Campsite Media.
Hello everyone, and welcome to our bonus episode for Go Boy. I'm Sam Mullins and I'm here with my co creator of the Go Boy podcast.
Rob Hello.
Rob Lindsay.
And one thing that's hard when you make a podcast series like this, especially Go Boy, where you could have a twenty episode series just telling Roger stories from different times in his life, and when you cut it all together, there's always some of your favorite stories that just didn't quite fit into the series that you were making. So we thought it would be fun if we sort of go through some of our favorite stories that either didn't make it into Go Boy or that we're just kind
of fully touched on in the series. So we want to go through and kind of highlight some of our favorite full stories and some of our favorite little nuggets that will help those who enjoyed this series understand and appreciate the character of Roger Kron even a little bit more.
Yeah, it's great too because we have these cards everywhere, and not all the cards made it into the podcast, so this is a nice opportunity to get those stories out.
Yeah, all the flash cards from the corkboard that didn't quite make it into the episode outlines. Right, yeah, I can go first. I'll start with the Bowl Gang. So the Bull Gang is something that existed at the Guelph Reformatory, which was the first real reformatory that Roger went to. When he first got there, he kept getting into trouble with other inmates. He was like violent and fighting and he was getting into trouble with the guard all of
the time. And if you kept getting into the trouble, they would sentence you for X amount of time to go and join the Bull Gang. And the Bullgang was this segregated unit. They had no privileges and just like a hard bed, three meals a day, and their main punishment was that they had to do this hardcore manual labor in the pit, with the idea being we're going to take all these problem inmates and we're just going to exhaust them every day and use it as a
way to scare other inmates into behaving. The way that the Bullgang would work was every day they would march to the furthest reaches off the property and they would all be pushing these wheelbarrows toward this huge two hundred foot by two hundred.
Foot sixty foot deep pit.
That was just it was essentially just like a gravel pit right where Corey. Yeah, totally a quarry where they would break off boulders from the side and break it into smaller boulders that would fit into their wheelbarrows, and then they'd load them up and then they'd have to like push these impossibly heavy wheelbarrows back up and around, and then they would take it a couple hundred yards or something and they would dump it down the steep embankment.
Because what the big project was was that they were trying to fill this sort of lake or wetland area with gravel so that they could develop it more or something like they could put buildings in this wetland essentially, so they're just breaking rocks, moving rocks, dumping rocks.
It is literally that thing where you you know, break a big rock and make it a smaller rock, and then take that smaller rock and make it even smaller.
Yeah.
And one detailed I love is that all of these guys cared for their wheelbarrows like they were their children rogers. That was like pushing a car up a hill, pushing these things out. So after hours, these guys would be like greasing the wheel and making the handles more comfortable, and they would all name their wheelbarrows, and Rogers was
named Voodoo. And then if they ever were paroled, if a guy was paroled and he had a sweet wheelbarrow, they would all jockey for position to try and get the nice wheelbarrow and take care of it with the claws being that if the guy ended up having to do another stint on the bulgang, that he.
Was allowed to his wheelbarrow back. I really love that.
It's like, you know, from Rodgers respective what he would have done with his bike might have been in this case as his wheelbarrow.
Yeah, And the way that he describes this pit, it just seems like there was never a nice time of year to be working outside in this pit, because the summers in this region just are so hot and muggy and humid, and they would just barely be able to stand up from heat.
E saw.
And then in the winter, he said all of their winter gear was a joke, that it was just modified from discarded old prison clothes. They'd make gloves and stuff for them, and they would all be down there, just their teeth chattering, and then they'd look up and they were always watched by armed guards because they were kind
of off campus and they were the worst inmates. So there's like eight armed guards, and they'd look up at the armed guards and they would all be laughing and drinking their nice thermos of soup that their wife made for them, and they would all just resent those guys so hard as they're freezing.
Down in this hole.
And the other thing I remember when Roger talked about is that it was like scary down there. When there was a wind, it would make a howling sound over the top of the pit, and it was so echoey down there that it just sounded like it was haunted, and it would he says, that would freak these really tough guys out sometimes, the sounds that would be generated down in this hell hole.
