Hard Road

by Peter Edwards

  Harley and the other inmate slowly lowered Trudeau to the floor. “We both felt him go lifeless in our arms, and we looked at one another that very instant, knowing what each other had felt.”

  Blood was sprayed on the gym walls, the floor and a card table in the aftermath of the struggle. “If you grabbed a dry mop, you could have filled a wheelbarrow,” Harley said. A negotiator in the gun tower asked the prisoners’ range representative to either get the prisoners to clear the gym or convince Little John to walk through the medical doors. “Some called him names as he exited. I clapped with respect, knowing ninety-five percent of the people in that gym would have taken an easier road that day,” Harley said. “If I ever see him again, I look forward to shaking his hand.”

  He also felt bad for Trudeau. “It wasn’t Jordan’s beef, so there are no sides to have. They both were warriors that unfortunate evening.”

  Harley was released as planned three weeks later, on April 15, 2011.

  “This is where you’re going to go when you’re bad,” Lucienne Guindon had told his sons, introducing them to the penitentiary decades ago. He’d meant it as a caution, not a legacy. But here was the grandson he’d never met, walking out of that same institution and about to enter another family legacy.

  As Harley reflected back on that horrible night, he thought he wouldn’t even have been there in the first place if not for a Durham Regional Police officer saying that he was a Hells Angels prospect back in 2005. That was a lie, Harley said.

  “I was always told that once you get in the club, the police never stop surveilling. You’re always outnumbered and they never sleep. It’s too much heat, it’s too much hassle and it’s not all what it’s cracked up to be.”

  Harley had been a street gang member, not a biker, when he went into prison. He left prison thinking he had nothing to lose by wearing the patch of an outlaw biker club, as his father had before him. The Satan’s Choice no longer existed, but the Hells Angels were alive and well. In March 2014, he got his Angels’ patch. “Why not join? It’s my life story. I’m now a federal offender anyways. I understood that I’m already a marked man.”

  From childhood, Bernie Guindon seemed destined to travel a hard road. He hadn’t reached its end when his son was born, and now Harley followed in his tracks, seeking his own destination but ending up in the same place.

  CHAPTER 47

  “A Little History”

  I’ve never done a bad thing to a good person and have always stuck up for the weak.

  HARLEY GUINDON

  Durham Regional Police Constable James Ebdon came calling to an Oshawa crack house in 2011 with questions for Harley’s friend Bradley Cox. The patrol officer escorted Cox outside and said, “You give me attitude and I’m gonna fucking drag you uptown. I’m gonna say you assaulted me. I’m gonna say you threatened me.”

  Cox stayed silent while Ebdon had plenty to say, including: “I hurt people…and then I make their cocaine fucking appear.” Ebdon, who was armed and standing close to two other armed officers, invited Cox to assault him: “Shut your fucking mouth and do something…do something please, do fucking something.” Cox declined the invitation and Ebdon gave instructions on what Cox should say the next time they met: “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, whatever the fuck you want. Can I suck your cock, sir? Can I do a backflip?”

  That was an unpleasant enough story for Harley to hear, but it actually got worse. Ebdon, speaking into his police radio, gave a possible reason for why Cox generated so much interest and vitriol: “We think he is associated to Harley Guindon.”

  —

  In the summer of 2012, Guindon and Suzanne rode from Ontario to Vancouver Island in nineteen days. Harley, who was out on parole, followed along in a trailer but didn’t make it far. His friend was handcuffed and put in the back of an OPP cruiser somewhere around Wawa in a dispute over a payment for gas. Suzanne raced back and covered the bill, but by this time, police dogs were sniffing through his truck and marijuana was discovered in a ski boot.

  Erslavas rode west with Guindon and Suzanne from Thunder Bay. “It was a fantastic ride,” Erslavas said. “We stopped at all the provincial borders for pictures, and most of the Harley dealers, where Bernie was often overwhelmed with attention. Most of all, for me it was an opportunity to take ‘the long ride’ with Bernie. We had talked about it, but because of circumstances and timing, it never worked out, so taking that ride for me was something really special. Let’s face it: none of us is getting any younger.

  “We rode on, motoring across the endless prairie, just enjoying the miles, the wind, the burble of the pipes and the easy lope of the Harley engines. It’s euphoric, almost Zen-like as one day flows into the next. The best rides always end with a certain level of regret, and that was the case, for sure, when we parted company.”

  Later in 2012, a telephone call from Harley hit Guindon like a stiff punch in the kidneys: Harley would be representing Ontario in a Hells Angels boxing match against a former pro in Vancouver.

  “Can you give me some tips, Dad?” Harley asked.

  There was only time for a twenty-minute lesson, and Guindon ran over the basics of footwork and punching combinations. Then Harley was off to fight the pro in a six-round match. Harley was a veteran of scores of prison and street brawls, but he had never actually boxed in a match before.

  “I was fucking going crazy,” Guindon recalled.

  The pro Harley was supposed to fight had a cut under his eye from a bout two weeks earlier, and his trainer wouldn’t let him take the fight. Another fighter stepped in to face Harley.

