When Montreal bikers were given government cash to carve wooden ducks

   The Sundowners, Popeyes, Death Riders, Dead Men, Cave Men, Outsiders, Les Gorilles, Playboys, Arch Angels, Phantoms - all of these were biker gangs in the late 60s and there might have been more.

   These gangs were all in attendances - 285 in total - at a funeral for a pair of bikers run down by a motorist in St. Constant in May 1969.
   We mentioned a few times here about a progressive initiative led by local cop John Dalzell to co-opt these gangs and keep them from causing trouble.
   Those gangs were given a dedicated place to hang out and ride their bikes but stopped going pretty fast.
   The 25-member St. Henry Dead Men MC were given something much more substantial, however. They were given jobs.
   The federal Local Initiatives Program handed them a $75,000 grant to make  wooden handicrafts such as bolo bats, puzzles, dolls boats, cars and tractors. One of their best sellers was an old-fashioned telephone.
   The gang, aged 18 to 25, even purchased their own building in Old Montreal with no money down to house their workshop.
   The boys earned $80 a week from the 1971 program which hoped to reverse the influx of imported toys from abroad.
   No word on whatever happened to the gang but it appears that Ronal Malo and Robert McPhee, the only bikers named in the media coverage, did not turn into prominent criminals.
   According to a 1973 Canadian Magazine article, the gang received $150,000 from the LIP program the year prior. According to one online calculator that would be worth about $830,000 in today's money.
   A wistful duckie was their bestseller. Most of the bikers "sold their bikes and bought old cars," it reports.