Hard Road

by Peter Edwards

  Teresa worried that as long as she lived in Oshawa, she would never escape the taboo of her last name. Parents wouldn’t let her play with their children. Boys seemed afraid to ask her out, for fear of what might happen to them if things went wrong. Employers were reluctant to hire her. “I was taboo, taboo. You go out with her and make a mistake, you end up in the river,” she said. “My dad’s reputation followed me.”

  Life seemed stacked against her from birth. “My whole life, I was living behind my dad’s shadow and it wasn’t good…My mother was young…I was told that I was a mistake. Nobody wanted me.” Teresa thought seriously of changing her last name. “I almost did and then I thought, Should I be ashamed of who I am? I thought no, no.”

  Guindon didn’t want to force a relationship on his daughters, but he needed them to know that he was around now and that he cared about them always. His message was “I’m here if you need me,” and it was painful to deliver. “I’m sure it wasn’t any fun,” Shanan said.

  Aside from the girls’ emotional reactions to their long-absent father, he struggled just to keep track of all his daughters. Each had a different mother except for the two from his second wife, Barbara Ann. Another two were born to different mothers in the same year. But Guindon took to the job with a newfound commitment, lecturing Shanan when he learned that the thirteen-year-old dropped acid on Canada Day. “This is going to lead to this and this and this,” he said, lifting his nose like he was snorting something and jabbing at his arm as if sticking a needle into a vein.

  Having returned to Oshawa, Guindon also took it upon himself to sort out the lives of friends and acquaintances in the biker world. “Every second knock on the door was usually drama,” Shanan recalled. “He would complain he was stressed, but he couldn’t turn away a knock at the door. They expected him to sort out the bullshit. Stripper bullshit. Boyfriend bullshit.” At times, she would get frustrated and tell him, “You’re spending your time with the wrong people.” With time, her tone softened: “Now that I’m older, I understand.”

  Teresa was already grown up by the time her father was paroled. She had married an ex-con whom Guindon knew from behind bars, though he didn’t know his new son-in-law’s offence. To ask while behind bars would have been considered poor form.

  Teresa found work in palliative care, easing the pain of terminal patients. Then she became a professional clown, to bring joy to children. She also wrote a children’s book called My Gentle Giant, which tells the story of a little girl whose love transforms a cruel giant into someone lovable, despite the barriers put in place by villagers. It was easy to imagine what the little girl in her story wanted. “That was my dream,” Teresa said. “That my dad would lose the club. Become a better person. Have a happy life. Have a normal life.”

  When she was thirty, Teresa suffered a stroke and was no longer able to write well enough to put together a grocery list, let alone write more books. “I thought, My life is over.” Rage finally consumed her. “I got really mad at God, and I decided that I wanted to end my life. Commit suicide.” She planned to use a cocktail of prescription pills but wondered if swallowing them would keep her out of heaven. She also wondered about the consequences of having a father who led the Satan’s Choice. “I thought I might not get in because of my dad.”

  She started reading a bible that had been given to her by her maternal grandfather, and she marvelled as the paralysis began to leave her body. She also found that she had lost the need for approval from her birth father, who had never been there anyway. To Teresa’s mind, he wasn’t the father who had saved her. She felt cleansed and finally freed. “God healed me.”

  —

  Guindon got a phone call from his old friend George Chuvalo in 1985, asking for a special favour. The boxing champ’s son was in trouble.

  Guindon suspected it hadn’t been easy to live in the shadow of a famous father whose very name called to mind toughness and courage. Certainly, that’s what he was hearing from his own kids. Jesse Chuvalo’s drug problems began at the age of twenty, shortly after he lost a kneecap in a motorcycle accident. The pain from the injury lingered and he turned to heroin to fight it. Soon, he was an addict, and his father, so indomitable in the ring, was worried and lost.

  “Would you mind coming over and having a talk?” Chuvalo asked.

  Guindon didn’t hesitate, as his respect for Chuvalo ran deep. “He was always a nice guy. He’s a gentleman.”

