Bernie Guindon
Bernard Dieudonné Guindon, better known as "Bernie the Frog", is a Canadian former outlaw biker, gangster and boxer, best known as the founder and national president of Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club from 1965 to 2000. He was later a member of the Hells Angels until his retirement in 2006.
Youth
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, Lucien, was a petty criminal from Buckingham 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 Lucien 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, remembering how "I used to go across the street and fight all the Protestants". At the Holy Cross Elementary School, Guindon was a poor student who failed at everything. Guindon's first language is French, but he became fluent in English due to growing up in Oshawa. Guindon was frequently beaten by a nun he called "Dirty Gertie". As a 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, whom he bonded with as he spoke to her in French. Blais was from Montreal, but her mother, dissatisfied with the education offered to girls in Quebec's collèges classiques had moved to Oshawa in 1958 to give her a "modern" education in English. Upon first seeing Guindon, Blais recalled saying to her mother "qui est ce mec mignon qui pompe le gaz?" and insisted that her mother pull over to that gas station so she could talk to him. Guindon was to have on-off relationship with her that lasted decades before marrying her 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". Although 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 teenage girlfriend Veronica became pregnant with the first of his many children, but he continued his womanizing and continued to insist that Blais was his true love. In April 1963, Blais married someone else. Despite being French-Canadian, Guindon did not object to his nickname "Bernie the Frog".
Rise to power
Starting in 1961, Guindon came to be involved in a feud with Harold "Johnny Sombrero" Barnes, the self-proclaimed "Supreme Commander" of the Toronto-based Black Diamond Riders. It remains unclear even today why Barnes's nickname was "Johnny Sombrero" as he never wore a Sombrero. Guindon refused to address Barnes by his title of Supreme Commander, causing much offense to the latter. Barnes was the son of a working class Englishman from the north of England and an Italian woman who was related to the Commisso 'Ndrangheta clan. Barnes took more to his British descent and portrayed himself despite being an outlaw biker as the defender of traditional British values against upstart "Frogs" such as Guindon. Barnes in his interviews with the media rather bizarrely claimed that his criminal activities were somehow related to his self-proclaimed mission defending the monarchy and Canada's British heritage. Guindon came to embrace the nickname "Bernie the Frog" as a way of countering the attack and later in life run businesses with names such "Frog's Fresh and Frozen Sea Products".In 1962, the Satan's Choice club led by Don Norris 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. On the field day at the Pebbestone Golf Course in Courtice hosted by the Golden Hawk Riders, Guindon noticed that the Black Diamond Riders were keeping to themselves and were arming themselves with tree braches, leading him to predict violence was coming. The other Golden Hawk Riders dismissed his concerns, saying that no violence would happen at the field day. At the signal given by Barnes, the Black Diamond Riders attacked. Guindon punched out the sergeant-at-arms of the Black Diamond Riders. Guindon recalled in a 2015 interview: "I started with the sergeant-at-arms and knocked him out, and then Johnny Sombrero chased me down the field with a log. I wasn't going to stand waiting until he hit me. I ran". Guindon came out of the Golden Hawk clubhouse with a piece of lumber and manically attacked the Black Diamond Riders. During the "Battle of Pebblestone" as the fight was called, Guindon came to face to face with Barnes and exchanged blows. Guindon punched out a Black Diamond Rider, Tom Bird, and forced Barnes to retreat. The "Battle of Pebbestone" damaged the prestige of the Golden Hawk Riders, who came to be called the "Chicken Hawks", and Guindon ended up leaving the club. For a time, Guindon went to Montreal to work in a factory to before returning to Oshawa in late 1963.
Guindon was furious with this violation of the biker code by the Black Diamond Riders at the "Battle of Pebblestone" as the media dubbed the brawl 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, of which he became president. Guindon founded the Phantom Riders in either late 1963 or early 1964. The Phantom Riders were a successful club who mostly rode British motorcycles such as the Triumphs, Nortons and BSAs. During the early 1960s there had been a short-lived Amalgamated Riders Association, which inspired Guindon with the idea of creating a "super-club" with chapters in several cities that would overwhelm the Black Diamond Riders. The success of the Black Diamond Riders lent urgency and appeal to Guindon's plans, and many of the other club presidents who were also threatened by the Black Diamond Riders were interested.
Satan's Choice
In 1965, Guindon founded the Satan's Choice outlaw biker club in Toronto by merging his Phantom Riders of Oshawa with three other outlaw biker clubs based in what is now Cambridge, Mississauga, and Toronto. 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. Guindon had read a newspaper article where Barnes had listed Satan's Choice as one of the clubs which he had forced to disband, which inspired him to choose the name. Guindon asked and received permission from Norris to use the name and patch of Satan's Choice. 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. To humiliate Barnes, Guindon rode up to the clubhouse of the Black Diamond Riders with his followers. Guindon challenged Barnes and his followers to come out and fight them, causing his prestige to rise and theirs to dwindle when they did not. 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.
The American journalist Mick Lowe described Guindon in the 1960s as: "He was widely respected for his self-discipline, and his athleticism, but was admired in other ways, too. The Choice founder combined courage and a quick intelligence and a keen sense of diplomacy. Bernie always seemed to know how to get things down without ever appearing manipulative. He was a dreamer who would prove time and again his ability to act on and achieve his visions. The young Oshawa biker radiated energy and self-confidence. To be around Bernie Guindon was to feel utterly and irrepressibly alive, living for the moment and yet moving towards some grand and glorious future". For many of the young people in the 1960s, Guindon was a folk hero.