Harold Paul Barnes (12 May 1935 – 5 November 2016), better known as "Johnny Sombrero", was a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who was the founder and leader of the Black Diamond Riders Motorcycle Club of Toronto.
[1] His father, a working class Englishman from Carlisle in the north of England, was a quiet, reserved man while his dominating mother, a Calabrian woman from Siderno, ruled the household.
[9] A colorful character, Barnes spoke often to the media and portrayed himself as engaged in a crusade to defend Canada's British heritage, which he somehow connected to his criminal activities.
[10] In 1963, Barnes wrote a long letter to Queen Elizabeth II asking for a royal charter to rid Canada all of the other outlaw biker gangs except for the Black Diamond Riders.
[10] By this point, Barnes was regarded as a "semi-mythical" figure in Toronto, the leader of the largest outlaw biker gang whose colorful antics kept him constantly in the news.
[10] Media reports in 1963 described Barnes as a "beefy, tough-talking" young man who led a biker gang of about 200 that "terrorized high school dance halls, staged brawls and administered serious beatings to whoever was considered an opponent.
[11] It was to end the attacks of the Black Diamond Riders that led to a merger in 1965 of four biker gangs, namely the Phantom Riders of Oshawa, the Canadian Lancers of Scarborough, the Wild Ones of Port Credit and the Throttle Twisters of Preston into a super-biker gang, Satan's Choice led by Guindon.
[16] In 1973, a police report stated the Black Diamond Riders were only minor players in the drug trade in Toronto.
[17] Despite the police report, Barnes who worked as a plumber, owned a stylist house in an upper-middle class district of Toronto, giving rise to suspicions that he was engaged in gangsterism.
[17] Barnes still struck to delusions of grandeur, telling a journalist from The Globe & Mail: "so I broke a couple of arms and split some guy's skull from here to there...I'm a liberal-monarchist.
[19] Barnes along with several Black Diamond Riders had beaten up a Satan's Choice biker on the streets of Sudbury and stolen his gang "colors".
[19] The matter was considered sufficiently important for Guindon himself to lead 45 Satan's Choice members armed with guns, knives, boards, and baseball bats against eight Black Diamond Riders led by Barnes.
[19] The journalist Jerry Langton described Barnes as an "all-round tough guy" who still commanded respect in the biker world in the 1990s despite leading a club that had only a shadowy existence since the 1960s.
[20] In 1996, Barnes expelled a number of Black Diamond Riders who founded the forlornly named Lost Souls Motorcycle Club of Milton.