Peter Edwards - Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club

T he first time I met Bernie Guindon, he was swearing at a string of Christmas tree lights. We were in the house of Lorne Campbell, one of his former clubmates from the Satans Choice and Hells Angels motorcycle clubs. I was writing a book about Campbell called Unrepentant: The Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satans Choice and Hells Angels Biker, when Guindon paid a visit. It was December, and soon he was trying to help his old friend put the lights on his Christmas tree. He clearly wanted them just right, but they kept getting tangled and were not lighting up as they should.

If the uncooperative lights had been uncooperative human beings, the situation wouldnt have been so tricky for Guindon. Though in his seventies now, he was a former world class boxer and head of a major outlaw motorcycle club. He could have settled things as he had many times before, with a crisp left hook. It would have been lights out.

I noticed during his visit to Campbells house that Guindon didnt drink any liquor, even though plenty was available. I have met with him scores of times since and have never seen him touch alcohol or use any kind of drug, prescription or otherwise. Hes a confirmed teetotaller and strongly opposed to drug use, which doesnt jibe with his image as an old-school, big-time outlaw biker who served prison time for his role in an international drug trafficking ring.

Guindon impressed me that day as a polite, complex man who had lived a hard life and had probably seen and done some truly horrifying things. That initial impression only deepened after he decided that he, too, would like to co-operate on a book about his life and we began getting to know one another.

This book is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with Guindon and those around him, including family members, bikers, former bikers, police and former police, boxers, a former bitter rival, and a couple of people who have had murder contracts on their lives. (Im not sure when an unfulfilled murder contract expires. Im not sure it does.) The book also draws upon various written and online archives as well as my three decades of reporting on outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Throughout my research, Guindon never told me what to write or whom I could and couldnt speak with. He only asked that I not go out of my way to stir up trouble with the Hells Angels, but thats generally a wise philosophy. He never missed or was late for an interview. If a book was going to be written on his life, he clearly wanted it done right, so his place in outlaw biker history would be properly recorded before the memories totally fade or too many participants die off.

Guindons memory is not what it once was, which made the supporting interviews all the more necessary. The perspectives of others proved to be a good thing. I heard the full spectrum of opinions about him, from reverential to damning. Some of the people who know him best have the most nuanced views of him, blending strong positives and negatives. Several of the people interviewed for this book cant stand each other for reasons that will become evident. (I have actually wondered how we can have an inclusive book launch that doesnt end in a punch-up or shootout.) Undoubtedly, some of my interview subjects will be upset with me for giving space to their rivals and enemies, but I hope they will respect my effort to get as close to the truth as I can.

I was surprised to find that Guindon can be quite critical of himself, which may also surprise some who knew him in his heyday. And so this book is not an attempt to either glamorize or demonize Bernie Guindon. That he was a major figure in Canadian biker history is beyond dispute. As the leader of Satans Choice, once the second-largest club in the world after only the Hells Angels and exemplars of the old-school biker lifestyle, he is arguably a major figure in the global history of biker clubs, too. My goal, however, is to humanize him, with all of the good and bad that goes with thatto learn what kind of a man makes a biker club, and what club life ultimately makes of a man.