Bernie Guindon
Bernard Diedonne Guindon, better known as "Bernie the Frog", is a Canadian outlaw biker and criminal, best known as the founder and national president of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club from 1965 to 2000.
Rise to power
Guindon was born in Hull, Quebec to French-Canadian parents. His mother, Lucy, was an illiterate woman from rural Quebec who dropped out of school in Grade 1 while his father, Lucienne, was a petty criminal from Buckingham, Quebec who worked as a bootlegger. The Guindon family were itinerant in his early years, living at various locations in Quebec and northern Ontario. In Ontario at the time, bars and liquor stores closed very early, and Lucienne Guindon who ended settling up in Oshawa sold alcohol out of his house to those who wanted to drink past the closing time, charging double the price in the liquor stores. In his native Quebec, the bars and liquor stores stayed open late, causing Lucienne Guindon to relocate to Ontario, where bootlegging was more profitable. Guindon pere also served as a fence for corrupt Oshawa policemen who wanted to sell items that they had stolen while performing their duties.Guindon fils grew up in Oshawa surrounded by criminality and violence, recalling his father as a thuggish man who was very good with fists and whose favorite form of entertainment was watching his sons punch each other out. To amuse his father, Guindon constantly fought his older brother Jacques "Jack" Guindon, and usually got the better of him, causing a lifelong sibling rivalry. Guindon's father often beat his mother. Guindon's mother was the main emotional support as he grew up and tried hard to pass on her Catholic faith to her son. Guindon later defined his attitude towards Catholicism: "There's somebody up there, but I don't know who the fuck He is...I'm not at all religious. I used to hate being on my knees all the time, saying prayers and losing a couple of hours every Sunday".
As a Catholic and French-Canadian in Ontario, a province that at the time was largely English-Canadian and Protestant, Guindon was constantly involved in brawls while growing up. At the Holy Cross Elementary School, Guindon was a poor student who failed at everything. Guindon was frequently beaten by a nun he called "Dirty Gertie". As an young man, Guindon excelled at boxing and ultimately came to be trained by the Canadian heavyweight champion George Chuvalo. When Guindon was 15, he came to the defense of his mother who was being beaten by his father, and proceeded to beat up his father in turn. Lucienne Guindon abandoned his family shortly afterwards. Lucy Guindon found a boyfriend who owned a motorcycle and who allowed his stepson to ride it. Guindon later recalled about his first time riding a motorcycle that "it was unbelievable", marking the beginning of a lifelong love of motorcycles. As a teenager, Guindon met another French-Canadian teenager living in Oshawa, Suzanne "Nicky" Blais, while working at a gas station. Guindon was to have on-off relationship with her that lasted decades, marrying her twice, first in 1961 and then again in 2009.
As a youth full of machismo and a rebellious streak, Guindon was fascinated with the outlaw biker lifestyle and purchased a motorcycle which he named the Wild Thing. In 1959, at the age of 17, Guindon joined the Golden Hawk Riders outlaw biker club. Guindon's biographer, Peter Edwards, described him as riding his motorcycle down the streets of Oshawa like "a conquering hero". Through bike helmets were not mandatory in Ontario until 1969, Guindon always wore one as his "punch-enhancer". In November 1961, Guindon married for the first time after his girlfriend Blais became pregnant with the first of his many children, but he continued his womanizing. Despite being French-Canadian, Guindon did not object to his nickname "Bernie the Frog".
