Ten minutes down the highway, one of the guards turned and said, “Ricky, I don’t want to sound like I’m in your business, but this ain’t a good time for you to go back to Collins Bay.”
“Really? When is it ever a good time to go to prison?”
He laughed. “No, no, I’m serious. Word is that you’re going to get killed. You know, because of all those racial problems that went down a while back.”
I didn’t react. I hated to hear guards talk prison shit. You could never tell whether they knew something, or if they were just starting trouble. He might have wanted me to check into protective custody, or maybe he just wanted to rattle my cage.
I just smiled. “Your grapevine is different from mine. I heard that the head of security is going to welcome me with open arms so that I can run the inmate committee.”
The driver laughed at the thought of security officers embracing me. His partner said, “No fucking way any coloured person is ever going to be on the inmate committee in Collins Bay.”
I stared out the window at the farmhouses and the rolling hills in the distance, wondering what I was going to face. The fair-fight rule of one-on-one was out the window if fifty whites tried to stab ten black people. And I want you to imagine the headlines had all ten men been killed.
But I was not going to punk down. If I had to kill to defend myself, I was ready. And if I was killed, so what? All those who wait to die have waited long enough.
Halfway to Kingston, the driver asked if I was hungry. I said nothing. The trip from Warkworth to Collins Bay wasn’t long enough to merit lunch.
“We can go to a little restaurant I know,” he said. I still said nothing. “Think of it as your last meal.”
Now I knew he was messing with my head, so I sent him some sarcasm. “Yeah, I could use a nice thick steak.”
He said, “I’m not shitting you. We’ll stop. You’ll eat. I live near the restaurant. There’s nowhere to run. But if you take off, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
He sounded like he meant it.
We left the highway. There was not a house in sight for miles. I hadn’t a clue as to where I was but there, nestled in a wall of forest, was a little restaurant. We pulled into the parking lot. They took off my handcuffs and shackles and I walked in like a free man.
The place was small, only six tables, four of them empty. The driver seemed to know everyone, and the waitress handed me a menu. I couldn’t even afford a glass of water, but the driver said, “Get what you want, it’s on us.”
His partner leaned in: “Last meal, eat up.” I was happy and nervous at the same time. They were risking their jobs for me. Did they know something I didn’t? Was I about to be murdered?
I ordered a steak with two eggs and French fries, along with a slice of apple pie and some strawberry ice cream. I’d have ordered the same thing if I was on death row.
When I finished eating, they took me back to the car and chained me up again. A short while later, as we pulled into Collins Bay, the driver turned to me. “Don’t say a word to anyone about the grub.”
That was nearly forty years ago. I have never mentioned that meal to anyone until this moment. I want to thank those guards now. Thanking them then was not part of my mental makeup.
Two preventive security officers – “Keepers” Street and Frankovitch – were waiting for me. One of the guards dropped the bedsheet filled with my personal belongings. Somebody said, “They must have wanted you out in a hurry.”
The inmate helping them sorted through my stuff, removing items that were allowed in a medium security jail but not in the Bay.
Officer Street called me into his office. “Listen,” he said. “Since all that racial shit, this place has quieted down. We don’t need you stirring up trouble. I’m going to put you in 2-Block, upstairs, to save you all the noise in 1-Block. But if I hear one word about you, you’re off to Millhaven. You got me?”
I got him.
I was still sitting there when the noon count was called. It seemed odd; I thought I’d been set up, because 2-Block did not have a guard station. If you wanted to kill someone, it was the best place for it. People had been beaten to within an inch of their lives on 2-Block and no one downstairs heard a scream.
I knew I had to get a knife.
Chicago came in shortly after and we shook hands. I grabbed my belongings and followed him onto the strip. Once we were out of earshot, I asked him what was going down.
“Brother, this is a different jail,” he told me. “All that nigger shit has stopped. Maybe not a hundred percent but it ain’t like it used to be.”
I said, “Be nice to have a shank.”
“I’ll get you one tomorrow,” Chicago promised. “But you ain’t gonna need it.”
I tossed my stuff into cell nine on 2-Block, and hurried back downstairs, following Chicago to the kitchen.
I was waiting for someone to say something negative so I could go off, but no one did. A few people I knew approached and shook my hand. The Italian mob nodded when I went past their table, including Domenic Racco. Two or three brothers raised their fists in a black power salute, welcoming me home.
As we inched towards the chow trays, one of the members of the inmate committee approached. “The committee would like to talk to you.”
