BURST
Former Ontario Hells Angel Harley Guindon says he’s not bringing the revived Satan’s Choice biker club to B.C. to start any trouble.
“We’re not looking for a problem. We don’t want a problem, right? We just want to have the motorcycle club in every province,” he said Tuesday.
The Oshawa businessman said he has heard from many across the country tired of the way the Hells Angels have operated over the years.
“For 25 years, we’ve had a thumb down on us … saying you can’t do this, you can’t do that,” he said. “It’s their way or no way, right?”
Last summer, he restarted “the Choice” in Ontario. Several Satan’s Choice chapters, or “charters,” have formed across Canada since then.
The gang was originally led by his father, Bernie, in the 1960s and was the largest in Canada before the Hells Angels moved in. The Choice “patched” over to join the Angels in 2000.
There were no B.C. members in the revived Satan’s Choice until this week, when an Abbotsford chapter officially opened.
Guindon said the Abby group, pictured on his Facebook and TikTok pages Monday, already has a clubhouse, though he declined to say where it is. He said three more B.C. charters are expected to open soon and that he will have 60 members in this province by the new year.
“We are sitting at 400 Canadian members, 200 American members,” he said.
By contrast, the Hells Angels has more than 100 B.C. members in 10 chapters since the gang started here in July 1983.
Asked if he had heard from police about the move into B.C., Guindon said, “No I haven’t. Nor would I speak to them.”
Cpl. Sarbjit Sangha of B.C.’s anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit said Tuesday that officers are aware of the social-media postings about the new Abbotsford Satan’s Choice chapter.
She said the agency is working with the Abbotsford Police Department and CFSEU’s provincial outlaw motorcycle gang coordinators to gather more information.
“CFSEU-B.C. is part of the national outlaw motorcycle gang strategy wherein we continuously monitor and share intelligence related to the OMG landscape in B.C.,” she said in an email.
Abbotsford Police Sgt. Paul Walker added that “ our Gang Crime Unit and Intelligence Unit continue to actively monitor the situation.”
Guindon said he has always “had a lot of love” for B.C. Hells Angels and has only had problems with some former Ontario HA members.
Initially he wasn’t going to open in B.C. but changed his mind “just to have a charter in every province across the country.”
“I don’t have bad blood with B.C. I was actually respectfully going to not come to B.C., just out of the respect, not fear, that I have for B.C. HA,” he said. “We just want to ride our bikes from one side of the country to the other.”
Guindon said he didn’t speak with any B.C. Hells Angels before setting up here simply because his status changed within his old club, from being out in “good standing” to being out in “bad standing” because he restarted the Choice.
He said it may be “naïve” to think the Angels won’t be upset about the new gang in town “but I’m hoping, because we know each other very well, that they’ll know that we’re not coming there stepping on anybody’s toes. We’re just coming there to ride our bikes.”
He said Satan’s Choice chapters will all have to do charity work across the country as he has been doing in Ontario.
“Basically, what I’m trying to do is change the stigma from the way that people are perceiving the Hells Angels and bring back the Choice, but in a much more revamped positive manner with different brotherhood values,” he said. “I’m not trying to run with the whole fear tactic thing. I’m trying to deal with the respect part of it.”
No one from the B.C. Hells Angels responded to an email requesting comment.
Bluesky: @kimbolan.bsky.social