The first time I met Bernie Guindon, he was swearing at a string of Christmas tree lights. We were in the house of Lorne Campbell, one of his former clubmates from the Satan’s Choice and Hells Angels motorcycle clubs. I was writing a book about Campbell called Unrepentant: The Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satan’s Choice and Hells Angels Biker, when Guindon paid a visit. It was December, and soon he was trying to help his old friend put the lights on his Christmas tree. He clearly wanted them just right, but they kept getting tangled and were not lighting up as they should.
If the uncooperative lights had been uncooperative human beings, the situation wouldn’t have been so tricky for Guindon. Though in his seventies now, he was a former world class boxer and head of a major outlaw motorcycle club. He could have settled things as he had many times before, with a crisp left hook. It would have been lights out.
I noticed during his visit to Campbell’s house that Guindon didn’t drink any liquor, even though plenty was available. I have met with him scores of times since and have never seen him touch alcohol or use any kind of drug, prescription or otherwise. He’s a confirmed teetotaller and strongly opposed to drug use, which doesn’t jibe with his image as an old-school, big-time outlaw biker who served prison time for his role in an international drug trafficking ring.
Guindon impressed me that day as a polite, complex man who had lived a hard life and had probably seen and done some truly horrifying things. That initial impression only deepened after he decided that he, too, would like to co-operate on a book about his life and we began getting to know one another.
This book is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with Guindon and those around him, including family members, bikers, former bikers, police and former police, boxers, a former bitter rival, and a couple of people who have had murder contracts on their lives. (I’m not sure when an unfulfilled murder contract expires. I’m not sure it does.) The book also draws upon various written and online archives as well as my three decades of reporting on outlaw motorcycle gangs.
Throughout my research, Guindon never told me what to write or whom I could and couldn’t speak with. He only asked that I not go out of my way to stir up trouble with the Hells Angels, but that’s generally a wise philosophy. He never missed or was late for an interview. If a book was going to be written on his life, he clearly wanted it done right, so his place in outlaw biker history would be properly recorded before the memories totally fade or too many participants die off.
Guindon’s memory is not what it once was, which made the supporting interviews all the more necessary. The perspectives of others proved to be a good thing. I heard the full spectrum of opinions about him, from reverential to damning. Some of the people who know him best have the most nuanced views of him, blending strong positives and negatives. Several of the people interviewed for this book can’t stand each other for reasons that will become evident. (I have actually wondered how we can have an inclusive book launch that doesn’t end in a punch-up or shootout.) Undoubtedly, some of my interview subjects will be upset with me for giving space to their rivals and enemies, but I hope they will respect my effort to get as close to the truth as I can.
I was surprised to find that Guindon can be quite critical of himself, which may also surprise some who knew him in his heyday. And so this book is not an attempt to either glamorize or demonize Bernie Guindon. That he was a major figure in Canadian biker history is beyond dispute. As the leader of Satan’s Choice, once the second-largest club in the world after only the Hells Angels and exemplars of the old-school biker lifestyle, he is arguably a major figure in the global history of biker clubs, too. My goal, however, is to humanize him, with all of the good and bad that goes with that—to learn what kind of a man makes a biker club, and what club life ultimately makes of a man.
I have learned some things through my research that go far beyond Bernie Guindon’s personal story. Some of what I have learned, obviously, is about the development of outlaw motorcycle clubs in Canada, from their beginning to the present day. But the more I worked on this book, the more I realized it’s also about something far bigger and wider reaching than how outlaws on motorcycles organize themselves in one country. The further I got into the research, the more I was pushed to think about the vital role of fathers. In particular, I understood the devastating multi-generational effects of domestic violence. The prolonged and intense cruelty inflicted upon Guindon, his mother and his brother in their home has had a painful ripple effect that’s still being felt today throughout their families and communities.
There is a recurring pattern in this book of boys witnessing their mothers getting beaten, and then eventually, between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, defending their mothers against their fathers. I didn’t seek out this pattern but I kept finding it. After a while, I came even to expect it.
Small wonder that these boys often grew into men who have little respect for authority. The system didn’t protect them or their mothers, so why should they respect it? Also, small wonder that those boys often grew into men who greatly value violence as a way to solve problems.
That said, much of my research has been fun and some has even been inspiring. A true hero in this narrative is the stepmother of Guindon’s son, Harley Davidson Guindon. (The fact that he would name his son after what he considers the world’s best motorcycle speaks volumes about the man.) She has selflessly nurtured a sense of family under extremely difficult conditions. Out of respect for her request that her name not be included in these pages to protect her professional life, I have referred to her as simply “Harley’s stepmother.”
I have also benefited from the unpublished writing of Harley Guindon and his father’s former clubmates Verg Erslavas and Frank Hobson. I am extremely grateful to them for sharing their work with me and allowing me to quote from it.
Most of the comments from Harley Guindon in this book come from his own writing, which impressed me. I think he has the potential to develop along the lines of Roger Caron, the former inmate who won a Governor General’s Literary Award for (English) Non-Fiction. I hope that one day Harley will write his own book and I can write its introduction.
Conversations in these pages are taken from the memories of participants. Obviously, they are not reproduced precisely word for word. What appears in these pages is solely my responsibility. I have included endnotes for those who want to check sources or take some of the many Dickensian side roads that spin off from the main story. Nothing you are about to read has been made up. The true story of Bernie Guindon’s life is more interesting than anything I could imagine.