I show my adoption photographs to a friend and he recognises his father in one. I recognise myself in him.Ī wild synchronistic event occurs one day. I first got to know my father from a photograph. I receive an envelope with photos from the crime scene including a photograph of my father lying dead in his car.Ībove, My birth father on the left in his infamous boat, the Shepherd. Canadian journalist, Simma Holt, donated her writing to the library and in it are the research materials from her book, The Devil’s Butler, about the Satan’s Angels bike gang and the police investigation into the murder of my birth father. During my research into the murder, I request a file from the archives of the University of Manitoba. ‘The Murder’ section in this piece is the result of my efforts. Each week I produce a scene from the murder in the short condensed Micro Lit style – little descriptive prose, present tense, verbs and dialogue, the total opposite my long essays. I take a Micro Lit course at Cit Lit University in London to kickstart the project. Only now, 25 years later and, after decades of yoga, meditation and therapy, do I have the emotional stability to work with the material. I make a few attempts but the content is just too difficult. And I still might.Ībove, Pierre Elliot Trudeau and journalist Simma Holt. If I’d stayed, I would have tracked him down. I don’t meet Robert David James that day and my life takes me away from Canada for 20 years. If there was one good thing to result from the murder, it was the end of the Satan’s Angels, a sadistic bike gang who kidnapped and tortured hippies off Davie Street in Vancouver in the late sixties.
He doesn’t but he remembers the Satan’s Angels and says the chapter no longer exists. I approach an elder biker and ask if he knows him. I wonder if the murderer, Robert David James, is here. I take the B.C Ferry to Vancouver Island and find myself on board with the Hells Angels. Seventeen-year-old Donna, had vacillated between hippies and bikers since she was thirteen, and was eye witness to the murder in the clubhouse living room.
#DOUG LINDSAY I HAD TO HEAL MYSELF TRIAL#
I meet the Chief Justice of the British Columbia Courts who generously gives me a photocopy of the murder trial proceedings - with a harrowing testimony by the murderer’s ‘old lady’ of one week. One man has a deformed and shriveled arm. … He was seen with two young men Thursday night. “Savage beating of former Calgary oilman who had worked on million-dollar promotions in B.C. He is elegant and dapper in a black and white suit with a tie. “Sidney Albert MacDonald, 50, was found bludgeoned to death in a car in Burnaby.” The photo of the ‘slain man’ is Sid. The story is front page news on the Vancouver Sun in 1968. I read the Devil’s Butler by Canadian journalist, Simma Holt, about the notorious Satans Angels bike gang and in it is a chapter on the murder of my birth father. I research his murder in the library archives, scroll through newspaper clippings imprinted on to microfilm. I believe that in healing myself, I will heal the spirit of my dead father. I no longer believe I’m going to die violently. I visualise the brutality, delve deep into my own shadow to release my fear. With owl eyes, I learn to see through the darkness.
I go underground, inside Pandora’s black box, and imagine eagle talons, jaguar claws ripping me apart so I can be reborn. I’m fatally flawed and destined to be alone. The original rejection trauma of adoption returns, as do the critical voices. “He was murdered by the Satan’s Angels bike gang.” Suddenly, my life falls to pieces. The Stoney Indians say that when a father dies his spirit goes into the youngest daughter. Yet, his death has been psychically imprinted upon me. No right to grieve his death because I never knew him.
#DOUG LINDSAY I HAD TO HEAL MYSELF CODE#
Like some child prodigy following their genetic code to greatness, do I have a bad seed inside me that will lead to my destruction? Will I too die a violent death? His murder takes on the symbolic force of my own darkness: violent thoughts, fear and depression. Who was this generous and flamboyant man whose intoxicated dreams led him on a walk on the wild side? I hear those words as if they are inside a bell jar, they echo inside my head and the rest of the conversation tinkles against the glass, unheard. “He was murdered by the Satan’s Angels bike gang.” Bludgeoned to death. The first time I speak with my birth mother, she tells me my father is dead. Adoption, Spiritual Practice Satan’s Angels: The Ugly Club The Murder of my Birth Father by Heather Elton
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