Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club (SCMC) was a Canadian
outlaw motorcycle club
An outlaw motorcycle club is a motorcycle subculture generally centered on the use of Cruiser (motorcycle), cruiser motorcycles, particularly Harley-Davidsons and chopper (motorcycle), choppers, and a set of ideals that purport to celebrate fre ...
that was once the dominant outlaw club in
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
, with twelve chapters based in the province, and another in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
,
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, at its peak strength in 1977. Satan's Choice grew to more than 400 members by 1970, making it the second largest outlaw motorcycle club in the world, behind only the
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) is a worldwide outlaw motorcycle club whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporatio ...
.
The club was involved in
the first major outlaw biker conflict in Canadian history, when it engaged the country's second largest club, the
Popeyes
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Inc., also known as Popeyes and formerly named Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits and Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken & Biscuits, is an American multinational chain of fried chicken fast food restaurants that was formed in 1972 ...
, from 1974 to 1976. Satan's Choice's power began to diminish during the late 1970s, with some of the club's chapters "patching over" to the
Outlaws in 1977. The remaining chapters would eventually become members of the Hells Angels, along with most of the other major outlaw clubs in Ontario, in 2000.
History
Early history
The founding chapter of the first iteration of Satan's Choice was established during the late 1950s in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, usually hanging around ''Aida's'', a downtown restaurant. This version of Satan's Choice was small in size, only numbering about 45 members, and had a very casual, non-criminal focus at the time.
[ ] Don Norris, the president of the club, described its activities as "party, party, party".
This club would disband in 1962, but went on to serve as the namesake for a group of four other motorcycle clubs which came together as the new Satan's Choice in 1965, namely the Phantom Riders of
Oshawa
Oshawa ( , also ; 2021 population 175,383; CMA 415,311) is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the Lake Ontario shoreline. It lies in Southern Ontario, approximately east of Downtown Toronto. It is commonly viewed as the eastern anchor of the G ...
, the Canadian Lancers of
Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to:
People
* Scarborough (surname)
* Earl of Scarbrough
Places Australia
* Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth
* Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong
* Scarborough, Queensland, su ...
(modern Toronto), the Throttle Twisters of
Preston (modern
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
), and the Wild Ones of
Port Credit
Port Credit is a neighbourhood in the south-central part of the City of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, located at the mouth of the Credit River on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Its main intersection is Hurontario Street and Lakeshore Road ...
(modern
Mississauga
Mississauga ( ), historically known as Toronto Township, is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is situated on the shores of Lake Ontario in the Regional Municipality of Peel, adjoining the western border of Toronto. With a popul ...
).
In 1962, the Satan's Choice club led by Don Norris was forced to disband following attacks from the rival Black Diamond Riders, who humiliated them by beating them up in street fights and stealing their
patches.
Bernie Guindon
Bernard Diedonne Guindon (born 19 November 1942), better known as "Bernie the Frog", is a Canadian former outlaw biker, gangster and Boxing, boxer, best known as the founder and national president of Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club from 1965 to 20 ...
of the Phantom Riders decided to use the name and patch of the disbanded club because he knew it would enrage the Black Diamond Riders. Ever since a brawl in 1962 known as the "Battle of Pebblestone" that saw the Black Diamond Riders defeat the Golden Hawk Riders that Guindon belonged to at the time, it has been his mission to seek vengeance on the Black Diamond Riders.
Former Phantom Riders president Guindon became the president of this newer, larger version of Satan's Choice, and later their national president as the group expanded.
He had promoted the merger of the four clubs to end the attacks of the Black Diamond Riders, arguing if the four clubs were united, it would have such an overwhelming numerical superiority that it would ensure that the Black Diamond Riders would not dare attack them anymore. Guindon received permission from Norris to use the name and patch of the former Satan's Choice. In the outlaw biker subculture, using the name and patch of a former club without permission is seen as very disrespectful. Norris recalled: "I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. I loaned them my old chest as a sample and told them where they could be made. For aiding in the new beginning, I was presented with a new set of colors".
The group regulated itself somewhat differently from most motorcycle clubs such as the
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) is a worldwide outlaw motorcycle club whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporatio ...
, using a series of bylaws instead of a single written constitution or charter.
The Alpha Club
This new Satan's Choice started out much the same as the original, a group of young men simply wishing to escape from society and its rigid norms and expectations. Satan's Choice members were not serious criminals, if they committed any crimes at all.
In 1965, a documentary film about the newly founded club, directed by
Donald Shebib
Donald Everett "Don" Shebib (born 27 January 1938) is a Canadian film director. Shebib is a central figure in the development of English Canadian cinema who made several short documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada and CBC Televisi ...
and titled ''Satan's Choice'', appeared, making the club famous in Toronto. Charismatic and handsome, Guindon was the "star" of the documentary. Prior to the 1960s, Toronto had a very staid image of "Toronto the Good", a city whose people were mostly hard-working, conservative God-fearing
Protestants
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
of
British descent
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mo ...
, a bastion of
Victorian values that was prosperous, safe and well run, but also rather boring and conventional. A British visitor to Toronto in 1896 stated: "Sunday is as melancholy and suicidal sort of day as
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...
principles can make it". In the 1960s, it was common for young people to Toronto to embrace a "hip" image, choosing ways of life that were quite contrary to the traditional Anglo-Protestant Victorian values that had previously defined Toronto, which were viewed by the young people as conformist, dull and stifling. The outlaw biker subculture came to be seen as a symbol of rebellion and freedom with many of the younger people having a very romantic and idealized image of the bikers, who were admired for their "authenticity". Bikers were viewed as dangerous men who were, however, "cool" and "hip" in their rejection of "Toronto the Good" values. One young woman interviewed in the documentary said she liked riding with Satan's Choice because they were "not phony" and were "real". The Ontario outlaw biker subculture was violent, but in the 1960s the violence was usually limited to brawls and it was most unusual for bikers to kill each other. The unwillingness of outlaw bikers to testify against one another in court following their code made it difficult for the authorities to prosecute them for their frequent street fights, which contributed to their "cool" image as men who successfully broke the law. Shebib said of Satan's Choice in 1965: "It was a lot of booze, broads, and bikes. It wasn't organized crime as it became. But I don't think you wanted to cross them".
In ''Satan's Choice'', Guindon together with the rest of his club professed to reject materialism as they maintained that the only possessions they held dear were their motorcycles. In the documentary, Guindon and the rest of his club claimed to be rejecting what they called the mindless conformity of Canadian society. That Guindon and his followers were rigidly conforming to the code of outlaw biker subculture that originated in California in the late 1940s apparently escaped them. Shebib's documentary, with its sympathetic picture of Satan's Choice as "rebels" against "Toronto the Good" values, gave them an immense amount of publicity in 1960s Toronto. Through the values of outlaw biker subculture that celebrated violence, macho masculinity and the acquisition of wealth contrasted with the counterculture values of the
hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
s, the two subcultures saw themselves as fellow outcasts from Canadian society, and hippies tended to glamorize outlaw bikers as the 1960s progressed.
Although Guindon and his gang were often into trouble with the law owing to their frequent brawling with other outlaw bikers, in general Satan's Choice were not involved in organized crime in its early years, engaging only in petty crime. One of the first reports in the media about Satan's Choice was a story in the ''
Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...
'' on 29 August 1966, reporting "Five arrested in motorcycle rumble". The report stated: "A policeman had a guitar smashed over his head during a brawl in a local hotel cocktail lounge Saturday after two motorcycle clubs ganged up on a musician. Police say about 12 members of the Golden Hawk Riders and Satan's Choice were out to get even with a musician after he fought with a Golden Hawk Friday and kicked over his motorcycle". Reports such as this were typical of the media reports about Satan's Choice in the 1960s, which rarely mentioned serious crimes. Police raids in the 1960s discovered that Satan's Choice members possessed guns, brass knuckles and marijuana, the latter which were as much for their own use as to sell. One policeman stated about Satan's Choice in the 1960s: "They were rough guys, for sure. But they weren't gangsters; we'd pick them up for little things-simple assault, vandalism, trespassing, public drunkenness, that sort of thing". By contrast, Sergeant
John Harris of the
Hamilton Hamilton may refer to:
People
* Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname
** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland
** Lord Hamilt ...
police believed that Satan's Choice were always involved in organized crime, saying: "Guindon had a right-hand man named Arnold Kelly, who was never a member, never wanted to be. He made his money in construction and owned a resort north of
Orillia
Orillia is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is in Simcoe County between Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe. Although it is geographically located within Simcoe County, the city is a single-tier municipality. It is part of the Huronia region of ...
... But he arranged everything – drug deals, beatings, shootings – he was probably more dangerous than Guindon himself".
In 1967, a black outlaw biker from
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
, Rod MacLeod, arrived at a biker's convention at
Wasaga Beach
Wasaga Beach (or simply Wasaga) is a town in Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada. Situated along the longest freshwater beach in the world, it is a popular summer tourist destination. It is located along the southern end of Georgian Bay, approximate ...
to meet Guindon. MacLeod wanted to form the first Satan's Choice chapter in ''la belle province''. Guindon approved the request, making MacLeod the first black chapter president anywhere in Canada, leading in Montreal a multiracial, multilingual chapter made of blacks and whites, English-Canadians and French-Canadians of about 20 members. Outlaw biker clubs tended to shun non-white applicants, and Guindon was highly unusual in allowing a black man to lead a chapter. Members tended to leave as quickly as they arrived as Guindon recalled: "In a year or two you'd lost at least a hundred members. They'd come and go so fast". Oshawa, as the first chapter, held the pride of place as Guindon stated: "The Oshawa chapter always stood proud. We'd fight anybody and ride to the fight".
Lorne Campbell, a founding member of Satan's Choice and one of Guindon's principle lieutenants remembered: "There wasn't machine guns or knives back then, but there were pretty serious fights".
Guindon recruited a university drop-out turned chef, Howard Doyle Berry, aka "Pigpen", of
Peterborough
Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...
into Satan's Choice, who became his principle lieutenant. To compensate for his solidly respectable middle-class background, the former Classics student Berry embraced a slovenly, disheveled look and purposely led a life of poor hygiene, hence the unflattering moniker "Pigpen". Berry liked to offend and disgust people via such antics such as vomiting over new members; attaching the remains of a dead skunk he found on the road to his Satan's Choice jacket; and bringing and eating his own feces when invited to dine with other Choice members. At a cottage near
Coboconk
Coboconk, often shortened to Coby, is a community in the city of Kawartha Lakes, in the south-central portion of the Canadian province of Ontario. The village lies at the junction of Highway 35 and former Highway 48, on the northern tip of ...
