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

Lefebvre was kicked out of liquor serving establishments on campus. “That was before Christmas. I negotiated them down to the rest of the fall term, six weeks, but I could still go to the faculty lounge. I would take a whole bunch of my friends up to the faculty lounge. I’d buy the drinks, they’d pay me the cash, and then I wouldn’t pay the faculty lounge back for three or four months. It was a good way of making money for the weekend.”

Lefebvre had his troubles — controlling his temper in his personal dealings, arguing for more union autonomy — but he also had the foresight to help student media gain independence from student politicians. A newspaper or radio station reporting on student government that isn’t at arm’s length from that government is never effective:

It wasn’t an idea that I had to conceive. The Gauntlet had already figured that out. They’d come and talk to me and I’d say, that makes sense, of course that makes sense.

That’s one of the things I learned being the student council president, was that as president you don’t really have to know that much, you just have to know what’s what when you hear it. I know fuck-all about the internet. I know fuck-all about money transfers or finance, but when the idea was presented I thought, Hmm, that sounds to me like a good idea .

After his tenure as president, Lefebvre felt the need for a break before tackling law school: “I decided to take the summer off because I’d heard the Stones were playing at Angels Stadium.” He phoned down and ordered ten tickets from a U.S. agency. A gang of student union people went, along with his old pals John Babick and Gloria and Angie Parker. The Some Girls tour dates for Anaheim were July 23–24, and they were going the second night. The historical reports about the tour suggest that while the band’s rhythm tandem was in form (as usual), the guys upfront, Jagger, Richards, and Wood, were a mess from continuous substance abuse (coke, smack, drink). The performances were lackluster, many agreed, and the Anaheim shows in particular were reportedly epics of boredom. Not that Lefebvre or his Calgary contingent cared—“It’s the Stones, man!”—or agreed. Lefebvre wrote a rave review for the Gauntlet : “Every note was perfectly clear with a dose of the Stones’ characteristic sloppiness … they’re simply amazing.” And anyway, well, for Lefebvre there was also a major distraction.

Angie was total gas. When we were driving down through Salt Lake she’d be lying across the front seat of the car, suntanning through the windshield, with her feet out the window, wearing these tiny cutoffs and that’s all. And I’d pass this semi, and the semi guy’s going Honk! Honk! And I’m going eighty miles an hour and all of a sudden I look in the rearview mirror and this semi comes hi-ballin’ past me about 100 miles an hour, honking, staring down at Angie again. So I pulled in front of him and slowed down to make him pass us again. That was sort of fun. People in Los Angeles, who were used to seeing beautiful chicks, their jaws were dropping.

We had all these great adventures in L.A. When we were coming home we were at San Luis Obispo — we’d been up all night — we went down to the beach. Angie stole a blanket from the motel we were in. I said, “You’re gonna get me in shit. We gotta take that blanket back.”

“Well, first let’s go sleep on it on the beach.”

So we’re lying on the beach. She’s lying on her stomach but she’s undone her top so her tan would have no lines on her back. The next thing you know, our feet are pointed towards the water, and this wave has crashed upon us. We wake up, and I look up, and immediately in front of us — Angie’s beside me and she looks up too — are four little adolescent guys, sitting there, staring, just waiting, and you knew in a instant that they were just waiting for Angie to get up, just waiting and waiting and waiting, watching each wave. And then they finally got their eyeful. Angie ran up to those four little guys and got the one that was the slowest. She grabbed him by the hair and said, “You want a look? Here, have a look.” She was rubbing his face in her chest. She was really kind of forward.

After his wild California adventure, the president floated back down to the mundane. He retained his membership on the Review Board at the U of C Student Union, but his buddy Ramsay was now president and in charge. Lefebvre was out of politics, just another guy looking to get back into school. It was a bit of a leap — the law? Lefebvre? — but he needed to take that leap. He was getting serious with a woman he had met in Dinnie’s Den back in January (in the new year he’d been allowed back into the bar run by his own administration).

Katharine Armitage was a nursing student at the Foothills Hospital. They met one evening in the bar because she and some friends had come to the Den to “get tanked and meet guys,” according to Lefebvre. A real “wild girl.” Her friend Nancy followed him into the men’s washroom with her top stuffed with white buns swiped from the banquet counter, but it was Armitage who ultimately caught Lefebvre’s eye. She stood five-foot-six or — seven, lean, with long, dark hair, an angular face, piercing eyes, and a wicked, smart-ass sense of humor. His timing was good — at that point, he says, he was a “Big Man on Campus, and that sufficed for lack of personality, musculature, and money.”

By the summer Lefebvre and Armitage were a couple, by the fall they were living together, and by the following February she was pregnant. At that point, in Lefebvre’s mind, any reluctance about getting his head into studying law — and he did feel a deep unease in his gut about the field — had to be ignored. Emily was coming in November, and he wanted to be a stand-up guy. They were married in October. The union worked for a while, but not long. By fall 1983, after four years, they were kaput. Lefebvre thinks the divorce went through in the mid-eighties, after he and another lawyer, Jane Bergman, had become an item.

First-year law was stressful, so one pastime Lefebvre picked up, which relieved some of the pressure, was to play the piano on campus. Here’s how it would work. He’d get up at six, get to the university around seven, smoke a joint on the way in, find an empty piano room in Craigie Hall, where the Music Department was located, and play until a music student knocked on the door and said, “Hey, my turn.” Otherwise, no one ever hassled him. Lefebvre would remember the Faculty of Art’s hospitality when he got rich.

My Bail’s Bigger Than Your Bail, Part 1

Day One, Monday, January 15, 2007, Malibu, California, 9 a.m.: Lefebvre is up and about, puttering around in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and sandals, answering some early morning email. Mostly he’s thinking about his love life, about his lunch date with Lisa, his Malibu girlfriend. Thinking about how today is the day he’s going to have to tell her about Hilary, the girl from Salt Spring Island. How it’s serious. How he’s committing. How he’s not playing the field anymore. How they’ve got to revert to being buddies. Lisa will be fine with that. She’ll be California cool. He’s certain.

Lefebvre has been steeping his English breakfast tea. He’s about to take a sip.

Rinnngggg!

Now who the fuck would come around here at 9 a.m. on a holiday Monday?

Mid-January is a strange time for a holiday. Many people are in post-bacchanal recovery mode from credit card overload and weight gain. Some are in the middle of “Juiceless January,” repenting excessive behavior, trying to get right with their bodies. But back in 1983, President Ronald Reagan, not the staunchest of defender of civil rights himself, signed into law an official holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., fifteen years after the African-American activist and religious leader’s assassination in Memphis. It took seventeen more years, but by the millennium, all fifty states united in celebrating the life of the revered orator and civil rights crusader every third Monday in January. And now, seven years later, January 15, 2007, four men and one woman stand on John Lefebvre’s front door step at 25030 Malibu Road, Malibu, California, 90265. The female officer rings the doorbell. “This is the FBI,” she states in a firm monotone. “You must come to the door immediately.”