Unrepentant

by Peter Edwards

  Michele wasn’t how one might imagine a woman who marries a man serving a life term. She wasn’t desperate. She wasn’t tattooed. She wasn’t one of those women who send lurid letters—and full-frontal Polaroids—to convicts. She first met him when her criminology class visited Millhaven as part of their study of “lifers.” Their dating consisted of two-hour visits, several times a week, for almost five years. In a sense, the physical distance imposed by their extended engagement gave the relationship an oddly chaste, traditional feel—if you could somehow imagine prison guards as chaperones.

  Sauvé had filed a court challenge to a provision in the Canada Elections Act that barred convicts from voting. Sauvé kept fighting until eventually prisoners were given the right to vote. The fight to win his own freedom, however, was far from over.

  Earle played a benefit show in an Ottawa nightclub on June 30, 1991, to raise awareness of the Port Hope case. That night, he was invited into the Ottawa clubhouse of the Outlaws but said he wouldn’t go unless Campbell was invited too. Campbell said he was game, but also ready for trouble. “I said, ‘If there’s one derogatory statement, then it’s a go.’ ”

  Campbell and Earle entered through the side door with Wally High, who was close to Campbell and Earle but also managed to stay on friendly terms with members of the Outlaws who had once been Satan’s Choice. There was music playing on the ground floor—the usual biker mix of artists including Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, and Bob Seger—and other guests that evening included some Outlaws up from the States.

  The Outlaws president gestured towards photos on a memorial wall of Satan’s Choice members who had died before the 1977 split, along with memorial photos of fallen Outlaws. It harkened back to when Outlaws and Choice members actually got along and shared a brotherhood. “I thought that was respectful,” Campbell says.

  The Outlaws were on their best behaviour, as Campbell wore his Choice colours, but one friend of the club looked at his vest and snapped at him, “What the fuck’s this?”

  “Before I could get a chance to get to him, they got him and beat the snot out of him and threw him out. Then they beat him up again and told him never to come back again. It was all before I got a chance to hit him, and I was pretty fast.”

  Campbell and the president went upstairs to talk in an office for about three hours. The president was curious about what was happening in prison, where Outlaws were being beaten by Satan’s Choice with baseball bats. “We were comfortable, but I was ready for anything,” Campbell says. “I didn’t feel tense because I don’t feel tense.” He told the Outlaws president that he had turned down another biker’s offer of a pistol to bring into the Outlaws clubhouse, in case things went sour.

  “Well, look around you,” the Outlaws president said, referring to the numerous potentially dangerous Outlaws in the building. “It wouldn’t have done you any good.”

  Campbell nodded at the point well taken.

  When it was time to leave, Wally High said he considered the evening a success. “He always felt he could be the peacemaker,” Earle says of High. “I think it was the only time a Choice member was in an Outlaws clubhouse anywhere.” Earle considered High “the most peacenik biker you ever met,” and High radiated particularly good vibrations as he left the clubhouse.

  “We made a lot of peace tonight,” High said as he walked out of the party.

  “No we didn’t,” Campbell replied.

  “I wasn’t there for that,” Campbell remembers. “That wasn’t my goal. I just went because they invited Steve.”

  There were a few more drinks back at their hotel before Earle fell asleep on the phone talking long-distance to his wife. The next day, Canada Day, Campbell rode Earle on the back of his Harley up to Parliament Hill. “I rode right up on the lawn.” There, Earle sang “Justice in Ontario” before telling the crowd: “These guys have been locked up for pushing thirteen years, and I really truly believe that they’re innocent.… The thing that irritates me is not a matter of someone else’s differing opinion, it’s their complete and total indifference to the situation.”

  Bill (Mr. Bill) Lavoie of the Choice had ideas of his own about how to spring Sauvé and Comeau from custody. A visit to Mr. Bill’s place in the village of Warsaw, near Peterborough, was always an adventure, but the day he discussed freeing the imprisoned bikers was odd even by the standards of Mr. Bill.

