Serge LeClerc – the turning point

“The secret of life,” Serge LeClerc said in Foam Lake recently, “is not the choice you make. It’s the choices you do not make.”

LeClerc would know. It was a choice that he did not make – to stay at school one Friday afternoon – that led to a brutally abusive training centre, crime, drug addiction, and, eventually, life as one of Canada’s major drug lords. Another choice he rejected allowed him to turn his life around.

LeClerc, now a Saskatchewan MLA, is the son of a Cree mother who was raped at 14. Unable to read or write, living in Toronto, she worked two dishwashing jobs with Sunday off. . “She was a very strong Christian who gave me a set of guidelines and an ethical certainty that I could follow. My identify was framed by the kids in the inner city who didn’t want to fight me because I was a talented boxer. I had talent, and I had mother’s faith.”

However, in order to fit in with a group of older boys, he skipped school and went shoplifting with them. He was caught. The judge branded his Aboriginal mother unfit and sent LeClerc to St. John’s Training School, run by the Christian Brothers. He was physically abused. He ran away, was captured, and beaten some more. He managed a grade 5 education. He did get a new identity. “I discovered that people were motivated by fear and greed. I learned that it was better to be the predator than the prey.”

Eventually, he became Canada’s third largest drug dealer. By 1984, he had a $40 million crystal meth lab, a drug store chain to facilitate importing chemicals, and a string of laundromats to launder money. “I never lied, I never broke my word,” he said. “I said that if you wanted drugs and paid me, I’d get you the best quality possible. And if you didn’t pay me, I would hurt you.”

In his late 30s, he was in jail again, for the fifth time, facing a nine year prison sentence, waiting for a transfer to a super max prison.

A prison volunteer distributing magazines challenged LeClerc. “He told me that I could believe that I was an animal that walks on two legs and there was no meaning to my life – that I began to die as soon as I was born. Or, I could believe that there is a Creator, that I was a creation, that I had a soul and, therefore, had great value. I could choose only one,” he said.

A few months later, LeClerc watched a 19-year-old inmate rip up sheets and hang himself. The kid was in prison for buying crystal meth that had come from LeClerc’s labs. He considered suicide. Then, in his deepest, darkest moment, he chose not to kill himself. He went, instead, to the chapel.

“My mother was right in the things she taught me as a child,” he said. “I began a journey. I began to shed the baggage of prison life. Within six months, I had quit doing drugs and selling drugs. I quit carrying a knife and wanting to stab people. I quit swearing in church about 18 months later – these things take time.”

Taking correspondence courses, he earned General Social Work certification while in prison. When he was released, he enrolled at the University of Waterloo. By the time he graduated with a double Honours degree in Sociology and Social Work, he was on the President’s Honours list for outstanding achievement.

He founded Teen Challenge Saskatchewan, a year-long rehab program for young addicts which ends with a year spent living with a “shepherd” family. Following years of counselling and speaking, he applied for and received a full federal pardon and is now the MLA for Saskatoon Northwest. In 2007, his autobiography, “Untwisted: From Lawbreaker to Lawmaker,” was published.

Post by: Joan Eyolfson Cadham