AN ANGEL EARNS HIS WINGS

When the Guardian Angels announced their return to Toronto, joined
the group undercover. In the first of a two-part series, he meets
Canada One, Little Bear and Scorpio, learns how to gouge an eye out
- -- and wonders whether he's prepared to hit the mean streets

Marching down George Street, we're assaulted from all sides.

Between Jarvis and Sherbourne, just north of Dundas Street East below
Allan Gardens, a kid with a shaved head darts toward us on a silver
dirt bike. "Get out of here, you fucking rats!" he hisses.

"Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" salutes an inmate at Seaton House, earning
cheers from the other guys who line the block-long shelter, smoking
cigarettes on concrete benches.

Residents on balconies applaud as we pass. A woman with scars on her
legs sits in a lawn chair drinking Lakeport. A man with a yellow
stain in the centre of his Santa Claus beard follows us down the
street. People gather in clusters to scream at our colourful costume
parade: 18 Guardian Angels in red jackets and berets. Somebody on the
other side of the road flashes the barrel of his gun.

Streetcars honk their approval while we're patrolling, and couples
thank us over their draught beers on Dundas Street East patios. The
mayor, however, doesn't want us in the city. Neither does Chief of
Police Bill Blair.

A man named Biji has led us here. He wants us to do something about
the neighbourhood he lives in, but it's our first night on patrol,
and I'm still just trying to make sense of what we're doing here.

"What are you fucking looking at?" says a man standing in front of
the barred windows of his row home, blowing cigarette smoke in my
face. I'm in formation beside Rose, who wears her red beret like it's
knight's armour, while I cower, like it's a clown nose, in mine.

Later that night, Tues., July 11, after our patrol disbands, Kemar
Brown, 22, the city's 35th homicide, is shot twice in the chest at
Dundas and Church.

At the Twin Dragon kung-fu studio at Dufferin and St. Clair, duct
tape holds the punching bags together. Someone has opened the door
behind the kickboxing ring in a failed attempt to circulate the stale air.

It's early April, and I've come here for an interview after
responding to the Guardian Angels' call for volunteers to patrol
Toronto's worst streets. When I arrive, there are already six other
potential recruits lined up on folding chairs beside the ring. The
vibe in the room suggests a nervous theatre troupe before the opening
night of a show -- a nervous theatre troupe with tattoos, fanny
packs, beer bellies and pony tails. I feel out of place.

I'm also the smallest guy here. Except, that is, for Lou Hoffer, the
national director of Guardian Angels Canada. Pacing back and forth in
front of us in the group's trademark red beret and jacket, he's
tugging on his goatee, making some point absolutely clear into his cellphone.

As we wait our turn for Lou or Stephen Paquette, the assistant
national director, to call us to the front of the room, we don't talk
to each other. We just stare, eyes forward, as if in any moment we
might be called upon to thwart crime.

But we can hear each other's interviews. Most of the potential
recruits regurgitate the same "I want to do my part to clean up the
streets" line, which they seem to sincerely believe. Most already do
some kind of community service and appear to have a military or
policing background.

The man being interviewed before me describes his field experience as
a peace officer in Calgary, his work overseas and his familiarity
with night vision, GPS tracking, topography and weapons. To a
newcomer like me, he sounds like the perfect recruit for the Angels'
latest attempt to launch a Toronto chapter.

The last two times they tried to set up shop here, the Angels were
asked by local communities, not so politely, to leave. But last
year's record number of gun deaths in Toronto prompted Lou to invite
Curtis Sliwa, who founded the organization in New York in 1978, to
visit the city in January to drum up support for another go. It's up
to Lou to get the operation going.

A former constable with 33 Division turned home renovator, Lou quit
his job to revive the Toronto chapter. The Orthodox Jewish
39-year-old -- his code name is Canada One, but the guys call him
Hollywood because he likes to play to the media spotlight -- has
personally invested $10,000 into Canada's flagship chapter. He has
three kids and a mortgage in Thornhill. His mother works in the
office; his wife sells T-shirts at fundraising events. Unimposing,
anxious and high-strung, he's not the type of guy you might think
would be leading the Guardian Angels.

As the interviews progress, Lou never addresses us as a group. The
closest he comes to a spiel is when he describes the Angels as "the
world's largest neighbourhood watch" to me during my six-minute slot.

He looks at my application -- my real name and address, a fake
telephone number and job -- under his Yankees cap while he chats on the phone.

I tell him I moved here from New York.

"They say Toronto is nowhere near New York, but look at Boxing Day,"
Lou says, referring to the Yonge Street shooting that left high
school student Jane Creba dead. "Toronto isn't New York.
Unfortunately, it's worse." He hangs up the phone and holsters it
back to his hip.

"Have you ever had to defend yourself?" he asks.

"In sixth grade, a kid named Kenny Boho told me I had killed Christ,"
I say. "I defended myself, but it was only because I had no other choice."

Lou nods. He says he originally wanted to bring the Angels to Toronto
in response to synagogues and Jewish cemeteries being defaced.

"How would you feel about becoming a patrol leader?" he asks me.

A skinny Jewish 32-year-old newspaper reporter, how would I feel
about becoming a patrol leader?

Terrified for the patrol, I guess.

I survive my interview, as I believe most do, and Lou's mother checks
my references -- my brother-in-law and my fiance. I also have to
produce a letter from the Toronto Police Service that says I've never
been convicted of a felony. This, I gather later from Lou, dissuades
more applicants than his questioning.

By the middle of April, I am officially an Angel in training, which
will entail 16 hours of CPR training and a handful of kung-fu classes
at Twin Dragon, where I gradually get to know my fellow recruits. But
I won't see Lou or Stephen Paquette, a.k.a. Little Bear, for another
two months.

Some of the volunteers seem to have arrived at the Guardian Angels
much like how members of Alcoholics Anonymous arrive at a church --
the Guardian Angels is a rung on their way back up. Their belief and
zeal are matched by their outward appearance of having lived through
hard times.

When I meet Big Daddy, he's grunting "broken jaw, broken jaw" each
time his right hand hits the punching bag. Both of his forearms are
embroidered with tattooed flames. TNT's ink jobs read "Fear No Man"
and "Death before Dishonour." J-Guy, a UPS man, carries a Bible and
complains that he is not being given a chance to lead.

There's Rainbow, who does home health care, and Moondog, who owns a
record store in the Annex. Captain Hook operates a tow truck.
Diamond, a member of the 1992 patrol that was kicked out of Parkdale,
giggles as her push-ups become an opportunity to lie on the ground.

We've chosen our code names ourselves. I pick Boho, I tell Lou,
because it reminds me of what I'm fighting for.

I'm not sure about the team I have supporting me. I feel like I might
want protection from some of those who have signed on to protect.
Others I'm not sure are up to the job of protecting.

I meet Rose in early June, at a recruitment drive we've been asked to
staff at the Parliament Street Public Library, a few blocks from my house.

She and another recruit exchange their stories as we spread out the
folding chairs.

"My boyfriend used to drag me by my hair through our apartment, with
the door open for the whole building to see," the other woman says as
we arrange the library's second floor meeting room.

Rose can relate. "I don't want to come up missing," she says. "I have
a stalker, and in case I come up missing, I thought I'd better notify
the police. This way someone would notice I was gone."

But the police haven't responded to her report, and her stalker, a
crack dealer and addict, won't leave her alone. He has tormented her
for months, the 43-year-old massage therapist says -- loitering in
front of her building, following her, waiting at the bus station for
her to return home late at night from work. Eventually he was
arrested, but released quickly, and returned to the Bay and Dundas
area, where she says his job is to lure people from the bus station
to the crack houses in her neighbourhood.

Rose has a resigned but persistent smile. She picked her name for the
colour of her hair. She wears her pants up high and is constantly
adjusting the slope of my beret.

We're moments from starting our meeting, which Lou promoted in an
interview on CFRB.

"They're going to be here soon," he says. It's the first time I've
seen him since my interview. It's hard to say whether he's more
excited by the prospect of fresh recruits or more media exposure.

Not counting the journalists, six people have turned out tonight. Two
will leave laughing halfway through the session.

Rose and I changed into our berets before the meeting, behind the
library. This is our first time in the Angels uniform. I feel like a
target. But these are only loaners -- after a brief photo-op, we have
to give them back to Lou.

"Are you the pizza guy?" a woman asks when we walk through the
library's front door.

"No, we're the Guardian Angels!" Lou responds. "We're helping the
neighbourhood take back the streets!"

"Oh," the woman says. "I thought you were delivering food."

By the beginning of July, we've been training for a month and a half.
We've practised flying kicks, attempted push-ups on our knuckles,
punched each other in the kickboxing ring, and learned how to gouge
an eye out, but what we haven't really learned is the Angels
doctrine. We don't get to powwow with Lou or Little Bear.

There's one last step before graduation. Apart from one recruit who
is kicked out because he "just wanted to go out there and kill
someone," everyone is enrolled in "basic training" at a Legion hall
in South Etobicoke with Edd Scorpio, director of training and
personnel for Canada's Guardian Angels.

"The last training," he declares, "before all hell breaks loose."

Scorpio wears a skull bandana over his long dreadlocks when he's not
wearing his red beret. He's worked K-9 and in night clubs, and had
two fingers reattached to his hand. Like Little Bear, he was a member
of the original 1982 Angels.

The instructions come hard and fast.

"Don't put the boots to someone, at least try not to."

"Be nice, until it's time not to be nice" -- a quote from the
late-1980s action movie Road House. "I'll let you know when that is."

The rules, according to Scorpio, are as follows: We have the same
rights as security guards, but can't carry weapons or handcuffs. We
must arrive for patrol in our street clothes. As a group, we don the
"colours": red beret and jacket, T-shirt, black pants and shoes. Once
in our colours, we go nowhere, not even a Tim Horton's bathroom,
alone. Before every patrol, we are frisked. We carry plastic gloves,
a First Aid kit, notebooks, water, pamphlets, cell phones and watches
with odometers, mostly dangling from our belts.

"When someone pulls a gun, don't everyone approach him, let that
person talk to him," he says, and teaches us the two-by-two
formations and hand signs -- a fist means stop, bouncing palm means
slow down, arms outstretched signals us to fan out.

Our initial patrols will span east from Yonge Street to Parliament,
north from Dundas to Bloor. "Crackville," Scorpio says. "A
neighbourhood I unfortunately know a little too well."

"We'll inevitably do Jane and Finch, but it's too volatile now," he
adds. "I don't want to outfit everybody in Kevlar. We don't even have
the budget for lunch."

Scorpio talks for about four hours about everything from face-down
take-downs to expecting beer bottles hurled down at us from Regent
Park roofs. He then leads us on a practice patrol through a small
south Etobicoke park. Along the way, he helpfully decodes Anarchy
signs and tags for Nirvana under a bridge.

I don't feel very reassured. I believe there's a real chance that
someone, either one of us or a resident or a drug dealer or a cop,
might really get hurt.

"After surviving this, you'll be prepared for anything on the
streets," Lou says after the final session.

"I wouldn't go that far," counters Little Bear.

Next week: It's graduation day for the Angels in training -- and time
to begin patrolling the streets.