I don’t know what the fuck she sees in me. She knew I was a fucking whore.
BERNIE GUINDON on his upcoming marriage
Guindon moved more slowly and deliberately now than in his prime boxing years, but as he slipped into old age, he still wasn’t soft and cuddly. Rick Gibson recalled being at a motorcycle show when his father was somehow irritated by another man whose name was also Bernie. Gibson didn’t see the incident, but he caught up with his father in time to see the result.
Someone called out, “Bernie just knocked out Bernie.”
Gibson didn’t have to be told which Bernie he would find still conscious.
“I’m the Bernie,” Guindon announced.
“Fuck, that guy raised his cane at me,” recalled Guindon, “so I gave it to him.”
Stories like this didn’t surprise Harley. He had seen and heard much to make him marvel that his father was still alive. “I could understand why rival clubs disliked him,” Harley said. “He walked right up to two dozen members and told them what he thought, which wasn’t good. I witnessed him losing his lid at a Toronto bike show, calling on one percenters [outlaw bikers] while foaming at the lips, solo. These guys were in their twenties to forties while he was pushing sixty all alone. This happened because a man looked at him and smirked. When it came to him being disrespected, he would swing first, ask questions later.
“A larger, in-shape guy not listening to my dad’s direction to leave, unaware of who he was, turned to him and said, ‘What are you going to do about it, Grandpa?’
“Not a second thought, and whammy!” Harley said. “There’s a helmet in the mouth and you’re missing eight teeth. The man just never cared. He’s going to die the same way he was born, an alpha male.”
Guindon was nothing if not a survivor. After his Orono home burned down, he stayed with friends and family for two years before he once again found some stability. He and Suzanne Blais married on September 11, 2009, at a resort motel in scenic Kawartha Lakes, north of Toronto. It was her third wedding and either his third or his fourth, depending on whether you counted the annulled prison one.
Harley had been released from prison but remained under strict parole conditions. His request to attend their wedding was denied by his case management team, who reasoned that going would bring him in contact with criminals.
Suzanne was as giddy as a blushing schoolgirl as the wedding approached. Guindon was in good humour himself, though no one would mistake him for Keats or Byron when speaking of the ways of the heart. “I don’t know what the fuck she sees in me. She knew I was a fucking whore. I’d fuck anything that walked the streets. The more the merrier. You only live once.”
Their nuptials were celebrated with 529 fellow bikers and other friends, and at least twenty-nine uninvited guests. Police surveillance officers carried binoculars, cameras and notebooks around the property, and it seemed a biker couldn’t piss in the bushes without tripping over an officer spying on the event. Other officers stood on ladders for a more panoramic view, calling out licence plate numbers of guests for another officer to write down. Annoyed, Suzanne approached some and sarcastically thanked them for making them all feel safe.
During the ceremony, Guindon, wearing a black shirt and white tie with a black leather vest, rode his FLHT Harley Decker through a gauntlet of bikes onto a white stage. Suzanne, dressed head to toe in white, appeared riding side-saddle on a Harley Road King tricycle.
The bride and groom each held live white doves as the assembled guests and police surveillance officers heard that doves mate for life. The bride and groom released the doves, then set free another ten for good measure.
At the end of the ceremony, the newlyweds climbed onto Suzanne’s Road King to ride off, with fellow bikers revving their engines and beeping their horns in a salute. Then everyone dined on burgers, corn on the cob, beans and pickled eggs long into the night.
Married life would require some adjustments for Guindon. Suzanne had a cabinet full of Paul Anka CDs and memorabilia. “I hear it every fucking day,” he grumbled. Still, even a daily earful of Canada’s beloved crooner beat sleeping on someone’s couch. “If it wasn’t for her,” said Guindon, “I’d be hitchhiking.”