“You idiot. The subway doesn’t go to Pickering.”
It was an almost predictable thing for Evelyn to have done. She wasn’t a city person and was still soft-hearted when it came to all strays, even human ones.
“Don’t fucking open your window for anybody,” Campbell sputtered.
His lawyer, Andrew Perrin, brought in top-flight criminal lawyer Tony Bryant, and Campbell told him immediately that he wanted to get to trial quickly. Rushing to trial meant they couldn’t weigh the Crown’s evidence in a pretrial, but it also saved money in legal fees and potential jail time awaiting trial. That idea fizzled, however, as the Crown denied attempts to sever Campbell’s case from those of the others or to forgo a preliminary.
Authorities didn’t have to explain why Campbell was the lone Hells Angel deposited in the Don Jail. Clearly, they didn’t want him with the other Angels as he could be expected to push them to plead not guilty to anything involving conspiracy or contributing to a criminal organization. He also was pushing for everyone to take trial by jury on criminal organization charges, since club members always seemed to lose when they left that determination up to a judge.
The Don Jail was a tough place to be alone, especially for a Hells Angel in his late fifties. Originally opened in 1864, the Don had deservedly garnered generations of bad press. In 1928, a grand jury called it a “disgrace”; in 1931, a mayoral delegation reported, “Many of [the cells] are so narrow a fat horse could not be backed into them”; and in 1935, a grand jury called it “an overcrowded dungeon … like the Black Hole of Calcutta.”
Globe and Mail writer Kirk Makin once wrote that the people who ran the Don back then weren’t trying to make it a nice place:
In its heyday, the prevailing ethic at the Don Jail was simple—prison should be a harsh and intimidating experience that no sane person would want to repeat.
To that end, the last thing an offender saw as he entered the Don from the outside world was a mawkish stone figure of Father Time carved into the stone above the front door of the jail. Inside, numerous wrought-iron serpents and dragons emerge from the dark, connecting walls to balconies and catwalks.
Floggings were conducted on the floor of its central rotunda, with inmates watching the gruesome spectacle from the balconies. For a long time, talking was prohibited.
There were thirty-four legal executions in its gallows, and in the early 2000s fifteen skeletons were discovered in an outside exercise yard. There were also some seventy murders, with prisoners getting beatings or worse from other inmates for offences such as looking at someone the wrong way, taking too long in the shower or sitting in someone else’s chair.
By the time Campbell arrived at the Don, prisoners were housed in a new wing, built in 1977, but the bad karma wafted over from the old dungeon. Politicians had been promising since 1996 to tear the whole place down, and in 1997—a decade before Campbell walked inside—the U.S. State Department wrote in its annual human rights report: “Conditions were described as so depressing that some inmates purportedly pled guilty in order to be sent to other facilities and thus avoid awaiting trial in the jail.”
All municipal and provincial jails lack the rehabilitation programmes and other recreational facilities found in federal penitentiaries, since they’re a place for defendants awaiting trial or convicts serving short stays. That meant anyone, from an underworld hit man or a terrorist to a lifelong pervert to a parole violator or drunk driver, could be found within the Don’s walls, breathing its stale air.
There seemed no end to the ways that jail was worse than prison. In prisons, inmates can purchase calling cards to phone their loved ones and lawyers at pre-assigned times. In jail, they have to call collect, and the Don had only four phones to use. These were often monopolized by prisoners such as Eric Boateng, one of the Jamaican gang members who call themselves gangstas. Boateng, who was just in his late teens, seemed to be on one phone all day, as if it belonged to him alone.
In prisons, interested inmates apply for cooking jobs and they’re fired if there are too many complaints from the customers. “If they don’t do a good job, they don’t keep it.” In jail, food is often served up by inmates who are indifferent at best and hostile at worst. In the Don, Campbell refrained from consuming any coffee or tea, fearing what mystery ingredients might lie in the dark waters of his cup.
In jail, inmates are separated from their loved ones during visiting times by thick Plexiglas. Physical contact is impossible, although women often pull open their blouses and lift their skirts in the wheelchair-accessible area, which has a particularly wide viewing area. “You never get to hold your wife, your kids.”
