FROM DRUG DEALER TO POLITICIAN

Serge LeClerc Takes His Life Story To High Schools

Minutes before his speech to a group of high school students, Serge
Le-Clerc set the scene like someone quietly familiar with the process.
Dragging a wooden podium across the stage with ease, the short,
barrel-chested man slipped off his grey corduroy jacket to reveal the
tattoos on his arms, a Viking, tiger, eagle and wolf.

Gold rings and a thick gold watch glinted off Mr. LeClerc's wrist as
he paced the stage. In the next hour, he would clown around with his
young, earnest audience one moment, then bellow at them the next. His
message was simple: "It's not important where you begin in life. It's
important where you end up."

It is the story of Mr. LeClerc's life. Born to a raped teenager, the
former drug kingpin would spend 21 years in prison, then turn his life
around to win a national pardon and a seat in the Saskatchewan
legislature.

"It's about choices. For the greater portion of my life I made all the
wrong choices," he told the packed auditorium at David and Mary
Thomson Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Ont., on Wednesday.

Peppering his speech with ex-con vernacular -- he talked of getting
"popped," hanging with his "homeys," and "gangbangers" -- Mr. LeClerc
managed to hold the auditorium in rapt attention, although the
performance did draw some jeers. The room was especially hushed when
he spoke of his criminal exploits, from stabbing a man in the stomach
with a pitchfork after he physically abused him in school, to running
a $40-million crystal meth lab he ran in Quebec.

Born as a product of rape to a 13-year-old Cree girl in an abandoned
log cabin in northern New Brunswick, Mr. LeClerc says he does not know
his age, having only a baptismal record.

When he was approximately two years old, Mr. LeClerc and his mother
moved to Toronto's Regent Park, a crumbling 1940s housing project on
the city's east side. Here, the pair settled in a rooming house.
Impoverished, his mother worked two jobs, one as a dishwasher, which
meant the boy was left alone early each morning.

At eight years old, Mr. LeClerc was sent to St. John's Training
School, a notorious institution run by the Christian Brothers. At age
nine, he had his jaw broken for whispering in the chapel.

Mr. LeClerc would spend four years in juvenile custody. Running away
several times, he was at one point eating out of garbage bins.

By age 12, having circulated through the youth detention system, Mr.
LeClerc had developed ties with the future heads of several motorcycle
gangs, including Satan's Choice, Vagabonds and Paradise Riders,
eventually becoming a gang leader himself. Not long after, Mr. LeClerc
got addicted to crystal meth, a drug he would abuse for seven years.

"I've been in heroin and cocaine and crack, all the major consortium
of drugs," said Mr. LeClerc, whose addictions spanned two decades.

His epiphany came at Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, a super maximum security
prison in Quebec where he was serving a nine-year sentence after
police busted his crystal meth lab. It was here that Mr. LeClerc
underwent a "faith experience."

He watched as a volunteer handing out magazines to prisoners in
solitary confinement was being humiliated by staff during a strip search.

"I couldn't figure out his angle. He wasn't getting money and he
wasn't getting prestige and nobody was patting him on the back. It
fascinated me, but I also got angry at him because I couldn't figure
out his angle. He was an anomaly to me.

"In a very short conversation of about three minutes, he challenged my
premise that you're either an animal that walks on two legs and there
is no meaning to your life and to the aftermath of your life, or that
you're a creation and that you have a soul, and that makes you of
great value."

The message crystallized several months later when Mr. LeClerc watched
a 19-year-old in the cell next to his rip up his sheets and hang himself.

"He got himself put into prison for buying crystal meth that came from
my labratories. For the first time in my life, I looked at the
responsibility of my choices."

Mr. LeClerc, who had a Grade 5 education, began correspondence
courses, eventually earning a BA in sociology and social work from the
University of Waterloo while in prison. Shortly afterwards, in 1989,
he began giving motivational speeches, speaking to some 110 high
schools every year for nine years. It was that work that helped him
earn the pardon in 2000.

The transformation sweetened during last year's provincial election,
when Mr. LeClerc won a seat in the Saskatchewan legislature. Premier
Brad Wall then nominated him as legislative secretary to the minister
of corrections.

His new job has not softened his approach. At the Toronto school, the
former dealer railed against the evils of drugs. Raising his voice and
shaking his fist, he called out those in the room who might be selling
to their classmates.

He also spoke at length about pressures they were likely facing,
everything from "media manipulation" to the perils of an unprecedented
disposal income.

"You are a generation that is a paradox," Mr. LeClerc told
them.

"On the one hand, you are the finest generation ever created.
Genetically and biologically, you're fitter and stronger. You have a
great body of knowledge at your age, greater than any other generation
before you, including your teachers and parents when they were your
age. And yet on the other side of it, you are the most
self-destructive generation ever created in our country because you
are making self-destructive decisions."

He pointed to anorexia, the number one medical problem among teenage
girls, and suicide, the second leading cause of death for Canadian
teens.

At the dawn of his political career, Mr. LeClerc is intent on cleaning
up Saskatchewan's juvenile custody and corrections facilities. Even as
it leads the nation in economic growth, Mr. LeClerc pointed out, the
province has led per capita in crime since 2000. Today, he said,
Saskatchewan also has the highest rates of child poverty, child
incarceration, youth gang recruitment, drug addiction, and child
prostitution, with some victims as young as nine years old.

"Over 16 years, we had a government that socially neglected our
province."

As for skepticism at his turn from dealer to politician, Mr. LeClerc's
response was as unconventional as his story. "I never lied to
anybody," Mr. LeClerc told the crowd, pointing out that as a dealer,
he never promised his clients popularity or happiness, just high
quality drugs.