Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club

Now in paperback: The founding father of Canadian bikers shares the story of his fascinating life.

You could call Bernie Guindon the Sonny Barger of Canadian bikers (but not to his face). The founder of Satan's Choice, Guindon led what was in the 1960s the second-largest biker club in the world (after the Hells Angels, which Bernie would join briefly in the early 2000s) to national prominence and international infamy. His life wasn't all bikes and crime. He was also a medalist in boxing for Canada at the Pan Am Games. That tension between the very rough life he was born into and the possibility for success in the straight world (and how aspirations in each fed his success in the other) layer Guindon's story, one of the great untold stories in biker history. Friends from the biker world and Guindon's family have given extensive interviews for Hard Road, including his son, Harley, whose own depictions of prison time are some of the most searing you'll ever read.

PETER EDWARDS has written for the Toronto Star for more than 30 years, specializing in organized crime and justice issues. He is the author of 14 previous non-fiction books, including The Bandido Massacre: A True Story of Bikers, Brotherhood and Betrayal; One Dead Indian: The Premier, the Police and the Ipperwash Crisis; Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War (with Antonio Nicaso); and Unrepentant: The Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satan’s Choice and Hells Angels Biker. Edwards has been awarded an eagle feather from the Union of Ontario Indians and a gold medal from the Centre for Human Rights.