And then they would also try to get out of work. Detail they would sort of give each other the nod of take me out today, And so as I'm breaking the rock, the sledgehammer breaks my foot instead, Oh yeah, which is very common thing to do. So they got onto them of that, you know, like they looked out for that. So you could actually get in a lot of trouble for breaking the guy's foot.
Not only do you need to break your leg, but you need to do a really good job of making it look like an accident if you want to get off the bull Gang for good. One other element I'm obsessed with about the Bullgang is that there was a special guard who sort of looked over them, and I think his name was Sergeant Tracy, but.
Everyone called him the Dick.
That was his nickname, because everyone has an adorable nickname in prison, of course, And the thing about the Dick is that the guy couldn't decide if they loved him or hated him, because he would sort of look out for them, and he would protect them from other guards messing with them. He's like, those are my guys to mess with, Like no one even look at my inmates
because the Bullgang belonged to me. Roger talks about how during the spring months it was sort of go boys season, where lots of these guys would try to make a run for it in that time. The thing about the Dick is that he was in such incredible shape that no one could outrun him, and then if.
He caught you, he would just beat you up.
So guys wouldn't run if they knew that the Dick was gonna be the one chasing them, because he would just calmly jog after them like he's a marathon runner, with the confidence that he would catch them and bring them back by their shirt collar.
Which is even more impressive that Roger did escape from there. He was a goal boy from the Bull Gang too, so that's even more impressive that, yeah, he was able to escape from the dick on top of all them.
It was quite the distraction that made it possible. Roger talks about his time on the Bullgang that that was really his coming of age moment. That's where he went from a boy to a man, was doing that hard labor with those guys, and it sounds even though it's like obviously miserable work, it seems like a part of him really enjoyed this camaraderie and suffering through this with this tight group of guys that would work together and
commiserate together. I think that that was a big moment in his coming of age tale.
And I think because they were the sort of the group singled out as the hard knot guys that are in here, and if Roger was among them, he was sort of brought into the fold. And because he was so much younger, probably having these older guys. You know, he's one of us. You're you're you know, as the sad and good fellows, You're one of us.
And I think in a lot of these settings, like even later with the weight Gang at Kingston Pen that Roger always earned other guys respect by just being a hard working and stubborn and determined kid. Yeah, like people like that, Guys like that admired that any young kid.
Yeah, you totally.
It was funny because you would say that about the about the bull gang, and it was making me think. When he was in Gwelph, there was a bird stuck in a window and so Roger was, you know, feeling bad for the bird. So we whipped a piece of soap, broke the window, freed the bird.
You know, Okay, I did my job.
But the guys didn't see it that way at all and came in and beat the crab out of him and took him down. We're gonna take him down to the hole. But they gave him an option, like you can either go to the hole and get the paddle, or we've got this new psychiatric department and we're running
these sort of new tests. If you decide to do these new tests with this new psychiatrists that we got, you will forego all the punishment that you would normally get, which would have been the whole the paddle and stuff of that. And so Roger was at first very reluctant. He's just like, I don't like the ideas. I'll take
my punishment. It's like, but this test is made for someone like you, Roger, Like, if you have a temper and if you, you know, are feeling volatile and stuff like that, this is designed to curb those those tendencies. So at the end of the day, Roger thought, okay, well maybe sure I'll try it. And they had just built like it was this beautiful new air beautiful, but you know, it was this.
New area in there.
They had soft beds, they had one guard looking over the whole area, and then the rest of the guards, if you will, were nurses and they were all women, and some of them were young, and they were all cute. And so Roger was in this environment for about ten days and the tests were ink blots and puzzles and you know those do sketches of your family and stuff.
So he's like, I get to do this instead of getting with a perforated strap, like what exactly.
So he thought, this is amazing, I'm so glad I agreed to do this, and so he did that for
ten days and then everything changed on the eleventh. So on the eleventh day, they pulled them in and they would pull them in small groups, and Roger was waiting in the waiting room and they took a man that was like in his forties into this room wherever this experiment was going to take place, and all they could hear from the other side of the door was was it started as a whimper and sort of got into crying and then got into whaling and screaming and stuff
of that. So you can just picture Roger and the other people and the other side the door, like what is happening in there? The door opens, they bring him out.