, Berry served to initiate new members by dumping outhouse buckets over their heads while also vomiting over them. Through Guindon found Berry repulsive, his willingness to do anything made him useful and he came to serve as his principal enforcer. Cecil Kirby stated about Berry: "There are guys who would start fights and then they'd say 'Come and help me'. I can't stand people like that. Be a stand-up guy. He was a stand-up guy. That's what I liked about him". Berry once fought Howard "Baldy" Chard, the chief enforcer for the gangster
Johnny Papalia
John Joseph Papalia (; March 18, 1924 – May 31, 1997), also known as Johnny Pops Papalia or "The Enforcer", was an Italian-Canadian crime boss of the Papalia crime family based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The Papalia crime family is one o ...
, which added to his legend.
On 25 September 1967, Guindon held the first national convention of Satan's Choice at a farmhouse in
Markham Township just outside of Toronto, which was also attended by the Vagabonds club. Attending the convention were the members from the chapters from Oshawa,
Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
,
Guelph
Guelph ( ; 2021 Canadian Census population 143,740) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as "The Royal City", Guelph is roughly east of Kitchener and west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Highway 6, Highway 7 and Wel ...
,
St. Catherines,
Windsor
Windsor may refer to:
Places Australia
* Windsor, New South Wales
** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area
* Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland
**Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...
, Montreal, Preston,
Kingston, Peterborough, and Hamilton. Amid much riotous drinking in a barn where the convention was being held, 23 police officers raided the barn about midnight, but came under a shower of empty beer bottles, forcing them to retreat. The police had not left behind any men to guard their cars which were parked outside of the barn, and as a result, while the police were being showered with bottles, some of the bikers had trashed the parked police cruisers, ripped out the radios and punctured their tyres, forcing the policemen to walk back to the station. At about 4:00 am, the enraged police returned with a greater force of 84 officers who engaged in a fierce brawl with the bikers. On their second attempt, the police had plastic shields that allowed them to advance on the barn despite the shower of empty beer bottles being thrown at them. The police arrested 55 bikers plus 9 women who also attending the party. The police smashed up the motorcycles of the bikers in retaliation for the damage done to their cruisers. Journalists who saw the scene the next morning described it as looking like a war zone. The incident at the barn in Markham attracted much media attention, as did the fact that the police seized at the barn a mixture of weapons such as sawed-off shotguns, handguns, axes and bike chains together with an immense quantity of alcohol and marijuana. Arrested together with Guindon at the barn were his second wife Barbara Ann and his right-hand man Howard Berry.
On Sunday morning as those arrested were taken into the
Don Jail
The Don Jail was a jail in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located to the east of the Don River, on Gerrard Street East in the Riverdale neighbourhood. The original building was completed in 1864 and was reopened in 2013 to serve as the administrative ...
, there were a number of journalists from the local television stations present and the bikers blew kisses to the cameras. On Monday after the Saturday night raid, the arrested bikers were taken to a courthouse, which became the most popular "tourist attraction" in Toronto that day as one journalist from ''
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'' newspaper described it with a large crowd waiting outside the courthouse, many of whom were high school students who were there to cheer on the bikers as they were marched into the courthouse to be fined. In the end, the judge fined Satan's Choice a thousand dollars, most of it in the form of $10 dollars fines for each individual for being present in a place where alcohol was being illegally served plus $3.50 fine for court costs. The Markham incident was not considered a triumph for the forces of law and order with public opinion on the side of the bikers, who were felt to be victims of excessive force. By the end of the 1960s, Guindon had emerged as something of a
folk hero
A folk hero or national hero is a type of hero – real, fictional or mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in folk songs, folk tales and other folklore; a ...
in Toronto while Satan's Choice had become the most best known and largest outlaw biker club in Canada. In 1969, Satan's Choice reached its peak strength of 400 members as the club grew rapidly in the 1960s. By this point, Satan's Choice had chapters in Toronto, Oshawa, Preston (modern Cambridge), Hamilton, Windsor, Ottawa, Kingston, Guelph, St. Catharines, Peterborough,
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
, and Montreal. Guindon was forced to disband the Vancouver chapter after drug use of its members became too excessive even for him.
On 15 May 1969, Guindon was convicted of rape and during his time in prison, which lasted on and off until 1974 as Guindon kept being sent back to prison for violating his parole, the acting national president was Garnet "Mother" McEwen. In October 1969, during a field day in Hamilton, every Satan's Choice member took part as a demonstration of power against the rival Wild Ones club. As all 400 members rode in, the Wild Ones were so intimidated that they abandoned the field.
Criminalization
Towards the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, Satan's Choice slowly developed into an organized crime group as a result of the large potential profits from criminal activities.
While they were involved in a number of criminal activities that were typical for biker gangs, such as
robbery
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...
,
theft
Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some ...
,
assault
An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in crim ...
, and running
prostitution
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in Sex work, sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, n ...
rings, they were notably deeply involved in drug production and trafficking. The club operated a number of drug labs out of remote cabins in
northern Ontario
Northern Ontario is a primary geographic and quasi-administrative region of the Canadian province of Ontario, the other primary region being Southern Ontario. Most of the core geographic region is located on part of the Superior Geological Provi ...
, with production focusing especially on
PCP and
methamphetamines
Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug and less commonly as a second-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obesity. Methamphe ...
, better known in the area as "Canadian Blue". The remoteness of northern Ontario made it possible to hide drug labs and to manufacture drugs on a scale that was difficult in the more populous region of
southern Ontario
Southern Ontario is a primary region of the province of Ontario, Canada, the other primary region being Northern Ontario. It is the most densely populated and southernmost region in Canada. The exact northern boundary of Southern Ontario is disp ...
. This success emboldened elements of Satan's Choice, in particular their Toronto chapter, into sparking a gang war with two rival biker gangs in the city, the Black Diamond Riders MC and the Vagabonds MC. However, the rest of the group's chapters met and ended the war, making peace with the two rival groups and disciplining the leaders of the Toronto chapter. During this time period, Satan's Choice had grown rapidly, reaching a peak strength of more than 400 by 1970. Despite crackdowns by authorities, the club still maintained a membership of over 350 in 1977, across thirteen chapters in Ontario and
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
. At this point, Satan's Choice still maintained the position of the second largest motorcycle club in the world behind only the Hells Angels.
The Canadian scholar Graeme Melcher wrote: "In a culture where violence, toughness, and assertive masculinity were so highly prized, Guindon succeeded as a leader because he was tougher and smarter than the next guy". Although Satan's Choice, together other Canadian outlaw biker clubs, slavishly copied the American outlaw biker clubs, Guindon was adamantly against allowing American clubs to come to Canada, arguing the American-based clubs would destabilize the biker scene and cause too much violence. Guindon saw violence as a legitimate way to achieve his aims, in general, but he was against biker wars, arguing that the Canadian public was willing to accept street fights, but not murder, and that excessive violence would lead to a police crackdown. Guindon argued the outlaw biker clubs should respect each other's territories and avoid violence. Melcher wrote there was an element of self-interest to Guindon's strategy since Satan's Choice was the largest club and his strategy for peace by mutual respect for each other's territories enshrined the dominance of his club by preventing challenges into his territories. Melcher further noted that as a business strategy, Guindon's peace strategy was quite rational as the lack of a police crackdown allowed Satan's Choice to make greater profits than would be the case if the police were cracking down. In 1973, Guindon was approached by the Hells Angels for the first time with the offer to have Satan's Choice "patch over" to become Hells Angels. Guindon was an ardent
Canadian nationalist and rejected the offer, saying he did not want his club absorbed into an American club.
In October 1970, a number of Satan's Choice members from the Toronto and Oshawa chapters served as extras in a low-budget exploitation film ''
The Proud Rider
''The Proud Rider'' (also known as ''The Last Ride'') is a Canadian outlaw biker film released in 1971.
Inspired in part by ''Easy Rider'', it stars Michael Bell, Scott Colomby, and (in his screen debut) Art Hindle.
Filmed in and around Courtic ...
'' staring
Arthur Hindle about a thinly disguised version of Satan's Choice. The decision to use Satan's Choice members in the film had been approved by "Big" Jack Olliffe, who had replaced McEwen as the interim president. The first day of filming, 3 October 1970, was highly chaotic owing to unruly behavior of the bikers who refused to take direction, and matters continued to decline thereafter. Olliffe and the others took advantage that the film's producers were paying for the meals of the extras to gourmandise extravagantly as Olliffe alone devoured six hamburgers per meal. The gourmadising inflated the film's production costs by $2, 000 dollars per day, which ensured that ''The Proud Rider'' was doomed to lose money at the box office owning to its bloated production costs. When a group of bikers dropped their pants and underwear with the aim of shocking a script girl, "Pigpen" Berry felt overshadowed, which inspired him to bite off the head of a live snake to shock her even more. Throughout the film's production, Berry was out of control as he engaged in bizarre antics designed to disgust and appall. The scriptwriter and assistant director, Chester Stocki, told a journalist, Paul King, that he felt "scared, scared, scared. Just look at them!"
As the group moved from a motorcycle club into organized crime, many of the original members dropped out. It was estimated that about 90% of the violence in the 1970s was related to the control of the drug trade. Guindon later stated: "Drugs were the ruin of many a good club member and many a good club". Ken Rae, the Crown Attorney (prosecutor) in
Kitchener stated in 1977: "At one time Kitchener had all the (Satan’s) Choice in jail. When they got out in 1971, they decided that running around alleys with shotguns wasn’t profitable so they reorganized and got into more profitable things like drugs."
The stories about Satan's Choice started to change from that of a hedonist types who liked to party hard to darker stories such as the case of a Kitchener man beaten to death in a back ally brawl and that of a Markham woman who tried to break up with her Choice boyfriend, only to be found lying semi-conscious and naked outside with serious vaginal bleeding caused by rape. Satan's Choice members were the suspects in the murder of a Vancouver businessman, believed to have been a case of murder for hire.
Former Satan's Choice member
Cecil Kirby
Cecil Kirby (born 17 August 1950) is a Canadian outlaw biker, criminal and hitman for the Commisso 'ndrina, turned police informant.
Satan's Choice
Kirby was born in the Weston neighborhood of Toronto on 17 August 1950, and was twice expelled fro ...
wrote in his 1986 memoirs ''Mafia Enforcer'' that Satan's Choice members specialized in seducing the female clerks who operated the Ontario Provincial Police's computers and were always willing to share information from the computers with their boyfriends. Kirby stated that there was one clerk who had access to the most classified information and:
"Club members carried her number in their wallets. If a member was worried about the cops, all he had to do was call her number, and she'd access the police computer to see if there were any warrants on him. When we spotted a rival gang member, we'd also use her to see if there were any outstanding fugitive warrants on him. If there were, we'd have someone in the club call up the cops and tip them off where that rival was and who was with him. It was a good way of avoiding trouble and getting rid of rival gang members. We could also check out anybody's criminal record through that computer. This helped us spot people trying to infiltrate us from rival gangs or the cops".