In 1962, the Satan's Choice club were forced to disband following attacks from the rival Black Diamond Riders club. The Black Diamond Riders followed this up by attacking the Golden Hawk Riders during a field day in the summer of 1962, beating up the Golden Hawks. Under the outlaw biker code, field days under which bikers show off their motorcycles are supposed to be immune from violence. The Golden Hawk Guindon was furious with this violation of the biker code by the Black Diamond Riders and vowed revenge. Guindon who was considered to be more intelligent than the average outlaw biker, devised a strategy of seeking to humiliate the Black Diamond Riders by amalgamating several outlaw biker clubs into one and forcing the Black Diamond Riders to retreat by confronting them with overwhelming numbers. Guindon knew from his experience of street fights that there was a strength in numbers and the side that had the most fighters always had the advantage. Under the outlaw biker code, cowardice is considered the supreme vice, and for Guindon forcing the Black Diamond Riders to retreat from a fight by confronting them with overwhelming numerical superiority would be far more satisfying than merely beating them up. As part of his strategy, Guindon founded a new club called the Phantom Riders, which he became president of.
In 1965, Guindon founded the Satan's Choice outlaw biker club in Toronto by merging his Phantom Riders with three other outlaw biker clubs based in what is now Cambridge, Mississauga, and Scarborough. The other clubs were the Canadian Lancers of Scarborough, the Wild Ones of Port Credit and Throttle Twisters of Preston. Guindon chose the name Satan's Choice and adopted the patch of the disbanded club because he knew it would enrage the Black Diamond Riders. With four chapters, Satan's Choice became the largest outlaw biker club in Canada, and Guindon became the president of the new club. With his numerical superiority, Guindon humiliated the Black Diamond Riders by forcing them to retreat from fights that they knew they would lose. Guindon followed up his triumph by dictating terms to the Black Diamond Riders, ordering them to stop attacking other clubs and to stick to their territory in Toronto, whose borders were defined by him. The humiliation caused the Black Diamond Riders to lose face and by 1968, what had once been the largest outlaw biker club in Toronto had declined to only 15 members.
Guindon recruited an university drop-out turned chef, Howard Doyle Berry, aka "Pigpen", of Peterborough 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. Through Guindon found Berry repulsive, his willingness to do anything made him useful and he came to serve as his principle enforcer.
On 25 September 1965, 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. Amid much riotous drinking in a barn, 23 police officers attempted a raid on the Satan's Choice convention about midnight, but were forced to retreat under a shower of empty beer bottles. Later that night about 4: 00 am, the police returned with a greater force of 84 officers who after much brawling arrested 55 bikers including Guindon and 9 women who also attending the party. The raid much attracted media attention, as did the fact that the police seized weapons ranging from 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 Berry.
National president
Later in 1965, Guindon was featured in the documentary, Satan's Choice about outlaw bikers directed by Donald Shebib, which made him into something of a celebrity in the Toronto area. Charismatic and handsome, Guindon was the "star" of the documentary. Toronto before the 1960s had a very staid image of "Toronto the Good", a city inhabited by hard-working, conservative God-fearing Protestants of British descent, a city that was prosperous, safe and well run, but rather boring. In the 1960s, many of the younger people in Toronto embraced a "hip" image, consciously choosing lifestyles that were contrary to the traditional Anglo-Protestant values that had previously defined Toronto. The outlaw biker subculture came to be seen as a symbol of rebellion with many of the younger people romanticizing the bikers as a symbol of "authenticity", people who were dangerous, but "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". The Ontario outlaw biker subculture was violent, but the violence was generally limited to brawling, and murder was extremely rare in the 1960s. 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 and the rest of his club professed to reject materialism, claiming that the only possessions they valued were their motorcycles, and maintained that they were rejecting the conformity of Canadian society. The fact that Guindon and his club were rigidly conforming to the code of outlaw biker subculture that originated in California apparently escaped them. Shebib's documentary Satan's Choice with its sympathetic picture of Guindon and his gang as "rebels" against "Toronto the Good" values gave him an immense amount of attention in 1960s Toronto. Through the values of outlaw biker subculture with its focus on violence, macho masculinity and the acquisition of wealth contrasted with the counterculture values of the hippies, the two subcultures saw themselves as united by a common rejection of the values of Canadian society, and it became common for hippies to glamorize outlaw bikers as the 1960s progressed. Through Guindon and his gang were often into trouble with the law owing to their frequent brawling with other outlaw bikers, but in general Satan's Choice were not into organized crime in their first three or so years, engaging only in petty crime. 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.