He's all limp, and they bring him out and like, okay, next, yeah exactly, So they hate Roger had to watch that for two or three other people before it was his term, and so he describes it as what they did was they he went in, they put him on a table, they put him in a zipped him up like in a straight jacket, and then they put a gas mask over his mouth, and then all of a sudden they just turn on some sort of gas. Whatever the gas was that was supposed to curb these violent tendencies he had.
All it did was it filled his lungs and it made him start choking. He couldn't breathe, he says. He talks about having this incredible headache, immediate, like an immediate migraine. And also these guys they would sort of turn into the Hulk for a minute where they would be thrashing uncontrollably and make them really angry. Yeah, that's what he say, Like, if for a treatment that's supposed to make me not angry, all his doing is making me angry. And like you're saying,
violently shaking on the table. That's probably why the straight jack got on. And so when it was finally over, it was like Roger was spent. He was screaming. They actually put a towel in his mouth at one point because he was screaming so much. So they finally got him off the table, and so they're dragging him off or taking him off, and the doctors, oh, don't worry, Roger, next.
Time it will go better, you know, it.
Well, it's like and he's I'm sure he's like it next time. And he had to do it twice a week or yeah, so so, uh, he had to do it a couple of times a week.
I think he did seven total.
I think it was like seven treatments over a extended period of time. They eventually, you know, was his turn to come in and he's like, I just don't want to do this. I can't do this anymore. And he went back and at one point he just got really angry and he sort of smashed a window again and then which is funny because that's what got him there
in the first place. They they did gave him something to calm him down, and then the doctor, he says, the doctor came and says, don't worry Roger, We're not going to.
Do this test anymore. We're actually going to dissent.
So I don't really know what happened with the test or what the end result was, but my feeling is unplugging it.
You know, Well that didn't work or and we don't even know what specifically. It was just this mysterious experiment. The idea was I think that they they give this gas that gives these vibeviolent men of violent reaction, and it could be a sort of artificially created way for them to purge themselves of the violence, like create a safe space for them to thrash and scream in anger, and then they won't have anything left when they're back in the general population, right right, which I don't think
is what with the end result ended up being. And so Roger, he just didn't trust that they are not going to make him do it anymore. So he of course he tried to escape from the psychiatric area and then they caught him, and then unfortunately what ended up happening to was was going to happen to him. Originally they put him in the hole, they gave him the strap, and then they actually sent him to the bulgang, which is which is funny because it comes full circle back
to the bulgang again. But the only good thing about the whole thing in Roger's eyes was he did get a kiss from one of the pretty nurses, So I don't know if that was worth it. One of my other favorite stories that we didn't find a home for in the series is he he is in the jail in Fredericton and then he has that scene with Ninny where the woman in the cell beside him and him they find a hole and they start talking and they
start conspiring together, and then they're found out. Roger gets into a scuffle with the guards and he jumps out a window and escapes.
And if you stick with.
That story and that escape, so Roger like jumps out a window and he really hurts his ankle as he runs away, and he goes down by a creek or river and he's kind of following it along, and he knows that they're gonna put out man hunt and set up roadblocks and things like that, so he has to keep a really low profile as he tries to get
far enough outside of Fredericton that it's safe. So he finds this hotel he sneaks in, and he finds this empty banquet room and has all of these big tables with white linen tablecloths, and he just crawls underneath one of them and he has a little nap for a couple of hours. And when he wakes up from this nap, his ankle has doubled in size and he can barely walk.
So he's like, oh God, I got to get out of here.
So he goes and he steals some bell Hops clothes from a locker downstairs. From a staff room, he finds like a blue blazer and some shoes, and he goes out, but it starts raining so incredibly hard that all of a sudden, a car is suddenly beside him that he wasn't able to hear because of the rain, and it's this man with his two teenage daughters in a car. The teenage girl is like, it's a young man, and the dad is like, you need to get in here before you drown. And Roger's like, no, no, thanks for
the offer for the ride, but I'm good. And the dad's like, son, my daughters will disown me if you don't get into the car right now. And Roger's just so desperate to keep a low profile. And before he gets into the car, he looks at the radio antenna on it. He's like, if they turn on the radio, it's just gonna be like man hunt, Man on the loose.