Kirby concluded that Satan's Choice "had the upper hand in Toronto because we had the best intelligence network around. We were able to move on the other gangs faster than they could move on us because we had such good sources and good information on the habits of the other gangs".
In 1973, the Ontario government decided to put all the outlaw biker clubs out of business, and had the Intelligence Branch of the
Ontario Provincial Police
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is the provincial police service of Ontario, Canada. Under its provincial mandate, the OPP patrols provincial highways and waterways, protects provincial government buildings and officials, patrols unincorpo ...
(OPP) set up a Special Squad with the unfortunate acronym of the SS dedicated entirely to pursuing outlaw bikers. The Special Squad was later renamed the Anti-Biker Unit. Unlike other organized groups such as the
Mafia
"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...
, the outlaw biker subculture was perceived by public by 1973 as especially dangerous. It was understood by members of the Special SqRuad that "legal niceties" need not be upheld as the politicians demanded convictions to show the public that action was being taken. Corporal Terry Hall of the Special Squad called the campaign against Satan's Choice "reverse intimidation" as the Special Squad sought to intimidate bikers via the same means used by the bikers themselves. The American journalist
Mick Lowe
Mick (Michael) Ellenwood Lowe (23 September 1947 – 17 April 2021) was an author, journalist, and writer based in Sudbury, Ontario, whose work appeared in a diverse range of Canadian publications including Maclean's, Canadian Business, Canadian ...
wrote that, starting in 1973, Hall "had inhabited a strange nether region on the fringes of Canadian law enforcement" as he went after bikers via very ruthless and often illegal means, making him into a "black legend among Canadian bikers" who feared him as a policeman who did not follow the law. Even Hall's appearance with his long hair and beard and a generally disheveled look made him appear more like an outlaw biker than a policeman.
One consequence of the "reverse intimidation" campaign was to reduce Satan's Choice membership from the all-time high of about 400 members in 1969 to about 110 in 1977. An additional and unintended result of "reverse intimidation" campaign was to drive out the genuine motorcycle enthusiasts out of Satan's Choice while leaving behind only those committed to organized crime who were willing to accept imprisonment from time to time as a consequence of their lifestyle. The campaign waged by Hall and other Special Squad members failed in its purpose as the number of outlaw bikers in Ontario went from about 500 in 1973 to about 800 in 1978 as the profits from organized crime led more men to join outlaw biker clubs.
As part of the campaign against Satan's Choice, Hall orchestrated a media campaign, leaking information to journalists that portrayed Satan's Choice as public enemy number one, sparking a moral panic against the club.
Alliance with the Outlaws
In 1975, Satan's Choice began an alliance with the
Outlaws Motorcycle Club
The Outlaws Motorcycle Club, incorporated as the American Outlaws Association or its acronym, A.O.A., is an outlaw motorcycle club that was formed in McCook, Illinois in 1935. It is one of the largest outlaw motorcycle clubs in the world and histo ...
, one of the largest international outlaw biker clubs. In 1974, Kirby and
Garnet "Mother" McEwen, the president of the St. Catharines chapter, went to
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...
to meet Outlaw leaders. McEwen became especially close to the Outlaws and was the most vocal advocate within Satan's Choice of closer ties with them. In June 1975, Guindon forged an alliance with the Outlaws club, which is very active in the
American Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...
. Under the terms of the agreement, the Outlaws were the exclusive distributors in the United States of the PCPs and methamphetamine manufactured by Choice members in northern Ontario. The "Canadian Blue" methamphetamine produced in Ontario sold for $8,000 Canadian dollars per pound, but in the United States was sold for $12,000 U.S. dollars per pound. As manufacturing methamphetamine produces a very unpleasant smell that is usually compared to the smell of cat urine, northern Ontario with its sparse population, numerous lakes and vast forests was ideal for manufacturing methamphetamine. The Outlaws who controlled the markets of the Midwest came to be dependent upon methamphetamine manufactured by Satan's Choice.
The benefits of such a relationship worked to the advantage of both groups. Satan's Choice gained access to a larger support network of clubs throughout the United States and beyond, opening the club to new business opportunities and possibly even reinforcements in the event of another club war. Meanwhile, the Outlaws gained a strong ally in Ontario, precluding any expansion by the Hells Angels into the region. Furthermore, the Outlaws gained a way to challenge the supremacy of the Hells Angels in Quebec through access to the Montreal chapter of Satan's Choice. This led the Montreal chapter and their Outlaw allies
into open conflict with the Hells Angels-backed
Popeyes
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Inc., also known as Popeyes and formerly named Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits and Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken & Biscuits, is an American multinational chain of fried chicken fast food restaurants that was formed in 1972 ...
, resulting in a number of casualties on both sides. The Popeyes had targeted the
Devil's Disciples
''Devil's Disciples'' is a Hong Kong television series released overseas in February 2007 and broadcast locally on TVB Jade in July 2007.
Synopsis
There are two groups of people, the good and evil. Everyone sees the Saint Sword Sect, led by Pak ...
biker gang, who were allies of Satan's Choice. The Devils' Disciples and the Montreal chapter of Satan's Choice were engaged in the manufacturing and smuggling of chemical drugs, a market that the Popeyes decided to violently enter in 1974, leading to the biker war. Kirby was present when "Pigpen" Berry opened fire on the clubhouse of the Popeyes with a sawed-off
Lee–Enfield
The Lee–Enfield or Enfield is a bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifle that served as the main firearm of the military forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the first half of the 20th century, and was the British Army's st ...
.303 rifle with a ten-round clip, saying "It was like a cannon going off". Kirby recalled in a 2015 interview: "If there was trouble anywhere, they'd sent Howard Berry out to take care of it. He was the Choice hitman and everybody knew it". In an interview, Berry stated that he was hired to kill people, but never actually succeeded in doing so. The same underworld struggle drew in the Irish
West End Gang
The West End Gang (french: Gang de l'ouest) is a Canadian organized crime group in Montreal, Quebec. An Irish mob group originating from the Irish-Canadian ethnic enclave of Pointe-Saint-Charles in the 1950s, the majority of the gang's earni ...
on the side of Satan's Choice while the
Dubois Brothers gang backed the Popeyes. The Popeyes, who acted as "muscle" for the Dubois brothers, killed 15 members of the Devil's Disciples between 1974 and 1976, causing the latter gang to disband themselves in January 1976.
Yves Trudeau, the ace assassin for the Popeyes, first rose to prominence during this struggle.
Reflecting the new alliance, Berry started to work for the Outlaws in Florida, where his willingness to perform any task together with his anonymity made him useful as an enforcer. In the 1970s, the
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
-based Hells Angels were seeking to expand from California into Florida, leading to a biker war with the
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
-based Outlaws. The conflict had started in 1969 when an Outlaw raped the wife of a Hells Angel, leading to the Angels to beat the rapist to death. During his time as an Outlaw enforcer and hitman in Florida, Berry customarily rode around in his motorcycle with a machine gun strapped to the front, as much for his own protection as for intimidation. During an assassination attempt by the Hells Angels, Berry took two bullets to the chest. Berry was living under the assumed name Tim Jones, and the Florida police did not realize that Berry was living illegally in the United States. Berry reported to Guindon that many of the Outlaws were
Vietnam veteran
A Vietnam veteran is a person who served in the armed forces of participating countries during the Vietnam War.
The term has been used to describe veterans who served in the armed forces of South Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and oth ...
s who were full of rage and hatred who engaged in pointless, irrational violence. The fact that many of the Hells Angels and the Outlaws were veterans who used the combat skills they had learned during the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
against each other added to the intensity of the conflict as Berry stated: "Down here they played the game for keeps". However, Berry also told Guindon about the Outlaws: "They're well organized. They make money big time".
In August 1975, Guindon went to a hunting lodge at Oba Lake in northern Ontario owned by Alain Templain, the president of the Oshawa chapter of Satan' Choice. The lodge was so remote as to be only accessible by plane. Also at the lodge were a group of undercover detectives from the OPP posing as American tourists looking for a "good time" in Canada. On 6 August 1975, the undercover officers raided a shack located on an island in Oba Lake and found Guindon and Templain with some PCP tablets worth $6 million Canadian dollars together with PCP-manufacturing equipment.
Found on the island on Oba Lake were 9 pounds of PCP ready to sell and 236 pounds of PCP waiting to be completed.
The drug network for selling the PCP ranged as far as Florida, and the police estimated Guindon was making at least $60 million per month in sales.
Unknown to Guindon, it was McEwen who tipped off the police about the PCP factory at Oba Lake and told them when Guindon would be visiting so they could arrest him. McEwen wanted Guindon out of the way in order to pursue his plans for "
Yankeeization". Lowe described McEwen as suffering from "...the classic Canadian-American love-hate relationship, a distinctly Canadian malady, since Americans never thought enough about Canada to either love or hate their northern cousins one way or the other". McEwen believed that he would not be a truly important person in the biker scene until he had become a member of an American outlaw biker club.
Fugitives from both the Outlaws and Satan's Choice were found to be in hiding in each other's nations. Berry, wanted for attempted murder in Peterborough, was arrested in North Carolina in December 1975 with a forged Florida driver's license giving his name as Tim Jones. Berry was arrested after he was caught trying to steal a tank from a
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
base. He was not extradited to Canada as he was instead convicted in North Carolina for his involvement in an Outlaw auto theft ring.
After completing his sentence, Berry was deported to Canada. James "Blue" Starrett of the Outlaws was found to be living in St. Catherine's on 22 July 1976 under the name Charlie Brown, where he ran a painting business and was a member of the local Satan's Choice chapter.
Starrett had been serving a life sentence for murdering a woman in Florida in 1970 and had escaped from prison in 1974, leading to his fellow Outlaws arranging for him to go to Canada. William "Gatemouth" Edson of the Outlaw chapter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida had been convicted of multiple offenses such as murdering three Hells Angels; torturing a woman for two days because she wore a jacket with an Outlaw patch without permission; and almost beating another woman to death because she was the girlfriend of a
Bandidos Motorcycle Club
The Bandidos Motorcycle Club, also known as the Bandido Nation, is an outlaw motorcycle club with a worldwide membership. Formed in San Leon, Texas in 1966, the Bandidos MC is estimated to have between 2,000 and 2,500 members and 303 chapters, ...
member. Like Starrett, Edson had escaped from prison in Florida and with the help of his fellow Outlaws had made his way to Canada, where he settled in Kitchener. In Kitchener, Edson was given the false name Denis Lupo, together with a fake Ontario driver's license, and he joined the local Satan's Choice chapter. Edson was arrested in Kitchener on 27 August 1976 and deported to the United States.