  Guindon tried to scare Jesse, just like he had tried to scare Shanan after she used acid. He did his best to explain to Jesse that drug users often end up in prison and there’s no joy in that life. “I told him the truth. You don’t want to go to jail. You ruin your life. You’ll never get a job.”

  Guindon left the meeting thinking he had gotten through to Jesse. It was a good, hopeful feeling. “I talked to him a good hour. He seemed like a good kid. He listened. Two months later, he was dead.”

  Jesse shot himself in the mouth in his bedroom on February 18, 1985. Chuvalo said he appreciated Guindon’s support throughout that horrible time, before and after the death: “He was very sympathetic. He was a kind guy. He was a nice guy. He would lend his support.”

  Guindon thought of his friend Davey Hilton and his sons. Hilton had been a high-level boxer, with a knee-buckling left hook, and he had close associates that included Montreal mobster Frank Cotroni. Hilton’s sons had fallen into trouble, and Guindon suspected they were going through the same troubles as Jesse Chuvalo. “He [Hilton] was a good guy, good boxer,” said Guindon. “The boys had to grow up in the old man’s history.”

  Chuvalo and Hilton were tough men—Chuvalo famously so. But neither shared the kind of infamy that comes with being the leader of the Satan’s Choice. Guindon wondered to what degree his history would continue to haunt his own family.

  CHAPTER 32

  Angel

  She was untameable. He was madly in love with her.

  Guindon’s daughter SHANAN describes the mother of his son, Harley Davidson Guindon

  Angel was drop-dead gorgeous in an edgy, troubling way that was impossible for Guindon to ignore. The blue-eyed, teenaged stripper was also impossible to understand. She giggled often and said little. She was extremely public and painfully private all at the same time, dancing naked in front of strangers but painting the windows of her home black. Even her best friends didn’t know her last name. And very few of them knew that her real name was Lorraine, or that her father was a big deal in amateur boxing circles, who had split from his wife for reasons that weren’t quite clear.

  Angel was less than half Guindon’s age and younger than some of his daughters. It seemed hopeless from the start that he could rescue her from herself, but Guindon revelled in lost causes. “He pretty much took her right off the stage and into a fur coat,” Shanan said.

  Angel was small, but like her newfound lover, she radiated power and charisma. She also shared his mania for freedom. She would disappear and reappear and never explain where she’d been, then disappear again. She was also fearless, not letting his love or anger or authority control her. “She was untameable,” Shanan said. “He was madly in love with her.” Upon emerging from prison, Guindon had resumed leadership of the Satan’s Choice, and Angel liked the power that came with being known around Oshawa as the old lady of Canada’s most powerful outlaw biker.

  She was still a teenager when she became pregnant. She appeared to be utterly devoid of maternal instinct, and thoughts of becoming a young mother overwhelmed her. “She was more of a big sister to me than anything,” Shanan said. “Angel at the time was the link to my dad.” Complicating Angel’s pregnancy was the fact she had only one good kidney, which worried her further.

  There were rumblings that the relationship between Guindon and Angel could crash even before their child was born. To take the pressure off their relationship, the pair reached an agreement: If they separated in the future and the baby was a boy, he would go with Guindon. If the baby was a girl, she would go
with Angel.

  Their baby was born on October 15, 1985, in Oshawa. Finally, at age forty-two, Guindon had a son he could raise from birth. In Teresa’s eyes, her father was like some medieval monarch who finally had a male heir to continue his reign. So liberally had Guindon been procreating that three weeks later he would have another daughter when Sarah was born to a girlfriend. “My dad impregnated so many women because he wanted a son,” Teresa said. “The only reason he wanted a son was because he wanted him to carry on the name.”

  On the subject of names, there was a rumour that Harley-Davidson might give a free motorcycle to anyone who named their child after its famous brand. The rumour turned out to be false, but Guindon joked that the name was still a good choice for his son since he could never forget it.

  “He stepped down from the throne,” Teresa said of her father, and of the ascent of his newborn heir, Harley Davidson Guindon.