In 1967, a black outlaw biker from Montreal, Rod MacLeod, contacted Guindon at a biker's convention at Wasaga Beach and asked to form the first Satan's Choice chapter in la belle province. Guindon granted the request, making MacLeond 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. At the same time, Martin K. Weiche, a German immigrant, Wehrmacht veteran and a fanatical Nazi who had grown rich as a property developer in London, Ontario, tried to recruit Guindon and Satan's Choice to provide security at his Nazi rallies, a request that Guindon rebuffed under the grounds that he was a Canadian "patriot".
By 1968, the Toronto chapter of Satan's Choice had about 50 members, making it the largest outlaw biker club in Toronto. Towards the end of the 1960s, Guindon started to move into organised crime, turning Satan's Choice into one of the leading distributors of illegal drugs in Ontario and in Montreal. As the drug trade was profitable, the rivalry with the Cross Breeds biker club of Niagara Falls grew increasingly bitter. On 1 June 1968, Guindon led an attack by Satan's Choice members on a Cross Breeds meeting that saw the latter savagely beaten up and their motorcycles trashed, an incident that so badly damaged the reputation of the Cross Breeds that the club disbanded itself. The change from outlaw biking from being a lifestyle to being more of a business caused many of the original Satan's Choice bikers to leave the club in the late 1960s. In August 1968, Guindon attracted national notoriety by holding a bikers' rally in Wasaga Beach that featured a contest that involved having Choice members chase down and run over live chickens with their motorcycles. Under Guindon's leadership, Satan's Choice grew rapidly, opening up chapters all over Ontario together with one in Montreal. Guindon had an obsession with "rats" as he called police informers, and most of the victims of his violence were fellow Choice members he suspected of being informers. Guindon continued his womanizing as many women considered him attractive, which amazed him as by his own admission his penis is very small as he recalled it was said by his lovers that he was "hung like a stud field mouse". Guindon explained his sex appeal to women as due to the appeal of the "bad boy", observing that many women in the 1960s-70s were sexually obsessed with outlaw bikers as the ultimate "bad boys", saying: "Maybe they like the wild side. He's not straight up and down like her father was. Who knows?"
The Canadian scholar Gordon 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". Through Satan's Choice and the other Canadian outlaw biker clubs all slavishly copied the American outlaw biker clubs, Guindon was adamant about keeping American clubs out of Canada, arguing the American clubs would destabilize the biker scene and cause too much violence. Through Guindon was willing to use violence to achieve his aims, in general he was against biker wars, arguing that the Canadian public would tolerate 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 to 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. 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.
Guindon was described as extremely charismatic and was idolised by his followers. In 1970, Satan's Choice had about 300 members in 12 chapters, making Satan's Choice second largest outlaw biker club in the world, being exceeded only by the Hells Angels. In 1969, the Toronto chapter of Satan's Choice became greedy and unwilling to share the drug trade with two other outlaw biker clubs, the Vagabonds and the Black Diamond Riders. Some of the other Satan's Choice chapters favored a biker war while others were opposed. Faced with a split in his club, Guindon declared that there would be no biker war and threatened to resign if his will was not accepted. The threat of his resignation was such to bring all of the rebellious chapter presidents to accept his decision. Guindon followed up his victory by going to Toronto with his followers to beat up and expel what he called the "fight crazy shitheads" from the Toronto chapter who were causing the trouble with the other clubs. To show that he was not intimidated by the Vagabonds, Guindon publicly challenged their president to a fight atop Mount Hamilton, saying: "Let's you and I get it on and we'll solve the problem". The challenge was declined, which made the Vagabonds look cowardly and increased Guindon's reputation.
In October 1968, Guindon was charged with the rape of 15-year-old girl in Ottawa, through he still claims his innocence, maintaining that he thought the girl was 18 years old when he had sex with her. Accordingly, to Guindon's account, the girl liked to hang around the Satan's Choice's Ottawa clubhouse and during his visit to Ottawa, she invited to him and several other bikers to the house of a man who also associated with Satan's Choice. Guindon claimed she had engaged in group sex with him and the other bikers, and it was the wife of the homeowner who called the police when she arrived home early to discover that her husband had been unfaithful, accusing all of them of rape.
At Guindon's trial for rape in 1969, the girl testified that she had been held against her will over three days and had been raped by five men, one of whom was Guindon. In May 1969, he was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to five years in prison. Guindon went to prison to start serving his sentence at the maximum security Kingston Penitentiary. Guindon described Kingston as a harsh prison where prisoners were not allowed to talk to each other unless a guard was present. As Guindon had been convicted of sexual assault against a minor, he was considered to be guilty of a "skin beef", making him very unpopular with the other prisoners. Guindon continued to maintain his innocence, claiming he was the victim of a lie told by a jealous wife and refused to go into the special protective wing for sex offenders. Through Guindon was sometimes attacked by other prisoners, he gradually convinced the other inmates that he did not rape a 15-year old. Paul Henry, the prison psychologist at Kingston said about Guindon: "He was a man's man. There was nothing I didn't like about him. He never needed a psychologist. He was too solid. Rock solid." Guindon started receiving sexually explicit letters from a female university student who he had never met as she became infatuated with him after seeing his photograph in the newspapers, and soon he was having sex with her during conjugal visits. Guindon quickly married her in the Kingston prison chapel and she gave birth to twins shortly thereafter, one of whom died shortly after being born.
Guindon was transferred to the minimal security Joyceville Institution, where living conditions were easier than in the Kingston prison. In January 1971, Guindon was released from prison on parole for good behavior. He joined his father who was living in Thunder Bay. Between January–July 1971, Guindon won successively the Ontario Golden Gloves, the Eastern Canadian Golden Gloves and Canadian Golden Gloves tournaments. Guindon won a bronze medal in boxing at the 1971 Pan American Games and he was looking forward to boxing for Canada at the 1972 Olympics. However, his rape conviction made it impossible to join the Canadian Olympic team for the 1972 Olympics as he had hoped, as he was declared to be of a bad character. Through Guindon had ambitions of pursuing a professional boxing career, his frequent brawls led to fears on his part that a prosecutor would classify his fists as "deadly weapons", which would increase the penalty if he was convicted of assault. Guindon decided he enjoyed beating people up more than he did professional boxing, and unwilling to give up his life of violence, gave professional boxing instead. In December 1971, Guindon was sent to prison for violating his parole conditions by associating with Satan's Choice members.
In 1973, while serving his sentence for rape at the maximum security Millhaven Penitentiary, Guindon was interviewed by Arnie Keller of the Toronto Star. Guindon stated that as the Canadian amateur light middleweight boxing champion that he would very much like to box for Canada at the 1976 Olympics, but complained that prison was making it difficult to practice. Guindon stated: "All I can do is hit the heavy bag, do a lot of leg exercises, work with the weights, and do exercises to strength my stomach. There are no ropes which I can use to skip or mirrors to look into to check my style. Nothing resembling a weapon is allowed". Guindon was eligible for parole, but declined to take it as one of the parole conditions was that he could not associate with criminals, saying: "They're the only friends I have. I'm not going to give them up". Despite his rape conviction, the handsome Guindon continued his womanizing ways, being ultimately married four times and fathering between 11-16 children.
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. By the early 1970s, Satan's Choice had moved into both selling and manufacturing drugs. The two principle drugs manufactured in rural northern Ontario were the "Canadian blue" methamphetamine and PCP. 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. In the summer of 1974, Guindon was released from prison and returned to Thunder Bay. In 1975, Guindon forged an alliance with the Outlaws outlaw biker club, which is very active in the American Midwest. 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. Despite Guindon's dislike of biker wars, the Montreal chapter of Satan's Choice became involved in a conflict with the Popeyes, the most violent of Quebec's many outlaw biker clubs. The Popeyes placed a contract on Guindon's life.