At times, the fugitive hiding program caused tensions. One Outlaw biker from
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
arranged for his girlfriend to hide out with the Satan's Choice's chapter in Kitchener, during which time she had a sexual relationship with Lorne Campbell of the Choice's Oshawa chapter, which almost caused a brawl between the two men when the biker from Tennessee travelled north to reclaim his girlfriend.
In May 1976, the club's leader Bernie Guindon was incarcerated on drug charges relating to the Oba Lake drug bust. The man who replaced Guindon as national president, Garnet "Mother" McEwen, was a proponent of "Yankeeization", favoring close ties with the Outlaws unlike the Canadian nationalist Guindon who wanted to keep his club Canadian. The fact that McEwen
bugged the automobiles of other Satan's Choice members did not endear him to many who saw him as a "rat". In 1976, McEwen arranged for a common "association patch" between the Outlaws and Satan's Choice, allowing for equality between the two clubs. In 1976, a member of the Hamilton chapter, James "Wench" Kellet, ran for the mayor of Hamilton under the slogan "A Choice in the Right Direction". He won only about 1,000 votes, coming last in the election. Shortly afterwards, Kellet was involved in a shoot-out with the Hamilton police when he opened fire with a shotgun on a police cruiser, leading to the police to return fire and ultimately kill him. One of the first Satan's Choice members to be murdered was John Foote, who was killed on 4 November 1976 by another member, John Harvey. After a disagreement, Foote hit Harvey with a pool cue, resulting in Harvey, who was heavily under the influence of drugs, returning with a gun and shooting him dead.
During McEwen's presidency, in-fighting between the chapters became common and in 1977, McEwen tried to expel the entire Kitchener chapter after some of its members talked too frankly to two journalists from the ''
Kitchener Record''. At a party at the clubhouse of the Montreal chapter, Lorne Campbell of the Oshawa chapter was startled to hear David Séguin of the Windsor chapter declare: "If I broke down on
the 401, I wouldn't phone anyone from Oshawa. That's how much I hate Oshawa". Campbell responded by assaulting Séguin, who screamed in pain under the blows of Campbell's fists, leading Campbell to mockingly say "Not till I'm finished with you, Dave. This ain't hurting me". McEwen called a secret meeting attended by William "King" O'Reilly, the president of the Windsor chapter; John "Doctor John" Arksey, the president of the Ottawa chapter; and Joseph "Sonny" Lacombe, the president of the Montreal chapter. O'Reilly and Arksey both agreed to McEwen's plans to have Satan's Choice "patch over" to the Outlaws, while Lacombe remained non-committal for a time. In March 1977, McEwen arranged for the Windsor and St. Catherine's chapters to secretly join the Outlaws.
"The Big Split" of 1977
Guindon's imprisonment soon led to the fracturing of Satan's Choice when, on 1 July 1977, the Ottawa, St. Catharines, Windsor, London and Montreal chapters fully abandoned Satan's Choice in favour of the much larger Outlaws. McEwen called a secret meeting on 1 July 1977, with most of the chapter presidents being present where he called for "patching over" to the Outlaws, arguing that being members of an American-based club would add to their power, saying that the St. Catherine's and Windsor chapters had already decided to join the Outlaws. The chapter presidents known to be loyal to Guindon were not invited to the meeting. The meeting was not held at the usual meeting place of Wasaga Beach on
Georgian Bay
Georgian Bay (french: Baie Georgienne) is a large bay of Lake Huron, in the Laurentia bioregion. It is located entirely within the borders of Ontario, Canada. The main body of the bay lies east of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island. To ...
, instead held at
Crystal Beach on
Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...
close to the American border. McEwen brought over a number of American Outlaws from their
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
chapter to provide intimidation at the Crystal Beach meeting. Lowe wrote that the chapters "began to fall like dominoes" as, once
Mario Parente
Mario Parente (born 1949) is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster, mostly noted for serving as the Canadian national president of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club between 2000 and 2009.
Satan's Choice
Parente was born in Hamilton, Ontario into a worki ...
of the Hamilton chapter decided to go over to the Outlaws, the Montreal chapter did likewise, which caused the Ottawa chapter to "patch over". To mark the change, a ceremony was performed at Crystal Beach where the Satan's Choice chapter presidents burned their jackets with the Satan's Choice patches while putting on new jackets with the Outlaw patch.
Satan's Choice lost the chapters in Montreal, Hamilton, St. Catherine's,
Sault Ste. Marie, Windsor,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, Ottawa, and Kingston to the Outlaws. The "Big Split" as the break-up was known caused much anguish with many Satan's Choice members feeling that it was like a family being divided after a divorce as members either opted to join the Outlaws or remain with Satan's Choice. Lorne Campbell stated: "The split never would have gone down if Bernie was still out. Bernie Guindon's influence was not to be challenged. When he talks about people having parts, he's got all kinds of parts". When Guindon was released early from prison for good behavior in 1984, all Satan's Choice had left were the chapters in
Thunder Bay
Thunder Bay is a city in and the seat of Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada. It is the most populous municipality in Northwestern Ontario and the second most populous (after Greater Sudbury) municipality in Northern Ontario; its population ...
, Kitchener, Oshawa, Toronto and Richmond Hill. The way his supposed allies, the Outlaws, poached several chapters away from him while he was in prison caused Guindon to have a lasting grudge against the Outlaws, and during the subsequent struggle between the Hells Angels and the Outlaws, Guindon was to lean in a pro-Angel neutrality. In 1977, Guindon was described in media reports as being furious with McEwen, the man he appointed as interim national president for having engineered the "patch over".
Guidnon later recalled: "I couldn't do anything about it. Fuck was I mad. Especially at him
cEwen Stool pigeon motherfucker". From within the
Millhaven prison
Millhaven Institution (french: Établissement de Millhaven) is a maximum security prison located in Bath, Ontario. Approximately 500 inmates are incarcerated at Millhaven.
Opened in 1971, Millhaven was originally built to replace Ontario's other ...
, Guindon placed a bounty on McEwen, promising to pay $10,000 as the reward for killing him. Langton wrote: "Effectively powerless behind bars, he
uindonissued a $10, 000 reward on McEwen's head. It went uncollected". Guindon spent hours punching his bed in fury as he wished his bed was McEwen. McEwen's house in St. Catherine's was shot up by the Satan's Choice in a failed assassination attempt.
On 5 December 1977, the Popeyes of Montreal "patched over" to become the first Hells Angel chapter in Canada. On 15 February 1978, Trudeau, who was now with the Hells Angels, shot two Outlaws outside of a Montreal bar, killing one of them, Robert Côté. The shooting caused the
First Biker War that was to last until 1984. Between 1978 and 1983, the "psychopathic killer" Trudeau killed 18 out of the 23 Outlaws slain in Montreal during the conflict. By 1980, it was estimated that the Angels–Outlaw biker war had caused about 20 murders in Quebec and Ontario since 1978, while between 1981 and 1984 another 42 were killed. The Montreal chapter of Satan's Choice who had "patched over" to join the Outlaws in 1977, believing that this would improve their status within the underworld, had been "virtually exterminated" by the Hells Angels by 1984. One consequence of the biker war was that the Outlaws did not wish to take on Satan's Choice, which enjoyed a respite despite its weakened status. The possibility of Satan's Choice "patching over" to join the Hells Angels ensured that through the Outlaws–Satan's Choice relationship was tense and always difficult, the Outlaws never wanted to apply too much pressure against the Choice least they join the Hells Angels. In the summer of 1978, at a general meeting, Satan's Choice debated about whatever to move into selling heroin.
The only consolation for Guindon was that McEwen as the first national president of the Canadian Outlaws proved to be a total failure as the American Outlaws expelled him after he was caught embezzling some $30,000 he was supposed to pay to them. Fearing he might be killed if he stayed in Ontario, McEwen fled to Alberta where he ended up working as a
dishwasher
A dishwasher is a machine that is used to clean dishware, cookware, and cutlery automatically. Unlike manual dishwashing, which relies heavily on physical scrubbing to remove soiling, the mechanical dishwasher cleans by spraying hot water, ...
at a restaurant located in a
Calgary
Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...
hotel. McEwen joined the Chosen Few biker gang and was again caught stealing, causing the other members of the Chosen Few to be almost beat him to death with his artificial leg. In 1980, McEwen abandoned biking to become a dishwasher, which was felt to be sufficient punishment by Satan's Choice.
The Port Hope 8 case
The Golden Hawk Riders of
Port Hope were a small club of seven members, and were considering "patching over" to join the Outlaws. In the aftermath of the split of 1977, relations between the Outlaws and Satan's Choice were very unfriendly. Several members of Satan' Choice warned the Golden Hawk Riders, including their sergeant-at-arms, Bill "Heavy" Matiyek, who had a reputation as a hothead, not to go through with the planned "patch over", a demand that Matiyek rejected. Port Hope is a small town close to Oshawa, and an Outlaw chapter in Port Hope would threaten the profits from the drug trade enjoyed by the Satan's Choice Oshawa chapter. With Port Hope less than a half an hour away by automobile from Oshawa, an Outlaw chapter in Port Hope would effectively be the same as an Outlaw chapter in Oshawa.
Brian Brideau, a petty criminal and an associate of Satan's Choice, was in the bar-room of the Queen's Hotel in Port Hope on the night of 18 October 1978 when he encountered Matiyek drinking with two Outlaws. Brideau was a drug addict who annoyed many with his incessant begging for money and Matiyek, who greatly disliked him, proceeded to beat him up and throw him out of the Queen's Hotel. Brideau sought revenge by calling Satan's Choice's Peterborough chapter from the phone booth outside the Queen's Hotel. A member of the Peterborough chapter, Richard Sauvé, took the phone call from Brideau, who said that Matiyek was drinking with two Outlaws, Fred Jones and Sonny Bronson, at the Queen's Hotel and wanted to see an officer of the Peterborough chapter that night. Sauvé choose to accept the challenge, but unwilling to face Matiyek with only Merv "Indian" Blaker of the Peterborough chapter as an ally, Sauvé called the other chapters for help. Blaker, who owned his moniker to the fact that he was an
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
, was felt to be too easy-going for a possible bar fight. While Sauvé and Blaker drove west to Port Hope, several members of the Toronto chapter abandoned drinking and watching a hockey game at their clubhouse to head east to Port Hope. The members from Toronto who went to Port Hope that night were Garry "Nutty" Comeau, Jeff McLeod, Larry Hurren, Lorne Campbell and Armand Sanguigni.
