I was told that my house had been burned to the ground.
BERNIE GUINDON
On March 30, 2008, Guindon received a call from Orono while he was attending the Toronto Motorcycle Show. “I was told that my house had been burned to the ground.” No one was injured, but all of the cash he had hidden under a bookshelf was consumed by the blaze. He didn’t believe in banks and had kept all of his money close to him. Now it was all ashes. He also lost his jewellery, including Rolex watches, artwork that he had made in prison, club memorabilia including his old Satan’s Choice patches, motorcycles, bike parts, clothes, boxing memorabilia, and phone numbers and addresses for his old friends. Worst of all, he lost freedom.
The house wasn’t insured because Guindon had been in the process of buying another house and had just cancelled the policy. Either it was extremely bad luck or someone knew when to hit him to hurt him the most. All of his possessions had been boxed up, ready for the move, when the house burned down. “He was more bent out of shape about his pictures than pretty well anything,” Harley said. “He had a lot of art. I’m sure that took a toll on him.”
Harley’s half-brother Rick Gibson tried to help out, but there wasn’t much anyone could do. The structure had collapsed and there was four and a half feet of water in the basement. “There was nothing left,” Gibson said. “He was devastated.”
A disaster relief worker gave Guindon a cup of coffee as he stood by the ruins and stared. Soon, police forensics officers arrived and started to root about, suspecting they’d find a body under the water. They searched thoroughly but found nothing to turn the rubble into a homicide scene. Apparently, someone had called in with a crank tip about a body in the basement just to make sure Guindon had as miserable a day as possible. “He didn’t sleep that night,” Gibson said. “He just stayed there. He was completely in shock. Didn’t know what to say.”
For the next two weeks, Guindon worked on the cleanup, but there was precious little to salvage. “He was just completely run off his feet,” Gibson said. Some biker friends organized a poker tournament called “Bernie’s Burnout,” which raised a quick $2,400 to help get him back on his feet.
Guindon suspected that the family of a spurned woman, not a biker club, was behind the attack, but he couldn’t prove anything.
His relationship with his girlfriend died with the fire. Guindon was sixty-five and homeless. Had he stayed on at General Motors all those years ago, his pension would be just kicking in. People close to him noticed that something happened inside him that he just couldn’t fight. “I think when he had that fire, that’s when age really kicked in for my dad,” Shanan said. “He lost everything in the fire. Everything that made him.”
“I was in bad shape,” Guindon said.
He moved in with Gibson and his wife, Vanessa. They had been his sureties after he was charged for a domestic against his former common-law wife in Orono, which was dropped to a peace bond after taking two years in the courts. Guindon busied himself with working on Harley’s motorcycle, which had sustained four thousand dollars in damages in the fire.
Gibson had always sought a tighter connection with his father, and now they were living under the same roof. There was certainly love there, but Guindon still felt awkward. Once, he had been president of the second-largest outlaw motorcycle gang in the world. He had been the go-to member of the inmate committee in one of Canada’s toughest prisons. He had been captain of Canada’s amateur boxing team. Now he felt like he was in the way and not even the man of the house. “It’s hard, trying to fit in,” Guindon said. “You can’t just go into the fridge and get what you want. You’ve got to wait until dinnertime.”
“He’s not a man for change,” Shanan said. “He likes routine. He’s happy with a set schedule he likes to follow.”
Despite the upheaval, one thing remained a constant in his life: Suzanne Blais seemed to be forever in the background, cheering him on. She and Guindon rode out east to the Maritimes in the summer of 2008. The trip marked the fiftieth anniversary of their first meeting.
A lot of time had passed since Guindon first climbed onto a motorcycle. He had lost friends to road accidents and gang violence. Now, natural causes were taking a toll too. On September 29, 2008, Sarah’s mother, Marlene, died after a ten-month battle with lung cancer. She had remained close with Guindon since their early teens, and he often visited her during her sickness. At her funeral, attended by hundreds, Guindon was the first to shovel dirt onto her grave.
Guindon’s mother was also frail. She had kept her spirit intact through a brutal marriage and seemed somehow unstoppable. “She was just there forever,” Shanan said. “She was always there.” She also knew she was loved in Oshawa. Guindon saw to that. In the final years of her life, Guindon and Suzanne got her groceries and took her to medical appointments, and Guindon wrote all of her Christmas cards out for her. “He was very much in his mother’s life,” Shanan said. “He was there once a week.”
Her sickness was a profound blow to Harley, now settling into his first federal prison term. When she was younger, she had taken her grandson swimming every Wednesday. Now, Harley wasn’t allowed passes from prison to be with her, and she wasn’t healthy enough to visit him. “My grandmother was my heart,” Harley said.
Albini (Lucy) Guindon died in November 2008. She was eighty-five. Harley was permitted to attend her funeral, escorted by three guards and shackled and handcuffed “like Hannibal Lecter,” in Harley’s words.
Suzanne gave a prayer and a speech for “Mom” in French. Then the francophones present joined hands and sang a drinking song that had been her favourite, even though she wasn’t a drinker herself. Fitting the life of a woman who had done with so little, and whose infamous son found himself with so little after so many years of fighting, the lyrics included: “Tu prends un verre, tu m’en donnes pas/J’te fais des belles façons/J’te chante des belles chansons/Donne-moi-z-en donc,” which translates roughly to “You take a drink, you do not give me any/I’m looking good for you/I’m singing beautiful songs for you/Give me some of that.”