Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (81 page)

Although Boucher was essentially unharmed (he required no medical attention), while his assailant eventually died from his wounds, it was a stark reminder that the Hells Angels are not the only gang, or even the most powerful gang, behind bars. The would-be assassin was a member of the Indian Posse, a gang made up of Native Canadians. Most inmates say they have far more members and power than the bikers in Canada's prisons.

With so many Hells Angels behind bars, especially the important ones, it's tempting to think of them as a weakened and declining empire. According to police forces all over the country, the opposite is true. While they may be the No. 2 gang in prisons, they are still solidly in front on the streets of Canadian cities and towns. With 34 chapters in Canada, the Hells Angels are still on top of the organized crime heap. Although police intelligence officers claim that their activity has been reduced in the Maritimes and Quebec, which is no surprise considering the massive number of arrests, those same officers admit that business is booming for the Hells Angels in Ontario and Western Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) claim that the Toronto area has the greatest concentration of Hells Angels in the world. Things are even better for them out West, where crystal meth use has reached epidemic proportions. According to one Saskatchewan biker cop, “There's tons of crystal meth out there, and the Hells Angels are controlling it all.”

A street-level dealer who recently moved from Toronto to Edmonton told me, “These days, you can sell meth anywhere there's white people . . . of course I get it from the bikers—that's what they're famous for.”

Perhaps more important is the fact that Stadnick's legacy lives on. According to the Hells Angels head office, there are currently 22 Nomads chapters worldwide in places as disparate as Brazil, Finland and Nevada. While the man himself is behind bars, he can feel secure in the knowledge that his philosophical contribution has helped the club immeasurably.

And, as the Hells Angels saved themselves by turning to selling illegal drugs in 1965, they have recently gone to legal means to raise funds. Although the Hells Angels would never allow a non-member to wear the winged skull logo or the name, the club has opened a number of retail stores to sell what they call “support gear”—licensed items with pro-biker designs and logos. With slogans like “Support 81” (the 8 stands for H, the eighth letter of the alphabet and 1 for A) and ACAB (an acronym for All Cops Are Bastards), Hells Angels-approved gear is selling like proverbial hotcakes. I visited one of the two Toronto locations and almost bought a T-shirt. On a black background, a muscular man with heavily tattooed arms on a Harley is lovingly holding onto a smaller Harley with a toddler aboard. The slogan reads “Big Red Machine/First Lesson.” Other stores have opened in places like Thunder Bay, Ontario; Moncton, New Brunswick; and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. “Obviously we want to make money off them,” said Donny Peterson, the former Para-Dice Rider who has become a de facto Hells Angels spokesman. “And we do make good money off them.” Another store is planned for Halifax.

Of course, the authorities haven't stood still. Operations like Project Dante in which the RCMP, OPP and Sûreté du Québec (SQ) arrested 16 Hells Angels in the Kingston and Ottawa areas continue and arrests pile up. Hit particularly hard have been the Bandidos, who did eventually swallow up what remained of the Rock Machine, making the last remaining major Canadian motorcycle gang a subsidiary of an American super-club.

Advocates of tough anti-gang legislation cheered on June 30, 2005, when a Barrie, Ontario, judge ruled that the Hells Angels were indeed a “criminal organization.” At the extortion trial of Woodbridge Hells Angels Steven “Tiger” Lindsay and Ray Bonner, Justice Michele Fuerst found them guilty not just of demanding $75,000 from a Barrie businessman, but also for having “presented themselves not as individuals, but as members of a group with a reputation for violence and intimidation.” Since Lindsay and Bonner used nothing more than the man's fear of the Hells Angels to force him into payment, it was clear to Fuerst that the club was itself a weapon. Of course, Fuerst's ruling did not outlaw the Hells Angels, but it did open up members and associates to harsher penalties if they are convicted of any crime. As one Toronto-area biker said to me: “Great, now if I get into a bar fight, I can get 14 years tacked on to my sentence because of what some guys did in Quebec ten years ago.”

But despite all the arrests and threats of harsh punishments, the bikers, especially the Hells Angels, continue to survive, even expand. “With Operation Springtime, we took out the brains of the organization,” said one OPP officer. “But it didn't matter; they put together such a well-thought-out system that taking the managers out of the equation didn't affect it all that much.” They can thank Walter Stadnick.

As has been the case for more than half a century, there are legions of young men who will work hard, humiliate themselves and give up everything they have just for a chance to wear the colors. I talked to an old friend of mine who counsels troubled youth in suburban Montreal. The boys he sees are from the very pool that biker gangs have always recruited from. Though some of them are smart, they are all doing poorly in school and most have had some trouble with the law. “If they have one common thread, it's the alienation,” said the counselor. “That and a habit of wearing denim and leather.” They're about the same age Daniel Desrosiers would be if he were still alive. Although none of them would admit that they want to join a motorcycle gang, every single one of them apes the biker look. They all know who “Mom” Boucher is and all of them know who the local puppet gang is.

I asked them about popular culture. Fewer than half knew who Jay-Z is and one declared that “nobody around here listens to rap.” Instead, they maintain, all the kids are into Metallica, Slayer, Pantera and even Led Zeppelin, a band that broke up ten years before many of them were born. Theirs is an entirely different youth culture than the one they see on TV, one not significantly different from the one that informed Boucher, Stadnick and all the other big bikers.