Prisons have weight rooms, tracks and basketball courts, and sometimes also handball, mini-putt and nine-hole golf. Jails have none of these. Motivated prisoners are forced to improvise workout programmes they can follow in their tiny and often crowded cells. Prisons are often cleaner than jails such as the Don, where mice were part of the general population. Campbell found himself developing ear infections and scabs in the corners of his eyes not long after he arrived. Prison inmates can wear regular clothes, while in jail they wore only clown-like orange jumpsuits and blue slippers. In prison, inmates can have radios and televisions, and can work on leather and wood crafts. In jail, they can’t even have pens, and must do their writing with a shortened pencil.
Just a few years before Campbell arrived, there was a move to desegregate the Don. Black gangsters had been housed in an area nicknamed “Motown,” while repeat offenders who had done federal penitentiary time were kept in the “Pen Range.” The problem, authorities concluded, was that this arrangement only made gangsta street gangs such as the Malverns and Crips feel stronger and more special. So, by the time Campbell arrived, the prevailing thinking was that other inmates, including bikers, should be housed in the gangstas’ midst, to dilute their power. At fifty-nine, Campbell was almost triple the age of many of them.
The trouble started on his first full day of custody, when he saw a tray of hot cross buns in the meal line on the range. The gangstas who were in charge of handing out food seemed in no hurry to pass him one, so Campbell reached out and grabbed a bun for himself and placed it on his food tray
“Yo yo!” a voice behind him shouted. “Yo! We don’t reach for the food here.”
Campbell wheeled around and glared in the direction of the voice. “Don’t you fucking ‘yo’ me.”
“Where are you going with that?” asked Eric Boateng, who seemed to have a particularly elevated status among the gangstas. Boateng was one of more than a dozen gangstas arrested after the fatal shooting of fourteen-year-old bystander Jane Creba on Yonge Street on Boxing Day 2005.
“I’m going to fucking eat it,” Campbell replied.
Within seconds, he was encircled by a half-dozen Jamaican gangstas, all in their late teens or early twenties. It often seems the lower you get in life, the more the little things matter. Now, in the belly of the city’s worst jail, gangstas and an aging Hells Angel were ready to go to war over a sweet-tasting pastry.
“I’ll take on this whole fucking range. I wasn’t born the day I got to the Don. You guys jump me and I’ll hunt each one of you down and I will kill you. I am no bluff.”
A jail captain pushed in between them and faced the gangstas. He was wearing a white shirt, showing he was higher in rank than the blue-shirted guards. “He’s got friends and he ain’t no fucking show.”
“I don’t depend on my friends,” Campbell snapped at the captain. “Let’s get it fucking on.”
The captain made it clear there wouldn’t be a brawl on his watch, finally asking, “We don’t have a problem here, do we?”
The next day, Campbell was handcuffed to a gangsta in his early twenties as they were transported in a police van to the Finch Avenue courthouse. The gangsta at the end of his wrist seemed polite enough, so Campbell introduced him to his Hells Angels clubmates in the courthouse bullpen. The gangsta, who was facing a murder charge, was t
he only black prisoner in the jailhouse bullpen and clearly appreciated Campbell’s courtesy.
That night, without Campbell knowing, this polite senior gangsta got word to his friends on Campbell’s range at the Don Jail that they should back off the old Hells Angel.
The next day, Boateng walked over to Campbell and asked, “Are you being treated okay?”
“What do you fucking care?” Campbell replied.
“You getting everything you should be getting?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’m just wondering.”
There was now a sea change in how Campbell was treated by the jailhouse gangstas. Other inmates routinely had their “jug ups,” or night-time snacks of tea and cookies, stolen by them, but Campbell was spared such indignities. Boateng continued to steal desserts and snacks such as peanut butter from other inmates, but he and his crew were now invariably polite with Campbell. It was like being back in training school, when he stood up to the bullies. “They would deliver my desserts. If I didn’t get it, I would say, ‘Where’s my fucking dessert?’ They would say, ‘Hold on,’ and give me two or three.”