As the Choice members entered the Queen's Hotel at about 10:00 pm, Gayle Thompson, one of the waitresses present who recognized some of the bikers as she had served them before, reminded the owner of the Queen's Hotel, Leo Powell, that Satan's Choice's members were banned from the hotel owing to past unruly behavior. Thompson advised calling the police, but Powell decided to let them stay as the bar was almost empty that night and he felt he needed their money A confrontation, with Golden Hawk Rider Matiyek and the two Outlaws on one side and the Satan's Choice members on the other, began in the bar-room soon after. Sauvé sat down with Matiyek and quickly learned that he did not want to see him as he instead flashed his gun and said he had "nine friends", which was interpreted to mean that he had nine bullets in his gun. Matiyek, who was drunk and high on marijuana and amphetamines, was talking about shooting the Satan's Choice members in the Queen's Hotel bar-room, causing Lorne Campbell of the Choice's Toronto chapter to come to their aid. Campbell had heard that Matiyek had a gun and he brought along a gun to the Queen's Hotel. The confrontation in the bar-room ended with guns being drawn and Campbell shooting and killing Matiyek at about 10:55 pm. Campbell claims that Matiyek had reached for his gun first, leading him to open fire. Several of the Satan's Choice members who fled the Queen's Hotel such as Comeau, Blaker and Sauvé drove to Kitchener to contact David "Tee Hee" Hoffmann of the Kitchener chapter because he was considered intelligent and was felt to be capable of treating Comeau's wound.
Much of the police investigation was slapdash with the detectives taking no fingerprints from the crime scene while interviewing the witnesses as a group instead of individually. Subsequently, four Choice members were charged with Matiyek's murder, but not Campbell. Corporal Terry Hall of the OPP's Special Squad, who took charge of the investigation on 27 October 1978, seems to have decided to use Matiyek's death as a chance to cripple Satan's Choice by convicting as many bikers as possible of his murder. Hall's investigative methods were heterodox and contrary to accepted standards, but what mattered to him was providing the evidence to convict as many Satan's Choice bikers as possible. Ultimately, eight members of Satan's Choice were charged with the murder. People in Port Hope were so outraged by Mayiyek's murder that it was deemed impossible to find an impartial jury in that town, so the trial was held in London, Ontario. The Crown Attorney at the trial, Chris Meinhardt, presented the case as a first-degree murder, calling it "a foul, horrible, planned execution."
During the trial, Campbell testified that he had killed Matiyek and the eight accused were innocent. Campbell had been convicted of perjury once and as a result, the jury distrusted him.
Some of the evidence that emerged during the trial, such as the fact that the same bullet that killed Matiyek was found lodged inside of the body of one of the accused, Gary "Nutty" Comeau, supported the defense. The defense lawyers argued that Comeau could not have possibly fired the same bullet that went through Matiyek's head that also ended in his side, leading the prosecution to change its thesis midway through the trial to now claim that there had been two gunmen instead of one as first claimed. The journalist
Jerry Langton
Jerry Langton (born October 1, 1965) is a Canadian author. His focus is on crime, specifically the rise of motorcycle gangs throughout Ontario. Langton's books are published by John Wiley and Sons. He has written 10 books and is the author of the ...
wrote that the trial was "comical" as some of the witnesses for the Crown "changed their testimony three or even four times... Much of the Crown's evidence contradicted itself". Several witnesses mentioned that the man who killed Matiyek was a tall man with long blonde hair, described as a "big, blonde, bearded guy".
The fact that none of the accused took the stand did not help their case as juries tend to be very suspicious of defendants who excised their right not to testify.
The conviction of six of the eight accused of Matiyek's murder despite Campbell's testimony on the witness stand that he had killed him was highly controversial in 1979 and remains so. At the time, a journalist wrote "Who actually fired the gun was never established..." at the trial.
Comeau and Sauvé were convicted of first-degree murder while the other four were convicted of second-degree murder.
Two of the accused, Armand Sanguigni and Gordon van Haarlem, were acquitted. Two of the convicted, Sauvé and Blaker, came from the Choice's Peterborough chapter. At the same time, another four members of the Choice's Peterborough chapter were also convicted of separate charges relating to a gang-rape. The Peterborough chapter, which was already the weakest chapter, was effectively destroyed as a result of losing six members to the prisons, being reduced down to a shadowy existence. The Queen's Hotel was renamed the Walton Hotel to avoid the associations with the murder.
The lawyers for one of the Satan's Choice members convicted of Matiyek's murder, David "Tee Hee" Hoffmann, were able in 1981 to prove on the basis of police intercepts of Hoffmann's telephone calls that he was making phone calls in Kitchener on the night of 18 October 1978 and thus was not in Port Hope as the prosecution had claimed at the trial. The fact that the police had these intercepts all along was controversial and Lowe feels that Hoffmann should never have been charged with Matiyek's murder, let alone convicted. Hoffman was the treasurer of the Choice chapter in Kitchener and had known Hall since 1974, having very unfriendly relations with him. Hoffmann was indicted for murder as a way to pressure him to turn Crown's evidence and testify against his club. In 1983, Hoffmann was acquitted on an appeal, with a judge ruling that the Crown had acted badly by not disclosing to Hoffman's lawyer that it had the audio tapes proving he was in Kitchener the night of the murder.
The Port Hope case became the subject of a best-selling 1988 book, ''Conspiracy of Brothers'' by the American journalist
Mick Lowe
Mick (Michael) Ellenwood Lowe (23 September 1947 – 17 April 2021) was an author, journalist, and writer based in Sudbury, Ontario, whose work appeared in a diverse range of Canadian publications including Maclean's, Canadian Business, Canadian ...
, and the 1990 protest song "Justice in Ontario" by the American singer
Steve Earle
Stephen Fain Earle (; born January 17, 1955) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, author, and actor. Earle began his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982. Initially working in the country music g ...
.
The "Port Hope 8" case became a ''cause célèbre'' in the 1980s–1990s, attracting even international attention. Lowe charged that there was a police conspiracy to frame the accused, noting that exculpatory evidence, such as Comeau's jacket that would have supported his story that he had been shot, mysteriously disappeared after the police seized it. In 1988, the Oshawa chapter president Campbell served as a guest lecturer at the
University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa (french: Université d'Ottawa), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ottawa ...
law school class, where he spoke about the Port Hope case as a miscarriage of justice, becoming the first and only Satan's Choice chapter president to ever give a university lecture. A committee led by Comeau's sister and mother campaigned to free the wrongly convicted "Port Hope 6", publishing a newsletter that had subscribers in Canada, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Japan. The issue was debated on the floor of the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
as the
NDP
NDP may stand for:
Computing
* Neighbor Discovery Protocol, an Internet protocol
* Nortel Discovery Protocol, a layer two Internet protocol, also called SONMP
* Nondeterministic programming, a type of computer language
Government
* National ...
MP
Svend Robinson
Svend Robinson (born March 4, 1952) is a Canadian politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1979 to 2004, who represented suburban Vancouver-area constituencies of Burnaby for the New Democratic Party (NDP). He is noted as the first me ...
and the
Liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
MPs
Warren Allmand and
Christine Stewart
Christine Susan Stewart, (January 3, 1941 – April 25, 2015) was a Canadian politician. She served three terms as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for the riding of Northumberland in Ontario. During her career she held the cabinet position ...
all charged that the case was a miscarriage of justice. The last of the "Port Hope 6" to be acquitted was Comeau, who was freed on 8 September 2000. The Port Hope case is routinely taught in Canadian law schools as a textbook example of a miscarriage of justice.
The Beta Club
Although Satan's Choice was not as powerful as it once been before 1977, the club was described as still having a "cocky attitude" in the 1980s and 1990s, being the second most powerful club in Ontario after the Outlaws. In 1981, Satan's Choice made an alliance with the Lobos and the Chosen Few gangs to improve their bargaining power against their rivals, the Outlaws. In October 1982, the Toronto clubhouse was burned down in a case of arson.
In 1983, a Satan's Choice-turned-Outlaw, David Eugene Séquin, stormed into the clubhouse of the Chosen Few in
Emeryville Emeryville may refer to:
* Emeryville, California
Emeryville is a city located in northwest Alameda County, California, in the United States. It lies in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, with a border on the shore of San ...
, where he killed three people and wounded three more. Séquin fled to the United States and was killed in a shoot-out in Illinois in July 1985. On 8 September 1983, Guy "Frenchie" Gilbert of Satan's Choice Kitchener chapter was having lunch at ''Le Petit Bourg'' restaurant in
Longueuil
Longueuil () is a city in the province of Quebec, Canada. It is the seat of the Montérégie administrative region and the central city of the urban agglomeration of Longueuil. It sits on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River directly acr ...
, Quebec with
Yves Buteau, the national president of the Hells Angels, to discuss "patching over" to join the Hells Angels. As Gilbert, Buteau and another Hells Angel, René Lamoureaux, were leaving the restaurant, they were ambushed in the parking lot by an Outlaw, Gino Goudreau, who gunned down all three men. Lamoureaux was badly wounded, but survived while Buteau and Gilbert were both killed. Gilbert's murder put a temporary end to the efforts of the Kitchener chapter to join the Hells Angels.
A series of police raids in 1983 in
Madoc
Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd (also spelled Madog) was, according to folklore, a Welsh prince who sailed to America in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492.
According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwyned ...
discovered a methamphetamine factory operated jointly by Satan's Choice and the Para-Dice Riders that produced about $3.6 million worth of methamphetamine per month. Another set of raids in 1984 seized two small-caliber handguns, marijuana and marijuana oil, and a small amount of cocaine from four private residences in
Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to:
People
* Scarborough (surname)
* Earl of Scarbrough
Places Australia
* Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth
* Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong
* Scarborough, Queensland, su ...
.
[ ] In 1984, a Satan's Choice member was killed in Kitchener while riding his motorcycle by a gunman in a car that drove up next to him. On 19 November 1984, Guindon was released on parole for good behavior and despite his parole conditions, resumed his association with his club. Guindon went to Windsor to beat up Bill Hulko, the former president of the Choice Windsor chapter who had gone over to the Outlaws in 1977. Putting his boxing skills to good use, Guindon recalled: "I soaked him right in the fucking head... He did nothing... I just wanted to see where his balls were. He didn't have his balls that fucking day". Between 1985 and 1988, Guindon opened up four new chapters in Ontario, adding about 95 new members. By the 1980s, Satan's Choice had moved into selling cocaine, and a pipeline was opened to move cocaine from Toronto to Alberta, where many oil workers used cocaine to ease the tedium of their jobs. In 1985, a second version of Satan's Choice Hamilton chapter opened up on St. Matthew's Avenue which was very close to the Outlaws' Hamilton clubhouse at 402 Birch Avenue. In August 1985, a biker war in Hamilton led to the murder of two Satan's Choice members, Allan Kinloch and Brent Roddick; an Outlaw, James Lewis; and a member of the
Red Devils, Michael Carey. When Roddick's body was found on 25 August 1985, it was the fourth murder of a biker in Hamilton that month. The day after Roddick's murder, Satan's Choice disbanded their Hamilton chapter with its members relocating to the Kitchener chapter. In 1986, the
Nanaimo
Nanaimo ( ) is a city on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. As of the Canada 2021 Census, 2021 census, it had a population of 99,863, and it is known as "The Harbour City." The city was previously known as the "H ...
chapter of the Hells Angels put on an "Angels Acres" party on
Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are o ...
that was attended by 2,500 people. A number of bikers from Satan's Choice together with the Para-Dice Riders, and the Vagabonds from Ontario; the
Rebels from Alberta and Saskatchewan; the Vikings from
Quebec City
Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...
