Unrepentant

by Peter Edwards

  Four years, one month and seventeen days after the mass arrests and the shutdown of their former bunker-like clubhouse on Eastern Avenue, there were tears in the eyes of at least one Crown attorney as the five Downtown Toronto Hells Angels were all acquitted on charges of belonging to a criminal organization. Campbell was found guilty of conspiracy to traffic cocaine, while Neal, Myles and Bahman were convicted of charges relating to trafficking GHB; a charge for possession of a restricted firearm stuck against Pooler.

  It was as good a result as Campbell could have hoped for, considering the evidence. He knew from the start he didn’t have a realistic shot of beating the cocaine charge, since he was caught on tape discussing the price of a kilo of cocaine with Atwell. “He [Bryant] couldn’t fight that,” Campbell says. “They had it on audio and video. How could he fight the thirty-four? That’s the price of the cocaine.” The length of his pretrial custody more than covered the amount of time he would have got for his cocaine conspiracy conviction, which meant he was a free man. “They still owe me some time on my next conviction,” he says jokingly.

  He never did get any of the $1,000 Shakey Dave had promised for setting him up for the coke deal or the $425 for the eyeglasses eaten by Atwell’s dog. Of course, Shakey Dave and Brutus were now vanished into a witness protection programme. For Campbell, the big thing was that the criminal organization charges didn’t stick. That had mattered most to Campbell right from the beginning, and in the end nobody pleaded down to any conspiracy charge. Members obviously committed crimes, but Campbell felt strongly that the Hells Angels was an organization that included criminals, not a strictly criminal enterprise. For many members of the public that’s just wordplay, but for Campbell it’s a very personal and important distinction. Not to believe this is an insult to his many friends in clubs over the years, no matter what the police might say. They were friends and brothers first and criminals second, if at all.

  In an attention-craving world where there’s no greater insult than to ignore the existence of someone, Campbell and Evelyn say they plan to pretend Shakey Dave Atwell was never born. Evelyn Campbell says she considers Shakey Dave utterly insignificant in the big scheme of things: “Dave came into our life and went out of our life. He caused problems and those problems are gone.”

  “We don’t even think of that fuck,” Campbell adds.

  On the other side of the country, Omid (Mo) Bayani of the United Nations was due in court on September 7, 2011, for sentencing after his drug trafficking conviction related to Campbell’s trial. True to form, Bayani drifted away again. He still hadn’t reappeared fifteen weeks later and was sentenced, in absentia, to seven years in prison, while Haney, B.C., Hells Angel Vincenzo (Jimmy) Sansalone was hit with a six-year sentence for setting up the meeting between Bahman and Bayani that ultimately led to what a judge called the biggest seizure of the date-rape drug in Canadian history.

  Campbell’s Downtown Toronto clubmate Mark Stables hadn’t been picked up in the raids that netted Campbell, but he was in legal troubles as well after security at Vancouver International Airport found Hells Angels paraphernalia in his luggage in November 2006. A background check revealed that Stables hadn’t taken out Canadian citizenship since being brought here from Scotland when he was seven years old. Forty-two years after his arrival in Canada, Stables faced deportation to Scotland because he was a high-ranking Hells Angel who had served as treasurer and sergeant-at-arms for his charter. He had no criminal record and was a fitness enthusiast with black belts in karate and jiu-jitsu. He supported himself by running a downtown Toronto gym whose clients included professional mixed martial arts fighters and several Toronto police officers. Stables said he left the Angels in 2009, but the Immigration and Refugee Board ruling disputed this, arguing that his club tattoo showed no “exit date.” He was put on a jet back to his birthplace. “This guy I don’t think even gets speeding tickets,” Campbell says. “He’s a good family man. He didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs. Worked hard all his life. Paid all his taxes. Nothing criminal about that guy. He hated criminal activity.”

  When Campbell returned home with Evelyn, he felt more than a little stunned, like he was trapped in a twilight zone. “It was unreal. It was like you don’t know how to act. I might have looked normal, but I didn’t know how to act.” So much had changed, including himself. Time behind bars had conditioned him to blank out his peripheral vision and walk with his eyes aimed down and straight ahead. It also made him extremely possessive about his things. “In jail, nobody touches your stuff.” Even a little thing like getting up to speed on computers or learning how to use a smart phone was a challenge. “I threw one across a room. I didn’t have any patience.”