In the mornings now, Campbell was allowed to use the showers first. Anyone trying to wash before him was told: “Get the fuck out of there. Mr. Campbell’s coming.” The gangstas took pains to guard the seat where Campbell sat alone and played solitaire. Anyone who approached the chair was sternly told it was off limits: “It’s Mr. Campbell’s seat.” They now also made sure he had access to the phones, pretty much whenever he wanted. “I’d go, ‘Who’s on the fucking phone after you?’ They’d go, ‘You are.’ ”
A few months after Campbell’s arrival, Boateng was on the street again. He went back to the Don once to visit an inmate while on bail, even though that was against the rules. After this visit, Boateng was shot dead on a Riverdale residential street by men in a van. Word reached Campbell of his death. Despite the special treatment he’d received from the gangstas, Campbell’s first thoughts were about the hot cross bun incident and how Boateng had made the Don an even worse hell for fellow inmates by stealing their food.
“The killers should have stuffed peanut butter in his mouth.”
CHARTER 30
Cards and Letters
It’s going to blow up.
Advice to Lorne Campbell from DON JAIL GUARD
Campbell befriended the man in the next cell, an African-American librarian’s assistant in his late fifties named Gary Freeman. American authorities wanted Freeman extradited to face charges of shooting and wounding a police officer in Chicago in 1967. After the shooting, Freeman had fled to Canada, where he changed his name to Joseph Parnell, fell in love and raised a loving family that included a professional football player, a teacher and a provincial bureaucrat. He maintained that he fired on the police officer in self-defence during a racially charged time that white Canadians four decades later could never fully understand. Police claimed he was a member of the Black Panthers. In reality, Freeman was never a Panther, but he was impressed by much of what they did for inner-city communities, such as running food kitchens.
Despite their widely different backgrounds, Campbell and Freeman quickly learned to respect each other. Both were big on physical fitness, fashioning dumbbells from wet newspapers and plastic bags. “He did lots of push-ups and sit-ups. He worked out hard every day.” They also both refused to handle the marijuana “spliffs” prisoners would pass from cell to cell once the lights went out.
Campbell was impressed by how Freeman kept to himself and didn’t get involved with any gangs, including the gangstas, who obviously looked up to him. “You could see he had nothing but respect [from them]. They wouldn’t let anybody near this man.”
Many bikers had abusive fathers, while gangstas often didn’t even know who their fathers were. Perhaps that explained why biker clubs had a rigid paramilitary structure with titles like “sergeant-at-arms” while the gangstas didn’t seem to have much structure of any kind. Whatever the case, Campbell was underwhelmed by how the young gangstas ran their groups. They clearly didn’t trust each other. They didn’t seem to have a real brotherhood. When they had to go somewhere, they wouldn’t trust a fellow member to guard their marijuana stash. “They’ll pass it to a white guy before one of their friends. They don’t trust their friends.”
Campbell also wasn’t impressed with how some of the guards had sold out to the gangstas. One criminal on the range lectured a guard for being too slow with his pot and tobacco delivery, the way a customer might chastise a pizza delivery man. “You were supposed to be here yesterday,” the gangsta snapped, and the guard did no more than mutter apologies.
One gangsta Campbell spoke with was born and raised in Toronto’s Jane–Finch high-rise corridor, and knew precious little about the world outside its boundaries. He wouldn’t take even a short trip out of his neighbourhood for fear that fellow gangstas would rip off his drug turf. Membership in the Hells Angels had taken Campbell to Paris, Amsterdam and the French and Spanish Rivieras. The Toronto gangsta, by contrast, “was born and raised in Toronto and he had never seen the CN Tower.”
Campbell descended into what would likely have been diagnosed as depression had he received counselling. He scratched at his cell walls and plucked out his eyebrows and obsessed about the day he would again be free of the rodent-infested jail. “I’ve got a family. I’m doing every day, minute by minute.” Christmas was particularly bad, even though his stepdaughter, Kylie, gave him a collection of framed family photos.
It wasn’t just the prisoners who were wound up tight. At least one white guard slipped threatening notes into black guards’ lockers. The black guards were on a work-to-rule campaign, meaning all prisoners were locked down in their cells.
Campbell was okay with some facets of lockdowns, even though they were usually meant as punishment. Three prisoners were cramped into each small cell, with one having to sleep on a mattress on the floor, but at least there was welcome relief from the usual noise. The range meant four televisions blaring four different stations at full volume and fifty prisoners trying to talk over them. “I read a lot and enjoyed the quiet. I really didn’t mind being locked down except for the lack of showers. In those years it was the only time there was relative quiet. When the TVs were on, you can’t get away from it. I had control of the first TV. I’d put it on mute with the captions, but the other three would still be going. During a lockdown, if you want to talk to somebody, you don’t have to yell because the TVs aren’t on. That’s why God gave us lockdowns.”
Campbell had a collection of paperbacks to read during lockdowns, including Relentless by Dean Koontz, Deadlock and Blood Game by Iris Johansen, True Detectives by Jonathan Kellerman, A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré, and, less predictably, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and A Mixture of Frailties by Robertson Davies.
One guard liked to call out to prisoners with comments like, “John Smith, the witness protection people are out there to see you.” It infuriated some inmates, but Campbell was amused. Anything that broke the tension wasn’t all bad.
Another male guard at the Don started painting his fingernails with ginger-coloured polish. The guard’s head was shaved and he had the refrigerator-like physique of a championship wrestler, which he had been as a teenager. As the months passed, the guard shaved all his visible body hair and donned a reddish wig, which called to mind a full-figured Lucille Ball. His facial appearance and body hair might change, but his punching power, grappling skills and position of authority still commanded obedience.
At this point, Campbell was no longer surprised by flamboyantly bisexual or gay guards or inmates, and he respected anyone who was true to him- or herself. That said, the prospect of cavity inspections from someone transitioning from a male to a female body was a first. He joined other prisoners in refusing to submit to the full-body searches from the transitioning guard. “You’ve got to bend over and strip. Here’s your asshole to this guy standing there with makeup and a wig.”
Campbell found himself becoming extremely food conscious. He went strictly no-dairy immediately after seeing prisoners handle a jug used for delivering milk. “They’ve been scratching their balls and their asses all night and they’d run out and take it. They’d never wash them. I was told by one of the staff, ‘If you wash them, they just get dirty again.’ ” For a brief time he went vegan, and then shifted to a high-protein, fish and chicken diet. He also thought often and fondly of Evelyn’s cooking, such as mashed potatoes with her special horseradish, sour cream and cheese, and spaghetti sauce with a secret ingredient she jealously guarded.
Sanitation inside the Don was a constant bother, with mice scurrying constantly underfoot. More than once, Evelyn came out of the women’s washroom in the visiting area to warn other visitors, “Watch it, there’s wildlife in there.”
Jail time did entitle Campbell to receive a newsletter called Brothers Behind Bars. It went out to full-patch bikers imprisoned in Australia, Canada, England, France, Finland, Germany, Norway and Sweden belonging to fifty-eight clubs, from the Avengers and Bandidos to the Boozefighters, Brother Speed, Hells Angels, Hessians, In Country Vietnam, Outlaws, Pharoahs, Sadistics, Sacramaniacs, Unforgiven, Vietnam Vets, Warlocks and Wino Crew. The newsletter’s circulation was just three hundred, and its bold motto was “Free All Brothers Behind Bars.” While its readership was exclusively outlaw bikers, much of the content was lifted gratis from mainstream publications. Also included were poems and song lyrics that couldn’t make it into any mainstream—or few fringe—publications and which would make a hardened Teamster blush. They included “Perfume on My Colors” by SOS MC DAGO, a song with the chorus: “She woke me with a shotgun,/And she scared me half to death/She says I come home drunk last night/With Pussy on my breath.” He sometimes received the H.A.M.C. B.H.C. Newsletter, which stood for “Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Big House Crew.” It arrived from the United States, with pictures of American World War II fighter pilots who’d nicknamed themselves “Hells Angels.” It also contained articles lifted from the mainstream media, such as a story about the Hamilton arrest of a biker for wearing no pants or underwear; fitness plans of Danny Lawson of Manitoba, a bodybuilder formerly of the Los Bravos MC; articles about police charged with assault and insubordination; and an upbeat piece about Harley-Davidson profits being on the rise.
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