Unrepentant

by Peter Edwards

  That was easier said than done. No man is unkillable, but Beaucage was certainly a challenge. He had been shot in the heart by an Outlaw with a .45 calibre automatic pistol outside an east end London bar on January 16, 1987, but lucked out: a heart surgeon happened to be on duty when he was rushed to Victoria Hospital.

  In 1988—twenty years after his original prison term began—Beaucage was in the Kitchener Satan’s Choice clubhouse, snorting cocaine with Campbell. He had found work as an enforcer for the Montreal mob and that evening Beaucage had plenty to say to Campbell about his Satan’s Choice clubmates. None of it was good. They argued in the upstairs washroom where they were doing lines, but only briefly. “It didn’t last too long. We didn’t dwell on it.”

  Around this time, a friend of Campbell’s named Danny told Beaucage that he wasn’t afraid of him. “I know I could take you,” Danny said.

  Nothing came of it at the time, and Campbell later took Danny aside. “Danny, you might be able to do that, but you don’t have the meanness. If you beat him up, he will likely come back and put one in your head. That’s the meanness that you don’t got.”

  Danny took the advice and lived for another year, when he died of a motorcycle accident near Kitchener.

  Campbell and Beaucage met again at a party later in 1988 with Charmaine and Beaucage’s wife, Val, in the Kawarthas near Lindsay, where a mutual friend had built a sprawling log cabin. Since their last meeting, Beaucage had left the Kitchener chapter, where he just didn’t fit in, and been given a full patch with Oshawa. Campbell was Oshawa president and didn’t realize the depth of hostility between Beaucage and the Kitchener members. “We just thought he’d be a good asset, and then I saw how mad they were. I didn’t realize they’d be so mad. It put me in a spin because they were so mad.”

  Again, Beaucage was quick to disparage the club, and again he quickly grated on Campbell’s nerves. “I’m extremely loyal, so it’s an argument. He was really running things down. I had been Choice since I was seventeen. That’s just not done around me.” They didn’t exchange blows that evening, but as the get-together ended, they both said words to the effect of: “I don’t want to see you again. When I see you again, it’s going to be heavier than an argument.”

  Campbell stewed about it overnight, and when he got up the next morning there seemed only one way to solve the problem. “I went home. I got a gun. I told Charmaine I’d probably be gone for a couple of weeks. Brian was a dangerous guy and I knew it. I told her, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ She knew enough not to ask.”

  His plan was to visit people and places Beaucage frequented until he finally found Beaucage himself. This wouldn’t be easy, since Beaucage didn’t have predictable haunts. Once Beaucage was found, Campbell would kill him. Campbell was sitting on his couch, ready to head off on this mission in his own private war, when Charmaine picked up the phone. “It was Brian. He apologized to me. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said the things I said.’ ”

  The apology didn’t cause Campbell to lose respect for Beaucage. Quite the opposite. It takes a big man to admit a mistake, and in Campbell’s eyes Beaucage had just proven he was a big man. “Brian wasn’t apologizing through fear. He knew he was wrong. I was relieved that he phoned, because he was my friend.”

  Police raids were a part of outlaw biker life; grovelling to police wasn’t. Campbell made it known to clubmates that they were to remain standing even if ordered to do otherwise by police during a raid: “Anybody gets down on his knees, I’ll kick him in the face.”

  In January 1989, police raided the club’s Scarborough clubhouse.

  “Everybody get on your knees,” shouted an officer who was carrying a rifle.

  “Nobody gets on their knees,” Campbell responded. “Anybody who wants me on my knees has to put me there.”

  This wasn’t well received by the officer who’d made the order. “And this cocksucker hits me with his gun right below the solar plexus.”

  Campbell stayed on his feet, struggling to deny the officer the satisfaction of knowing how hard he had hit him. When he regained his breath, he managed to say: “I guess you don’t know we do stomach exercises.”

  Campbell had no stomach for a new breed of biker who hopped on a plane and shipped his bike to his destination unless there was an overwhelmingly compelling reason to do otherwise. Life has its mysteries, but some things are very simple in Lorne Campbell’s universe, and one of them is that bikers ride bikes.

  Campbell rode his Harley west in 1989 for a “mud run”—or ride on rough roads—from Winnipeg to The Pas, a burg 630 kilometres to the northwest. There was a lot that he liked about the western bikers. He had been impressed by the Los Bravos of Winnipeg when he went there to hunt down Tony Valentine and retrieve his Choice patch in the early 1980s. Campbell noted how everyone had seemed to come to attention when a member of the Los Bravos walked up to the bar. “Everyone in a second stopped talking.”

  The health kick Campbell had begun after his heart attack was cooling considerably, and they dropped lots of acid while at The Pas. The next morning, as he climbed back on his 1989 Harley Classic, Campbell couldn’t believe how much the front end of the bike was shaking. The road was bad, but not enough to explain the vibration of his handlebars.

  He pointed this out to Bernie Guindon, who was finally out of prison. The Frog sounded skeptical, so Campbell told him to try to ride the bike himself if he needed proof. Guindon turned the throttle, rode a ways, and then pronounced a typically blunt judgment. “You’re still fucking high, Lorne,” he shouted.

  Campbell and Guindon rode out of The Pas to Alberta to meet with the Grim Reapers, and somewhere along the road the acid wore off and Campbell’s Harley got less shaky.

  While in Calgary, Campbell met Gerry (Gentleman Gerry) Tobin of the Grim Reapers, whose murder two decades later in England would make international headlines. “He was a gentleman. A big guy. A quiet guy. A responsible guy. Well spoken. Polite.”

  Campbell and Guindon rode on to visit a friend in the Grim Reapers in Lethbridge, Alberta, named Jimmy. Jimmy had founded the club and was its national president. He owned no phone or television and didn’t want them. He did know how to show Campbell a good time. “There were the nicest-looking girls and pure cocaine.”

  Campbell wasn’t the only Reapers guest around this time. A decade later, a photo would surface of then Calgary mayor Ralph Klein having a drink with members of the club. That photo became public at the time when Klein was premier and talking of allocating more money to fight organized crime—including outlaw biker clubs.

  As Campbell rode out on his way home, Jimmy waved at him. “Stay Canadian, guys,” Jimmy said.

  There had been a time when the Satan’s Choice was fiercely Canadian, but by the winter of 1990, Campbell and some others wondered if the American-born Hells Angels might be a better fit. By now even Guindon was unhappy with what had become of the club he had helped build. There had been a whole new generation of leadership since Campbell and six of the Port Hope Eight went off to prison. New members often seemed too soft, and it felt as though some people thought it was okay to take liberties with the Choice. “There were some violent things that happened. Nothing was done [to retaliate].… I’m a person who retaliates.”

  That new-found conciliatory tone in the Choice was a far cry from the time, a decade earlier, when Campbell took a hammer to Tulip for suspicions he’d torched the Choice’s clubhouse. Campbell did that crime and then hard prison time for it without a word of apology, and made it clear he would do it again and again and again if necessary. Newer members didn’t seem to understand what this was all about. “I couldn’t keep a guy and break his fingers all night. Things were done more diplomatically.”

  No one took liberties with the Hells Angels in Quebec. They protected their brand as jealously as any major corporation, and were prepared to kill even their own members and dump them in the St. Lawrence if that’s what it took to keep the club in line. Making the Ange
ls even more attractive in Campbell’s eyes was the fact that they had never got along with the Outlaws, the club of Campbell’s enemies Mother McEwan and Dave Seguin.

  A half-dozen Satan’s Choice, including Campbell, Guindon and Wayne Kelly, rode east to visit the Angels at their Sorel clubhouse, about ninety kilometres north of Montreal. The Sorel charter was the first for the Angels in Canada, and it had at one time been the home base for founding president Yves (Le Boss) Buteau and Maurice (Mom) Boucher.

  The feud with the Outlaws dated back to 1969, when an Outlaw raped the wife of an American Hells Angel. As the story went, her husband and fellow club members beat the Outlaw to death. Not long after that, American Outlaws began frequently using the word “Adios,” for “Angels die in Outlaw states.”

  Guindon asked a polite postman in French for directions to the clubhouse. He had grown up in a francophone family, but his command of his mother language was mangled and it took the letter carrier a few minutes to understand the question. “Anybody there would have known. They’re beside the biggest church in Sorel. They had a sign on top of the building saying ‘Hells Angels.’ ”

  Campbell, Guindon and the other Choice members rode through the gate, past the motion detectors and up to the three-storey bunker. Then they walked through the steel-reinforced doors to see about setting up an Angels charter of their own. There was a security room with one-way bulletproof glass that faced the yard, and it was always manned. Inside it was a wall of TV monitors that showed every inch of the surrounding area. Rumour had it that even if a pane of glass was broken in a member’s home, it would show up on one of the monitors. Another wall was lined with rifles and shotguns, all registered. There were also a number of guard dogs in the yard. “How’s that for organized?” Campbell says.

  If accepted into the club, the Satan’s Choice members would have the first charter of Les Hells in Ontario. It would infuriate the Outlaws, which was always a good thing in Campbell’s books. During the visit, the Angels noted that they had had a similar visit from three bikers from Ireland, who were part of a new Angels charter and who rode rundown bikes. They sent the Irishmen away with three new Harleys and words of encouragement.

  Within an hour of the arrival of Campbell and his crew, representatives of the Angels from across the province joined them. The Quebecers were respectful, something that always impressed Campbell. “They listened to us. Even though they had the reputation for being dangerous, there was no confrontation. There was no pulling heavies. They were perfect gentlemen.”

  When they left, there was no promise made about patches, but they weren’t rejected either. Campbell found himself wanting to be part of an Angels charter even more.

  That year, Campbell heard a story that Andrew (Teach) Simmons, the national president of the Outlaws from London, Ontario, was planning to head north of Toronto to kill him. Simmons was the son of a British military sergeant major, and in previous incarnations Teach had served as a schoolteacher and a youth church choir leader. That day, Teach had a court appearance in Barrie, and Campbell confronted him as he left the courthouse and told him what he had heard.

  “If you do, I’m ready,” Campbell recalls saying. “If you come to my house, Teach, you will die in my driveway.”

  “That’s not true,” Teach replied. “Who told you?”

  “He really denied it,” Campbell says. “He was a gentleman. Obviously nervous about what I was saying to him. Every night I sat with a high-powered rifle, waiting for them.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The Hard Way

  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

  old Kingston Satan’s Choice saying

  It was also in 1990 that Campbell got a call from journalist Mick Lowe that chart-topping alt-country singer-songwriter Steve Earle wanted to meet him. Earle was riding high from his critical and commercial hit albums Guitar Town and Copperhead Road, while Lowe had written Conspiracy of Brothers, a book that raised serious doubts about the Port Hope convictions. Earle first learned of the book and the Port Hope story from Wally High, an original Kingston Satan’s Choice member, who liked to say, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” The musician was impressed by the courage and brotherhood in the story, and especially by how Campbell had tried to take the rap for the killing.

  The meeting was to take place at the bar of L’Hotel, the upscale Toronto hotel where Earle was staying while promoting his album The Hard Way. When Campbell and Charmaine got there, Earle was nowhere to be found. That wasn’t surprising, as Earle hadn’t yet gone into rehab to clean up his heroin and booze addictions, which had started back during his early teens in Texas. After several minutes Campbell and Charmaine went to the front desk, and the clerk called up to his room. A few minutes later Earle stepped out of the elevator, looking as if he hadn’t slept for three days or so, which may have been the case.

  “Lorne, I think you’re overdressed,” Charmaine said to Campbell, who had worn his dress garb of clean jeans and a red Satan’s Choice T-shirt.

  The meeting went well when it finally began. Earle’s an anti-war, anti-handgun, anti–death penalty peacenik, but he took a liking to Campbell, whom nobody has ever accused of being a pacifist. “He was really nice,” recalls Earle. “Actually, he was the quietest of those guys. Larry Vallentyne, you always knew he’s in the room when he’s in the room.”

