May 28, 2025 • 38 mins
Old habits die hard.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Roger's second book, Bingo, wasn't supposed to be a big undertaking.
Most of the material for Bingo was already written in
his original Go Boy manuscript and was set aside for
book number two. The idea was that his sophomore effort
was going to ride on the coattails of the runaway
success of Go Boy and hit bookshelves within a year
(00:27):
or two at most, But Bingo didn't launch until seven
years later in nineteen eighty five. Getting it finished took
everything he had and all the support he could get
from those closest to him.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I dedicated this book to the most important person in
my life, my sister Sue. He never abandoned me. People
read Bingo, and after people read Go Boy, they say
to me, how did you survive twenty four years in
prison under all those circumstances? And it's because of my
sister Sue.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Roger told people it took so long because by writing
about the Kingston pen Riot, he was forced to revisit
the grizzly scenes that haunted him. Or perhaps it was
just that his life was so full. Now, it's one
thing to write a book when you're locked in a
prison cell quite another when you're an overnight celebrity with
more money and attention than you'd ever dreamed of. Like
(01:21):
the famous boxing quote from Marvin Hagler, it's tough to
get out of bed to do road work at five
am when you've been sleeping in silk pajamas. But it
turned out there was another reason for Roger's persistent writing
struggles that was lurking beneath the surface, something that no
one including Roger had picked up on yet. From iHeart
(01:52):
Podcasts and Campsite Media, I'm Sam Mullens and this is
Go Boy, episode eight one Last Escape. Sue was the
(02:19):
first one who noticed it.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Well.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
He was visiting me one time in Cornwall and as
we were outside talking away, I start noticing his arm
kind of curving and his hand heading more upward towards
his waistline. And I didn't say anything at first, and
(02:43):
then seemed to go back down. And then I noticed
this happened a few times, so I said to him, Roger,
just look at your hand where it is right now.
He had no idea that it was coming up in
a curve and he said, oh, isn't that funny? I said, yeah,
that's funny. My first thought was, my gosh, I think
(03:04):
he's having maybe a stroke or something. That was my
first thought on it. But I said, I think you
should have that checked, Roger, you know, so he promised
me when he got back to Auttaway, you'd have it checked.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So he went in for a series of tests and
a physical examination, and the issue was clear.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
I was diagnosed.
Speaker 7 (03:25):
I got a physical problem.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
Now I was dagnosed to having parkinson disease.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
He was very bluntly told. The doctor said, oh, well, yep,
you got Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Roger had finally built a comfortable life as a writer.
But what would this mean going forward.
Speaker 8 (03:44):
I was in Roger's place in Ottawa and his left
hand was trembling. And he saw me.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Notice this is David Schleike, Roger's longtime friend and writing mentor.
Speaker 8 (03:55):
And I said, Roger, what is that because it wasn't
his right hand, and he said, oh, I can still type.
That's exactly that moment he said, oh I can still type,
and but his hand was trembling. He said, well, it's
probably Parkinson's because he'd been for a diagnosis, and but
that's the first time I saw it. But he expressed
it in terms of I can still type.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Roger was never much of a typist anyway, so he
tried to carry on as if there was no issue.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
He was having a hard time with the keys. He
was finding that he was, you know, hitting different keys
that he did not mean to hit left hand. He
ain't to say letter all the time, so that became
quite an issue for him. You know, that was kind
of quite an adjustment.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
At the doctor's appointments, Roger started to learn about Parkinson's,
that it's a neurodegenerative condition that effects one in five
hundred people in Canada. It felt like random bad luck,
something he'd had his fair share of. But when he
learned that there seems to be a correlation between between
head trauma and Parkinson's diagnoses, and that emotional trauma can
(05:05):
affect the symptoms severity, he stopped thinking of it in
terms of luck.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
He talked about how the tremors were inevitable because he
had been beaten so much and hit about the head,
and that it was a result of abuse.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Looking back over his life, you could say he had
enough violent stories to fill a best selling book or
an eight part podcast about it.
Speaker 6 (05:31):
After surviving the pedal system. I had to come down
with it, but I'm handling that very very well.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Roger was encouraged by Muhammad Ali's journey with Parkinson's, seeing
that he was able to still live a fulfilling life
with the disease.
Speaker 6 (05:44):
Well, if he could handle it, I can.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
You know he wasn't going to He just wasn't taking
a back seat to it, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
As the symptoms progressed, he would stubbornly keep riding his
bike everywhere, even on days when his tremor was an
eleven out of ten. Here's Roger's nephew, Todd.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He was so proud that he was still riding a bike.
He gets on this bike, this two wheeler, and starts
riding it. And this guy has Parkinson's disease and he
can barely walk, and he's riding a bike and he's
going down hills and We're like, oh my god, what
does he doing.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
He's going to kill himself.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
You could try tying a piano to his back. He
was still biking to the store if he needed something. Eventually,
he wound up in the hospital after a bike crash,
and then he started having violent falls unrelated to the bike,
But the biggest concern wasn't with how his body seemed
to be betraying him. It was with how the disease
(06:44):
was affecting his mental state. And his riding.
