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The Current Transcript for April 28, 2017

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

9/11. BP oil spill. General Motors. Even Volkswagen. It’s very, very emotional.

LAURA LYNCH: He has a few aliases—Master of Disaster, the Pay Czar and according to a new documentary, he's playing God. He is Kenneth Feinberg and over the years he's been charged with deciding just how much a life is worth as he divides up and doles out payments to those who have suffered from some of the biggest disasters the US has ever experienced. He joins me first up to talk about what has become his life's work. After that—

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We have a lot more to do here. We’re reminded of this week by the tragedy in Cleveland. Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr.

LL: Tragic enough that an elderly man is murdered by a total stranger. Worse still is that a video of the murder of Robert Godwin Sr. was posted on Facebook by his killer. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg expressed his sympathies but offered no new solutions to what has become a troubling trend on the social media site—people posting acts of violence or showing them live, including a vicious beating of a young woman in Manitoba. Facebook's role and responsibility in all of this in our second half hour. And then—

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Motorcycles revving]

Satan’s Choice is a motorcycle club composed of 110 members from four divisions located in the Toronto area.

LL: Satan's Choice once ruled the world of bike gangs in Toronto and a young man named Bernie Guindon took over the gang at the relatively tender age of 22. A new book profiling Guindon’s rise to the top and subsequent fall into prison is the subject of our last half hour. I'm Laura Lynch and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

What's life worth? Ken Feinberg on victim compensation

Guests: Kenneth Feinberg

SOUNDCLIP

During the day, I'd see the worst of civilization—death, anger, frustration, tragedy. At night, a concert, the opera—the height of civilization. Wagner, Verdi, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler. The contrast is remarkable. Remarkable.

[Sound: Opera singer]

LL: That is Kenneth Feinberg. He is an American attorney. But not just any attorney as you heard there. He's taken on some notorious cases throughout his career. In fact, any one of the cases he's handled could be career-defining for any other attorney. Think the BP oil spill, the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal, 9/11. He's dealt with so many of these cases he's even earned nicknames including the Master of Disaster. Ken Feinberg and his work are the subject of a documentary premiering at Toronto's Hot Docs Festival this Sunday. It is called Playing God. And Ken Feinberg is in our Washington, DC studio. Hello.

KENNETH FEINBERG: Hello.

LL: Why do you think people are so intrigued by what you do?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Well, it's very rare. It's an aberration from the normal life that people confront each day. They get up, they go to work, they go home, they eat, they sleep. They enjoy life. Every once in a while, there is a tragedy where society decides to do something about it in terms of aiding the victims. And I think that's why there is a fair amount of interest in this.

LL: Perhaps they feel that they may be in that position someday.

KENNETH FEINBERG: There but for fortune, yes.

LL: You've been called as I said before the Pay Czar, the Master of Disaster, God. How do you see yourself?

KENNETH FEINBERG: I'm an average citizen. What I do is not rocket science I must say.

LL: And I want to get into that. But first for our audience, we should probably get you to explain what your actual job is. What do you do?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Policy makers, a president, a governor, a mayor, the Congress, they come to me and they say we have decided we want to provide money compensation to innocent victims of tragedy—9/11, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Boston Marathon bombings, the Virginia Tech University shootings. We have decided we want to compensate the victims and we're asking you to design and administer the program.

LL: You in that sense get to decide who gets how much money.

KENNETH FEINBERG: That's correct.

LL: You just named some of these disasters, tragedies. You've been in charge of some of the largest payouts in US history. But take us back because in the documentary you talk about wanting to be an actor growing up. What happened?

KENNETH FEINBERG: My father gave me some very sound college advice. He said Ken, there are thousands of would-be actors waiting on tables in restaurants around the country who can't get a big break. Why don't you instead go to law school and become a trial lawyer and act out your dreams before juries and judges?

LL: And do you use those actorly skills in your work day to day?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Oh, I think you have to. Yes. I think that the degree to which I can demonstrate empathy, sensitivity, concern that I can help innocent victims feel that somebody is listening and acting on their pathos, I think is an important—maybe the most important part of what I do.

LL: But if you talk about that as being something that you do as an actor, that suggests that it's not sincere.

KENNETH FEINBERG: Well, it may start out as an act, but I can assure you that after a very short period of time it is about as sincere as it can be.

LL: Let's go through some of these cases that you dealt with. After the attacks of September the 11^th, 2001, a compensation fund was created by Congress for the victims. How did you get involved in that?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Senator Kennedy, my old boss.

LL: Ted Kennedy.

KENNETH FEINBERG: Yes. Called John Ashcroft, the attorney general of the United States and he said John, there's only one person that I know of that could bring this 9/11 fun to fruition and that would be my former chief of staff Ken Feinberg. Let President Bush know this is exactly the type of guy that should do this.

LL: Did you hesitate at all?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Not at all. I think probably millions of Americans at the time wanted to do something in response to this national tragedy and this is what I did by experience and thought I could help. So I volunteered my services.

LL: Yes, you did this pro-bono. You didn't take any pay for this.

KENNETH FEINBERG: You couldn't. This was a patriotic duty I felt. I didn't think it was appropriate.

LL: You met with hundreds and hundreds of these victims. How did that affect you?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Debilitating. Debilitating. You meet people face-to-face in confidence and you invite them—who have suffered such terrible loss—to articulate anything they want to say. I guarantee you that unless you have a heart of stone, you will be impacted by what you hear. The stories I heard were chilling. Chilling.

LL: It wasn't just about listening to them. It was your job to place a monetary value on the lives that were lost in the towers. How difficult was that?

KENNETH FEINBERG: That's not that difficult. Judges and juries every day in the United States—and I might add in Canada—every day judges and juries are asked to calculate a dollar value to a life or an injury. What would that person have earned in a work life but for the tragedy? Economic loss, lost wages, lost income—add to that some amount for pain and suffering, emotional distress. There is your reward. You need an adding machine. That part of the job is not that difficult.

LL: But in this case, the situation was obviously so fraught with emotion and national attention. There were family members whose loved ones were firefighters who died that day but they were compensated with less money than those who worked on Wall Street. Were there problems? Do you see problems with the way the compensation was given out?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Of course but that was the statute that was enacted by Congress. What I learned about compensating people: people are concerned not so much about what they are going to receive in the way of compensation. That's a very manageable challenge. But everybody counts other people's money. That is emotional. Mr. Feinberg, you're giving me three million dollars but you’re giving my next door neighbour four million dollars. What do you have against my wife? You never even met my dead wife. You are tarnishing the memory of my dead wife. Why are you doing this? That's a real problem.