  Harley represented possibilities for his father. The boy was Guindon’s chance to finally get parenting right. He was a perfectionist, though his track record as a parent didn’t yet reflect that. “He was my dad’s do-over baby,” Shanan said. “He was the first child that my dad had on the street and got to raise on the street. I think he tried really hard to make up for a lot of things.”

  Guindon quickly learned that he wouldn’t be able to count on Angel. Though the young mother remained in the family’s circle for years to come, Harley has gently described his birth mother as “unmotivated, not ready for child-bearing,” which was probably reasonable for a teenaged street kid.

  From the beginning, Guindon expected his son to grow up tough. When Harley was still a toddler in diapers, he fell over and hit his head on a coffee table. He started to cry and Teresa tried to comfort him, but Guindon jumped in.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “He’s got to be a man. He’s got to toughen up.”

  Teresa sensed things were going bad fast. She asked if she could become Harley’s legal guardian. Guindon wouldn’t hear of it. For better or worse, Harley Davidson Guindon was his father’s son.

  CHAPTER 33

  Hospitality Industry

  He challenged me and I knocked him out. I told his girlfriend that if she woke him up, I’d knock her out too.

  BERNIE GUINDON on customer relations at his resort

  While in prison, Guindon had a new idea about how to make a legitimate living after he got out. He planned to establish a high-end trailer park where bikers could camp, drink beer and ride their Harleys. He also hoped to attract many people who he considered “common citizens.” Guindon had his eye on a campground near Parry Sound, which he first spotted while out of prison on a pass. He had a smooth-talking partner who wanted in on the idea, but neither of them had the money yet. They did, however, have a name for their camp: Shan-gri-law, for the mystical, happy valley described in Lost Horizon, the 1933 novel by British author James Hilton.

  In an attempt to raise money to purchase Shan-gri-law, Guindon and his partner ventured into real estate. They found a house they could fix up and resell, and bought it without a down payment by convincing the seller to add five thousand dollars to the selling price. It worked. Then they repeated the process several more times. “I swear on my patch that it was totally legit,” Guindon said. Next, they branched out and set up a seafood shop on Ritson Road near Highway 401 in south Oshawa, called Frog’s Fresh & Frozen Sea Products. “I didn’t know shit about it,” Guindon confessed. “I liked surf and turf.”

  Through the seafood and the houses, they scrounged up enough money to finally buy the Shan-gri-law, which offered more than 175 acres of private campsites. Their plan for the grand opening was to bring in John Kay and Steppenwolf, whose song “Born to Be Wild” became the ultimate biker anthem after it appeared in the movie Easy Rider.

  Kay in person wasn’t as much fun as his song. He seemed businesslike and a bit detached when he arrived, and Guindon wasn’t about to act like some giddy fan-boy. “I don’t like bugging people if I know they’ve got a job to do.”

  Kay wasn’t impressed with the wooden stage that Satan’s Choice members had built on the property, and he refused to perform on it. Lorne Campbell, one of Guindon’s most loyal supporters in the Choice, stood up for the boss in the way he knew best. He stepped in, telling Kay, “All of your vehicles and instruments stay here. You can fuck off if you want.’ ” Kay played.

  After the concert, Kay departed while some of his band stayed on and partied with the bikers and some of their female friends. Their tour was over and it was time to cut loose and celebrate. Steve Earle, the Grammy Award–winning country star from Texas, was far more accommodating than Kay and didn’t grumble when he played Shan-gri-law. “He was a pretty good guy, normal type of guy,” Guindon said. Things also went more smoothly with promotions like Kickass Country, a country jamboree; amateur boxing and charity toy runs.

  Shan-gri-law was fun, but as a business, it was falling short of Guindon’s hopes. For one, the public didn’t feel welcome, and two, bikers worried that letting their guard down in such an obvious spot would leave them vulnerable to an ambush from enemies. That left few actual customers to pay Guindon’s bills. “We were hoping that we were going to get civilians. Hardly anybody showed up.”

  The guests who did arrive often made Guindon re-examine whether his future really lay in the hospitality industry. Weasels kept poaching the chickens that Guindon raised for eggs and meat, and some customers treated the livestock even worse. Guindon ordered one wannabe biker to stop taunting his chickens and retire to his tent. “I did this with authority in a way the dumbest SOB would understand. He challenged me and I knocked him out. I told his girlfriend that if she woke him up, I’d knock her out too. The next morning, he came and apologized.”

  In an attempt to be family friendly, Shan-gri-law had a petting zoo. One of its residents was a goose nicknamed “Dog.” “He acted like a watchdog. They are quite a watchdog, those things.” The goose attacked little Harley and spat on him and put up a spirited fight when Guindon rushed to his son. That was the end of the goose. “We ended up eating him.”

  The pygmy goat and the dog in the petting zoo caused fewer problems, while the boa constrictor occasionally slithered away and hid. “My dad would have to give a red alert,” Shanan recalled. “ ‘If anyone finds a ten-foot snake…’ ”

  Determined to make a go of the camp, Guindon soldiered on. He sweated to clear trees to expand the camp’s usable property. One day, he hooked a chain from a tractor onto a stump and then let out the clutch. “As soon as I let the clutch out, that sonofabitch was on top of me. The steering wheel went right on my chest.” Infuriated, Guindon thought he was going to die. He didn’t talk to God. He stayed conscious by cursing the teenagers who worked there and who should have done the job themselves and now should at least be saving him.

  His chest was in great pain and his left arm seemed paralyzed. He struggled to get his feet under an axle in hopes he could push the tractor off himself. A few of his young employees finally showed up and managed to pile up logs under the tractor to relieve the pressure. After about twenty minutes, he was freed but near death. Emergency workers arrived and inserted a tube into his lung to drain it.

  “The nurse cut him open so he could breathe, because he was coughing up blood, and took him to Huntsville Hospital and gave him twenty-four hours to live,” Harley said. His left lung was punctured. Six ribs were broken. “And he said fuck you to the doctor. ‘I’ll be out of here in a week.’ Then he went home…He basically refused to die.”

  Once home, Guindon couldn’t make a fist with his left hand and his left arm felt as stiff as a canoe paddle. He built a contraption with coat hangers and elastics that helped his hand recover.

  He was barely out of the contraption when he got involved in a fight with a camper that centred around Angel. The man pulled a knife on Guindon, who put him hard against a wall. The incident landed Guindon briefly in jail again for assault. Shortly after he was rel
eased, he tested his fist with a left hook on a familiar face—his business partner’s. “He didn’t give a shit who he went over to get ahead,” Guindon said of him. “I finally gave him a shot in the jaw and told him to stay away. He left.” With that, Guindon did three more months in jail for assault, while the doors closed for good on Shan-gri-law.

  CHAPTER 34

  Nightmares

  We saw the nightmares.

  Bernie Guindon’s FORMER GIRLFRIEND describes his son, Harley, as a preschooler

  Corky’s bar on Park Road in southwest Oshawa was a popular spot for GM workers, bikers and strippers. It had large front windows, which allowed the bikers to keep an eye on their Harleys while they played pool. There were also good live bands, covering AC/DC and their like, filling the dance floor. Maggie Pearce-O’Shea went there sometimes as a sixteen-year-old and once saw Guindon swinging his motorcycle helmet at a man, which wasn’t shocking, given Guindon’s reputation and the Corky’s crowd. “Not sure why or what happened. Kinda normal stuff for that bar,” Pearce-O’Shea said. “I didn’t hang out to watch the aftermath.”

  Guindon was at Corky’s on a Friday night when a woman in her mid-twenties caught his eye. Things hadn’t been going well with Angel, and Guindon always noticed good-looking women anyways.

  She was on the phone, checking in with her office for messages, when Guindon introduced himself.

  “You can see I’m busy,” she told him. “You’re interrupting me.”

  His reaction surprised her. “He was very apologetic. He ended up being very sorry for interrupting me.”

  Guindon was born the same year as her father, but he seemed young in a way, which she later chalked up to his lengthy stretches of prison time. “I believe that when they go inside, they’re stunted inside,” she said.