  The next thing Guindon heard about the bout was Harley describing how he won it in the fifth round, after the ref called the fight on a standing eight count to protect his battered opponent.

  “He was a man,” Harley later said of the boxer. “He was strong. He was tough. He went three rounds toe-to-toe.”

  Harley was just twenty-six when he was back in the news in August 2012, as Durham police announced the results of a sweep called Project Kingfisher. The operation, which also involved Peterborough police and the OPP’s biker enforcement unit, resulted in the arrests of twenty-eight suspects and the seizure of drugs, including heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Harley, who was on parole at the time, was now facing the possibility of a fresh prison stint for trafficking cocaine.

  Harley often faced misconceptions about his name and upbringing. “People ask what it was like growing up with the last name Guindon and believe it to be a luxurious upbringing full of fun, adventure and respect. I did not inherit his respect. I inherited a name to defend, and honour, through the toughest times and protect it with my life. The life I knew was motorcycles and a crest with a devil on the back, with one parent, my father, with a mother on the run. I have been through a lot growing up, being kidnapped twice, held at gunpoint, etc.

  “I look past how I was brought up and believe it to have instilled a moral compass to differentiate between right and wrong. I’ve never done a bad thing to a good person and have always stuck up for the weak…I love my father. I have earned his pride in me.”

  The little boy who once cried at having to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion at Catholic elementary school was facing charges that threatened to put him behind bars for seventy years. Harley wasn’t about to blame fate or his father for his predicament. He also wasn’t about to give empty apologies to his father for ending up back in jail. “I don’t need to continue to think about what my father would think, because I am my own man now.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Criminal Duties

  I went to give him a hook. He moved. I hit him with the right.

  BERNIE GUINDON on troubles with a motorcycle painter

  Guindon was at a bike show called Classy Chassis in the Kawarthas, north of Oshawa, in 2012, when he heard a familiar gruff voice.

  “Hey buddy, come over here.”

  Guindon turned to see none other than Johnny Sombrero looking at him. His long-time nemesis was s
elling antique guns from a booth. Neither man was tempted to exchange punches for old time’s sake. “That’s past tense,” Guindon said. Instead, they swapped business cards and then, later in the year, sent each other Christmas cards.

  “I never disliked him, ever,” Sombrero said of Guindon. There was absolutely no hint of apology from either side, just memories that somehow seemed good. “He wasn’t the one who shot me,” Sombrero said. “He’s a good guy. He’s a good kid. I don’t look at him like the enemy anymore.”

  Sombrero said he always looked forward to getting Guindon’s annual Christmas card with smiling photos of him and Suzanne wearing Santa hats. “It was always the first one to come.”

  —

  Back in custody, Harley was anything but a model inmate. On December 14, 2012, a security intelligence officer at Collins Bay penitentiary wrote:

  Overall while in institutional custody GUINDON’s conduct can be described as very poor, and he was noted to be heavily entrenched in the criminal, gang and drug subculture of the institution, with ongoing connections to these elements in the community. It is noted that this behaviour continued despite the highest routine security controls available to an incarcerated offender, present in a maximum security environment. GUINDON established himself as a key figure in the institution, and relied on violence and intimidation to conduct his business and garner status. Numerous reports from his CASE Management teams throughout his period of incarceration note anti-social tendencies, and that his ties to organized crime and gangs served as reinforcement of his image and character. In preparation for GUINDON’s release to the community on Statutory Release, his Parole Officer at the time noted: “He appears to regard this lifestyle with some degree of reverence…”

  In the spring of 2013, Harley learned that his Millhaven prison friend Ray Fernandez had been murdered by a Mafia hit team outside Palermo, Sicily. At the time, Fernandez had fallen into disfavour with his boss, Vito Rizzuto, for not taking sides in a Montreal underworld war that had killed Rizzuto’s father and eldest son. Harley said the news upset him. “I had a lot of plans with Ray. For him to get taken out, it kind of hit home.”

  —

  Guindon was getting frustrated. He’d been waiting months for a custom paint job on Harley’s white 1999 Softail. It was the motorcycle Harley had financed with his prison bridge earnings, and Guindon was impatient to get it ready for his son, should he get out on parole.

  The painter and tattoo artist was six-foot-five, 235 pounds and in his thirties. Guindon was about ten inches shorter, more than sixty pounds lighter and in his early seventies. As Guindon described it, “I went to give him a hook. He moved. I hit him with the right.” That punch dropped the younger, bigger man, who later apologized for the delay.

  Guindon’s old friends from his club days were dropping from natural causes, like long-time Toronto biker Larry McIlroy, who passed away in October 2013 after a long bout with cancer. The sixty-seven-year-old had been a member of the Road Runners club back in the 1960s before joining the Satan’s Choice, and he was an East Toronto Hells Angel at the time of his death.

  Guindon’s fearless nature didn’t always help him, as it had with the bike painter. He got into trouble in the biker community for an interview he gave to the History channel, in which he said that the Hells Angels had absorbed some members from “Mickey Mouse” clubs in the 2000 patchover. Feelings were still raw when he and Suzanne drove to McIlroy’s funeral to pay their respects. “A guy came up to me, probably one of the heavies, said, ‘You’re not wanted here,’ ” Guindon recalled.