LL: So far better to give out equal amounts even if it means less than some might deserve?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Would be far better. The trouble is that as the federal statute pointed out, if you want people in return for receiving the compensation to sign a release that they will not sue the airlines or the World Trade Center or the security guard companies. Once you tie compensation to the voluntary willingness not to litigate, everybody has to get a different amount of money because everybody has different jobs and different commitments. And what is sufficient compensation for one person might not be sufficient compensation for another.

LL: Now in the documentary we hear from a woman named Anna whom you met after 9/11. Let's listen.

SOUNDCLIP

When he touched my hand, he make me comfortable. He make me feel that I was in a safe place, that I was touching by an angel. He would say, “I’m here for you so don’t be afraid.”

LL: Anna. She calls you something akin to an angel. Can you tell us about her?

KENNETH FEINBERG: I can tell you that there were many, many people who became quite comfortable with the program. Not because of the amount of money but because we met with them voluntarily if they wanted to and empathized and commiserated with their loss.

LL: And Anna was part of a group of undocumented workers who were trying to seek compensation after the 9/11 attacks.

KENNETH FEINBERG: Yes. The undocumented workers even though they were eligible to be compensated by the law and even though they had no realistic fear that they would be deported or punished because they were undocumented, nevertheless they were horrified and frightened that if they participated in this program, it was a trap. And at the beginning, they were extremely reluctant. There were about a dozen of them extremely reluctant to participate in the program, fearing the consequences. Eventually we overcame those challenges.

LL: You talk in the film about how being Jewish—

KENNETH FEINBERG: Yes.

LL: And your faith helps you deal with other people's grief. How so?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Well, I learned in my own religion Judaism, how the community rallies behind and supports the victim, the innocent victim. No victim is isolated. To the contrary, victims of death and tragedy benefit from the community of which they are a part rallying around them. At the funeral service, at the grave, each member of the community is invited to throw dirt onto the grave as evidence of community support for both the victim and the dead. I learned growing up that a sense of community goes a long way in helping an individual who feels so alone and so isolated to know that others in the community, friends and acquaintances are solidly behind them in their grief.

LL: In 2010, the BP oil spill paralyzed the Gulf of Mexico and again you were called in to manage a $20-billion compensation fund. You faced some criticism for not being clear with victims of the spill that you were being paid by BP. And I just want to play you another bit of tape from the documentary. This is George Barisich, a fisherman that you met with.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: When you impress upon a people that you're not getting paid from BP and you are, you should have just said that. We would have understood that because nobody works for nothing.

VOICE 2: I think I told everybody that.

VOICE 1: No, you told you were not getting paid by BP. I guarantee you.

VOICE 2: No. What I said is I'm getting paid by BP but BP doesn't control my decisions in any event.

LL: What do you make of that criticism now?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Oh, very common. I'm not surprised. If you're not working pro-bono, for free as I was in 9/11, but you're getting paid by the company that caused the spill, all the rest of the words that you give about being independent and not being beholden to BP, you're acting independently—that doesn't get you very far with people who are emotionally victimized by the spill. So I wasn't surprised by that criticism. The only way you rebut that criticism—the only way—is not by words but by getting money out as quickly as you can to victims of the spill which we did. And that helps assuage and alleviate any charge that is some hidden agenda here to deny people compensation.

LL: Did it erase those charges entirely?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Pretty much. In 16 months in the BP oil spill, 16 months, we distributed six and a half billion dollars and to about 250,000 individuals and businesses. Once that money started flowing on a very regular generous basis, that went a very long way to the initial criticism that the program was rigged.

LL: But there were some people who still felt they received very little for their destroyed livelihoods. How do you see it?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Oh, to this day. To this day. The number of people who filed a claim without any proof whatsoever that their damages could be documented.

LL: Well, they said they did deals on a handshake.

KENNETH FEINBERG: Yeah. Well, I mean I can't pay people on a handshake. Well, what evidence do you have that you lost $100,000? Do you have a tax return? No. How do I know that that's how much you lost? Well, take my word for it, Mr. Feinberg. This is the way we do business down here. Well, that may be, but the integrity of the program that I'm administering requires something more than a handshake.

LL: You often have to be in the middle of making some unpopular decisions. You served as the government's special master for executive compensation after the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent government bailout and a lot of people wanted to see the executives of those banks go without any pay. What did you have to do?

KENNETH FEINBERG: The law passed by Congress made it very, very clear that one thing I can't do was to act punitively, to punish. My job under that very unique federal law was to compensate executives in seven companies that received the most taxpayer assistance a fair amount of compensation tied to best business practices for that company, but not to act as judge and jury in punishing it.

LL If you had your own way with it, would you like to have done a little more? I mean as I recall from the film, they got $500,000 a year.

KENNETH FEINBERG: No. I don't think that if I had my way I would have reduced the pay any further than I did. I think I followed the law exactly as enacted by Congress.

LL: Do you feel that the top CEOs were held to account for their role in the 2008 crisis?

KENNETH FEINBERG: No, I don’t. Well, there could have been further punishment enacted or requested by Congress. As I understand it from reading the newspapers like everybody else, none of these corporate officials or corporate executives were criminally prosecuted. There was no effort to seek reimbursement back to the taxpayer for the salaries that were paid. I think that Wall Street wasn't sufficiently deterred.

LL: As we have clearly established through our conversation, governments and companies do continually turn to you. I'm wondering what you think that says about the US justice system? The fact is that people should be able to go to court, have a judge, have a jury—an impartial judge and a jury hear their case—have their own advocate fighting for them and then get a ruling. And yet more and more of these cases seem to be coming your way. What does that say about the justice system in America?

KENNETH FEINBERG: I think your assumption is incorrect. I think that the number of times that government comes to me and asks me to do what I do, you can put on two hands. Every day in America—and I might add every day in Canada—thousands of people take advantage of the courts and what I do is a real aberration. What I do is rarely newsworthy.

LL: But the thing is that you state yourself in the film that the idea of the funds that you're administering is that they will not have to wait years and years and years to get a judgment.

KENNETH FEINBERG: That's right.

LL: So you're suggesting that the system itself is going to take too long to help these people out. So they should come to you instead.

KENNETH FEINBERG: No. I'm suggesting that the system takes too long. You're absolutely right. It's very inefficient and it's very costly. I am not saying in the film that I think we ought to use what I do, these private independent compensation funds. I certainly do not suggest that they are the wave of the future to promote justice. The idea that one person should have all of this authority to decide who's eligible and how much money they should get and they can't go to court to challenge what I do, it's not sound public policy and I doubt that what I do will be more than just aberrational every once in a while.

LL: Do you see yourself doing more of this in the future though? Have you got cases on the go right now?

