Bill Reynolds - Life Real Loud - John Lefebvre, Neteller and the Revolution in Online Gambling

Ted was not the rebellious type; he was inclined to fit into the system. He was also more of a jock in high school and hung out with Danny Patton, who would later engineer and play on Lefebvre’s recordings. Ted became an oilman in Alberta, and Lefebvre readily admits, “It was quite a burden for Ted to have me as a brother.” Then again, Ted took the idea of blood brothers seriously. “His English teacher brought me an essay he wrote about his brother,” Louise says, “and it was a beautiful love letter. He was so upset that people thought less of John.”

John’s sister, Anne, also visited him in Bowden jail, although less frequently. They all whiled away the hours with bridge and conversation. Louise was doubly tested the year of Lefebvre’s drug bust: her only daughter had a child out of wedlock and gave her up for adoption, and it would take almost four decades for that trauma to heal.

Effectively, Lousie Lefebvre had become the house shrink. “The bust was good for Mom,” says Lefebvre, who thinks of his and Anne’s troubles as his mom’s Gonzaga U practicum. He continues, “Well, it was bad too, but it was good because she was forced to realize that people in trouble aren’t necessarily bad people. It’s hard for a mom to think of her own child as a bad person, and she knew that neither Anne nor I were particularly bad. Maybe we were disobedient vis-à-vis the law, but she knew us to be capable of making good judgments.”

In response to her son’s recent assessment, Louise says,

Oh dear. I never thought John was a bad person, just a bit foolish. I know I worry too much about what people think, but it’s hard when people ask, “Where’s your son?”

“Well, he’s — you know — he’s in that boarding house in Bowden.”

Lefebvre was released from prison on July 15, 1970. He says the authorities were sadistic in extending his departure date. They kept him in the Bowden pen on purpose until ten days after a major rock festival had left Calgary. The Festival Express was a short-lived transcontinental road show concocted in Toronto. Festival dates included that city, Winnipeg, and then, on July 4–5, McMahon Stadium in Calgary, home of the Canadian Football League’s Calgary Stampeders. The musicians and their equipment traveled by chartered train, which allowed for much indulgence along the way. The bill included Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Buddy Guy. The Band was the headliner, and other Canadian acts included Ian and Sylvia Tyson’s Great Speckled Bird and French-Canadian rock star Robert Charlebois. Mashmakhan, riding worldwide fame with the novelty hit “As the Years Go By,” hoped to be hometown heroes when the train stopped in Montreal. They were foiled. The date was lopped off the tour after panic-stricken locals successfully petitioned the city to prevent the trainload of drugged-out rock ’n’ rollers from setting foot inside the city limits. The men who ran Bowden knew Lefebvre was a longhaired, dope-smoking hippie who loved rock ’n’ roll, and they knew he was looking forward to seeing all the great bands. They also knew that all his friends would be there and that he wouldn’t, which Lefebvre imagined gave them great satisfaction.

Lefebvre’s sentence, one year in prison, was half of what many of his friends were handed. They were given two years less a day, the maximum amount that could be meted out for Bowden. A few guys were saddled with serious time — four years — in a federal pen. The reason Lefebvre got off lightly in comparison was because his mom found representation for him through Catholic family connections. Asa Milton “Milt” Harradence retired in 1997 as a judge of the Alberta Court of Appeal, but in 1969–70 he was a gale-force criminal lawyer on the provincial jurisprudence scene. He was also a sharply right-wing patriot. He had been a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II and then a member of the Confederate Air Force in Texas — kind of like John Birchers with wings. Harradence was elected to Calgary City Council in 1957 and reelected in 1960, only to resign. He took over the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta in 1962, but in the 1964 provincial election he failed to win a seat in the legislature. In 2001, C.D. Evans was impressed enough by his law colleague’s career that he wrote a hagiography called The Western Flair .

While Harradence may have been a bust on the provincial political scene, by 1969 he knew a lot of people and how to outmaneuver legal adversaries. Lawyers were wary of having to go up against him in court. In Lefebvre’s case, it wasn’t verbal pugilism that prevailed but cronyism. “Harradence was a gregarious sort of fellow,” says Lefebvre. “He took my bail bond, which was six hundred bucks, for his retainer and never asked for another penny.” Nothing happened for a long time, and then, as Lefebvre recalls,

Milt finally calls us in for a meeting and goes, “We’re going in next Tuesday to plead guilty.”

I said, “Guilty? For six hundred bucks I can stand there and say ‘Guilty’!”

So he comes across the table at me, rolling up his sleeves, and says, “I used to be the champion golden glove boxer in my category, and I’ll teach you a lesson, you smart aleck.”

My mom is screaming while this bunch of bravado is going on. And there’s this other young guy there, Milt’s junior criminal lawyer, who says, “When you come to court to plead guilty, wear shorts and cut your hair.”

“Cut my hair?!”

“Yeah, cut your hair! Wear shorts! Suck a lollipop! Do whatever you need to do to look like a kid.”

I was getting a really good education.

Lefebvre was seventeen, busted, in danger of doing serious time, and going before an older judge. His lawyer was a one-hundred-percent pure Alberta redneck who understood the difference between winning and losing. Clean up real good, sonny boy, before you go before the Honorable Mr. Justice H.W. Riley.

Harradence lined up three character references for Lefebvre. The first was Arial Gogan. Lefebvre knew Gogan a bit from when he worked at Holy Cross Hospital, in the kitchen, as the night cook, warming up the day’s unused food for the night crew’s midnight lunch. Lefebvre also made cereal, Cream of Wheat, in a huge vat, which occasionally tipped and spilled mush all over the floor. The rest of the time he went to the back of the kitchen and smoked hash. To Lefebvre, Gogan was a buddy from the Scottish intelligentsia. People used to stay up late and pull out the whiskey and guitars. When someone whipped out a version of “With God on Our Side,” Gogan would spit, “That’s not Bob Dylan — that’s an Irish rebel folk song!” And he’d bellow, unaccompanied, the plundered original.

Lefebvre’s second character reference was Father Pat O’Byrne, an influential man who was director of Catholic Charities for the Calgary Diocese. He was a socially aware fellow whose younger brother Paul became the bishop of Calgary.

Reference number three was William C. Howells, the father of Lefebvre’s friend Dave Howells. The elder Howells was an influential oilman in Calgary. When Howells got up to speak, Justice Riley jumped out of his chair, put out his hand, and said, “Willie, what the hell are you doing here? Good to see you!”

“And they shook hands,” says Lefebvre. He continues,

Willie Howells and Justice Riley were great drinking buddies. My buddy Dave and his friend Henry used to pour them into the car and drive Riley home and drive Willie home. They were friends. Harradence was the guy who knew exactly how to play that card — not what you know, who you know.

And, of course, Milt knew all of these relationships existed. So where other guys were getting two years less a day and two years probation, I got one year and no probation. They marched me right out of that courtroom. My mom came up to the bar that was between us and gave me a hug and said, “He’s just a boy!” A bunch of my hippie friends were there and said, “We love you, John!” And then out the back door and into jail. That was it.