In August 1975, Guindon visited 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 staying at the lodge were a group of undercover detectives from the Ontario Provincial Police posing as American tourists looking for a "good time" in Canada. On 6 August 1975, the undercover officers raided a snack-bar located on an island in the 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.
After his arrest, Guindon was visited in the Sault St. Marie jail by two Satan's Choice members, Cecil Kirby and Frank Lenti. Kirby felt he was owned money by Guindon and ended up leaving Satan's Choice to become a bomber and a hitman for the Mafia. In May 1976, Guindon and Templain were convicted of conspiracy to manufacture and sell drugs and were sentenced to 17 years in prison each. During his second prison sentence, Guindon used LSD heavily, later saying "I only did it in jail. I never did it on the street. I used to go on my own vacation so to speak. Go on a holiday. Take a trip. I probably did more drugs in two months in the joint than I ever did on the street".
Decline
During his time in prison, Satan's Choice began to fall apart and on 1 July 1977 several Satan's Choice's chapters "patched over" to join the Outlaws. The charismatic Guindon proved to be the principle focal point of Satan's Choice, and with his prolonged absence the club became plagued by infighting between the chapter presidents. The way his supposed allies, the Outlaws, poached several chapters away from him while he was in prison caused Guindon to have a lasting grunge against the Outlaws. In 1977, Guindon was described in media reports as being furious with Garnet "Mother" McEwen, the man he appointed as interim national president for having engineered the "patch over". From within the Millhaven prison, Guindon placed a bounty on McEwen, promising to pay $10, 000 dollars as the reward for killing McEwen. Guindon spent hours punching his bed in fury as he wished his bed was McEwen. Satan's Choice lost the chapters in Montreal, Hamilton, St. Catherine's, Sault St. Marie, Windsor, London, Ottawa, Kingston and part of the Toronto chapter to the Outlaws. When Guindon was released early from prison for good behavior in 1984, all Satan's Choice had left were the chapters in Thunder Bay, Kitchener, Oshawa, and Toronto.On 19 November 1984, Guindon was released on parole 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 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 1985–1988, 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 the summer of 1995, Satan's Choice became involved in a biker war with the Loners, another outlaw biker club founded by former Choice member, Frank Lenti. The use of rocket launchers to attack each other's clubhouses led to an attempt by the mayor of Toronto, Barbara Hall, to ban all outlaw bikers from Toronto. 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. In response, the Satan's Choice bombed the police headquarters in Sudbury in December 1996. Guindon whose Canadian nationalism was described as "almost a mania" repeatedly turned down offers all through the 1990s to have Satan's Choice "patch over" to the Hells Angels. However, in December 2000, Guindon and the rest of Satan's Choice went to Montreal to join the Hells Angels. Guindon was a briefly a member of the Hells Angels before retiring from outlaw biking in 2001. Guindon accused another Hells Angel, Steven Gault, of being a police informer, which led to tensions between the two; ultimately it emerged that Gault was a police informer who was paid $1 million by the Ontario government for his work. On 11 September 2009, he remarried Blais, who he had first married nearly 48 years earlier in 1961.
Guindon's son, Harley Davidson Guindon, has followed his father into the outlaw biker subculture, becoming a Hells Angel, and like his father has served a prison sentence at Millhaven between 2007–2011. Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent for the Toronto Star published a biography in 2013 of Lorne Campbell, a Satan's Choice turned Hells Angel biker. While researching the book, Edwards met Guindon and agreed to write his biography. In 2017, Edwards described Guindon as: "He's a very human person. And if I was at war, Bernie's the guy I'd want sitting next to me."