KENNETH FEINBERG: Unfortunately you pick up the newspaper and you see some tragedy and I'm asked to get involved, yes. Right now for example, I'm trying to determine appropriate compensation for childhood victims of clergy abuse in the New York Archdiocese system where priests preyed on innocent kids. To Cardinal Dolan’s credit, he has asked me and my colleague Camille Biros to establish a program to compensate innocent victims of clergy abuse. That's a major challenge for me right now.

LL: Major and more very difficult stories to listen to, I'm sure.

KENNETH FEINBERG: Yes. Very.

LL: Kenneth Feinberg, I thank you very much for your time. I know you're coming to Toronto to see the premiere of your documentary in just a few days. Thank you.

KENNETH FEINBERG: Thank you.

LL: Ken Feinberg is an attorney featured in the documentary, Playing God. It premieres this Sunday at Hot Docs and he joined me from Washington, DC. Well, the CBC News is next. Then it is an increasingly common and disturbing trend—violent acts being filmed and posted or streamed live to social media such as Facebook. We are asking whether it is possible to reverse the trend of violent video sharing. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

Facebook isn't doing enough to control violent posts, says expert

Guests: Jacqueline Helfgott, Daphne Keller, Hany Farid

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, you know the Hells Angels and the Bandidos, but what about Satan's Choice? Once upon a time, the Canadian Satan’s Choice bikers club was a major force to be reckoned with. Journalist Peter Edwards cruises back to that time in his book, Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club and he's my guest in half an hour. But first, a shock on social media.

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So I watched the video and it was very explicit. It was very brutal. I was doing pretty well most of the kids saw it because it's out there.

LL: That's Claude Guimond, principal of a high school in Manitoba. The video he's talking about the video that is so difficult to talk about is one that appeared on Facebook. It shows a violent assault on a person who is believed to be Serena McKay, a 19-year-old woman who was found beaten to death last weekend in Manitoba’s Sagkeeng First Nation. Two teenage girls have been charged with her murder. The video was eventually removed by Facebook, but not fast enough for many in the horrified community. And in fact, it is still being shared via Facebook Messenger. The appearance of disturbing graphic video on a social network would appear to be part of a grisly trend. On Monday in Thailand, a young man killed his 11-month-old daughter before killing himself. He filmed it all, broadcasting it live to Facebook. And earlier this month a man in Ohio fatally shot an elderly man—a total stranger—then posted the video on Facebook. As more of these kinds of videos are published on social media, there's a growing chorus of calls that Facebook and other platforms do more. Jacqueline Helfgott is a professor and chair of the criminal justice department at Seattle University. She's been studying these issues and joins us from Seattle, Washington. Hello.

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: Hello.

LL: Well, are you surprised to see these videos popping up on platforms such as Facebook?

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: No, I'm not. Even though social media has done a lot for law enforcement in terms of you know helping to catch offenders by showing crimes in action and police being able to respond to crimes, it also brings the negative consequence of this sort of thing because it's an opportunity for people to gain notoriety and celebrity.

LL: Is that the main motivator?

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: I think social media creates opportunities for people who aren't famous to be famous and there's an element of that in these types of crimes where you know people want to be on display and this is an opportunity for them to have that kind of notoriety. So yes. I mean we live in a world, Joel Black wrote in the book The Aesthetics of Murder in 1990 that we were moving from what he called the “ethical realm of the real to the aesthetic realm of the hyper real”. And that was almost 30 years ago he was talking about advances in mass media and technology way before the internet and well before social media. And we're now in a time period in the world where we have all moved into this aesthetic realm of the hyper real where there's a blurring of boundaries between fantasy and reality in social media and the ability for regular people to video themselves. Between YouTube stars and social media, we're all able to click a button and have what we're doing be broadcast globally and it's like nothing we've ever seen before in history. Even though it has benefits, it operates as a risk factor for criminal behaviour for a subset of individuals who have a propensity for crime and it operates on one end of a continuum as a modus operandi for crimes in such a way that someone could watch something on a screen—TV, movie, social media—and get an idea for a crime on the low end to the extreme end of a continuum where it can actually operate as a signature element in crime where it's actually part of the crime. And these social media postings, everything from the guy a couple of years ago who filmed himself when he went in and shot the news reporter to the couple in Las Vegas a couple of years ago who went in and shot the police officers. They had a whole history of posting memes and comics of themselves killing police on their Facebook, all the way to these types of incidents where people are actually filming themselves in action. And so there's all different types of people that are involved in these crimes but these are individuals who for whatever reason have a propensity for crime and they're using social media along this continuum either to get ideas on one end or to actually become integral parts of the criminal event. Social media is operating as a risk factor for crime in these situations.

LL: What impact does viewing these videos have on the people who see them?

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: Well, you know that's a really good question. Of course it impacts directly victims and survivors of crimes. But it also has an impact on everyone. Most people if they're lucky, they can get you know through their lives without being victims or survivors of really extreme violent crimes. And there's vicarious trauma that occurs for say, victim service providers who deal directly with homicide survivors and victims of violent crime. But this makes us all you know vicarious trauma victims because we all see this and we're in a world right now where we can't avoid seeing this stuff. I mean it's very different than having things in print. You know you can easily not pick up a book if you don't like horror stories or serial killer true crime stories. You can easily not pick that up and just not read it.

LL: But what about violent movies, violent TV shows, violence that is shown on the news albeit with a warning? How is that different?

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: Did you say should it all come with a warning?

LL: No, I'm saying that sometimes there are scenes of violence on the news but people are usually warned beforehand. How does that compare to this?

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: Right. That’s what I'm saying, that we're in a world now where we can't avoid it. You know we can't avoid it. If we either don't consume any media at all or we can't avoid it. So you know we don't get much of a warning on the news and we don't get any warning on social media. So that's my point. It's becoming very difficult to avoid seeing this stuff and it's making us all vicarious victims. And we all have the potential to experience vicarious trauma from this.

LL: It sounds like you're suggesting we're going to see more of this.

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: I'm suggesting that like any technology, technology can be used for the good. It can also be used for the bad. Law enforcement has to stay one step ahead. We all have to stay one step ahead of how this technology can be used in a way that can hurt all of us even though like I said, it has its benefits. And so we just have to stay one step ahead of it. You know we've got a huge body of research on the effects of you know George Gerbner and the cultural indicators project. There's many years of research on TV violence. We have research moving all the way into the computer game violence. We need to make use of the research and what we know about the factors that can contribute to the criminogenic effects of violent media and use the information that we have to do what we can to protect all of us and to minimize the criminogenic risk from these media sources.

LL: Okay. But many social media platforms are relying on the community to flag inappropriate comment. When they're faced with grisly videos, do most users flag, share it or just keep scrolling by?

