The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club may not have an active affiliate in Thunder Bay, but their influence is still felt in the city and region, says the deputy director of the OPP’s Provincial Biking Unit.
“Like other areas of the province, the Hells Angels have had a presence,” OPP Det. Insp. Scott Wade said. “They’ve been disturbed by police projects, investigations or just direct alternative disruption that affects their membership.”
“Thunder Bay in particular has seen the flow of that membership and the membership has been going up and down,” he said. “The head was closed and open. And right now, according to my intelligence and my information…the Thunder Bay chapter is closed right now.”
“But there are still members in the area who influence the Hells Angels in the area.”
A major blow to the Canadian Hells Angels came in 2006 in an operation known as Project Husky. The OPP, along with Thunder Bay police, RCMP, Surete du Quebec and Calgary police, worked together in a two-year investigation that resulted in numerous arrests in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.
In Thunder Bay, police raided the Hells Angels clubhouse and arrested four Hells Angels members and some associates.
Overall, Project Husky also saw police seize more than $2.3 million in illegal drugs.
More recently, the Hells Angels established a clubhouse on Simpson Street. However, this building was destroyed by fire in 2020.
Wade said as police continue to crack down on outlaw biker gangs in Ontario, there has been “exponential growth” in what he called support clubs across the province.
“Some clubs support the Hells Angels,” he said. “That means attending their events, hanging out with them.”
“They are a friendly club or an associate club or a supporters club, whereas some of the more prominent clubs like the Iron Dragons Motorcycle Club, the Red Devils, they are support clubs directly linked to the Hells Angels and they wear support 81 patches on their vest, meaning they support the Hells Angels in an official capacity.”
Wade said these clubs act as a network that larger clubs, such as the Hells Angels, will use to “facilitate their criminal activities so they can stay in the shadows, stay out of the police eye and the public eye, and induce others to carry out their criminal activity.”
Wade said some clubs that are associated with the Hells Angels are in Thunder Bay and the surrounding area.
Kenneth Dowler, an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University who teaches a course on biker gangs in the school’s criminology department, said outlaw biker gangs do their best to keep a low profile when it comes to criminal activity, including drug, extortion and human trafficking .
“When an entity controls the criminal market, you’re going to see relative calm,” Dowler said.
“If you look at where homicide rates come and go, a lot of the time, it’s because of the market opening up. And suddenly people start trying to make money.”
In general, however, Dowler said, biker gangs do not want to draw too much attention to themselves and would not accept members who engage in random acts of violence.
“At one point, way back in biker history, they were into a lot of tourism,” he said. “They’re going through town, getting into bar fights, and doing all kinds of things like that.”
“They don’t want that attention now,” Dowler said, adding that bike gangs will also participate in things like Toys for Kids and rides to raise money for cancer research.
“They wanted to have this public image of being these good guys on bikes,” he said. “It’s because they don’t want anything negative to disrupt their business.”
In recent years, street gangs from southern Ontario have emerged in Thunder Bay, essentially taking over the drug trade in the city and region. Wade said outlaw bikers will work in tandem with these gangs as long as it’s profitable.
“We’ve been fortunate enough through good policing, intelligence and law enforcement that we don’t have significant conflicts, which is our number one priority to make sure there’s no threat to public safety or officer safety from conflicts between these groups,” Wade said. “But they do arise from time to time.”
Wade said police do not currently believe there is a high risk of widespread violence due to conflict between the various criminal groups.
Dowler, however, said there had certainly been conflict in the past.
“It happened in British Columbia at one point, I think it was around this year 2000,” he said. “There was another criminal organization that wasn’t associated with cyclists that wanted to come in.”
“There was a little bit of violence that happened, but my understanding is that it was a deal breaker,” Dowler said. “It’s kind of like what happened in Montreal with the Irish mob and the Italian mob and the bikers working together at one point to make sure they’re still operating.”
“So there hasn’t been a real challenge at that point,” he said. “As long as these other organizations are either paying some money or basically setting aside their territory and not actually infringing, that’s what’s keeping the violence to a minimum right now.”
Dowler said violence does break out, but not at the level seen during the biker wars in Quebec.
“The biker war was between the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels,” Dowler said. “The Rock Machine were basically a biker gang that didn’t really care about the biker club culture at all, they were just experienced drug dealers who wanted to take over the market.”
“The whole war is on the Rock Machine and the Hells Angels fighting for control of the drug market.”
“It was one of the most violent episodes in Canadian history.
Wade said there are currently several hundred Hells Angels members in Ontario and investigating their activities requires a lot of resources.
“The legal process is lengthy and requires a lot of resources, so our investigations have to be carried out very efficiently,” he said. “One of the big ways we do that at the Biker Enforcement Unit is through our partnerships.”
“We have over 20 municipal partners involved in the motorist enforcement unit with members from across the province.”
And while Thunder Bay doesn’t currently have an active Hells Angels chapter, Wade said he believes the gang still has an influence on the city.
“Really good law enforcement from Thunder Bay police and the OPP and our partners has affected their ability to keep a head, but I believe they will maintain their sphere of influence in this area,” he said. “We may see an increase in support clubs because the chapter is still here, but that remains to be seen.”
“Things are changing very quickly in the motorcycling world.”
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