; and the
Grim Reapers from Alberta attended the party, which reflected the growth of Hells Angels influence.
Starting in 1981, Kevin Roy Hawkins worked as an anti-biker police detective in Kitchener who spent much time pursuing the Kitchener chapter of Satan's Choice.
Hawkins saw a stripper named Cherie Graham perform at the Breslau Hotel in
Breslau in March 1984 and fell in love with her, abandoning his wife later that spring to move in with Graham. Through Graham, Hawkins got to know the president of her stripper agency, Claude "Gootch" Morin, who was also the president of Satan's Choice's Kitchener chapter. As Hawkins was deeply in debt owing to the costs associated with his divorce, the police allege that he began to sell information to Morin. Morin is alleged to have paid him $5,000 in cash at their first meeting and promised another $10,000 in cash if his information proved to be useful. The police allege that Hawkins told Morin about a police raid planned in Hamilton and based on the information he is said to have provided, Morin was able to deduce the identity of the informer, whom he promptly had killed. Detective John Harris of the Hamilton police stated about the murder: "At first we thought it was a drug deal gone bad. But when Hawkins went down, we were all more careful about what we said".
In March 1987, Graham contacted the police, alleging that Hawkins was physically abusive and was involved with Satan' Choice.
Hawkins and Morin were charged with corruption and obstruction of justice on 29 January 1988, and at Hawkins's preliminary inquiry on 7–8 September 1988, Graham testified against him.
However, Hawkins then married Graham on 31 March 1989, and at subsequent preliminary inquiry hearings she claimed she had committed perjury at the instigation of the detectives and Crown Attorneys at the first preliminary inquiry hearings in 1988.
Over the following years, the Crown sought to use Graham's initial 1988 statements as evidence for the trial while the lawyers for Hawkins and Morin sought to exclude these statements as evidence. The case reached the
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
in 1996, which ruled these statements could be used as evidence.
In 1997, the charges against Hawkins and Morin were withdrawn by the Crown following the revelation that the OPP detective investigating Hawkins and Morin had been in a sexual relationship with Graham at the time, a relationship the prosecutors were aware of, but failed to disclose to the defense lawyers representing Hawkins and Morin.
On 18 January 2010, Hawkins won the right to sue the two Crown Attorneys at his trial, Brian Trafford and William Wolski, alleging malicious prosecution.
The case was chronicled in the 1998 book ''The Biker, the Stripper and the Cop'' by Eugene McCarthy.
The Kitchener chapter was generally considered to be the strongest Satan's Choice chapter that had a firm arm-lock on organized crime in the "
Tri Cities" of
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, Kitchener and
Waterloo from the early 1970s onward. The "Tri Cities" were a wealthy area, and unlike in Toronto, the Satan's Choice chapter had a monopoly on organized crime in the Waterloo region. In 1985, the Kitchener chapter recruited Brian "Bo" Beaucage, one of the leaders of the prison riot at the
Kingston Penitentiary
Kingston Penitentiary (known locally as KP and Kingston Pen) is a former maximum security prison located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, between King Street West and Lake Ontario.
History
Constructed from 1833 to 1834, and opened on June 1, 1 ...
of 14–18 April 1971. During the riot, Beaucage had presided over a kangaroo court that "sentenced" 15 child molester prisoners to death, with Beaucage using a board with a nail hammered through it to personally execute two of the child molesters. One policeman, Don Andrews, said of Beaucage: "You always knew Brian wasn't going to die a natural death". A prison report described him as: "Beaucage is an intelligent person who resorts to assaultive, aggressive behavior without remorse or provocation. He is considered to be a very manipulative and potentially dangerous person". Beaucage was known for his violent hatred of the Outlaws, once travelling to London to try to pull off the sign of the Outlaws' London clubhouse, causing the Outlaws to shoot him. He was wearing a bulletproof vast and survived. On 16 January 1987, Beaucage during a visit to London was shot by an Outlaw with .45 calibre handgun, taking a bullet to the heart, but again survived the shooting. He was known for his aggressive and confrontational personality, which led him to being transferred over to the Oshawa chapter after he was involved in quarrels with almost every member of the Kitchener chapter. In December 1986, the Kitchener chapter ran a full-page Christmas advertisement in the ''Kitchener Record'' reading: "Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone in the Waterloo Region a very Merry Christmas and let you know that we are still here and will always be here. Choice Forever Forever Choice!" In December 1987, after complaints from readers, the ''Kitchener Record'' ceased running what was intended to be an annual ad.
In the summer of 1989, a group of Satan's Choice bikers led by Guindon and Campbell visited the
Prairie provinces
The Canadian Prairies (usually referred to as simply the Prairies in Canada) is a region in Western Canada. It includes the Canadian portion of the Great Plains and the Prairie Provinces, namely Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These provin ...
, meeting with the leaders of los Bravos gang of
Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...
and the Grim Reapers in Calgary and
Lethbridge
Lethbridge ( ) is a city in the province of Alberta, Canada. With a population of 101,482 in its 2019 Alberta municipal censuses, 2019 municipal census, Lethbridge became the fourth Alberta city to surpass 100,000 people. The nearby Canadian ...
to form alliances. A report by the police Organized Crime Committee from 1989 stated that Satan's Choice, the Vagabonds and the Lobos were working closely to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine. Although the media often described Satan's Choice as public enemy one, Campbell disagreed, arguing that the low intelligence of most Satan's Choice members led them to engage in asinine antics that made it very easy for the police to arrest them. Campbell gave as an example one member who, in August 1989, hid an M1 assault rifle in the branches of a tree in the backyard of the Oshawa clubhouse. In October 1989, when the leaves were falling, a policeman arrested the member for the possession of a banned weapon. The arrested member expressed much bafflement that a policeman was able to find the assault rifle, leading Campbell to tell him that "He just looked up", which astonished the man. By late 1989, both Guindon and Campbell were growing dissatisfied with the low quality of incoming recruits into Satan's Choice, feeling that the new members were of abysmally low intelligence and were too "soft". The feud with the Outlaws led Guindon and his deputy Campbell to look with approval upon the Hells Angels who had driven the Outlaws out of Quebec with much ruthlessness. Furthermore, the style of the Hells Angels were much to the taste of both Guindon and Campbell, who admired the type of men that the Hells Angels attracted. In the winter of 1990, a group of senior Satan's Choice members led by Guindon and Campbell visited the Hells Angels' clubhouse in
Sorel to seek an alliance with the Angels against the Outlaws. Campbell recalled about the visit: "They listened to us. Even though they had a reputation for being dangerous, there was no confrontation. There was no pulling heavies. They were perfect gentlemen". Although no promises were given about joining the Angels, it was made clear that the Angels wanted an alliance.
Rival gangs would also begin to target the club. Brian Beaucage spent the night of 3 March 1991 devoted to drinking, hard drugs and watching pornography in a Toronto rooming house. On the same night, he was beheaded in his bed by a member of the
Loners
A loner is a person who does not seek out, or may actively avoid, interaction with other people. There are many potential reasons for their solitude. Intentional reasons include introversion, mysticism, spirituality, religion, or personal consi ...
gang, Frank Passarelli, with his body not found until the next day, being partially devoured by the dogs belonging to another boarder. At the time, the police expressed no surprise about Beaucage's murder, saying he was a violent and disagreeable man, and the only surprise was that it took this long for somebody to saw off his head with a kitchen knife. The gruesome nature of Beaucage's murder led it to take on a legendary reputation within biker circles, being known inaccurately as the "Fifty Whacks with an Ax". On 5 September 1992 in
Sudbury, the local Satan's Choice chapter was involved in a brawl with the Black Diamond Riders at a baseball park that put eight of the Riders into the hospital.
Campbell, after his release from prison in March 1993, recalled that Satan's Choice was "making money hand over fist". Campbell together with three others members of the Oshawa chapter served as the security for cigarette smugglers on the
Akwesasne
The Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne ( ; french: Nation Mohawk à Akwesasne; moh, Ahkwesáhsne) is a Mohawk Nation (''Kanienʼkehá:ka'') territory that straddles the intersection of international (United States and Canada) borders and provincial (Ont ...
St. Regis Mohawk Reservation that spanned across the international border in
eastern Ontario
Eastern Ontario (census population 1,763,186 in 2016) (french: Est de l'Ontario) is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario which lies in a wedge-shaped area between the Ottawa River and St. Lawrence River. It s ...
and
upstate New York
Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long Is ...
.
Throughout the 1990s, Satan's Choice was the subject of unsolicited offers of a friendly take-over by the Hells Angels. The Hells Angels had for decades been prevented from expanding from Quebec into Ontario by the Outlaws. The split of 1977 caused Satan's Choice to favor the Angels against the Outlaws. However, Guindon – whose Canadian nationalism was described as "almost a mania" – repeatedly turned down offers all through the 1990s made by Hells Angels' national president
Walter Stadnick to have Satan's Choice "patch over" to the Hells Angels. The journalist
Jerry Langton
Jerry Langton (born October 1, 1965) is a Canadian author. His focus is on crime, specifically the rise of motorcycle gangs throughout Ontario. Langton's books are published by John Wiley and Sons. He has written 10 books and is the author of the ...
wrote that Satan's Choice "...seemed to be the logical partners for the Hells Angels. Even through they had been weakened by defections to the Outlaws, they had an enviable network, a strong leadership crew, and a deep and abiding hatred for the Outlaws". However, Stadnick seemed more interested in the Loners than Satan's Choice. In June 1993, the Hells Angels, led by their national president Stadnick, hosted a party in Wasaga Beach attended by all of the Ontario biker gangs except the Outlaws and Satan's Choice. The party was seen as "an audition of sorts" to join the Hells Angels, and the guest of honor was
Frank Lenti
Francesco "Cisco" Lenti (born 1947) is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster, best known as the co-founder of the Loners Motorcycle Club alongside Gennaro Raso.