  Some things remain constant amidst all of the change. It remains a given that connivers are people to be shunned. Loyalty remains a virtue. A true man plays the cards he’s dealt and doesn’t whine. The best things in life are measured in quality rather than quantity. It takes more courage to love than to hate. There’s power in an honest story, even if it’s not always flattering. If you have a few rock-solid people around you, you’re a lucky man. Campbell walked out of jail still believing all of these things.

  Once at home, it was only natural to take stock of his life and consider how he planned to live out his final years. Campbell belonged to a club that spanned the globe, with members on five continents. At the same time, he missed the scruffy, un-corporate, often ultra-rude days when partying to excess was a priority. The circus had moved on, and he wasn’t convinced it was going to a better place. Some members of the Port Hope Eight—Merv (Indian) Blaker, Gary (Nutty) Comeau, Rick Sauvé and Jeff (Boom Boom) McLeod—are blocked from ever joining a one-percenter club because of parole stipulations. Gordon (Dog Map) Van Haarlem had quit the Choice years before and moved west. Armand (In the Trunk) Sanguigni was dead from an overdose of heroin, while Larry (Beaver) Hurren had died in a motorcycle accident.

  That meant Campbell was the only one in the Port Hope case to have moved on to the Hells Angels. He still considers the death of Bill Matiyek a sad waste of life, but he also still doesn’t regret carrying a gun that night or using it to protect his clubmates. It remains a deep source of pain that he wasn’t believed when he stepped up in court and tried to take responsibility for the shooting. There’s also a sense of awe at how his old group hung together and refrained from pointing fingers, even when they faced serious prison time for their silence. “In prison nowadays, it’s no respect,” Campbell says. “Never would eight guys stick together like that today. It would not happen now. Guys were different back then. They were guys that had a lot to lose and still didn’t say a thing. They did their fucking time and never said a word, other than that they’re innocent. Innocent completely. That went a long ways internationally. They all earned the utmost respect from every one-percenter club in the world. I’m so proud.”

  Some old biker haunts such as the Genosha, the Queen’s and the Atherley Arms went out of business years ago. Others have had dramatic makeovers like the Cadillac, which is now a social services drop-in centre instead of a hard-core, bucket-of-blood watering hole. Phil Boudreault, the biker who likes to see himself as a junior Campbell, was rearrested for a parole violation not long after being interviewed for this book. So much changes; so much stays the same. Campbell loves to hear how Indian Blaker is cruising roadways into the twenty-first century on the same Harley Sportster that he rode back in the 1970s, and Indian bought it second-hand back then. “Guys back then seemed more comfortable in their own skin,” Campbell says.

  Campbell can’t shake the feeling that his old world has been swamped by waves of paid informants, as clubs expand around the globe. “It used to be you knew who your enemies were. I’m sixty-four years old. I don’t want to be seventy-four and back behind bars because of an informant like Shakey Dave. This past four years [behind bars] was because of other people’s lack of due diligence … Sometimes I feel I can write all my friends’ names on the back of a fucking postage
stamp, and I’m happy with that.”

  A few of the changes are for the better, such as the fact that most Hells Angels charters no longer allow smoking at meetings. “A lot of guys are older. It bothers people at meetings nowadays.” Some other changes are just signs of the times. He sounds like an old cowboy wistfully noting the shrinking frontier when he observes that there’s a general reluctance to sleep out under the stars on extended rides. “When they go on runs nowadays, nobody camps. It’s all motels. I don’t mind putting my coat over myself by my bike. My helmet for a pillow. You don’t need anything else but a helmet.”

  Campbell’s hard-core reputation didn’t go away when he stopped wearing a club patch. He was reminded of this when a man approached him at a concert and asked, within a few minutes of saying hello, whether Campbell would kill his wife.

  “I’ll pay you,” the man said.