  Both men understood the transformative power of stories, and both men had plenty of life experience to draw on when they told theirs. Earle hadn’t been in a club himself, but he understood what it meant to be an outlaw biker. He had spent much of his childhood in Texas, close to a clubhouse of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club. The Bandidos had been set up in the 1960s in the Texas Gulf by returning Vietnam veterans, and working-class kids there knew there was a good chance they would end up fighting in Vietnam, unlike middle- and upper-class hippies, who could get draft deferments by enrolling in university. “Peace and love didn’t make much sense [to them].… There was still the class distinction.”

  Much of Earle’s early performing was done inside the Bandidos clubhouse. “I grew up with bikes. I grew up with scooter trash.… I carried guns for years. I don’t carry them anymore.… I’m a different person than I was when I was hanging out.” Earle didn’t have to be told there was plenty of crime in biker clubs, but he also saw it was simplistic and inaccurate to dismiss clubs such as the Satan’s Choice as nothing more than organized crime units. That sort of judgment totally missed the point of men like Campbell. “It was really more about live and let live, defending everybody’s right to do whatever the fuck they wanted to do.”

  Earle also realized there were subtle but real cultural differences between clubs such as the Hells Angels and the Choice and the Outlaws, even if they all might look the same to outsiders and sound the same as they roared by on their Harleys. Memorials to dead club members in Choice clubhouses showed photos of the fallen men in their prime, smiling and alive. Not so with the Outlaws. “When you went to an Outlaws clubhouse, you saw pictures of them in their coffins and at their funerals. It was a little creepy.”

  Earle was an avid history buff, and Campbell particularly enjoyed “The Devil’s Right Hand,” a song about a gun-toting juvenile delinquent in the Civil War era whose mother calls his handgun “the devil’s right hand.” Earle saw a historical parallel between Campbell’s attempt to take the fall in court for the Matiyek shooting and General John Buford’s actions in the Battle of Gettysburg. Buford, who headed a Union cavalry unit, chose to dismount and confront the enemy at close quarters, despite being heavily outmanned and ultimately doomed. Buford’s battlefield decision gave Union forces time to occupy a ring of hills around Gettysburg and win the battle, so his cavalry’s sacrifice ultimately saved their brothers’ lives. Earle respected how Campbell was willing to step up in court and try to protect his biker brothers, despite daunting odds. “He nutted up, man. He saw those guys were all going to
go down for something he did. He didn’t just do it, he did it knowing it might not do any good, and he did it anyways.… I’ve got a lot of respect for Lorne.… Being honest didn’t get him very far. That should never happen. Being honest should count for something, and in Lorne’s case it didn’t.”

  Earle’s involvement in the drug world taught him that notions of honour among thieves are most often just fantasies. Still, there was something solid there, in the way Campbell conducted himself. “Lorne’s that rare guy that I don’t think ever gave a piece of information on anybody but himself. I don’t think he has it in him.”

  There had been a time when Earle kept loaded guns, including a pistol under his mattress. But he realized that the very presence of a gun changes the dynamic and possibilities of interactions. “I didn’t see anything incongruous with being a peacenik.… I’m pretty non-violent and I’m getting more so every day, and he’s the only person I know for sure who killed someone.” As their improbable friendship grew, Earle realized that Campbell suffered personally over ending Matiyek’s life. “I think he thought about Bill Matiyek all of the time.… It has more than bugged him. It has followed him.”

  Campbell became a regular at Earle’s concerts in Ontario, and made a point of always requesting “The Devil’s Right Hand,” while Earle began dedicating his song “The Other Kind” to Campbell. It includes the lines:

  And I’m damn sure not suffering from a lack of love

  There’s plenty more where that came from

  Ah—but leave it up to me to say something wrong and hurt someone before I’m done.

  Other lines included:

  There are those that break and bend

  I’m the other kind,,,

  Back in Kingston, Rick Sauvé and Gary Comeau were still behind bars serving life terms, but there was some room for optimism. In January 1990, Sauvé married a 22-year-old University of Ottawa graduate, who was just ten years old and growing up in a middle-class family when he was convicted.