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: I think we all, as you're suggesting, have a responsibility to flag it. I mean I think it's an innate human tendency. It's like driving by a car accident. There's many theories about why people watch violent movies, consume violent media and you know one of the series is that it's the closest we can ever come to dying without dying or experiencing the violence without actually experiencing it to help us make sense and understand it. So people want to watch it on one hand, but they also need to be responsible and flag it and understand the traumatic effects that it could have on the direct victims and all of us and also help law enforcement. And that's the benefit of social media. We can see these crimes in action. Police can be called. They can be notified. I mean crimes have been resolved and people have been caught because of social media. And so we all just have to play a role as a community and around the world and everybody as individuals can play a role in helping to deal with this appropriately and use what we know about the harmful effects to stay one step ahead.

LL: Jacqueline Helfgott, thank you.

JACQUELINE HELFGOTT: You're welcome.

LL: Jacqueline Helfgott is a professor and chair of the criminal justice department at Seattle University and she was in Seattle, Washington. Well, psychologists have a name for this disturbing streaming of violent acts online. They call it performance crime. And as it becomes more prevalent, companies like Facebook are facing some important questions: is it possible to prevent these types of videos from being uploaded or streamed? We have two guests standing by to share their insights. Daphne Keller is the director of the intermediary liability program at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. She was previously associate general counsel for intermediary liability and free speech issues at Google. She's in San Francisco. Hany Farid is a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College and he is in Norwich, Vermont. Hello to you both.

DAPHNE KELLER: Hi.

HANY FARID: Good morning.

LL: Hany Farid, let's start with you. Do you think Facebook is doing enough to stop violent videos from being live streamed and shared?

HANY FARID: I think it's important. I don't but I think the question you also have to ask is what is technologically feasible. And the fact is that dealing with live video is technically very difficult. Developing technology that can automatically and accurately distinguish between violent and illegal content and protected speech and legal content is incredibly difficult. Even with all of the advances in machine learning and AI, we are nowhere near being able to filter content like that at that scale. Having said that, we do have technology that can stop the redistribution of this content and so there's always this dilemma we have is that what do we want to do and where is the technology? And currently there is a gap between what we can do and what we want to do, but there is no gap in the redistribution question. So when somebody live streams something, this is the reality where we are today. But we do have the ability to eliminate that content once it is determined to be illegal or a violation of terms of service and redistribution. And it is there that I think that Facebook and other companies are not doing enough to filter out content once it has actually been identified.

LL: Daphne Keller, what do you think?

DAPHNE KELLER: I think that even with respect to the existing videos that are not live streamed, the idea that we can have an automated machine that can detect what's illegal from what’s legal is pretty risky because outside of some pretty narrow categories of content—like child abuse images which are illegal in every single context no matter where they appear—a lot of the other categories of images and videos that come up in these discussions are things that are legal in some context and illegal in others. For example, terrorist recruitment material that might be illegal when used by the people who originally wrote it, but legal when used by professors using it for research or in news reporting. And the machines might be able to detect this is the same piece of video, but they cannot detect whether any individual use is something that as a society we want to make possible.

LL: Now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the issue last week after a man in Cleveland, Ohio shot and killed an elderly passerby and then posted the shooting on Facebook. Take a listen to what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

We have a lot more to do here. We’re reminded of this this week by the tragedy in Cleveland and our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr. We have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening.

LL: Hany Farid, Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is working on it. How would you like to see Facebook respond? You talk about what they could do.

HANY FARID: Yeah. I think Professor Keller is right that we currently do not have the technology to automatically make these characterizations and to distinguish between fair use journalists, academics using this context. I advocate a solution that is not fully automatic. I advocate solutions that combine the power of computing and the power and the intuition and the nuance and the subtlety of humans. So we have a good case for this which is in the child pornography space. So back in 2008, we collaborated with Microsoft and with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to develop the technology that would combine the expertise of the National Center with technology in order to remove child pornography from networks. There's no question that that's a little bit cleaner as Professor Keller said, because there is no legal context for using child pornography. But you can always have humans in the loop. You have humans in the loop at the beginning to determine what is a violation of terms of service and you have humans in the loop at the end to look at the flagged content. And so this requires effort. It requires time, it requires expense and it requires a commitment to really enforcing the terms of service. I don't think that Facebook is putting enough effort—and I don't mean to pick on Facebook, I think this is probably true of most of the tech companies. They put a huge amount of effort in data mining. They put a huge amount of effort into advertising. They put a huge amount of effort into the latest features like live. And I think the efforts that are going into really making sure that these platforms are safe are much, much less. I'm simply saying you have these terms of service that you say we don't want in our platforms. And I think that there is more that we can be doing both on the human side and on the technology side.

LL: Daphne Keller, do you think that’s it? Do you think it’s a lack of commitment on Facebook's part? And I know we are talking about other social media as well, that if they put more resources toward it, they could do a better job?

DAPHNE KELLER: I think it's a really hard problem to solve. I mean there's a new documentary out called The Monitors about the humans who do this work and it focuses on a group of outsourced contractors in India who are doing this kind of review for Facebook and other platforms. It says there are 150,000 of these people in the world and as we know, every week or so there is an instance where they take something down or fail to take something down in a way that causes uproar in the media and on my Twitter feed and everywhere. So you know it was only not that long ago that Facebook took down the Philando Castile police shooting video which like this instance was something horrific. It was an image of a murder taking place online but it was one that was an instance of police brutality against an unarmed African-American man that was very important for people to know about. And so Facebook got criticized intensively for taking that down, much as they got criticized for taking down the iconic photograph of the little girl during the Vietnam War a couple of months ago. So having humans in the loop I agree with Professor Farid is very important, but we also know that the humans in the loop often make the same mistakes that make people so upset with the platforms.

LL: But wouldn't it be better to err on the side of making those kinds of mistakes in the name of trying to prevent some of this other video from getting out?

DAPHNE KELLER: I'm not sure about that. I mean increasingly platforms like Facebook are the public square. They are the place that ordinary people and media and political dissidents and organizers go to talk to each other and to share information. Unlike the public square historically, they're run by a private company that is subject to media pressures and to legal pressures and can choose to just silence difficult speech or controversial speech or minority speech if that is what makes the media and shareholders happier. So do we want a system where that private actor is systematically erring on the side of caution and taking something down if it seems like it might be bad? In the terrorist context, it's very plausible that they would get a complaint about something that's a bunch of men talking in Kurdish and waving guns. Do they know whether this is advocacy of terrorism or perhaps important counter speech against terrorism or perhaps dissidents against an oppressive regime? Probably not. Are they going to take the time to figure that out if what they're being told to do is err on the side of caution? Probably not.

LL: Hany Farid, Daphne Keller raises some interesting points there about what kinds of things should be on social media. But is it possible to monitor Facebook content for extreme violence without censoring people?