Speaker 8 (06:48):
Bingo brought back some enthusiasm, and then the Parkinson stuff
took the steam out of him for a while.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Some people with Parkinson's experienced feelings of distraction or disorganization
and struggled with finishing tasks, and these were things that
Roger struggled with to begin with.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
It took him.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Longer to get things done. Eventually, it fixed your memory.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
A lot of things he was lost.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
His writing wasn't working, his public addresses weren't working because
he couldn't speak very well because of the disability that
was accruing from Parkinson's.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
It was attacking him. Whether he liked it or not,
it was coming at him.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
He tried different treatments, but every time something seemed to
be working, it suddenly would stop.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
This was something he couldn't take control over. This was
something he couldn't run from.
Speaker 9 (07:47):
Five years had slipped by since I was first diagnosed
with Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
These are Roger's words read here by our actor.
Speaker 9 (07:54):
My head tremors were getting worse, and my body would
shake so dramatically that when I rested my arms a table,
all the dishes would clatter. Sometimes my voice was so
soft and slurred that I was always asked to repeat myself.
It took enormous effort just to talk and walk and think.
My writing and lecturing dribbled to a standstill as I
(08:15):
was now too jittery to sit still. The lights were on,
but no one was home.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
The speaking gigs with the Solicitor General fizzled out, and
the Big Go Boy film adaptation that he talked about
for many years never made it to production. All Roger
really had left to lean on were the two books
of fiction that he signed on to write. He initially
seemed rejuvenated to pivot finally from memoir to fiction. Finally
(08:48):
he would be free to stop immersing himself in the
past and free to craft whatever he wanted. But every
day seemed to be harder than the last.
Speaker 10 (08:58):
After years of being on the outside, and I think
medical problems that he developed in his later years, the
parkinson and pain, and he started self medicating, which was
a real slippery slope for him.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Roger had always prided himself on his ability to abstain
from alcohol and drugs for years and years of enduring
what he endured and keeping the company he did, he
somehow had managed to never touch the stuff. But one
day Roger's friend David came over to work on his
latest book with him when he was surprised to see
(09:36):
that Roger was using cocaine.
Speaker 8 (09:39):
He'd have lines on his table when I got there sometimes,
and he knew I wouldn't blow the whistle on him
that he had it.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Roger claimed that he was only using a small amount
and was only taking it as medicine.
Speaker 8 (09:51):
It really helped with the tremors. That it really helped
with the pain of the tremors and the discomfort and
imbalance of the tremors.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Roger wrote about this time later in life.
Speaker 9 (10:01):
My medications were no longer cutting through the pain. I
was at my wits end when one day I was
introduced to the Deadly Lady in White. Cocaine was a
very expensive powder, and I absolutely hated the idea of
using narcotics for relief, but it worked. I was no
longer writing in agony. All of my parkinson symptoms would
(10:21):
instantly disappear. I felt I was a whole man again.
Yet I was a babe in the arms when it
came to dope.
Speaker 8 (10:29):
Sometimes I'd arrive at his place and he'd be just buzzing,
and you could tell he had, you know, taken some
lines prior to my arrival. It helped him forget, you
know that, he said, I know my days are numbered.
He said to me more than once. I don't want
to die wiggling. He didn't want to be a wiggling drooler.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Despite all of this, Roger did manage to finish his
two books of fiction, but his novels titled Jojo and
Dream Caper didn't do what he'd hoped they would, and so,
through the combination of his work struggling the Parkinson's and
the growing cocaine habit, Roger entered a new era in
his life where everything started to spiral.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
Roger gave me a call, and with Roger, it's always rushed.
Oh my gosh, her, yep, right now, he needs it.
He needs it like yes they I remember. It was
a nicy stormy day, nothing but black ice all over
the place. The town was just shut down with ice.
But he needed one hundred dollars and I had been
ill at home. I had a fever. Whatever wasn't up
(11:35):
to par, and I said, I don't even think I
can get out of the driveway. It's just nothing but a
She by, Oh, yes, yes, I need it right now,
And I said, what do you need one hundred dollars for.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
He told her that he had a very important meeting
in Toronto that he needed to get to.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
He said, I've got I've got to meet the publisher.
I got to be up there.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Sue looked out the window at the frozen streets with
a grimace, and then she did the thing she'd done
her entire life. She showed up for her brother.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
And I did, carried my sorry body out the door
and drove on the black ice and went to the
bank and deposited one hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
For our confused gen Z listeners. They didn't have banking
apps at the time.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
And that was on a Friday.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And then a few days later, Sue and some of
her and Roger's other siblings met up for their weekly
cup of coffee at Tim Horton's.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
So I walk into Tim's and everybody's saying to me,
did you hear about Roger? And I said, what do
you still get that not in your stomach when somebody
says Roger, because you think, oh my, what happened.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Tuesday, March thirty first, nineteen ninety two, at around five
point thirty pm, a gunman wearing a Richard Nixon mask
walked into a Zeller's department store in downtown Ottawa. He
grabbed a stock boy and demanded to be taken to
the store safe, but all that they could produce was
two bags of rolled coins, so the gunman grabbed a
(13:25):
child's knapsack from a luggage display, filled it with the loot,
and began marching the stock boy across the store, pressing
the gun into his back. They went up an escalator,
across the main floor and out the door, where the
gunman released the boy and made off with a limp.