Do not pick up hitchhikers.
So he climbs in and thankfully they don't have the radio on, and they say, so where are you heading, And he's like, I'm going to Montreal, which is quite far, and the dad is like.
Well, that settles it. You're coming to spend the night at our house.
So they take them back to their house and in the backyard there's a quite nice tent that I guess they're son had been living in and he was off at university. So they're like, you can take the son's tent. They bring Roger into the house. He said they were such a Christian family when they walked in that the grandmother is literally just like reading the Bible by the fire, and they're like, can we get you something to eat. He's like, no, no, no, no thanks. I'm just gonna take
you guys up on this tent. And he goes in this tent. His clothes are soaked. He takes off his clothes and he gets into this fur lined little sleeping bag, and then all of a sudden, the dad from the family, he bursts in and he's like, here's a couple of egg sandwiches, and here's a cup of coffee, and I'm just gonna take your clothes and I'm gonna take him inside and they'll be dry for you in the morning.
And he's gone, and Roger is like shit, I'm naked in this sleeping bag and that guy just took my clothes, So he has to change his plans, and he spends the whole night there, hoping that it's not part of their evening or morning routine to listen to the radio. So the next morning he emerges and they give him his dry clothes and they feed him again, and he says that he was so starving. He was embarrassed at how grotesquely fast he ate his food in front of
the mom and the gram and the teenage daughters. And then they gave him a nice knit sweater that belonged to their son, and they drove him across a river.
There was a.
One vehicle ferry that went across this river, and it was propelled by men pulling a rope like two men would pull the ferry across the river. So he ends up on the other side and he says goodbye to the dad who had done this, and Roger is almost weeping. He is so moved by how kind these people were
to him. And given where Roger had just come from, this was just on the tail of all everything that he had suffered at the Guelf Reformatory and other escapes and other bad situations and beatings, and this was like his first taste of just pure undiluted kindness and warmth was from this family that had helped him when he really did need help and sent him on his way.
He almost couldn't handle how kind they were. It made him deeply uncomfortable, and he hated that he had to lie to them about who he was and where he was going.
And what he was doing.
But eventually, I think what happened was the family did turn on the radio and did hear, oh, yeah, this guy escaped and sort of described him. I think he's been sleeping in my tent all night. So it was actually the father that called the police to I think I had.
That boy here.
I harbored a criminal.
Basically h But Roger afterwards said he didn't hold any ill feelings towards him at all, like it just because he was so kind of And it's one of those moments that later on when he got he did get caught. Eventually, while he's back into cell thinking about it, he must have really reflected on that that moment, you know, of just like this, this is what the other side looks like, you know, if I have if I had lived a different life, or if I did live another life, it could look like this, Yeah.
I have a good robbery story.
Roger got to a point where he started getting paranoid about banks. This is a little bit later on in his career, and he got paranoid that because he had he was known for escaping, he was known for robbing banks and stuff like that, that the people were watching him. And so if he would pick up a new crew or a new partner to rob another bank, they would be like, they're not watching Roger or whatever. But but in his mind, like he just I really think they
are watching me. So he started doing this habit of that he would break into to a police garage where they parked their undercovered cars and write down all the license plates of these undercovered cars. And then one time they were going to go do a job and sure enough, you know, he checks any license plate that has these numbers, Okay, we don't go in that bank, and sure enough he saw one that was hidden back and it was like this license plate, I just saw it in the garage.