  “Get that out of your mind,” Campbell replied. “That’s the mother of your kids.”

  Campbell wasn’t totally shocked by the approach, recalling how a middle-aged woman he didn’t know had once walked up to him to ask if he’d kill her son.

  “Why would you think I’d do that?” Campbell asked.

  “I know all about you,” the mother replied.

  “I just laughed at them,” Campbell says. “ ‘I know who you are. I know what you do.’ I’ve heard that so many times.”

  As a survivor of more than four decades of outlaw biker life, Campbell has spoken privately with people who have done violent things that haunt them. “I’ve counselled people who’ve gone over the line. Couldn’t deal with what they’ve done. My advice is: learn to live with it or turn yourself in.”

  Campbell can be brutally blunt, but he refuses to say a bad thing about Elinor, the mother of his daughter Janice. He freely acknowledges that she deserved far better than his treatment of her. After he got out of the Don Jail, it seemed time to appreciate Evelyn, his daughter Janice, his grandkids Jemelie, Joriana and Chaedra, and Evelyn’s adult daughter Kylie, who grew to become an excellent equestrienne in her own right. He knows he has missed far too many family events because of club commitments and wants that to change in his remaining years. “Before, there was always something,” Campbell says. “Runs, anniversaries, parties. Now there’s time.”

  Contrary to popular myth, a Hells Angel can retire in good standing if he has the respect of his fellow members. That’s what Campbell did shortly after his release from the Don Jail. He handed back his vest and jewellery, his track suits, T-shirts and anything else with the trademarked Hells Angels death head on it. Such material never actually belongs to members, but is always just on loan to them; on death or retirement or expulsion, it must be returned to the club. Campbell also had the exit date 09/06/11 tattooed under his Hells Angels tattoo on his upper left arm, along with the word “left.” That’s a key word for a former Angel, since “out” means kicked out of the club while “left” is the biker equivalent of honourable discharge, bestowing something akin to Hells Angel emeritus status. That done, an unfamiliar sense of calm settled over Campbell. “Since I got out of jail, I can’t be bothered getting pissed off,” Campbell says. “Wasting energy on little things. Don’t sweat the small things. I’m like that now. I’ve never been scared of death. Everyone dies. I still have bitterness, but I fight it very well.”

  Despite the ungodly names of his clubs and his scamming of the Bible in jail, Campbell says he still believes in a supreme deity. His God is like an all-loving parent, who doesn’t need him to be humble. Some aspects of his God sound a lot like Campbell himself. “I think God forgives. He’s got a sense of humour. I don’t get down on my knees and ask for forgiveness. I believe that He automatically forgives you. I don’t think that you have to automatically go down on your knees.” Campbell also has his own strong views on karma. “What goes around comes around. The good that you do or the bad that you do. The major things.” He says he’s already reaping positive benefits for at least some of his own personal karma. “As harsh as I’ve been, I’ve been very good to the people I love and the people around me. That’s come back to me.

  “People ask, ‘Why would you join a [motorcycle] club?’ I had no stable family growing up. Lots of cousins and aunts and uncles, but no stable family. That [club] was the first stable family I had. If you don’t love that life, I could see why it freaks people out. Would I recommend that someone young join a club today? Only if you could handle the hardships: the heat from the cops. Bernie Guindon had a saying: ‘Lose your job, lose your wife, go to jail.’ That’s the three things you’re taking a chance of losing.

  “For my grandkids, I don’t discourage anybody, but I don’t recommend it. I think you have to be a certain brand to last in that kind of life. It fit for me. There were a lot of good times. I love riding my motorcycle, and the camaraderie. That, I never had growing up. I never regretted it, but a lot of people would. The advice I would give to younger kids is more general: Don’t be led astray.… Listen to your conscience. Be comfortable in your own skin.”

  Campbell maintains his friendships with former clubmates such as Wayne Willerton, his old mentor Bernie Guindon and Larry Vallentyne. Willerton never left his day job at General Motors in Oshawa and never struck it rich with his sales and franchising schemes. He retired on a pension in 1996 after thirty-six years on the assembly line.