Speaker 11 (13:47):
Myself and my partner were patrolling in the Center Town
area of Ottawa which the call came in.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
This is Dwayne Raymond. At the time, he was a
staff sergeant for the Ottawa Police broadcast.
Speaker 11 (13:59):
So there was a robbery the Zellers. The robbery had occurred,
the suspect had left the Zellar store. I believed somebody
had followed him from the Zellar store and had called.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The eyewitness said he saw the robber board a public
bus nearby. The bus was moving through the downtown core
and was right near the Canadian Parliament buildings when the
cruisers eventually pulled it over. Dwayne and his partner cautiously
approached the bus when suddenly he was stopped in his tracks.
Speaker 11 (14:33):
When I first saw him on the bus, I'm like,
I recognized this person, and it clicked because it was
not that many years beforehand that I had seen him.
I was introduced to Roger through his book Go Boy In.
That was a mandatory reading where, of course I took
it at Algonquin College in Ottawa in nineteen eighty six,
(14:54):
and stood out to me as a story of just
overcoming everything that he had done and had been through.
They invited him to the college to do a lecture
in nineteen eighty six and got a chance to meet
with him and talk to him.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
At that point, even just these few years later, Roger
looked much different than Dwayne remembered.
Speaker 11 (15:19):
There was a frailty to him, and he did make
a statement to us that all right, all right, you
have me and I have Parkinson's. So we took control
of him on the bus. The two of us escorted
him together, obviously to ensure that he didn't try and
run away from us, and then put him into our
police car. Had a conversation with regards to what his
(15:41):
rights were and the fact that what he was under
arrest for. I do recall vividly saying to him that Roger,
I'm very disappointed in you, and I just I expanded
on that just where I knew him from, and his
response to me is that a lot of people are
(16:02):
disappointed in him.
Speaker 10 (16:07):
So I was at the time, I was doing my
masters in.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Toronto, Roger's nephew Todd, and I was.
Speaker 10 (16:14):
Just listening to the radio and the I think it
was like the twelve noon news came on and.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Carol was arrested yesterday near this downtown department store.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
A few minutes earlier, a gunman wearing a Halloween mask
robbed the store and briefly held a store clerk cost it.
After the whold up, Carl made his getaway on a
transit bus.
Speaker 10 (16:35):
Roger Carroll, you know, famous Governor General as Award winner,
just been arrested for robbery in Ottawa, and my heart
just sank. It was it was just it was one
of the worst things that I think I had ever
heard in my life. You know, my uncle, who I
(16:56):
had always looked up to, who was bigger than life me,
you know, a celebrity, seemed to have been a success,
had won such a prestigious award. I was so proud
of him for so many years, and then this all
came crashing down, just very surprisingly, and it was it
(17:19):
was crushing.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Sue found out from one of her siblings what had happened.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
And I was devastated. It was like, it was such
a blow. It was such a blow. At the moment,
I was very angry at him, extremely angry, and the
person I should have been angry at was myself.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Sue wasn't mad at Roger about the one hundred dollars.
She was mad that, after a lifetime of loyalty and
encouragement and love, that he could just call her up
and take advantage of her like that.
Speaker 5 (17:54):
And as the old saying goes, the straw that breaks
the camel's back, that was it. I said, I am finished.
It's like a piece of me died right there. So
I thought, You'll never never pull that on me again, never, never.
I couldn't believe that he did that to me.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Roger found himself behind bars for the first time in
over thirteen years, and it was just like old times.
He was immediately caught trying to pry open a window
covering and was sent to a different prison, where he
quickly got into a fight with another inmate that left
him with a broken hand. Roger wrote about what happened
(18:43):
next in the afterward to the final printing of Go Boy.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
One night, I attempted to escape through one of the
windows in the men's room. I was caught and placed
in a padded room by the orderlies. While one of
them came in to give me my medication. I again
tried to make a break for it. I failed and
wound up in court Rockville for attempted to escape and assault.
I picked up another nine months of time. In autumn
of nineteen ninety three, at the age of fifty six,
(19:08):
I was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment for the
robbery charge. After a very lengthy.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Trial, Roger was transferred to Hull, Quebec, the same town
he'd lived in when he was first paroled when Goboy
came out, but this time instead of the halfway house.
He was in maximum security when one night, the guard
(19:35):
who was supposed to be watching Roger fell asleep.
Speaker 9 (19:39):
So I took my chance and in darkness, scaled the
old concrete wall, ripping my hands and torso to shreds
as I tried to untangle myself from the coils of
razor wire. Unknown to me, the guards were holding a
union meeting that night. It looked like a nighttime football game,
with me at one end of the yard and thirty
or so guards at the other end advancing on me.
(20:00):
I was a bloody mess as I jumped from the
high wall to the roof in a very dramatic display
of willpower. During all of this, inmates who were watching
from the barred windows of the cell blocks were encouraging
me by yelling, go boy, go boy. Little did they
know that the two officers from the cruiser were on
the other side of the fence with their arms open
wide waiting for me to jump.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Sue fully stopped talking to Roger in the aftermath of
his relapse as robber. When Roger got married during a
stint in prison, Sue was not there. She continued to
meet up with her other siblings for their weekly Tim
Horton's coffee, like they always had. Some of the siblings
did a better job of keeping track of Roger than others,
(20:52):
but he was no one's favorite topic of conversation because
the news was always bleak. They'd heard that the Parkinson's
had become so severe his wife Barbara needed help to
look after him, and he wound up in a care home.
One time, when Sue's little brother, Gaston was in town
from Carolina, three of the siblings decided to go and
(21:14):
check on him to make sure he was okay.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
And they said, aren't you coming? And I said no, no,
And it was very easy to say no. It's just
my heart was saying no. And they said, oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So they went.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
But when they came back, Gaston looked shaken and he
said to Sue, you.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Know what, you were smart not to go. I said, yes,
Oh what happened? Well, he said, the good news is
he's got a roof over his head and they're feeding
them and he gets medicine. The bad news is, I
don't even think you knew me.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
And this is when something changed in Sue.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
So I thought, okay, I better check into this. So
I made a call to the establishment and they said, oh, yes,
we've got him here whatnot? And he falls a lot,
and when he's not falling, he's sleeping. So I thought, hmmm,
it was the start eat at me. So I take
the bull by the horns and I thought, I'm going
(22:17):
to go and see him. So I drove myself to Plantagenet.
When I saw him, he was sleeping in a wheelchair
and he was kind of slanted. Half his body was
out of the wheelchair with his leg straight out, and
his head was just plopped to one side. I recognized him.
(22:39):
So the one of the workers there woke him up,
and I stood in front of him and she said,
do you know who this is? And he looked at
me and he said Susie, which made me feel very good,
and so I said, how are you, Roger? And it's
just like I had spoken to him the day before.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
The two of the caught up over a shared treat.
Roger had been living there for a while and he
said that everyone there was pretty nice, but the big
problem he'd been having lately was with gravity.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
So he starts showing me his legs, which was absolutely terrible,
great big scabs from falling. He had a carpet in
his room, a small area carpet falling, so it's like rugburns.
So anyway, this shook me up big time.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Sue did her best to just enjoy the company of
her brother and keep things light. But once she got
back into her car, she knew what she had to do.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
And I thought, there's no way. There's no way I'm
leaving him there. There's just no way.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
It was like the switch that had turned off, and
Sue finally was flipped back on. When she got back
home to corn Law, she immediately hit the pavement.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
I did my legwork and I visited three four establishments
in Cornwall because I wanted to see them for myself,
and I knew the waiting list was at least two
years everywhere, so I went and presented myself to each place,
and I said, you know, you get used to seeing me,
because you're going to see a lot of me.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
We all need a sister like Sue.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
Just within the month, we got him into Sandfield Place,
which is a very nice nursing home, wonderful staff, very
patient and good with Roger and funny. So we used
my elder brother's car and I drove his car and
he came with me and we went to get Roger.
So one more time, we're taking Roger home.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
First introduced to Roger's story where my friend Rob slid
me a copy of Go Boy across a table in
a cafe, and Rob was introduced to Roger's story back
when he was still a kid in the eighties.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
I actually picked up a copy of the book at
the library. I didn't know anything about it. I think
the cover caught my attention and so I took it home.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Rob was immediately grabbed by the action of the book,
the bank robberies, the fights, but most of all, the
prison escapes.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
Where I'm from in Kingston, Ontario, basically it's a prison city.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It framed out his bedroom window was one of the
very prisons from Go Boy.
Speaker 7 (25:40):
From my house growing up, I could see Colin's Bay
pen attention, and they call it Disneyland because that has
this sort of big castle looking thing out in the front.
So it was just it's always been in my backyard.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Rob would read about the escapes in Go Boy again
and again, and when he'd glance out the window toward
Colin's Bay, raw up an escape plan for Roger. In
his imagination.
Speaker 7 (26:04):
If he could get over that back wall, through the
farm field, over the train tracks, through the conservation area,
he could come up from the bottom of what my
street was and go up my hill. I could leave
snacks out on the side. I had this all map that,
and I'd written it out, and I had a little
map and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
When Roger's second book, Bingo came out, Rob was such
a well known fan of Rogers someone got him a
signed copy.
Speaker 7 (26:30):
It was autographed, and honestly, I thought it was like
Wayne Gretzky, he had written a hockey stick for me.
Like it was like it was the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Rob eventually went off to film school, graduated, and then,
like all Cinophiles from that era, he got a job
at Blockbuster Video. When one day Rob thought, I wonder
where I could find a copy of the Go Boy movie.
He'd never seen it, but he remembered vaguely reading a
news story about how there was this big budget film
(27:00):
adaptation in the works. So he searched the Blockbuster catalog
and the library.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
I started looking for it. I couldn't find it anywhere.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So one day he called up the publisher of the
book and.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
I said, where could I see the movie of this book?
And he's like, well, there is no movie.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
How could there not be a movie. Rob's like, it's
one of the most cinematic books I've ever read.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
And I said, if someone was to make the movie,
how would you go about doing that? And he said, actually,
Roger holds the film rights to this. So that was
my introduction of like, oh, so it's available and I'm
a new film school graduate and oh maybe this has
actually got a good plan.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
So Rob thinks, great, I'll just get in touch with Roger.
Speaker 7 (27:45):
Unbeknownst to me at the time, Roger had been he
has sort of been getting in trouble in and out
of trouble later on in his life.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
And he was currently serving time in prison. So Rob's like,
I'll just give him a call in prison.
Speaker 7 (27:59):
Growing up in prison, I should have known how to worked,
but I didn't, And so I phoned the institution that
he was in, saying, basically, hi, is Roger there? You know?
Can I speak to Roger care on please? And they're like,
we're not running a hotel here, sir.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
But then a short time after that I.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Got to collect call, but my wife picked it up
and then she comes and says, and we just had
our babies were quite young at the times, like newborns.
And she goes, I don't know what project are you
working on, but why are we going to collect calls
from prison?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So that started it. Roger continued bouncing around to different places,
both in and out of prison, when finally the timing
worked out so that Rob could go and meet him
and his wife, Barbara, not knowing what sort of condition
he'd find Roger in.
Speaker 7 (28:48):
I knew he had Parkinson's disease, and I knew that
his voice was quite raspy and stuff, and I d
heard interviews that he'd done, but I didn't really know
what to expect when we saw him. So me and
some friends at the time I went up to visit Roger.
We came in and out of nowhere, like Roger just
I don't know why, but it's like he wanted to
show me that I still got it. And so he goes,
(29:09):
I can bench press one hundred pounds, and I'm sure
you can't. And then he went out and sort of
stumbled onto this bench press that he had just outside
of his door and did ten of the fastest bench
presses of one hundred pounds I've ever seen anybody do.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Rob was thrilled to discover that Roger was still Roger.
Speaker 7 (29:26):
And then when he was done, He's just sort of
stands up and I was like, Hi, I'm Rob. That
visit was amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
In subsequent visits, Rob got to know Roger's family and
his sister Sue, who, after they'd reunited, continued to look
after her brother back in Cornwall.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
He was in a nursing home. His health was really improving.
It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And one day with his camera, Rob tagged along for
a drive with the two siblings.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
We went for a drive literally down Memory Lane, and
it was really nice because it was sort of brother
and sister doing Remember Whens.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
There's the church Roger used to sneak out of the
woods where Roger would catch squirrels, the fishing spot where
he'd hide from the truant officer.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
And then at one point we were driving along, Sue
and I both saw we were passing a TD bank
and so Sue says, oh, Roger, don't get any ideas
and he didn't see it at first, and he goes
what And he looks over and he goes, oh, yeah,
I've never done a TD and you could just see
the wheels are really like Okay, I can still do this.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Driving around with Roger and Sue as they gently roasted
each other in the way the siblings do. Rob was
struck by this thought. In the grand spectrum of ways
that Roger Kuran's life could have gone, even given everything
that happened to him, this really was one of the
best paths available. A journey of unbelievable highs in Lowes
(31:00):
leading to a final chapter near his family, safe with
lots of friends and lots of people to tell his
stories to.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
But he just seemed more calm and at peace. He
seemed happy, which was which was nice to see one
of Canada's most notorious criminals and one of its most
celebrated authors has died.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
He was seventy three. It's hard to accept that Roger
Kuran eventually did die. It seems impossible that as his
mortality closed in he didn't find another way out. I
guess if it's possible for someone like Roger Kuran to die,
it could happen to anyone.
Speaker 11 (31:50):
Great.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
This is Roger's niece singing at his memorial Roger's headstone
that was picked out by Sue. Is in the shape
of a hardcover book, and it reads on its cover
Roger Goboy Koran, Governor General's Literary Award, nineteen seventy eight.
He can go see it next time you're in Cornwall.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
I think he'll be remembered in a loving way, and
I believe that. I don't think. I don't think anyone
that's known him will well think of him differently. We
remember Roger because he was such a vivid character. And
if you can say this about somebody who did the
things he did.
Speaker 7 (32:38):
He was a nice person. He was a nice company.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
He was a good company to be around.
Speaker 12 (32:44):
He was charismatic, he was full of energy. He was
hyperactive essentially all the time. But it seemed like a
very happy person. He seemed very positive, enthusiastic.
Speaker 6 (32:55):
I always found something positive out of everything that was negative,
no matter how negative, I'd manage to stubbornly to twist
it around and find something positive out of it.
Speaker 8 (33:03):
He would endure as the prison writer of his generation.
The story he told was quite remarkable and quite unique,
and it's a redemption tale. It had all those elements
of vindication and success and defeating the very system that
represses everybody. I think that's why it's so resonant.
Speaker 10 (33:24):
I think my uncle Roger's story brought the light on
what was happening in Canadian prisons at the time that
ninety nine percent of the population knew nothing about. And
I hope that some of my uncle's books helped reform
prison policy and public policy in some way that has
(33:47):
benefited prisoners.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Roger will be remembered for his moment in the limelight
and his story about the power of the written word.
But the thing that I'll never forget is his unest
sable will. The world tried to civilize and change and
control him, but he couldn't be contained. You could put
(34:11):
him in a cell in a hole, but.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
You couldn't capture him.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Walls couldn't confine him, Labels couldn't define him. His story
proves that stubborn belief in yourself can get you anywhere.
To hear of his prison escapes, his creative journey, and
his insane physical durability forces you to rethink what is
(34:38):
humanly possible. In Roger's world, it is possible to escape
from an inescapable place. It is possible to turn a
bag of jelly Beans into an award winning piece of
literature after his crimes as an older man. It seems
(35:03):
like it gave the people that were so inspired by
him fifteen years earlier, permission to dismiss his whole story.
That it was supposed to be a story of rehabilitation,
and when he returned to a life of crime, the
whole thing was deemed to be worthless. But that's to
miss the point.
Speaker 12 (35:24):
The most powerful message was that offenders aren't just defenders.
You know, a person isn't a robber, a murderer, a thief.
He's a human being that at some point in life
did these things. But that's a small part of his life.
He's much more than that. He's much more complex than that,
and he or she also as far more to offer
(35:45):
than that. And so the message really was that there's
tremendous power in human beings.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
If he was able to go to you know, cities
across the country and speak to groups of kids, and
if he and one or two kids in that audience
who were on a slippery path, if you changed one life,
I mean, that's that's huge.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
He had a story to tell that it's a story
that really catches you, and the people just got really
caught up in the in the story. They just come
away with wondering, you know, how did he get through that?
Speaker 13 (36:22):
All that frustration, all that hate, all that voice within
me to be heard, all came up that through my fingers,
into the pan and into the book. And now that
it's between the covers, I think of it as not
my voice, but the voice of many other inmates and candidate.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Roger's story shows us that creativity can transform, you can transport,
you can.
Speaker 7 (36:45):
Be your escape.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And if creativity can't get you where you need to go,
that's what the hacksaw Blade in your Shoe is for.
(37:14):
Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written
and hosted by me Sam Wellins. Our producer is Rob
Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer.
(37:36):
Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedemant, 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
(37:56):
Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Excerpts from Roger Kuran's book
Go Boy, read by Jamie Kavanaugh, and special thanks to
Damian Kerns for helping us restore some of the archival material.
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam
hoff and Matt Cher. A special thanks to our operations
(38:19):
team Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dingle.
If you enjoyed Go Boy, please rate and review the
show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Go
Boy is dedicated to the memory of Bonnie Heinrix.
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Roger's second book, Bingo, wasn't supposed to be a big undertaking.
Most of the material for Bingo was already written in
his original Go Boy manuscript and was set aside for
book number two. The idea was that his sophomore effort
was going to ride on the coattails of the runaway
success of Go Boy and hit bookshelves within a year
(00:27):
or two at most, But Bingo didn't launch until seven
years later in nineteen eighty five. Getting it finished took
everything he had and all the support he could get
from those closest to him.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I dedicated this book to the most important person in
my life, my sister Sue. He never abandoned me. People
read Bingo, and after people read Go Boy, they say
to me, how did you survive twenty four years in
prison under all those circumstances? And it's because of my
sister Sue.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Roger told people it took so long because by writing
about the Kingston pen Riot, he was forced to revisit
the grizzly scenes that haunted him. Or perhaps it was
just that his life was so full. Now, it's one
thing to write a book when you're locked in a
prison cell quite another when you're an overnight celebrity with
more money and attention than you'd ever dreamed of. Like
(01:21):
the famous boxing quote from Marvin Hagler, it's tough to
get out of bed to do road work at five
am when you've been sleeping in silk pajamas. But it
turned out there was another reason for Roger's persistent writing
struggles that was lurking beneath the surface, something that no
one including Roger had picked up on yet. From iHeart
(01:52):
Podcasts and Campsite Media, I'm Sam Mullens and this is
Go Boy, episode eight one Last Escape. Sue was the
(02:19):
first one who noticed it.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Well.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
He was visiting me one time in Cornwall and as
we were outside talking away, I start noticing his arm
kind of curving and his hand heading more upward towards
his waistline. And I didn't say anything at first, and
(02:43):
then seemed to go back down. And then I noticed
this happened a few times, so I said to him, Roger,
just look at your hand where it is right now.
He had no idea that it was coming up in
a curve and he said, oh, isn't that funny? I said, yeah,
that's funny. My first thought was, my gosh, I think
(03:04):
he's having maybe a stroke or something. That was my
first thought on it. But I said, I think you
should have that checked, Roger, you know, so he promised
me when he got back to Auttaway, you'd have it checked.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So he went in for a series of tests and
a physical examination, and the issue was clear.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
I was diagnosed.
Speaker 7 (03:25):
I got a physical problem.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
Now I was dagnosed to having parkinson disease.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
He was very bluntly told. The doctor said, oh, well, yep,
you got Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Roger had finally built a comfortable life as a writer.
But what would this mean going forward.
Speaker 8 (03:44):
I was in Roger's place in Ottawa and his left
hand was trembling. And he saw me.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Notice this is David Schleike, Roger's longtime friend and writing mentor.
Speaker 8 (03:55):
And I said, Roger, what is that because it wasn't
his right hand, and he said, oh, I can still type.
That's exactly that moment he said, oh I can still type,
and but his hand was trembling. He said, well, it's
probably Parkinson's because he'd been for a diagnosis, and but
that's the first time I saw it. But he expressed
it in terms of I can still type.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Roger was never much of a typist anyway, so he
tried to carry on as if there was no issue.
Speaker 5 (04:23):
He was having a hard time with the keys. He
was finding that he was, you know, hitting different keys
that he did not mean to hit left hand. He
ain't to say letter all the time, so that became
quite an issue for him. You know, that was kind
of quite an adjustment.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
At the doctor's appointments, Roger started to learn about Parkinson's,
that it's a neurodegenerative condition that effects one in five
hundred people in Canada. It felt like random bad luck,
something he'd had his fair share of. But when he
learned that there seems to be a correlation between between
head trauma and Parkinson's diagnoses, and that emotional trauma can
(05:05):
affect the symptoms severity, he stopped thinking of it in
terms of luck.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
He talked about how the tremors were inevitable because he
had been beaten so much and hit about the head,
and that it was a result of abuse.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Looking back over his life, you could say he had
enough violent stories to fill a best selling book or
an eight part podcast about it.
Speaker 6 (05:31):
After surviving the pedal system. I had to come down
with it, but I'm handling that very very well.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Roger was encouraged by Muhammad Ali's journey with Parkinson's, seeing
that he was able to still live a fulfilling life
with the disease.
Speaker 6 (05:44):
Well, if he could handle it, I can.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
You know he wasn't going to He just wasn't taking
a back seat to it, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
As the symptoms progressed, he would stubbornly keep riding his
bike everywhere, even on days when his tremor was an
eleven out of ten. Here's Roger's nephew, Todd.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He was so proud that he was still riding a bike.
He gets on this bike, this two wheeler, and starts
riding it. And this guy has Parkinson's disease and he
can barely walk, and he's riding a bike and he's
going down hills and We're like, oh my god, what
does he doing.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
He's going to kill himself.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
You could try tying a piano to his back. He
was still biking to the store if he needed something. Eventually,
he wound up in the hospital after a bike crash,
and then he started having violent falls unrelated to the bike,
But the biggest concern wasn't with how his body seemed
to be betraying him. It was with how the disease
(06:44):
was affecting his mental state. And his riding.
Speaker 8 (06:48):
Bingo brought back some enthusiasm, and then the Parkinson stuff
took the steam out of him for a while.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Some people with Parkinson's experienced feelings of distraction or disorganization
and struggled with finishing tasks, and these were things that
Roger struggled with to begin with.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
It took him.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Longer to get things done. Eventually, it fixed your memory.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
A lot of things he was lost.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
His writing wasn't working, his public addresses weren't working because
he couldn't speak very well because of the disability that
was accruing from Parkinson's.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
It was attacking him. Whether he liked it or not,
it was coming at him.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
He tried different treatments, but every time something seemed to
be working, it suddenly would stop.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
This was something he couldn't take control over. This was
something he couldn't run from.
Speaker 9 (07:47):
Five years had slipped by since I was first diagnosed
with Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
These are Roger's words read here by our actor.
Speaker 9 (07:54):
My head tremors were getting worse, and my body would
shake so dramatically that when I rested my arms a table,
all the dishes would clatter. Sometimes my voice was so
soft and slurred that I was always asked to repeat myself.
It took enormous effort just to talk and walk and think.
My writing and lecturing dribbled to a standstill as I
(08:15):
was now too jittery to sit still. The lights were on,
but no one was home.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
The speaking gigs with the Solicitor General fizzled out, and
the Big Go Boy film adaptation that he talked about
for many years never made it to production. All Roger
really had left to lean on were the two books
of fiction that he signed on to write. He initially
seemed rejuvenated to pivot finally from memoir to fiction. Finally
(08:48):
he would be free to stop immersing himself in the
past and free to craft whatever he wanted. But every
day seemed to be harder than the last.