The air in the room smelled of food, not fear. There was laughter coming from some tables. Maybe things had changed.
Before I could take my seat, Big Joe DiNardo brought me a specially prepared meal. Prison food can be as bland as hospital food, and kitchen workers were not supposed to feed the prison population any deviation from the menu. However, Joe and his kitchen colleagues had ways of spicing up whatever was served on the regular cafeteria-style prison line. It was a special treat.
Joe served me with a hug. After the steak the guards had given me for lunch, I wasn’t hungry, but out of respect I ate what Big Joe brought.
By the time I walked over to the committee table, I was feeling bloated. The chairman reached into his pocket and handed me a joint. “Here, Rick, get this into you.”
I put it in my pocket; there was no refusing.
He said, “Man, all that shit in the past is in the past.”
Putting one hand on the committee chairman’s shoulder, I thought about the death threats and kites left on my bed, the name calling in the middle of the night, the stabbing of friends and family, the beatings and the murders of guys whose only fault was they weren’t white.
I leaned forward and whispered, “If so, then so be it.”
My cousin Mad Dog, and his friend Andy came over, slapping hands and grinning. Mad Dog had a huge red Afro.
“Man, the pigs just leave me alone,” he told me. “No one bothers you about your hair here anymore.”
Hmm, maybe my last meal was not my last meal.
I took a job in the wood shop, building pallets for the Canadian Mint. I found myself working beside Darcy, the owner of my old after-hours haunt, Darcy’s Bar. During slow periods in the shop I sat with this older rounder, playing chess and listening to stories about people I knew who were still going to his bar.
Eventually, I was put on 4-Block, where I could play my harmonica. Before long they told me that, since I was behaving myself and because my transfer had been voluntary, they would write me up for farm camp.
I knew that would take a couple of months.
I had kites from Millhaven saying that the prison population there hated The Man too much to be racially divided. The black gangsters there wanted to know what we could do in the Bay so that beefs didn’t carry over. I decided to start a group to unify the black and white populations. I had help from Chicago and a guy named Greenwich, who was educated but who normally kept to himself.
We laid out the basis for the Black Inmates Friends Assembly or BIFA. We approached the administration; they thought it was a good idea. Then Officer Street called me into his office and dumped ten kites on his desk.
“‘If that nigger starts a nigger group, he is a dead nigger,’” he said, reading aloud.
No surprise. Some of those notes had already been slipped under my cell door.
“Mr. Street, nobody likes change, but this is a good thing for everyone,” I offered. “It can’t be looked at as any different from the native brotherhood group or the Jewish groups, or the chess club.”
He batted that back at me. “The native brotherhood and the Jewish groups are religious groups, and you can hardly call a chess club similar to a black revolutionary group.”
I showed him our logo – a black hand shaking a white one. “Black and white together, how can that be construed as a revolutionary group?”
He looked at the logo for a long time. “Your life is on the line with this one. You never know when one of those kite-writers will step out and stab you. But I think I’ll allow this to happen, if you’ll agree to let our social development people to sit in during your meetings.”
I had to weigh that one carefully.
Everyone hated The Man, but everyone liked the social development and recreation officer, Bernie Aucoin. He didn’t even have to wear a uniform. After some thought, I agreed with Street but I made one demand. “During the voting-in of members, and the reasons why they can or can’t be members, Bernie can’t be there.” He agreed.
BIFA was now a reality.
Inmate Greenwich wrote to the Black Students’ Union at Queen’s University. We also sent a draft of our constitution to Charles Roach, my first lawyer and a leader in the black community.
I got in touch with Al Hamilton, founder of Contrast, the black newspaper in Toronto, and Leonard Johnston, owner of the Third World Books and Craft Store, asking for book donations. In no time, we received a box of used black history books.
I also wrote an article about what we doing for Contrast. Edwin Hogan, the Black Panther leader who mentored me while I was awaiting sentencing in the Don Jail, had been returned to jail in Ohio. Contrast often printed letters from him and I knew he’d read what I wrote.
Our first social event was a dance attended by some of the girls from the Black Students’ Union at Queen’s. They came in miniskirts, smelling so sweet and smiling so invitingly that even the hardest criminals were grinning by the end of the night. There was even soul food for supper.
We brought the leftovers back to the cellblock and passed them around to our friends. I got a kick out of Ernie George’s Satan’s Choice biker buddies leaning over the plates of colourful food, licking their lips and giving me the thumbs up. Bernie Aucoin said he hadn’t seen anything like it.
BIFA has now taken root in prisons throughout Canada, the United States and England.