HANY FARID: You're absolutely right. She raises really good points. And so let's talk a little bit about the monitoring Facebook and the inconsistency with which they take down and don't take our content. Part of the problem here is that Facebook is primarily relying largely on human monitors. And so the problem is is that 150,000 plus monitors with various amounts of training and the humans are going to be imperfect. The problem is you don't have the computer in the middle. So what we advocate is at the very front end when content is discovered, that it be reviewed by a body, not just one person, not just two people but by a group of people representing all sides of points of view. Once that content is determined to be either illegal or violations of terms of service, then you automatically can detect that in future uploads and future posts. And then the human just has to decide is this a news organization? Is this a scholar? And those are easier discussions to be having. So Professor Keller is absolutely right. There are very hard decisions to be made at the very beginning. Having said that, I think there's also some very easy decisions that have to be made. There are beheading videos. There is child pornography. There are explicit calls to violence. There is explicit glorification of violence. And I advocate let's take care of that material. I think we should stay away from the gray area. And by the way, there was very similar issues in the child pornography space because the legal statute is sexually explicit and that can be construed very differently. And so when we launched the technology to eliminate child pornography, we made very sure to stay very clear and very far away from any gray areas because I do think you don't want to get into the business of taking down content that is protected. But I think there is so much heinous material out there that we can start with a lot of material that any reasonable person can agree is unambiguously and clearly violations of terms of service or illegal and remove that as a starting point.

LL: What about live streaming though? How do you wrestle with that?

HANY FARID: Well, therein lies a very difficult problem and I don't have a good answer for that. And look, we have to admit that we knew this was going to happen when live streaming came out. Facebook knew it. We knew it. This was eventually going to happen. And your previous guest talked very nicely about this that in fact there is a concern that it is now the motivating factor for committing these crimes. And I'm here to tell you that there is no technological solution today that can eliminate that contact and not interfere with other protected speech and I honestly don't have good answer for you and it is deeply, deeply concerning to me what we have been seeing in Ohio and Thailand and Manitoba and we are going to see more in the coming months and coming years. There's no question about that.

LL: Daphne Keller, is that just the price we pay?

DAPHNE KELLER: I agree this is unlikely to stop. I agree that we don't have good technology to deal with it. On the other hand, the same is true of abuses of video cameras to record crimes or telephones. You know every time there is a new communication technology for people to get in touch with each other and share things, it's used for good purposes and bad purposes. Facebook Live is used for grandparents to see their grandbabies thousands of miles away. It's used for all kinds of innocuous purposes. And then you know people are good people or bad. People also use it for terrible purposes. But I think taking away a key communications platform because of those instances of abuse would be a trade-off that we don't want to make. I’d also like to just respond a little bit to something that the first guest said about people committing crimes for social media fame. This sounds so similar to conversations we've already had for years about people committing crimes for real media fame because it will be discussed in radio programs like this. So I'm not sure while the social media element absolutely adds something new, I think it is part and parcel of an existing problem that has to do with our overall communications system including regular news media.

LL: I suppose the difference now being that we can see it happening in front of our faces when we didn't even invite it into our homes as opposed to having something in a newspaper. But it's an interesting discussion. I thank both of you for your time.

BOTH VOICES: Thank you.

LL: Daphne Keller is the director of the intermediary liability at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. She was in San Francisco. Hany Farid is a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College and he was in Norwich, Vermont. The Current contacted Facebook for a comment regarding the video which appeared to show the violent beating of Serena McKay in Manitoba's Sakgeeng First Nation. A Facebook person sent us a written statement which reads: “This was a horrific tragedy and our hearts go out to the family and friends of Ms. McKay. We're working with law enforcement as they investigate.” Now we want to hear from you. How would you like to see social media platforms like Facebook respond to videos of violent incidents? Let us know what you think. Tweet us @thecurrentCBC or me @lauralynchCBC. Comment on this Facebook post or e-mail us by clicking on contact at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Next is the news. We'll be right back after that.

Meet the godfather of Canada's outlaw biker club, Satan's Choice

Guests: Peter Edwards

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. Earlier this week I spoke with feminist Camille Paglia. Her newest book is a collection of her writings titled Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism. And it was a spirited conversation. Take a listen.

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CAMILLE PAGLIA: What I'm criticizing in current feminism is a kind of bourgeois entitlement. There’s an upper middle class girly thing. Young women are demanding a continuation of the protected environment of their bourgeois living room on a college campus in the workplace.

LL: You and I both know that younger people, this generation who are moving into the workplace now, live in precarious times. We call about precarious employment where jobs aren't secure and because of that, younger women may feel intimidated by the idea of standing up to the bad remarks or the bad behaviours. Don't they deserve to have some kind of avenue to go to get help?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Not from above. Not paternalistic rules which say that whatever problems you're having, there'll be mommy and daddy afterward you know to protect you. No. Okay?

LL: So what do they do?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: They should model their persona on me and on fellow Amazon feminists of the 1960s which is that you are responsible for how people treat you.

LL: Well, and after that interview we heard from a lot of you and it included many divergent views. To help me read through just some of your comments now, I'm joined by one of The Current’s producers, Karin Marley. Hi, Karen.

KARIN MARLEY: Hi, Laura.

LL: I mean really no surprise that this created a lot of division among the listeners. On Twitter, @Steve3B06 writes: “I completely agree with Camille Paglia. Women's rights is an important issue worldwide but we need an equality stance not anti-men.”

KARIN MARLEY: Laura Mason tweets: “Camille Paglia made the important point that we need to be free thinkers, not stubborn crusaders for universities’ creeds.” And @sixofdiamondssnb writes: “Working on third PhD. Perhaps my short skirt is distracting them from taking my dissertation seriously. Please tell me where to find turtlenecks.”

LL: Over on Facebook, Theresa Bianco posted this: “Listening to Camille Paglia was like listening to a female version of Donald Trump—completely imbued with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and overly convinced of her self-righteousness.”

LL: Denise O'Reilly from Cherhill, Alberta wrote this on email: “Just wanted to voice how much I enjoyed Camille's points on feminism and female and male roles in this world. People are so sheep-like that there are very few minds that stand out on their own and can think on their own. Why is it that strong women are so often shunned for standing up and speaking their minds?”

LL: Janie Bourget-Luke Brenner writes: “Here's what bothers me most about her perspective and her opinions: she's speaking from a point of privilege and fails to recognize and address inequality relating to poverty, lack of higher education and gender norms that place many women and minorities at a disadvantage. It's easy for her to say stand up for yourself and you'll be respected because she is a highly educated self-confident woman.”

KARIN MARLEY: Cindy Beaton from Halifax writes: “Camille Paglia’s emotional speaking style full of derision and incredulity reminded me of Donald Trump. Her responses were overpopulated with a self-indulgent pronoun “I”. This is always a signal to me that the speaker has a larger interest in self-promotion than a genuine interest in the issue at hand.”