Satan's Choice
Lenti was born in Woodbridge, Ontario to Italian immigrant parents. Th ...
, the president of the Loners.
In November 1993, in what appeared to be an attempt to undermine Guindon's leadership of Satan's Choice, Stadnick met in Thunder Bay with several Satan's Choice chapter presidents, most notably Andre Wattel of the Kitchener chapter.
As the Kitchener chapter was the most powerful and wealthiest chapter, Wattel had an oversized say in the running of Satan's Choice. Through the majority of Satan's Choice members favored an alliance with the Hells Angels, Guindon made the decision that individual members of Satan's Choice were free to do business with the Hells Angels, but there would be no official alliance nor a "patch over" to the Angels. In 1995, a third attempt was made to set up a Satan's Choice chapter in Hamilton. The president of the new Hamilton chapter was the professional wrestler
Ion Croitoru
Ion William Croitoru (December 7, 1963 – February 21, 2017) was a Canadian professional wrestler. He was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. To wrestling fans, he is better known by his ring names, Johnny K-9, Taras Bulba, and Bruise ...
. The decision to open a chapter was regarded as an insult to Mario Parente, the president of the Outlaws' Hamilton chapter. One policeman stated: "Oh, they hated Parente. And they knew it would piss him off to have another club in what he considered to be his town". By 1995, the Satan's Choice chapters in northern Ontario were buying the majority of their cocaine from the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter as well as the Hamilton chapter under Croitoru. Both the Hamilton chapter and the Sudbury chapter purchased the vast majority of their drugs from
Richard "Rick" Vallée of the Angels Nomad chapter.
War with the Loners
In 1995, Satan's Choice made an alliance with the Diablos, a club led by a former Choice member, Frank Lenti, resulting in a biker war in the summer of 1995 with the Loners, a club which Lenti had founded before he was expelled from it the previous year. Langton wrote: "So desperate were the big biker gangs for every square inch of southern Ontario – especially prime real estate like
Woodbridge – the Diablos were immediately courted". Satan's Choice agreed to sell drugs to the Diablos and offered the possibility of joining Satan's Choice, which angered the Loners, who were buying their drugs from the Hells Angels. Under pressure from the Hells Angels, the Loners came into conflict with the Diablos in the summer of 1995, who called upon Satan's Choice for help.
On 18 July 1995, a Diablo threw a homemade bomb at a tow truck owned by a Loner. Two days later, a Loner shot two Diablos, although the injuries to both men were only very slight. Brawls between the Loners and Satan's Choice became common in the summer of 1995, causing injuries to multiple people. Satan's Choice ambushed three Loners in Woodbridge, shooting three of them, who all survived their wounds. Several businesses belonging to members of both clubs, such a tattoo parlor, a motorcycle repair shop and a bar, were bombed. On 1 August 1995, the Toronto clubhouse of Satan's Choice on Kintyre Avenue – which was backing the Diablos – was hit by a rocket fired from a military rocket launcher by the Loners. The Canadian journalist Yves Lavigne wrote the explosion caused by the rocket "tore a large in the dooor and blew windows out of three neighboring houses, but did not injure the five bikers inside the building". Later the same night at 3: 35 am, Satan's Choice tossed a bomb through the window of Pluto's Place tattoo parlor owned by a Loner on Lake Shore Boulevard, setting off a fire that caused $50, 000 in damage. The net day three Molotov cocktails were dossed at Bazooka Jacks bar in Markham that was popular with Satan's Choice members. On 16 August 1995, Satan's Choice struck back by firing a rocket – again from a military rocket launcher – at the Loners' Woodbridge clubhouse. Despite the lucid headlines in the newspapers, Satan's Choice was not committed to an all-out struggle against the Loners, and Lorne Campbell made an agreement with the Loners that all of
York Region
The Regional Municipality of York, also called York Region, is a regional municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, between Lake Simcoe and Toronto. The region was established after the passing of then Bill 102, An Act to Establish The Regional M ...
north of
Highway 7 was a "no war zone". On 25 August 1995, Lenti was badly wounded by a bomb planted in his car. With Lenti in the hospital, the Diabos collapsed which marked the end of the war.
The mayor of Toronto,
Barbara Hall, unaware that the war was over, attempted to ban all outlaw bikers from Toronto. Langton wrote the "frequently hysterical Toronto media" vastly exaggerated the amount of violence, causing Hall's overreaction. Her attempt to shut down the Satan's Choice clubhouse in Toronto proved impossible due to the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms
The ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms'' (french: Charte canadienne des droits et libertés), often simply referred to as the ''Charter'' in Canada, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada, forming the first part o ...
, leading her to try to have the city of Toronto buy the clubhouse in order to shut it down. On 18 September 1995, Hall opened talks with the Satan's Choice counsel, Karl Jaffary, saying that the city of Toronto would literally pay any price to own the clubhouse on Kintrye Avenue. The Choice set an absurdly high price for the clubhouse, which caused much controversy in Toronto when Hall indicated her willingness to pay it. On 20 October 1995, the city of Toronto ended the talks once it was apparent that Satan's Choice would set a new clubhouse in Toronto after the city purchased the current one on Kintry Avenue, a possibility that Hall had not considered until that point as she seemed to believe that buying the current clubhouse would banish Satan's Choice from Toronto forever. The controversy is believed to have been a factor in Hall's defeat in her 1997 reelection bid as the media took to calling Hall "Biker Barb". Despite the biker war that saw the Hells Angels back the Loners against Satan's Choice, Stadnick did not wish to keep Satan's Choice as his enemies, and afterwards set out to rebuild his damaged relationships with the Choice leaders. By 1995, Satan's Choice were again the largest biker gang in Ontario with 118 members in 7 chapters compared with the Para-Dice Riders that had 61 members in 2 chapters; the Vagabonds that had 70 members in 1 chapter; the Outlaws that had 68 members in 7 chapters; the Loners with 62 members in 2 chapters and the Last Chance that had 20 members in 1 chapter.
Project Dismantle and the Sudbury police station bombing
In 1996, Guindon retired as Satan's Choice national president, although he remained a member of the club. Making matters worse, Satan's Choice the same year was targeted by a major police operation dubbed Project Dismantle, which involved almost 300 officers from the OPP, as well as the municipal police forces of
Halton,
Durham Durham most commonly refers to:
*Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham
*County Durham, an English county
* Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States
*Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...
,
Hamilton–Wentworth, Waterloo,
Sudbury, and
Metropolitan Toronto
The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was an upper-tier level of municipal government in Ontario, Canada, from 1953 to 1998. It was made up of the old city of Toronto and numerous townships, towns and villages that surrounded Toronto, whic ...
.
In May 1996, the OPP launched Project Dismantle, charging 161 people associated with Satan's Choice with 1,192 violations of the criminal code, mostly relating to narcotics, while seizing drugs with a street value of $1.05 million together with two marijuana labs capable of producing crops with an annual yield worth $13.8 million. The purpose of Project Dismantle was to convict every member, associate and girlfriend of Satan's Choice, to which end about 250,000 phone conversations were recorded while seizing some $3 million in cash and property. The clubhouses in Hamilton and Toronto were seized as the proceeds of crime. The chapters that suffered the most from Operation Dismantle were the ones in Hamilton, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and
Milton
Milton may refer to:
Names
* Milton (surname), a surname (and list of people with that surname)
** John Milton (1608–1674), English poet
* Milton (given name)
** Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Nobel laureate in Economics, author of '' Free t ...
, while the other chapters escaped relatively unscathed.
The result of the Project Dismantle raids included the seizure of marijuana plants and
hydroponic
Hydroponics is a type of horticulture and a subset of hydroculture which involves growing plants, usually crops or medicinal plants, without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions in aqueous solvents. Terrestrial or aquatic plan ...
equipment valued at $11 million, as well as more than $125,000 in cash and over $265,000 worth of other drugs including cocaine.
The police forces also seized a variety of firearms, including twelve handguns, five non-restricted rifles, and seven restricted weapons such as automatic pistols, sawed-off shotguns, and even machine guns such as a
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
-era
Bren gun
The Bren gun was a series of light machine guns (LMG) made by Britain in the 1930s and used in various roles until 1992. While best known for its role as the British and Commonwealth forces' primary infantry LMG in World War II, it was also use ...
and tripod.
In Sudbury, the operation specifically targeted the local chapter of Satan's Choice and members of the Hamilton chapter, which all but wiped out both chapters. This specific part of the operation involved a police surveillance operation that caught Satan's Choice members discussing the bombing of a strip club which had disrespected several members of the club.
[ ] Many of the members of these chapters found themselves in prison or otherwise leaving the club, with the Sudbury chapter being reduced to just three full members from the peak of eight members and two "hangarounds".
Unfortunately for those involved with Project Dismantle, no convictions were ever given as a result of the charges and arrests stemming from this operation. This was partly as a result of most of the wiretap evidence being excluded in September 2003 after Justice John McDonald of the
Ontario Superior Court
The Superior Court of Justice (French: ''Cour supérieure de justice'') is a superior court in Ontario. The Court sits in 52 locations across the province, including 17 Family Court locations, and consists of over 300 federally appointed judges.
...
found that a senior OPP detective lied to five different Superior Court justices to get the wiretaps approved, in addition to destroying other evidence.
As a result of Project Dismantle, Satan's Choice membership fell from 135 in 1995 down to 70 in September 1998.
Ion Croitoru, a thuggish professional wrestler and the president of Satan's Choice Hamilton chapter, was involved in a plot to bomb a police station in Sudbury on 15 December 1996. Len Isnor of the OPP's Anti-Biker Unit was not impressed with Croitoru, calling him "just stupid". However, Croitoru's career in professional wrestling made him a local celebrity in Hamilton and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Ontario. By contrast, Isnor described
Michel Dubé, the president of the Choice's Sudbury chapter, as one of the most dangerous outlaw bikers in Ontario.
Croitoru was very close to Dubé and often visited Sudbury to see him. It was apparently Croitoru's intention to blow up the Solid Gold strip club because he and Dubé had been refused admittance earlier that year, but Dubé diverted the plan into blowing up the police station instead. In early December 1996, Croitoru visited Sudbury to see Dubé with his followers "Jimmy Rich" (a court-ordered pseudonym), Garry Noble, Gordie Cunningham and a man known as "Lebanese Joe". In the parking lot of the Solid Gold strip club, Croitoru was surprised to see the members of the Sudbury chapter take off their colors and put them into their cars. When he asked why, he was told that the Solid Gold did not permit the wearing of gang colors. Croitoru shouted "We wear our colors wherever the fuck we want!", which inspired Dubé to shout "fuck yeah!" in agreement; the assembled Satan's Choice bikers then attempted to enter the Solid Gold wearing jackets with their Satan's Choice patches, where the bouncers promptly refused them all entrance. When the bikers continued to try to enter the Solid Gold, the police were called. Seeking revenge, Croitoru had a member of the Hamilton chapter, Jure "Jerry" Juretta build a bomb. Juretta was a former soldier in the
Canadian Army
The Canadian Army (french: Armée canadienne) is the command responsible for the operational readiness of the conventional ground forces of the Canadian Armed Forces. It maintains regular forces units at bases across Canada, and is also respo ...
and was an expert with explosives. Croitoru and Juretta then drove to Sudbury to hand over the bomb to Dubé. The bomb was handed over by Croitoru and Juretta to Dubé and vice-president Brian Davies of the Sudbury chapter at a
Tim Horton's where
Highway 69 and Notre Dame Avenue intersected in the
Lockerby district of South Sudbury. The bomb was planted by Neil Passenen, a friend of Dubé's.
