THE HELLS ANGELS TRY TO BUY RESPECTABILITY

Singer Ginette Reno may have thought she made a purely private pact with her conscience when she performed, along with singer Jean-Pierre Ferland, at the wedding Aug. 5 of a Hells Angels associate. But her highly publicized performance stands on a dangerously blurred line between what is socially acceptable and what should be ostracized.

The relatives and friends and colleagues of the 150 murdered individuals, the 11 people who have vanished without a trace and the 159 other people who have survived attempts on their lives during Quebec's so-called drug wars had every right to expect that artists of Ms. Reno's stature would shun members of the Hells Angels, a criminal organization that has been deeply implicated in the battle over drug turf in the province.

This is true even if some of the murder victims were themselves gang members. It doesn't follow that their families would want their killers treated with respect no matter what relation they had with the justice system.

Instead, photographs of a smiling, positively glowing Ms. Reno, laughing with Quebec's most notorious gangster, Maurice (Mom) Boucher, the host of the wedding, suggest that Mr. Boucher's position as head of a notorious criminal gang was of no social consequence. Those photographs show him in a new and flattering light.

Ms. Reno made a number of claims about the event, including: (1) she wasn't paid; (2) she didn't know whose wedding it was, even though she joked about wearing a bullet-proof vest to sing; (3) the Hells Angels are not killers 24 hours a day; and (4) even Jesus kept company with bad people. These remarks are both callous and stupid.

One of the people killed in the drug war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine was 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers, who died in hospital after he was injured by shrapnel in a car-bomb blast.

Did Ms. Reno not hear about the prison guards who were murdered in an effort to intimidate the province's justice system? Mr. Boucher was acquitted of ordering the murders of the prison guards in 1998, but the verdict is under appeal by the Crown.

Just a few weeks ago, the RCMP and Montreal Urban Community police were complaining that the 1998 acquittal has fed into the Hells Angels' feelings of invincibility: they feel they can get away with anything, buy anyone, be accepted anywhere. Ms. Reno - wittingly or not, paid or not, it makes no difference - is now part of that feeling of invincibility.

There is someone, though, who turned them down flat. Daniel Desrochers' mother, Josee-Anne. The Hells Angels offered her cash and she recoiled in horror.

The next time the Hells Angels go shopping for respectability, we should remember Josee-Anne Desrochers and where the line is between good and evil.

This is an excerpt from an editorial first published in the Montreal Gazette.