LL: And finally Jewel Swanson from Calgary wrote: “I consider myself a first-wave feminist who has become increasingly alienated from the current mainstream brand of feminism. The interview with Camille Paglia this morning was a wonderful reminder of why I became a feminist in the first place.” As we said, lots and lots of reaction to that. Karin, thanks for coming in and helping me share it.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome, Laura.

LL: Karin Marley is a producer on The Current. In today's world of biker gangs, the Hells Angels reign supreme. No other biker gang has the numbers, the influence or the criminal reach of the world's most famous motorcycle club. But there was a time when another club, a Canadian biker club, challenged the Hells Angels’ size if not its influence. It was called the Satan’s Choice motorcycle club and its undisputed leader was Bernie Guindon. Peter Edwards is a long-time crime reporter with the Toronto Star and the bestselling author of 14 books. His latest is Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club. Peter Edwards joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

PETER EDWARDS: Hi. Great to be here.

LL: How did you meet Bernie Guindon?

PETER EDWARDS: I was working on another book on Lorne Campbell. He's a former Satan’s Choice member. I was at his place for that and then Bernie showed up. It was around Christmas and he was trying to put up their Christmas lights and having a bit of difficulty. But it was interesting to meet him and we just sort of got chatting.

LL: Well, what were your first impressions of him as a person?

PETER EDWARDS: He was a perfectionist. He couldn't get the lights put up right and he was getting very frustrated but he really wanted to do it right. He wanted to do something nice for his friend. It bothered him that the lights weren't working.

LL: So how important was he in the rise of biker clubs in Canada?

PETER EDWARDS: He was central. If you had to pick the most important person of the sixties to 2000, I think it would be him. He pulled things together. He tried to hold off the international influence. He saw things coast to coast. He had a charisma. He kind of was the model for what a lot of people wanted to be in that world.

LL: I want to get into his biker career but let's talk first about where Bernie came from. He didn't have a very good upbringing. What was life like for him growing up as a kid in Oshawa east of Toronto?

PETER EDWARDS: Very tough. He has an older brother and he and the brother used to be told to fight for customers at his father's bootlegging business.

LL: Fight for customers. Fight each other?

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah, fight each other and the customers would watch them fight and they’d drink and then they might buy some more. And so they were like the entertainment, the kids fighting. And so Bernie's brother had a bad leg and Bernie's a very good fighter so Bernie would win the fights. But I mean that was the upbringing was punch out your big brother.

LL: His father was also an alcoholic and a bootlegger.

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah. It's odd because at one point I think Bernie was rebellious. Now he's thinking that his dad had a rough time too and he's more forgiving.

LL: But what did he think then?

PETER EDWARDS: I think there was fear and also Bernie was trying to protect his mother. And so a lot of Bernie's trouble with authority was that his father would beat his mother and Bernie would have to watch it until he got big enough to hold off his father. And I think that's why his reflex is violence. You know that's the way things were solved and when he could finally handle his father and protect his mother, then that's when he became a man.

LL: So what was his relationship like with his mother? I think her name was Lucy.

PETER EDWARDS: Very, very protective. She represented all the soft things, all the good things, all the things that made things worthwhile. I think with his father is a lot more complex. With his mother, there was goodness.

LL: So he has this upbringing where he's being told he has to fight with his brother. His household is full of violence. Where did the fascination with motorcycles come from?

PETER EDWARDS: His father didn't like them and I think that's part of it. I think there's also the 1953 movie The Wild One and I think all of those guys who wanted to be Lee Marvin. Lee Marvin is like the touchstone for those guys.

LL: Remind us of the character, who Lee Marvin played, what kind of person.

PETER EDWARDS: There was Marlon Brando who was talking about rebellion and sounding kind of philosophical to me and Lee Marvin was just the hardcore “I'm going to survive” sort of guy. And so the Marlon Brando’s the glamour one but they all like Lee Marvin. His parents finally split and his mother took up with someone who rode a motorcycle and gave Bernie a ride. So I think there's sort of a cowboy thing about a motorcycle for some of those guys too so there was that. It's also not super expensive if you really devote yourself to it and you can fix it up. You can customize it. And irony is a lot of the old motorcycles back then were police discards.

LL: So that became his obsession, his fascination.

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah and he was very good at it and he got this huge fancy motorcycle called the Wild Thing and he'd write it up and down Simcoe Street and people would look at him like he was some conquering hero.

LL: How old was he at this point?

PETER EDWARDS: He’d be late teens.

LL: So he gets the motorcycle. Biker clubs back then in the fifties, were they the same kinds of criminal organizations that they are today?

PETER EDWARDS: No, they were kind of scruffy kids who hung around hamburger stands and scowled. And they’d talk about life not having meaning, sort of scowly kids who chewed their hamburgers in an angry way.

LL: [laughs] So no criminal activity, no gang violence even?

PETER EDWARDS: They didn't go out of their way to do criminal activity. I mean they might fight they weren't criminal masterminds. They weren't on the radar for police. They were more rebellious kids who you know say school’s stupid, work’s stupid. I just want to ride my motorcycle. They were kind of Jack Kerouac guys without reading the books.

LL: And was Bernie one of those?

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah. He was on the higher end of those guys and he wanted—Bernie doesn't like whining like he's a very anti-whiner person. He was also a boxer and he was really rising up in that. He boxed for Canada and if he hadn't gone to prison he was a favourite for the Olympics.

LL: Yeah. I want to talk to you a bit more about that. What drew him to boxing? Obviously there was the fighting that he was forced to do when he was younger, but he got involved in it how?

PETER EDWARDS: Part of it is discipline. This guy is really disciplined. He's never been called lazy. A lot of ability. I think it really acted out his personality. Like he didn't go backwards, he didn't go sideways. He he'd go through the person or the person won't have to stop him. It's interesting. He was actually trained for a while by a priest and the priest had a double life as a professional wrestler and he wore a hood. And then he was finally unmasked. It’s a lot of weird little stories.

LL: That sounds like another book. [laughs] But Bernie in the ring, was he an imposing figure?

PETER EDWARDS: He was very, very good. And I talked to George Chuvalo about him and Chuvalo is like a legend.

LL: George Chuvalo, the old heavyweight champion.

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah. He knew Bernie. Bernie moved in his circles and he said that Bernie would have been a very good pro. He remembered Bernie's punches when I talked to him. He said oh yeah, leaping left hook. That’s the guy who hit the big left hand.

LL: Give me a sense though of his physicality. You're talking about Chuvalo who was a heavyweight, who fought Ali, Foreman, Frazier. What was Guindon like physically?

PETER EDWARDS: He’s not really that big. I mean he’s got this big image but when you look at him he's maybe 5’8”, 5’9”. He fought around 150 pounds. He's not a big guy. He had a guy he travelled with who was more than double his size. He had sort of a body guard for a while who was 350 and in a fight I would’ve bet on Bernie over the bigger guy.

LL: So he had a successful amateur career?

PETER EDWARDS: Really successful. He won out bronze in the Pan Am games. He was on the Canadian amateur team. He had all the tools. He could have gone pro but he was in prison for the Olympics.

LL: Well, that'll keep you away from it.

PETER EDWARDS: Actually he did some boxing while in prison too. They’d let him out to fight and then drive him back in a van.

LL: Oh really?

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah, and his training, he wasn't allowed a punching bag when he was in Stony Mountain and he got this huge guy who was well over 300 pounds and the guy would just drop his elbows and let Bernie punch him. [laughs]

LL: So Bernie you have these two sides to his life. He was this promising boxer but he was an increasingly important leader in Canada's biker world. How did the two worlds mix?

PETER EDWARDS: It was pretty tough. I mean the boxing world didn't like it. That was when they wanted clean cut amateurs. At some points he was put in heavier weight divisions than what he really fought in. That didn't work. Bernie didn't want to turn pro because he thought that then if he fought on the streets, his hands would be considered weapons and he'd get longer sentences.

LL: Was there any truth to that?

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah. I mean a prosecutor probably could have used it against him but he was already proven to be a pretty good puncher so I don't think amateur or professional really mattered.

LL: So the two worlds did not mix. He became president of the Satan’s Choice motorcycle club instead by the time he was 22. How did that happen?

PETER EDWARDS: He’s very organized. The surprising thing is he doesn't drink and he was anti-drug. And so he actually was one of the clearer heads. It's not [unintelligible] but he’s a teetotaler. He's not comfortable around drunk people.

LL: That goes back to his father I'm assuming.

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah, and he said he drank a couple of times and he didn't like his personality when he drank so he didn't want to be like that.

LL: So he was he was running the club instead of other people who were older than him, I would think.

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah and he was a pretty big force when he was in his late teens even. At one point he was in a club called The Golden Hawks and they didn't fight well one rumble and he called them the chicken hawks and he quit.

LL: So he’s in Satan's Choice. He's running Satan's Choice. Satan’s Choice club eventually did move in to criminal activity. What was Bernie and the other members involved with?

PETER EDWARDS: There was a turning point around 1970 and a lot of it was some mafia people were looking towards them for muscle, so there was that. The club was really big and they liked the idea of a fair amount of independence so people were coming in that would be freelancing for mob people. There was that. Montreal was getting increasingly rough. It went from kind of recreational drug use to drugs as a business.

LL: To trafficking in drugs.

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah. So the people who might have been smoking up all of a sudden are moving it and some of them would be called upon to do dirty jobs for the mob.

LL: What does that mean?

PETER EDWARDS: Kill people.

LL: Was Bernie involved in that?

PETER EDWARDS: No. An odd thing was he wasn't a gun person and I interviewed some people who were gun people and he did prison time for gun things and they said he just wasn't. He’d do criminal things but he wasn't a gangster.

LL: What's the dividing line between the two?

PETER EDWARDS: It's sort of weird but for them it's a big deal. Is it a club that tolerates criminals because they're all together or is it a club of criminals that tolerates people who don't do crimes all the time? And for them it actually matters.

LL: And yet he ended up doing two lengthy stints in prison. The total is about 15 years. What landed him in prison the first time?

PETER EDWARDS: The first one was indecent assault. There was a pretty wild party.

LL: What was the indecent assault charge? What happened?

PETER EDWARDS: There was a girl who had sex with some of them and one of the people who was involved in having sex with her, that person's wife called in authorities and that led to the charges.

LL: And you say girl. How old was she?

PETER EDWARDS: Fifteen.

LL: That's a pretty serious case. Did he plead guilty? Does he accept that he did something wrong?

PETER EDWARDS: He would accept that it was wrong but he wouldn't take it as more than he would say that she wanted to be there but that it wasn't a good thing to be doing.

LL: And how old was he at that point?

PETER EDWARDS: About 23, 24.

LL: And the second charge?

PETER EDWARDS: The second one was a drug conspiracy. That would be manufacturing chemical drugs.

LL: What kind of drugs?

PETER EDWARDS: Sort of ecstasy type things.

LL: So you mentioned that they allowed him to box. But what was life like on the inside for Bernie?

PETER EDWARDS: It was very tough on the first one because in prison culture, they call it a skin beef. If you go in for a sex crime, you're different than the other ones. And so he had some trouble with some guys and he actually beat up one of them. And after that it actually cleared out a bit.

LL: He established himself as a tough guy on the inside.

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah, and then some other bikers from other clubs, it sort of became biker culture inside prison where people from different clubs got together. He was the only Satan’s Choice one so for a while there he was a smallish Satan’s Choice guy, the only one in there for a crime that all the other prisoners can prey on them for.

LL: And what was happening to Satan's Choice while he was on the inside? I mean he was the leader.

PETER EDWARDS: It fell into the hands of someone who turned it over basically to the Outlaws which is an American-based club and then that was exactly what Bernie didn't want. And so he felt that he was betrayed and sold out. And half of the club went to the Outlaws and half of them stayed Canadian. There was just a huge, huge split. It was like an extremely ugly divorce.

LL: And there was nothing he could do about it, I suppose, from the inside.

PETER EDWARDS: No. And so I think a lot of it, he zoned right out. He actually started to do petit point and leather craft and things where he could just zone right out and not think of anything but what he's working on.

LL: In prison he was doing petit point. But then he got out of prison. He tried to go straight after the second stint. How did that go?

PETER EDWARDS: Not so well. I mean he's not a business person. He tried being a barber. He tried running an amusement park which was an unqualified disaster.

LL: So what did he end up turning to then?

PETER EDWARDS: His motorcycle repair sort of things. There wasn't the big crime after that.

LL: But did he return to the motorcycle club?

PETER EDWARDS: Oh yeah. And he was welcomed back. A lot of the ones who did hang tough and stayed all Canadian, they wanted him. There was a lot of this huge, huge split between Canada and the States and so he became the symbol of the all-Canadian club.

LL: Now in the midst of all of this, Bernie managed to sire as many as 16 children. And I think that they were what, how many different women were these children born of?

PETER EDWARDS: Only two of them have the same mother.

LL: Good Lord. What kind of a father was he?