  Fighting at a funeral would only make an ugly day even uglier, so Guindon and Suzanne left, fuming. “I felt sorry for Bernie and Suzanne,” Steve (Slick) McQueen said. “To me, I thought that was in bad taste. A funeral is not exactly the place to start bringing up stuff like that.

  “I was saddened for Bernie. That a guy who played such an important role in the whole biker growth or development in Canada was forbidden from paying his respects. I just don’t understand that…I saw him trying to leave. He had a hard time navigating his car through the traffic of Harleys.”

  Soon, Guindon was told he was “out bad” from the club, the biker equivalent of banishment.

  The History channel broadcast didn’t help Guindon’s eldest child, Teresa, either. She was living in Windsor now, away from the Oshawa crowd. A pastor’s wife approached her with a concerned face and mentioned the broadcast. “Is that your father? I feel so sorry for you. I will keep you in prayer.”

  “I just can’t get away from it,” Teresa said.

  —

  The world was also closing in on Cecil Kirby. The former Richmond Hill sergeant-at-arms had been living under assumed identities for more than three decades. Kirby confided in an interview for this book that he thought the end was drawing near for him. “I’m still waiting for a bullet in the back of the head. I’m just waiting for it. It’s going to happen. I’ve got a bad feeling about it. Something should have happened by now.” Kirby also had lots to say about the RCMP and none of it sounded positive. “I wish I would have taken a bullet in the head instead of cooperating with those bastards.”

  Kirby complained that it was increasingly hard to hide out in a world of instant messaging, digital photography and social networks. “It’s a small world, believe me.” As his physical strength waned, he came to regard anyone with a cellphone and a Facebook account as a potential threat.

  “All of a sudden, I heard this click.” He was in public one day and startled to realize that a woman he didn’t know had just snapped a cellphone photo of him. “I flipped on her,” he said. “I said, ‘You’re invading my privacy.’ ” He demanded that she immediately delete the photo and she balked. The man she was with could see that Kirby was deadly serious and his insistence was on the verge of turning ugly. The photo was erased.

  Kirby makes a point of covering up the camera of any computer he uses before signing on. “I put a piece of paper over it [the lens], just in case. You never know. You gotta always be careful.”

  From his hiding spot, Kirby spoke well of Guindon, although they hadn’t interacted in decades. “Bernie Guindon was pretty well known all over the place. Like the Sonny Barger of Canada. Really well known and really well liked.”

  For his part, Guindon didn’t worry about cyber security or much else. He didn’t have a smart phone or computer and had stayed off the Internet after a brief foray into online card games. “I used to play solitaire on the Internet and quit.”

  Like others of their generation, Harley and his friends treated the Internet as a natural part of life. Some of them had secretly videoed Constable James Ebdon’s threat to frame Bradley Cox for assault and cocaine possession, and that video had gained more than a million YouTube views by September 15, 2015, when Harley was scheduled to stand trial on Project Kingfisher, the massive drug bust targeting cocaine and heroin trafficking.

  Just weeks before his trial date, Superior Court Justice Laura Bird released a ruling that changed everything about Harley’s situation. After viewing the video, she concluded that the police officer had “committed several criminal offences in the course of his duties” and dismissed him as “not a credible or reliable witness.”

  With that, the Crown stayed all of the charges against Harley and several of his co-accused. After facing the possibility of several decades in prison, Harley walked free.

  CHAPTER 49

  Fathers and Sons

  I worry about Harley all the time. I told him, “Quit trying to walk in my footsteps. Try not to be like me or you’ll be in jail the rest of your life.” I did most of my best years in jail.

  BERNIE GUINDON gives advice to his son

  Life was full of surprises for Guindon as he settled into his eighth decade. One of them was that he was still alive. He had a knuckle that was out of kilter from a long-ago street fight, and his nose was multidirectional after nineteen breaks in and out of the ring, including one from Teresa’s punch
in the Collins Bay visiting area, and another from a supposedly accidental shot from a female Special Olympian with Tourette syndrome, also at Collins Bay. “That one really hurt,” Guindon said. “I just had my nose straightened, for fuck’s sake.”

  Guindon and Teresa remained in contact, despite their profoundly different outlooks on life. The eldest daughter of the founder of the Satan’s Choice was now doing God’s work as an ordained minister with a special interest in street people. There was something sadly ironic for her in the name of her father’s old club. Teresa knew how Guindon had slept in an abandoned car after he’d fled his father, and heard the perhaps apocryphal story of how he had tossed Guindon’s mother through a window. She tried to understand. She really did. But as horrible as those stories were, in her books they still didn’t excuse everything that her father had done. “Just because you started out in a bad place doesn’t mean you had to stay there,” Teresa said. “My dad made a choice. Unfortunately, he made the wrong choice.”

  Emboldened by faith, Teresa had the courage to tell her dad things that others wouldn’t dare. During one particularly heated conversation, she revealed that three Satan’s Choice members had come on to her decades earlier at one of her father’s birthday parties. After she’d rebuffed their sexual advances, they called her father “a washed-up nobody.”