Bernard Dieudonné Guindon (born 19 November 1942), 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.
[1] 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.
[3] 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.
[22] 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.
[33] 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.
[40] 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.
[51] 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.
[52] The raid attracted much media attention, as did the police's seizure of weapons including sawed-off shotguns, handguns, axes and bike chains, together with an immense quantity of alcohol and marijuana.
[60] 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.
"[63] 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.
[15] 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.
[63] 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.
Edwards, in his sympathetic biography of Guindon, implies that he was framed by the police and prosecutors who had long wanted to put him in prison, noting irregularities such as the fact that the trial transcripts from 1969 have mysteriously disappeared, making it very difficult to assess the evidence that convicted him.
[63] Melcher, by contrast, has suggested that Guindon was indeed guilty of rape despite his vehement claims of his innocence, maintaining that the misogynistic tendencies in the outlaw biker subculture strongly encourages violence against women.
[70] 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.
[73] 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.
[78] Though 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.
[84] As Guidnon's rape conviction made it difficult for him to find employment, he worked as the manager of the Venus Spa strip-club on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto.
[90] 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.
[97] 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.
[109] Guindon was a perfectionist when it came to custom building, and found that most people were unwilling to pay for his expensive services whether it be with leather wallets or motorcycles, as consumers preferred to buy the cheaper items manufactured in factories.
[105] In 1988, Lowe described Guindon as living in a middle-class neighborhood of Oshawa and engaged in real estate speculation while also owning a camp in northern Ontario for outlaw bikers.
[110] In the summer of 1989, Guindon, with his right-hand man Lorne Campbell, made a lengthy visit to the Prairie provinces to make alliances with los Bravos gang of Winnipeg and the Grim Reapers of Calgary and Lethbridge.
[97] The Canadian journalist Yves Lavigne wrote that Stadnick was interested in Satan's Choice not only because it was the second largest biker gang in Ontario, but because "its legendary founder" Guindon had "charisma and the ability to charm the skin off a snake.
[123] In the 1990s, Guindon worked as an extra playing a thug in various Hollywood films and television shows shot in the Toronto area such as My Date with the President's Daughter, Jungle Movie, Blues Brothers 2000' and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.
[128] In October 2003, he was somehow able to cross the American border despite his criminal record and attended as a guest of honor the 65th birthday of Sonny Barger, the Hells Angels international president.
"[133] Guindon's mother, scarred by years of domestic abuse by his father, was opposed to him leaving the Hells Angels, believing that his membership was the best way of protecting herself against being hurt again.
[134] More damagingly, Guindon did not believe in keeping his money in a bank, and all of his wealth in the form of cash which he had hidden inside of his house was also devoured by the flames, costing him millions.
[138] Guindon met Barnes by chance at an antiques show in the Kawartha Lakes region in the summer of 2012 and embraced his old enemy saying that their feud which had started 50 years earlier with the "Battle of Pebblestone" was now over.
[140] 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.