PETER EDWARDS: The sad thing was he tried. I interviewed his son quite a bit and Bernie really, really trained this kid to fight because Bernie always thought the house would be under attack and sometimes that actually was. And so Bernie was terrified that someone would take his son and punish him by going after his son. And so he turned his son into an extremely good fighter. One daughter actually became a minister and she could lecture Bernie on how he's messing up everybody's lives. And Bernie would take it. But he tried but it just didn't work. There was one part where he got out of prison and he tried driving around on his motorcycle to visit all the kids to try and help them. And it was just a sad, sad tour.

LL: Is he in touch with any of them, most of them these days?

PETER EDWARDS: He's in touch but there’s a lot of sort of tender feelings there. There's a lot of hurt.

LL: You talked about the one son who he was involved with quite closely and perhaps not surprisingly the name of that son is Harley Davidson Guindon. You talked about him training him. How would you describe the relationship between them?

PETER EDWARDS: Bernie's big sin would be that you betray somebody, that you betray trust. And so he's very proud of his—his kid’s done jail time and he's proud of his kid that he hasn't cut any deal where he's ever told on anybody. In Bernie's world, the big thing is that you don't ever say what someone else did. And so there's a lot of pride there. There's a lot of also guilt.

LL: Well, Harley’s spent most of his adult life in and out of prison. Is Bernie proud of that?

PETER EDWARDS: No, not proud of that but there's a lot of sort of fine lines for Bernie where he is proud that his son never cut a deal or never pointed the finger at anyone else. He was very big that he never set a son up in crime. His son sort of went off on his own doing it.

LL: Now Bernie finally did settle down with a woman named Suzanne. He's known her since he was a teenager. Tell me about their relationship and what his life is like now.

PETER EDWARDS: It's not what you'd expect. A lot of his time now is spent in a room with no windows working on leather craft where there's no noise. You could say that's like a cell. A lot of his time is just—he just wants to be quiet and not to be jarred.

LL: You got to know Bernie Guindon in your time writing and researching the book. How old is he and what are your impressions of him now?

PETER EDWARDS: He's 74. He has a lot of regrets. I think there's a certain amount of pride. I think there's a certain amount of surprise that he's still alive. I think he expected to be dead long ago. I think he's very proud of one daughter who will tear a strip off him in half a second.

LL: This is the minister?

PETER EDWARDS: Yeah. I mean I think he's extremely proud of her even though those two wouldn't admit it.

LL: What are his best qualities?

PETER EDWARDS: There's a huge amount of loyalty. If you have a problem with him, you'll get a punch in the chin. He won’t stab you in the back. There's nothing devious about the guy at all and he's smart but he's not devious.

LL: You're making him sound quite noble. But what are his worst qualities?

PETER EDWARDS: Worst quality is there's a temper. People talk about his eyes actually changing colour when he loses his temper. There's a real rage in there.

LL: Do you think he's a good man? I mean after all, look at the life that he's lived. He was a convicted child sex offender, a drug trafficker. He’s got a string of children who he doesn't really have great relationships with.

PETER EDWARDS: I think he's a really complex man. But I mean the man I've seen, he's never lied to me. There's a certain loyalty there. There's a lot of regret. The sex thing, I don’t think at the time he knew her age. I think he thought this was an 18, 19 year old.

LL: Why did you want to write this book? Considering all of the negative things that are part of his life, why would Canadians want to know about him?

PETER EDWARDS: There's something very historic. There's something social history about it. In the sixties, you always hear about the hippies. This is the other side of the coin. These are the kids who didn't go to university later on. There's something very, very human. You know when you said is he's a good person or not, he's a very, very human person. And also I mean if I was at war, Bernie’s the guy I’d want sitting next to me. But in a different situation, his good qualities are very strong. I mean there's obviously you know bad qualities but the very, very human. It's sort of odd. There is a code there. Like this is a guy trying to do right. However it turned out, he really tried in his own way.

LL: Has Bernie seen the book yet?

PETER EDWARDS: He's seen it and he didn't ask to read it when I was going through. He didn't read any drafts of it. And I think he held his breath a couple of times. But I mean some of the worst things about Bernie are from Bernie. I gave him a copy and he said there's good stuff and bad stuff but it's a good book.

LL: You don't really want to make an enemy of him, do you?

PETER EDWARDS: I think if you’re upfront with him, I don’t think there’s—I mean I'm proud of the book and I didn't write it for Bernie, I wrote it about Bernie and I'm proud of it. And I think there's some of it where he wants people to learn from where he messed up and some of it that he’s proud of it. And some of it, at least he was here making noise so he doesn't want it all forgotten.

LL: Well, he won't be forgotten thanks to you, Peter Edwards. Thank you very much.

PETER EDWARDS: Thank you.

LL: Peter Edwards is the author of Hard Road: Bernie Guindon and the Reign of the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club. He joined me in our Toronto studio. And now a nod to the people who made the show this week.

RIGNAM WANGKHANG: Hello. I’m Rignam Wangkhang and I provide the transcriptions along with Eunice Kim for The Current. This week, the show was produced by Idella Sturino, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, John Chipman, Lara O'Brien, Shannon Higgins, Sujata Berry, Kristin Nelson, Karin Marley, Liz Hoath, Samira Mohyeddin, Pacinthe Mattar, Catherine Kalbfleisch and Willow Smith. Our intern is Seher Asaf. Special thanks to our network producers Anne Penman in Vancouver and Mary-Catherine McIntosh in Halifax. And Patrick Ferguson, our production supervisor in Washington, DC. The Current’s writer is Peter Mitton. Lisa Ayuso is our web producer and Ruby Buiza is our interactive producer. Our technical producer Gary Francis. Our documentary editor is Josh Bloch. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

LL: That is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Singer-songwriter Leslie Feist is releasing her first album in six years. It's called Pleasures and Feist joins Tom Power to talk about it all. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. With the app, you can search for stories you missed or want to hear again or listen live to your local CBC station right from your smartphone or tablet. Now finally we have been talking about the Satan’s Choice biker gang. Back in the mid-1960s, there was a National Film Board documentary film about Satan's Choice. We're going to leave you today with a bit of that film. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: John Taylor, president of the Lancers has been with the club for six years. For him, like the rest of the members of Satan’s Choice, bike riding has become a way of life.

[Sound: Motorcycle revving]

VOICE 2: Riding a bike is the greatest feeling in the world. You're not just riding it. You become part of it. You start to think of yourself as a different person. Nobody's on your back. After a while you begin to think that nobody’s bothering me now. Why should they bother me at anytime? You just start to do things you want to do. Don’t worry about what people think of you. I think that's why bike riders get so much fun out of life. We do what we want to do. On the weekends, our whole [unintelligible] gets together and we just go someplace and have a good time, just get away from people. Anything that comes to our head, we do it.

[Sound: Group sing-a-long]

[Music: Ending theme]

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April 28, 2017 full episode transcript

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