Sergetalks Blog ~ The Official Blog of Serge LeClerc

I regained consciousness on the way to 311 Jarvis Street and the Juvenile Detention Centre.

Why they would be taking me there was rather confusing to me at the time, because I thought what I had done was perfectly normal given the treatment I had experienced at the hands of this Christian Brother. The courts did not agree.

“The boy must be brain-damaged,” they said. “For a ten-year-old boy to be so violent as to attack a grown man, he is definitely brain-damaged.” A disastrous psychological process had begun in me. I had developed an attitude that is common to many people when they are messing up their lives, when they’re making wrong choices and getting involved with drugs and alcohol, or suffering a lot of pain. It is the ‘I don’t care’ attitude which becomes a protective armor. We try to pretend that nothing bothers us, that we don’t care. And at the tender age of ten, I was already an expert at it. (more…)

For the trip to St. John’s Training School, I was put in a vehicle with a mesh screen separating me from the driver. I remember traveling down a road and going out into the country. It was a new experience for me. I had never been out of the city before.

St. John’s Training School was an ugly place. That was my first impression as we drove through the big steel gates. It had a rural, farmlike setting, but there was nothing peaceful or pastoral about it. The compound consisted of several austere, brown brick buildings and a barn. Much of the complex was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The rest was farm property adjacent to a small town where many of the staff lived.

I was immediately taken to the office of the Head Brother in charge of my assigned dormitory. There I had my hair shaved off, was issued a suit of clothing (blue shirt and pants, both about six inches too long, and black tennis shoes), given a blanket roll, and pointed to my bed. (more…)

In following the theme that I have been speaking to: media manipulation of our youth to mass market products through the TV commercial advertisements and the ever increasing use of alcohol by this current generation; let me state quite clearly that as a dirty-down-low drug dealer in the early part of my life, I was most likely more truthful and ethical than the alcohol industry and the TV industry and their corporate business people in their knowing promotion to our youth of a brand of alcohol before they are old enough to drink – well knowing that it is without a doubt the number 1 social problem of our time. At least as an uncaring and immoral drug dealer, I never lied to anyone and told them that they would be more popular, better looking, have a much better time at a party or get the guy or girl of my dreams! I never attempted to manipulate a youth into thinking their identity would be better if they used a powerful narcotic – I just told them that I sold good dope that would get them high.

The advertisers, and the corporate head office, knowingly target youth before they are even old enough to drink to pick out a particular brand within the alcohol industry – to create a brand loyalty so that when they are old enough, or can sneak some, will gravitate to a particular brand by the ‘identity’ associated with the brand. They project young men being able to ride a horse, muscles rippling in their forearms, hair flowing out behind them in the wind, and when they dismount from the horse, all rugged and macho, beautiful women flock around them and find them sexually appealing because they are ‘a bud man’. They project young women in being able to wear a skimpy bikini, be able to slink down to a beach, have not an ounce of fat or a pimple, and some young guy who looks like ‘Leonardo DePunko’ will fall magically in love with the girl because she drinks ‘the silver bullet light’. They spend billions of dollars on these commercials because they work – not because they do not work – and the proof of that is the starling alcohol consumption by this current generation! (more…)

We ended the last blog with speaking about the societal changes begun in the mid-1960, the moral and ethical left-hand turn, the movement into ‘MEism’, which has set up the change of consequences for the choices that young people make today – and the foundation of comparative values to judge those choices against. They are faced with the exact same choices every young person has always faced; sex, alcohol, drugs, how to dress and how to view one’s identity. We reviewed the reality of today’s consequences in the arena of sex by looking at the startling increase in the number of teenagers having sexual transmitted diseases and more alarming, the increase and diversity of the STDs themselves. Then we looked at the numbers of crisis pregnancy rates, the proliferation of abortions and the proportion below the age of 17 yrs, and the interrelationship of those factors to the spike of teenage female rates which is the 2nd leading cause of death amongst our teens. (more…)