So he called off the off the heist, and his partner was not happy. He was like, like, you know, thought it almost like he chickened out or whatever. They waited a week later or something, and so they picked another bank and they go in and they rob it and when they go in, they did it within like forty forty seconds or something that where they got all
the money they could. And then they're running out. They go into the car and then Rogers says, out of nowhere, this car comes flying and smashes into the side of his car, and so he can see that it's it's an undercover police officer but dressed as a hippie and runs into him, and so Roger's gun falls on the floor. Police officers gun falls on his floor in his car, and so the two of them are trying to get their hands on their weapons while not taking their eyes
off each other. So he said, it's like an oh, like pitcher, a Western of you know, you're trying to find the gun. So Roger picks up his gun, and just as he does that, another car comes and smashes in the front of them, and they'll go flying, and the gun goes flying again, and then that guy couldn't get out of his car because of the impact. He couldn't open his side door. A third car came and
hit him from the back. So they were t boone from every which direction and as he goes and there goes the gun again, go flying out of my hand. So when they finally got him, so they surrounded them and there's about six hundercover police officers. They take him out of the car and they put him up against the window of the bank that they just came out of, and everyone in the bank was like, oh my gosh, they're coming back in again.
You know, it's the same guys. They're coming back in. Oh man.
So during Roger's like most intense bank robbing time with the Montreal crew, there's this one story that is burned in my head forever that.
Didn't make it in.
So one of the guys on his crew, he had a girlfriend that all the guys knew and like named Eula and Ula.
She was like a stripper and she.
Had like an abusive ex boyfriend who kept bothering her. So her new boyfriend and all the guys on Roger's crew they were all like, next time you see that guy, you call us and we're gonna go and scare him off so that he doesn't bother you anymore. And one night, Roger, he's at home and he gets a call from Eula and she's like, my ex boyfriend sent two of his tufts here and they're they're holding us hostage and you need to get here right away, Roger. So Roger gets
out of bed and he speeds over there. He's like, just stall them until I get there. So Roger drives through the snow as fast as he can to EULA's place. When Roger walks in, he just sees the two toughs who have their back to him and his buddy from his crew. He's bleeding from his face and ULA's clothing is ripped. Roger says that both of these guys, they just looked like they looked huge and like they were twins.
He said, they looked like they were.
Both from from like a mob movie or something. These two guys with like their snap hats or their paper boy hat type thing. And I just wanted to read this one moment.
That that I'm obsessed with. Sorry, right right here it is.
So. So Roger walks in and he says, dream like no one uttered a word and made a move as all eyes watched me calmly remove my gloves top coat and sport jacket, draping them carefully over the back of a chair. Quickly I crossed the room, and turning my back on the tufts, I faced my buddy and asked
one question of him, do they have pieces? Not waiting for an answer, I suddenly pivoted and caught the first tough flush on the mouth with a looping right that splintered his teeth and sent him sprawling backwards onto the bathroom floor.
And then this starts this.
Insane, this insanely violent scene where Roger fights both of these Tufts at the same time, and he claims, he claims that he punched out this one guy and he's sort of laying on the ground, leaned against the refrigerator, and he kicks the guy in the side of the head, and Roger claims that the guy's eye popped out a little bit and remained popped out for the rest of
the scuffle. And Roger ends up like throwing both of them out of there and chasing them up the stairs out of the basement suite, and they both like run off to their escape car. And then Ulas says, I've never seen anything like that before, not in the club, and not even in the movies, Ula says in rapid French.
Isn't it also like I always have this image of this guy with his eyeball hanging out and you know, running away.
I know.
Yeah, we watch a lot of UFC fights and I have and I've seen some headcakes.
I've never seen the eyeball pop I've never seen an eyeball pop out.
So that's a pretty good talent.
But maybe that's maybe that's why we didn't include this story is because we're skeptical. It's like the eyeball detail makes me skeptical of the whole thing. I'm glad that we found a home in this episode for some of our favorite little snapshots from the book and little side quests that we didn't.
Find a home for in the series.
So thanks for going through these ways.
Now we can take things off the board. So corkboard, so we did actually talk about that's empty ess.
Board, all right?
I think.
Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership with iHeart Podcasts on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written and hosted by me Sam Mollins. Our producer is Rob Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer. Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedeman, original music by Garrett tiedemant fact checking by Michael Kenyon Meyer. Selected archival clips are from CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy was written
by Roger Kuran. iHeart Podcasts executive producers are Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam hoff and Matt Cher.
A special thanks to our.
Operations team Doug Slaywyn, Ashley Lawren, Sabina Marra and Destiny Dingle. If you enjoyed Go Boy, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening.