Book ~ "Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club" (2017) Peter Edwards

From Goodreads ~ 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, a convict and outlaw biker himself. 

Bernie Guindon's parents were from Quebec.  They eventually settled in Oshawa, ON, where his father was a bootlegger and physically abusive to his family and his mother spoke very little English and had a grade one education.  Bernie discovered at an early age that he was a good fighter and this was encouraged ... he eventually represented Canada in boxing in the Pan Am Games and was headed for the Olympics had he not landed in prison.  He never went professional because he was concerned his fists would then be considered a legal weapon.

Bernie always loved bikes, especially Harley Davidsons, and started the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club, eventually becoming president while still in his early 20s.  By 1970, Satan's Choice was second largest biker club in the world (behind the Hells Angels).  In those early days, he and his fellow riders were more rebels than criminals.  But as Satan's Choice grew in size, it became more involved in crimes. Bernie himself served about 15 years in prison, first for an indecent assault on a minor and later for drug trafficking.

Bernie has been married four times and has between 11 to 16 children, all but two from different women, and some born in the same year.  He was only actively involved in raising his son who he named Harley Davidson, who has done several stints behind bars.

This book is Bernie's story and the history of Satan's Angels (which eventually became part of Hells Angels).  It was an interesting one, that's for sure.  There are lots of pictures included in the book.

Book ~ "Unrepentant: The Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satan's Choice and Hells Angels Biker" (2013) Peter Edwards

From Goodreads ~ In this explicit first-hand account, a biker who spent 46 years as a member of the Hells Angels and Satan's Choice invites bestselling author Peter Edwards into the story of life lived as we've only imagined it.

A kid raised by his father's fists on the wrong side of a blue-collar town, Lorne Campbell grew up watching the local bikers ride past, making him wonder what that kind of freedom and power would feel like. He soon found out. At the age of seventeen, he became the youngest-ever member of the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club and spent the next five decades living a life for which he does not ask forgiveness, only that his story finally be told, and that his family finally understand what drove him to live the way he did. With moments of terror and humour, great sadness and the simple pleasures of camaraderie and the open road, Unrepentant is a book like none other. 

Lorne Campbell was born in Oshawa, ON, and grew up with an abusive father who his mother eventually left.  When he was in his late teens, he joined Satan's Choice, an outlaw motorcycle club.  Satan's Choice joined with Hell's Angels around 2001.  Now in his 60s, this is Campbell's account of his years of being a biker.  Most of the stories came from conversations the author had with Campbell and police wiretaps.

Over his 46 years as a biker, Campbell came across a lot of people ... some friends and some enemies.  There is history and a story about a lot of them.   Campbell, though a tough guy, was loyal to his friends and would defend them if they were slighted by beating up anyone.  He spent a lot of time in jail and/or prison ... he felt that if you can't do the time, you shouldn't do the time.  It seems like he honest about the drugs and booze he has consumed, the people he has beat up severely and or killed, his travels and the loves of his lives.

I found it to be an interesting read.