  To get into Mr. Bill–land, you always had to call in advance and let him know you were coming. Otherwise, odds were high he would be in a surly mood in his laneway, with a loaded shotgun in each hand. Back before the Port Hope convictions, Merv (Indian) Blaker had once neglected to call ahead, which explained the shotgun damage to the side of his car. Before you went to Mr. Bill’s, you were also advised to use a washroom, as his facilities didn’t include a toilet that actually flushed. Sometimes, new arrivals to Mr. Bill’s would assume things couldn’t be as bad as others claimed and ventured into his washroom despite the warnings. “They’d go in and they’d come out green.” Also at Mr. Bill’s, visitors were expected to take their shoes off at the door. Even though it appeared he hadn’t moved things inside the house for decades, and that he didn’t care in the least about the paint-peeling devil’s brew in his toilet, Campbell and his friends pretended Mr. Bill was fiercely protective of his floors and made visitors remove their footwear.

  Mr. Bill had been in the Choice since 1967 and was president of the Oshawa chapter between the Peter Rabbit and Campbell terms. He knew his way around a Harley to the point that he could stand up on the seat of his bike while riding down the road, though most of the time he was a safe rider.

  Mr. Bill was also a paranoid’s paranoid. When planes flew over his property, he would invariably look up and earnestly proclaim, “Look, it’s the police.”

  Recreation at Mr. Bill’s often involved shooting guns in his backyard. Once, Mr. Bill levelled a pistol at Campbell and pulled the trigger.

  Bang.

  Campbell was wise to Mr. Bill’s antics and knew it was just a starter’s pistol.

  “Did I scare you?” Mr. Bill asked.

  “No, but look at her,” Campbell said, gesturing towards Charmaine. “Charmaine just about had a heart attack.”

  Mr. Bill had a disarming way of looking deadly serious while saying ridiculous things. Once, while punching out a couple of men he found irritating, Mr. Bill barked out: “You guys are jerk-offs. I’ve jerked off better men than you.” Campbell and Fat Frog couldn’t stop laughing, trying to figure out what he was really trying to say.

  Another time, in Windsor, a biker slipped Mr. Bill dried horseshit wrapped in a rolling paper, and watched him take a long hard drag on it, thinking it was marijuana. “Fuck, this is good shit,” Mr. Bill pronounced. During a meeting in Hamilton, Mr. Bill snuck up behind Campbell and kicked his legs out from under him. Campbell was wearing a buck knife and thought seriously of burying it in him. “The only thing that stopped me was seeing that [Satan’s Choice] crest on his back. He had enough respect [that] he didn’t do it in front of anybody. If he had, I probably would have stabbed him.”

  Mr. Bill talked fondly and often of his weapons collection. Bikers liked to remember the day Mr. Bill went to a police station to retrieve a shotgun that had been seized during a raid. “He loaded it and fired it right in the cop’s desk. He said, ‘You have never seen so many cops run so fast.’ He got three months [in jail] for it.”

  Campbell arrived one day at Mr. Bill’s home only to find him stretched out naked on his bed, wearing nothing but a neck brace and a pained expression. He needed the brace to help him cope with pains from a bike accident of years before. The pained expression came from his thinking about what could be done to help his imprisoned clubmates, Sauvé and Comeau. His first question was about the daily routine at Millhaven.

  “Lorne, do they still have everybody go out in the yard?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do the guys go out?”
/>
  “Yeah.”

  Next, Mr. Bill directed the conversation to the old tank Conqueror that was parked in front of the Oshawa armouries, across Simcoe Street from Campbell’s boyhood apartment.

  “We can get that going,” Mr. Bill said. “We could get it transported down to there. We’ll go through the fence. We’ll have a boat waiting. They won’t know what hit them.”

  “Are you aware the Canadian army is nearby?” Campbell asked.

  “By the time they get there, we’ll be gone.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it,” Campbell replied, not wanting to excite Mr. Bill further.

  Campbell was drunk when he arrived one night at the Oshawa clubhouse. The only person inside was member Stan, who had on his back a tattoo of the body of Jesus with Stan’s face on top, wearing a crown of thorns. Apparently, no one ever asked Stan what the tattoo signified, perhaps fearing that he might explain it.

  Stan was dead asleep in an upstairs bedroom. Campbell shouted for him to come down and join him for a nightcap.

  “No, I’m sleeping.”

  “Come down and have a drink with me.”

  “No, I’m sleeping.”

  “Go on, have a drink with me.”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’re coming down.”

  “No.”

  Campbell started to climb the stairs and Stan didn’t want to be bothered anymore. It was so dark that Campbell didn’t see the armchair Stan pushed down the stairs until it was on top of him. Stan then fired a shot down with his Walther PPK 7.65, the same snazzy pistol used by Agent 007 in the James Bond movies. He wasn’t trying to kill Campbell, just make a point.

  “Oh, you want to play that way?” Campbell thought. He went behind the bar and pulled out the much more substantial .30-06 rifle that was stored there, and fired a round up through the ceiling.

  Campbell could hear Stan make a break for it across the top of the stairs. Campbell squeezed off several shots, and they all went between Stan’s legs. Campbell had thought he was firing somewhere else, farther from his friend.

  Clink, clink, clink.

  Stan pushed his Walther down the stairs, signalling surrender.

  “Have a drink with me.”

  He did.

  Another night at the Oshawa clubhouse, a young biker named Danny caught Campbell’s attention with a boastful comment.

  “If I ever fought you, I’d punch your fucking head in,” Danny announced. “You’re forty-something and I’m twenty-something. I know what moves you make, what you do. I won’t tell you, but you’ve only got three or four moves.”

  “Tell me what you’d do.”

  “I won’t tell you, but you’ve only got three or four moves.”

  “Tell me what you’d do.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  The conversation was getting repetitious, so Campbell punched it up by giving Danny a short, sharp hook to the head. Danny responded with a shot of his own that didn’t come close to dropping Campbell, but which made Danny oddly proud anyway.

  A moment later, Stan walked into the clubhouse just in time to see Danny hit the floor.

  “I’m out of here,” Stan said, and retreated back outside.

  Out of prison for a little while now, Bernie Guindon became a partner in a 120-acre campground called Shangri-La in cottage country near Huntsville. There, they staged outdoor shows with name acts. One memorable appearance was by John Kay, whose classic open-road freedom song, “Born to Be Wild,” was part of the iconic 1969 biker film Easy Rider. What biker didn’t want to hear him live, singing “I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal thunder” and “We can climb so high/I never wanna die”?

  “We build the stage by ourselves for him,” Campbell recalls of Kay’s show. “He said, ‘I’m not playing on that stage.’ Wayne Kelly said, ‘If you won’t play on that stage, we’re taking all of your equipment and your vehicles and you’re walking or hitchhiking home.’ He played. It was an excellent show. They go through all of the songs exactly like what’s on the albums in the 1960s.”

  Guindon’s impresario career ended shortly afterwards, when an investor pulled a knife on him and Guindon responded with his fists. That meant another six months behind bars and the closure of Shangri-La. “He filled him in,” Campbell says. “Bernie doesn’t hit softly.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Rock Bottom

  If you want to shoot somebody, walk up and shoot him. Don’t spray a house. That doesn’t make you tough. That doesn’t make you solid. That doesn’t make you stable. It does tell everybody that you will kill someone.

  LORNE CAMPBELL

  Campbell had an associate around this time named Stephen James Readhead, but everyone in Campbell’s circle called him Close-Up. He was a grim and intense man who got his nickname for his unsettling habit of standing extremely close to people while talking—so close they could feel the heat of his breath as he gave his high-octane views on life. Even more disturbing was the story about why he was missing the ring finger on his left hand. Close-Up parted with that finger after he became disillusioned with the concept of matrimony in general and his own marriage in particular. Simply removing his wedding ring didn’t seem nearly dramatic enough for the force of the anti-wedlock emotions coursing through him, and so Close-Up did the only thing he considered appropriate: he blasted the offending wedding band off with a pistol shot, removing his ring finger as well.

