of Harley’s co-accused if he, Brendan Mak and David O’Neil all pled guilty. “After explaining why we all pled, my father understood,” Harley said. “Bottom line: we were ready for trial. No one snitched and my crew took it on the chin wilfully. Not many men group together and take five years each out of loyalty these days.”
Just a decade earlier, Harley had been working hard to win merit badges as a Boy Scout to make his father proud. In March 2007, he followed more directly in his father’s footsteps. Harley entered the Millhaven Assessment Unit, where his father had been processed three decades before. Harley’s file noted he lacked a high school diploma, trade or profession and added that he also was considered to lack initiative. After he sat through a battery of tests, he was found to have a 9.3 grade equivalency in language, an 8.3 grade equivalency in math and a 10.2 grade equivalency in reading comprehension.
Harley had heard plenty of bad stories about Millhaven, and his buddy Scotty Jones was killed there just before his arrival. That said, there’s no real preparation for walking into a maximum-security prison for the first time. “It was a culture shock,” Harley later said. “It was gloomy. Rusting away.”
After his assessment, Harley was transferred to medium-security custody in Collins Bay Institution, where his father was also once an inmate. Soon, Harley was phoning his father a couple times a month. The line was monitored, so conversations were predictable. One would ask how the other was doing. “Oh, you know,” father or son would reply. “Same shit, just a different day.” Still, it was always nice to hear the voice of a loved one.
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Guindon once dreamed of turning his son into a fighting machine. Now he imagined Harley getting out of prison and finding a job with a pension. “He needs a good job. Some kind of a job that he likes to do and intends on holding onto it.”
As Harley settled into prison life, assistant Crown attorney Paul T. Murray filed a blunt report on him on May 3, 2007, to the National Parole Board:
He has shown complete disregard for the rules of society or for authority. I have attached a number of police intelligence reports that highlights his audacity and attitude towards police, including threatening officers, as well as other gang activity and violence. If he is prepared to take this position towards law enforcement officials, one can only presume that his level of disdain for the rights of normal citizens is greater, as was evidenced in the facts underlying the present conviction. Mr. Guindon will do what he wants to get what he wants, and if such involves violence or guns, then so be it. He is a dangerous individual who will no doubt revert to the only lifestyle he has embraced if given the opportunity: that of a violent drug dealer; he revels in the violence…
Murray was equally grim about the prospects for Harley’s coconvicted, Mak and O’Neil, writing, “These three have had access to guns and are prepared to use them for their criminal activities. I have no illusions about these three ‘turning their lives around’ for the greater good.”