The bombing occurred at 2 am just after a Christmas party on 15 December 1996, and only one police dispatcher was wounded by the blast.
In May 1997, Isnor came into contact with a drug dealer known as "Ed" due to a court order who was behind in his payments to the
Sherbrooke
Sherbrooke ( ; ) is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. It is at the confluence of the Saint-François and Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region. Sherbrooke is also the name of a territory equivalent to a regional count ...
chapter of the Hells Angels and wanted to turn informer. "Ed" ended up obtaining an impression of Isnor's
American Express
American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...
credit card and went on a lengthy spending spree before Isnor had him arrested. "Ed" was staying at a motel in Orilla and managed to convince the manager that Isnor was his brother who had left with his wallet, making him unable to pay for a pizza he had just ordered. The manager gave "Ed" Isnor's
American Express
American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...
number from the registry, which allowed "Ed" to use the number to spend thousands of dollars at Isnor's expense. Isnor had "Ed" arrested and thrown into the "Barrie Bucket" jail in
Barrie
Barrie is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada, about north of Toronto. The city is within Simcoe County and located along the shores of Kempenfelt Bay, the western arm of Lake Simcoe. Although physically in Simcoe County, Barrie is politically i ...
. Fearing he would face a lengthy prison sentence for spending thousands of dollars on Isnor's credit card, "Ed" told him that his cellmate was boasting about being involved in the bombing. The cellmate turned out to be Gordie Cunningham of Satan's Choice Hamilton chapter, who had been arrested for drug possession in Barrie.
"Ed" had befriended Cunningham and agreed to wear a
wire
Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm
A wire is a flexible strand of metal.
Wire is c ...
for Isnor in exchange for the charges being dropped against him. "Ed" joined the Hamilton chapter and lived with Cunningham as a boarder. "Ed" was able to obtain evidence that Cunningham was involved in drug dealing. After Cunningham was arrested, he promptly turned Crown's evidence in exchange for immunity. Cunningham then revealed the story behind the bombing. Isnor then dispatched "Ed" to Sudbury, where he befriended Russell Martin of the Sudbury chapter and accompanied him on several cocaine buys. Dubé was pressing Martin to kill the vice-president of the Sudbury chapter, Brian Davies, and when he refused, he started to suspect that Dubé was going to kill him as well. This impression was further increased by Dubé's erratic and irascible behavior. After Martin was arrested due to the evidence provided by "Ed", he in turn turned informer for the OPP's Anti-Biker Enforcement Unit. Martin told Isnor that he had been ordered to kill Davies, an order that he found himself incapable of obeying. Davies was confronted by Isnor who told him Dubé was planning to kill him, leading to Davies to turn white with fear and say "You're absolutely right". The evidence provided by Davies led to Dubé and Croitoru being charged as Isnor gave orders to arrest both men. The national leadership had the Hamilton chapter disbanded, while Croitoru was expelled as a "loose cannon".
Croitoru was convicted of trafficking in steroids and for having the bomb built while Dubé, who was facing charges of two counts of murder plus charges relating to the bombing, hanged himself in jail on 22 September 1998. Dubé was facing one count of first-degree murder charge relating to the 1988 murder of Claude Briere, who was a prominent drug dealer in Sudbury. Dubé was also the main suspect in the 1996 murder of Alexander Sretenovic aka "Alex Atso". Briere disappeared in September 1988 and his corpse was found three weeks later on 17 October 1988, while Sretenovic disappeared on 14 August 1996 after boasting about how he helped Dubé kill Briere.
Isnor was dismissive of Satan's Choice by the 1990s, saying: "Satan's Choice were never the big guys, they were nickel and dime. The Loners were always Stadnick's favorites".
Guindon had been a professional boxer in addition to being an outlaw biker and by the late 1990s, he was beginning to suffer from brain damage caused by his boxing career. Increasingly, Andre Wattel, the president of the Choice's Kitchener chapter, began to exercise leadership and Wattel, unlike Guindon, was much more open to joining the Hells Angels. As a result of Project Dismantle, the level of screening for new members fell off, and the Oshawa chapter accepted
Steven "Hannibal" Gault. The club's rules required that a new member be sponsored by a member who had known him for at least five years; Gault's sponsor William Lavoie had only known him for five months and had been bribed in the form of $20,000 by Gault to say otherwise. Gault was a career criminal who specialized in cheating senior citizens out of their life savings, and had joined Satan's Choice with the aim of selling them out to the police. Gault sold information to the police, first about Satan's Choice and then the Hells Angels, until 2006. Gault, who once bit off a man's ear in a bar fight, was described by his ex-wife Linda Sebastiao: "After he got his full patch he thought he was king of the world."
Gault was paid $1 million by the Ontario government for his work as an informer and as of 2011 he was delinquent in paying children support.
Alliance and merger with the Hells Angels
Satan's Choice, under their new club president Andre Wattel, decided to join the Hells Angels and abandon their own club's identity and autonomy because it would mutually benefit their criminal enterprises.
Satan's Choice, along with most of the other major Ontario biker gangs, including the Loners, Lobos, and Para-Dice Riders, "patched over" to the Hells Angels on December 29, 2000.
A total of 168 bikers "patched over" on that day.
This overnight placed the Hells Angels in a position of dominance in Ontario, and in effect put an end to any independent existence of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club.
The Satan's Choice chapters in Kitchener, Oshawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay,
Keswick,
Simcoe County
Simcoe County is located in the central portion of Southern Ontario, Canada. The county is just north of the Greater Toronto Area, stretching from the shores of Lake Simcoe in the east to Georgian Bay in the west. Simcoe County forms part of the ...
and Toronto all became Hells Angels chapters. The Toronto chapter of Satan's Choice became the new Toronto East chapter of the Hells Angels. The Outlaws would later find their Ontario operations crippled by Project Retire of 25 September 2002, an undertaking by Ontario police targeting the club.
However, many former members of Satan's Choice would remain active criminals after the club was dismantled, such as the former president of the Hamilton chapter Ion Croitoru, who would be charged but not convicted of the murder of Lynn and Fred Gilbank in January 2005.
Kirby left Satan's Choice in March 1976 and went to work for the
'Ndrangheta
The 'Ndrangheta (, , ) is a prominent Italian Mafia-type organized crime syndicate and secret society, criminal society based in the peninsular and mountainous region of Calabria and dating back to the late 18th century. It is considered one of ...
. One of the Satan's Choice members who "patched over" to the Hells Angels on 29 December 2000 was Steven Gault, who continued to work as a police informer within the Angels.
Gault, who became the treasurer of the Hells Angels' Oshawa chapter, played a key role in the OPP's Project Tandem of 2005–2006 that led to numerous Angels being convicted of various offenses.
Guindon joined the Hells Angels at the "patch over" in 2000, and remained a member of the Angels' Oshawa chapter until April 2006, when he retired out of the belief that Gault was an informer who setting him up to be arrested. Lorne Campbell also joined the Hell Angels in 2000, and served as the president of the Hells Angels' Sudbury chapter. On 22 May 2011, he was convicted of conspiracy to traffic in cocaine. In June 2011, he retired from the Hells Angels as a member in "good standing".
Campbell claimed that "Pigpen" Berry had retired and was running a "charming" bed and breakfast resort in the Ontario countryside. Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of the ''Toronto Star'' stated that Berry had indeed retired, but was living in hiding as of 2015. Wattel, the president of Satan's Choice Kitchener chapter, became the president of the Hells Angels Kitchener chapter. On 15 December 2009, the OPP launched Project Manchester against the Hells Angels, and Watteel was charged with one count of gangsterism, 28 counts of narcotics trafficking and 27 counts of the possession of the proceeds of crime. Wattel was a locally prominent businessman who owned The Barking Fish Café restaurant in Cambridge. On 12 January 2011, he was convicted of various charges relating to conspiracy to traffic in illegal narcotics, being sentenced to four and half years in prison. McEwen, the second Satan's Choice president, died as a forgotten man on 27 January 2012 in
Saskatoon
Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Hig ...
, Saskatchewan, still working as a humble dishwasher. Sauvé later became a noted prisoners' rights activist who, in 1993, won a decade-long legal fight ending at the Supreme Court of Canada to give prisoners the right to vote.
In July 2017, a new motorcycle club identifying themselves as Satan's Choice emerged using the same patch, but otherwise not connected to the original club.
The Satan's Choice of 2017 had chapters in Durham and Ottawa, with 48 full-patch members and two prospects.
Len Isnor of the OPP's Anti-Biker Enforcement Unit stated: "It’s a bit shocking. By somebody bringing them back, there could be some problems. Yes, we’re going to watch."
Donny Petersen
Robert Donald "Donny" Petersen (17 April 1947 – 12 December 2021) was a Canadian outlaw biker, writer, and alleged gangster. The author of 21 books, Petersen won the International Book Award in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and served as the national sec ...
, the national secretary of the Hells Angels, used his Facebook page to attack the new club, writing: "Those who take a patch from a respected club, one that has history, courage, who has paid their dues, died, done time and all the rest... like what are you thinking? You are pretenders".
Lorne Campbell stated that it was "insult" for the new club to use the name and patch of the former Satan's Choice and predicted violence.
A spokesman for the group stated that they were considering disbanding.
The group seems to have disbanded as nothing have been heard of the gang since 2017.
Filmography
* ''Satan's Choice'' (1965).
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...
. Directed by
Donald Shebib
Donald Everett "Don" Shebib (born 27 January 1938) is a Canadian film director. Shebib is a central figure in the development of English Canadian cinema who made several short documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada and CBC Televisi ...
.
References
Bibliography
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{{Canadian gangs
Organizations established in 1965
1965 establishments in Ontario
Organizations disestablished in 2000
2000 disestablishments in Ontario
Outlaw motorcycle clubs
Motorcycle clubs in Canada
Gangs in Montreal
Gangs in Ontario
Hells Angels