  Close-Up wasn’t to be confused with Campbell’s friend Sean (9 Fingers) McLay, who killed his parents with a shotgun at age nine because of extreme abuse. It was easy to believe 9 Fingers’s story after a glance at his nose, which had obviously been broken several times. Campbell was never told how 9 Fingers lost his digit, and he didn’t think it proper to ask. Despite the scary backstory, 9 Fingers struck him as a nice and respectful guy.

  On November 29, 1989, a police wiretap picked up Campbell talking with Charmaine in the early afternoon. Campbell was on the road with Close-Up, while Charmaine was at their home in Orillia, putting away groceries. It started as a typical domestic conversation, as they talked a little about the money they owed on their Canadian Tire credit card. They joked a little about Christmas, and Charmaine said she had already bought his gift.

  Then Charmaine teased him a little, saying, “You wouldn’t believe what I’m expecting.”

  “It’s too bad,” Campbell joked back. “I don’t like that kind of pressure.”

  The conversation shifted to their dog Oddie, a Yorkshire terrier (“The toughest dog in the world, pound for pound, I’m told”). Campbell said he would be home in a couple of days. Then he teased her a little himself, talking of a new car.

  “The one you’re getting me?” Charmaine asked.

  “No, I’ll see about that one next week. That’s what I mean about Christmas presents. Like I gotta get this car, so don’t worry about Christmas presents.”

  “Um.”

  “Ya know, don’t worry about Christmas presents until January. You know what I mean?”

  “Umm.”

  “It don’t have to be Christmas when you get a gift.”

  Charmaine wasn’t aware of his plans to buy a used Chevrolet for $1,200 as a joint Christmas gift for both of them. Campbell wasn’t aware that others in his circle, including Close-Up, were using car names as code in a drug deal. “The phones were tapped. I didn’t know that.”

  The 1991 trial that followed in Newmarket, north of Toronto, was short and unsweet. “One of the jurors fell asleep during the trial. That was disheartening. I thought that it was important.” He was found guilty of conspiracy to traffic cocaine, as the jury didn’t buy his story that he was talking about buying a used Chevrolet. The jury concluded that he knowingly drove another man to Montreal to pick up cocaine. “That’s the only one [conviction] that I was truly innocent in.”

  With that conviction, Campbell found himself back in the Millhaven Penitentiary assessment centre at age forty-two, facing a 3½-year term, or 1,280 more days be
hind bars, if he didn’t get parole. Bob Anderson, one of the prisoners on the maintenance crew, was working in the reception centre and decided to make a strong impression. Anderson weighed well over 350 pounds and was one of the few inmates anywhere in the country with a 500-pound bench press, about double what a large, strong man can lift. “Reception is double bunked, and Bob took a monkey wrench and broke the chain on the top bunk in my cell so I wouldn’t have to put up with anyone. Bob knew who I was through other people.”

  The prison hadn’t been a pleasant place the first time Campbell was housed there, but it had declined considerably in his absence, Anderson’s gesture notwithstanding. Prisoners were no longer allowed to use common rooms for eating, like back in 1983. There weren’t any more hockey games in the winter. There had been drastic changes to the yard, which had previously held two baseball diamonds, a miniature golf course, a weight pit, three handball walls, a running track and the outdoor rink. Now it was split into three separate yards and there were only short periods of time when prisoners from each range could go there. Black, white and Asian prisoners were generally kept apart, as gang tensions had grown worse. All in all, it was clear the old neighbourhood had gone downhill. “As far as prisons go, Millhaven was a far better place the first time I did time there.” There were still familiar faces from his first visit. “Career criminals usually have the same MO [modus operandi] and the cops know it. MO goes a long way [towards catching them].”

  The worst part about his return was how he found that attitudes of fellow inmates had also worsened. Prisoners now did previously unthinkable things such as stealing each other’s shoes. “They’re called cell or box thieves, and they’re the lowest of the low. In the eighties, they’d never get away with that. They’d get jumped. Jail etiquette, protocol, that’s just gone out the window.” Even Anderson, the behemoth who gave him the welcome, would prove a disappointment. He was suspected of pilfering money from the prison canteen, which was a taboo since canteen funds were used to buy sports equipment.