One city where motorcycle gangs have never had a problem finding disaffected youth is Hamilton. A walk around downtown indicates that things aren't going very well for the city. Of all the storefronts on King Street, the main drag, the only ones that appear to be doing any business are the ones that deal in what at least some people would consider vice: tattoo shops, hemp shops, fast-food restaurants, pawn shops, bingo parlors and the like. At the corner of King and Hughson is a large building that used to be the S.S. Kresge department store. Poor cousin to the also-defunct Right House across the street, Kresge's was well known a generation ago for its bustling lunch counter and a pet shop that housed a parrot that could swear reasonably well in at least three languages. Now the curse words are written in black magic marker on the building's west wall where people wait for the Cannon and Barton buses. The store, later renamed Kmart, closed in 1994. Since 1998, the building has housed Delta Bingo, which had just lost its lease in the city's East End. There was some opposition to allowing a bingo parlor to move into one of downtown's most prominent buildings—one city councillor even called it a “symbol of poverty”—but it beat an empty building.

The back of Delta Bingo faces King William Street, the downtown's artsy district. There are bookstores and art galleries, nightclubs and restaurants and the city's massive police headquarters. One of the strip's most popular restaurants was La Costa, a family-style Mediterranean bistro with an adventurous menu and a respectable wine list. For 11 years, La Costa stood at the corner of King William and Hughson and won the “Best Italian Restaurant” title from the readers of
The Hamilton Spectator
eight times. But in a chain that spread from suburban Toronto to Calgary, the Hamilton location was the only La Costa that lost money. It even started with a bad omen: two days before it opened, a woman was stabbed to death on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. “That poor woman. I couldn't believe what happened,” said La Costa owner Chris Des Roches. “In the months that followed, it was a big struggle to get established; people wouldn't come downtown after that.”

But as other stores closed and violent crime became more common downtown, fewer and fewer families came to Hamilton to eat out. Those that did often reported to Des Roches that they were harassed by aggressive panhandlers, had their cars broken into or were even mugged. A month after a random, almost fatal stabbing in the Jackson Square mall two blocks away, La Costa shut down its Hamilton franchise on July 5, 2004. “The downtown has deteriorated so much that people don't come downtown anymore; Gore Park is full of gangs,” said Des Roches. “We really tried to keep it going; we did everything to keep customers happy. But when my customers tell us they are afraid to come down on Saturday night, you can't change that.” The day the restaurant closed, there was a sign posted in the window that thanked loyal customers and explained that it was just too difficult to do business downtown. Within hours it was painted over.

About two miles to the northeast stood a narrow three-storey building with no windows and a giant metal door. The police had confiscated 269 Lottridge St. when they convicted Johnny K-9 and the Hamilton chapter of Satan's Choice with proceeds of crime offenses in 1998. They had been looking for a buyer for the lonely former variety store surrounded by factories almost ever since. In March 2002, they found someone. A man identified as John Q. Public bought the building for $40,000. He then leased it to an organization called The Foundation. Less than a year after Operation Printemps sent Stadnick and Stockford to jail, the Hells Angels returned to the city. The Foundation was one of six puppet clubs established in Southern Ontario that year. “Walter never wanted a Hells Angels' presence in town; he liked the idea of living away from the business,” said Sergeant John Harris, a former biker cop who followed Stadnick's career. “But with him gone it didn't make much sense not to have one here; lots of the Toronto and Kitchener guys lived in or around Hamilton anyway.”

Before long, the bikers refortified the building, installing a tall privacy fence with barbed wire, video surveillance equipment and concrete barriers in front of the wall that faces the street. Although the club featured some tough guys, they didn't impress a city that had seen Red Devils, Cossacks, Wild Ones, Outlaws and Satan's Choice, not to mention what was arguably Canada's biggest mafia concentration, the Barton-Sherman Gang, and plenty of skinhead, Asian and Jamaican gangs. “They weren't seen as a big deal,” said Sergeant Steve Pacey, another Hamilton biker cop. “It wasn't like the Hells Angels. When Stadnick would walk into a bar in his colors, even as small as he was, he commanded a great deal of respect. The Foundation didn't have any of that; they were a joke.”

They did have one moment in the sun, though. When heavy metal superstar Ozzy Osbourne played Hamilton's Copps Coliseum in 2002, The Foundation were invited as guests of the band and, after a rumor that a number of Outlaws would attend, they arrived in full colors. There weren't any incidents at the show, but their presence caused the city to consider banning gang colors at local events. “Yeah, who's gonna tell a biker to take his jacket off?” said one Copps ticket taker. According to police, some members of Ozzy's entourage went back to Lottridge Street for a party, but the man himself declined.

On March 9, 2005, less than six months after Stadnick and Stockford were convicted and sentenced, the Hells Angels moved into Hamilton. With a massive party that brought dozens of bikers to the Lottridge St. clubhouse, The Foundation finally got something that would give them respect on Hamilton's mean streets—Hells Angels colors. According to Pacey, it was the 16th chapter in Ontario. Naturally, the locals went crazy. Police chief Brian Mullan said that he was “extremely concerned . . . We'll do our utmost to ensure citizens of the city don't see more crime or violence.” Newly elected Hamilton mayor Larry Di Ianni seemed caught unawares by the turn of events. “This is not the kind of club we want to see set up in our city,” he said. “It took me by surprise. There has been motorcycle-gang activity in all the communities around here. I heard that consistently from the police. But to see an actual establishment of a clubhouse in our inner city is not an encouraging sign.” SQ biker expert Guy Ouellette piped up that Stadnick would be delighted. I don't believe him.