  For his part, Guindon growls that he’s broke but proud as he enters his eighth decade. “I don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.” The Frog’s missing some teeth, but declines to have dental work done, in case he gets into yet another fight and has them smashed up again. He also says he’s not concerned about any civilian passing judgment on his life. “I don’t give a shit. I’ve done my time. I don’t have to kiss anybody’s ass. I did it and stood up and didn’t rat out anybody. What the fuck? I didn’t have to bow down to anybody. I did my time.” The man who brought the Choice back onto the road left the Hells Angels in the summer of 2005 in good standing. He’s not so happy with where clubs are heading. “There are different reasons for being in the club. They think there’s dollars to be made.… That’s the problem today. If it wasn’t for the patch, they would have no balls. The only thing they have is their patch.”

  Campbell and Vallentyne have been close friends since the late 1970s, and Vallentyne was there when Campbell celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday by a lake north of Toronto. When they weren’t strumming and singing tunes by Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams, they enjoyed classic country from a CD player on his Ultra Classic anniversary edition Harley. This was too much for a younger guest at the party who was just in her early twenties. She repeatedly replaced what she called the “old man music” with her own CD of more youth-friendly tunes, rankling Vallentyne. Says Campbell: “He never said a word. He just took out the CD and went down to the lake with it. He came back without the CD. The next time he’s here, we’ll go down to the lake and see if we can find the CD. That’s typical Larry. He just makes things funny.”

  Campbell’s heart and back aren’t what they once were, but he still cruises on his Harley, with classic country blaring on the speakers, and he still gets his hackles up when he sees riders who don’t know how to handle their bikes. “I pull up beside them and ask them if they want me to teach them how to ride.”

  Like many Canadians, Campbell was shocked by public shootings involving gangstas in Toronto in the summer of 2012. One took place in the crowded food court of the Eaton Centre shopping mall, killing two people and injuring six. Another was at a neighbourhood block party on Danzig Avenue in suburban Scarborough, when two innocent people were killed and twenty-three wounded by gunfire. When he heard reports of the shootings, he said he felt grateful that he didn’t succeed in his own efforts to traffic machine guns in the 1980s. “It would have been chaos. I’ve thought about it often. Just not knowing where they were going to go. Back then, I never thought about that. I was just thinking about making money. I regretted
later that money came before my morals. I’m just so glad it didn’t happen.”

  He remains fiercely protective of his pack, and that includes his pets. When a visiting biker threw something at his Australian shepherd, Sparrow, Campbell punched the man in the head and threw him off his property. He doesn’t throw punches as frequently or as hard as in his youth, but he still uncorked a righteous smack onto that biker, who was at least twenty years his junior. Nothing trumps family loyalty, even where dogs are concerned. “Until the day that I die, I’ll live by that code,” he says. “When I’m a hundred years old, I’ll smack that guy too.”

  He also still has an idealized view of brotherhood, even though he never had any brothers by blood. “When I die, I want to be surrounded by men. What’s a man? Good to his family, good to his friends and loyal. It doesn’t mean a tough guy. That’ll never leave me. That’s one of the extremes I’ll keep.” He offers almost no apologies for roads he has travelled because of his extreme nature, but there’s at least one thing he’d like to take back. “I’ve justified everything I’ve done, except burning the family house. I’m lucky with the life I’ve led. I’ve got regrets, but everybody’s got those.”

  Campbell sometimes marvels that he’s still alive. So many of his old buddies are now dead from bullets or blades or drugs or bike accidents, and yet here he is. Equally amazing is that his daughter turned out so well and loves him so strongly, considering his severe deficiencies as a young father. He loves to boast how Janice somehow put herself through college while raising a family. He gets a little misty when he talks about how his granddaughter Chaedra once couldn’t bear to see him go at the end of a visit. “She cried, ‘I won’t see you for years.’ She just loved me to death.”

  His voice fills with wonder as he talks of how Evelyn wrote and visited him constantly while he was behind bars. She could have just walked away. These women are easily as strong and protective as any man he has met in his decades among tattooed bikers. There’s an irony here that doesn’t escape him. Somehow, he has ended up with the stable, loving family he so wanted as a child.