Speaker 10 (08:58):
After years of being on the outside, and I think
medical problems that he developed in his later years, the
parkinson and pain, and he started self medicating, which was
a real slippery slope for him.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Roger had always prided himself on his ability to abstain
from alcohol and drugs for years and years of enduring
what he endured and keeping the company he did, he
somehow had managed to never touch the stuff. But one
day Roger's friend David came over to work on his
latest book with him when he was surprised to see
(09:36):
that Roger was using cocaine.
Speaker 8 (09:39):
He'd have lines on his table when I got there sometimes,
and he knew I wouldn't blow the whistle on him
that he had it.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Roger claimed that he was only using a small amount
and was only taking it as medicine.
Speaker 8 (09:51):
It really helped with the tremors. That it really helped
with the pain of the tremors and the discomfort and
imbalance of the tremors.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Roger wrote about this time later in life.
Speaker 9 (10:01):
My medications were no longer cutting through the pain. I
was at my wits end when one day I was
introduced to the Deadly Lady in White. Cocaine was a
very expensive powder, and I absolutely hated the idea of
using narcotics for relief, but it worked. I was no
longer writing in agony. All of my parkinson symptoms would
(10:21):
instantly disappear. I felt I was a whole man again.
Yet I was a babe in the arms when it
came to dope.
Speaker 8 (10:29):
Sometimes I'd arrive at his place and he'd be just buzzing,
and you could tell he had, you know, taken some
lines prior to my arrival. It helped him forget, you
know that, he said, I know my days are numbered.
He said to me more than once. I don't want
to die wiggling. He didn't want to be a wiggling drooler.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Despite all of this, Roger did manage to finish his
two books of fiction, but his novels titled Jojo and
Dream Caper didn't do what he'd hoped they would, and so,
through the combination of his work struggling the Parkinson's and
the growing cocaine habit, Roger entered a new era in
his life where everything started to spiral.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
Roger gave me a call, and with Roger, it's always rushed.
Oh my gosh, her, yep, right now, he needs it.
He needs it like yes they I remember. It was
a nicy stormy day, nothing but black ice all over
the place. The town was just shut down with ice.
But he needed one hundred dollars and I had been
ill at home. I had a fever. Whatever wasn't up
(11:35):
to par, and I said, I don't even think I
can get out of the driveway. It's just nothing but a
She by, Oh, yes, yes, I need it right now,
And I said, what do you need one hundred dollars for.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
He told her that he had a very important meeting
in Toronto that he needed to get to.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
He said, I've got I've got to meet the publisher.
I got to be up there.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Sue looked out the window at the frozen streets with
a grimace, and then she did the thing she'd done
her entire life. She showed up for her brother.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
And I did, carried my sorry body out the door
and drove on the black ice and went to the
bank and deposited one hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
For our confused gen Z listeners. They didn't have banking
apps at the time.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
And that was on a Friday.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And then a few days later, Sue and some of
her and Roger's other siblings met up for their weekly
cup of coffee at Tim Horton's.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
So I walk into Tim's and everybody's saying to me,
did you hear about Roger? And I said, what do
you still get that not in your stomach when somebody
says Roger, because you think, oh my, what happened.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Tuesday, March thirty first, nineteen ninety two, at around five
point thirty pm, a gunman wearing a Richard Nixon mask
walked into a Zeller's department store in downtown Ottawa. He
grabbed a stock boy and demanded to be taken to
the store safe, but all that they could produce was
two bags of rolled coins, so the gunman grabbed a
(13:25):
child's knapsack from a luggage display, filled it with the loot,
and began marching the stock boy across the store, pressing
the gun into his back. They went up an escalator,
across the main floor and out the door, where the
gunman released the boy and made off with a limp.
Speaker 11 (13:47):
Myself and my partner were patrolling in the Center Town
area of Ottawa which the call came in.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
This is Dwayne Raymond. At the time, he was a
staff sergeant for the Ottawa Police broadcast.
Speaker 11 (13:59):
So there was a robbery the Zellers. The robbery had occurred,
the suspect had left the Zellar store. I believed somebody
had followed him from the Zellar store and had called.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The eyewitness said he saw the robber board a public
bus nearby. The bus was moving through the downtown core
and was right near the Canadian Parliament buildings when the
cruisers eventually pulled it over. Dwayne and his partner cautiously
approached the bus when suddenly he was stopped in his tracks.
Speaker 11 (14:33):
When I first saw him on the bus, I'm like,
I recognized this person, and it clicked because it was
not that many years beforehand that I had seen him.
I was introduced to Roger through his book Go Boy In.
That was a mandatory reading where, of course I took
it at Algonquin College in Ottawa in nineteen eighty six,
(14:54):
and stood out to me as a story of just
overcoming everything that he had done and had been through.
They invited him to the college to do a lecture
in nineteen eighty six and got a chance to meet
with him and talk to him.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
At that point, even just these few years later, Roger
looked much different than Dwayne remembered.
Speaker 11 (15:19):
There was a frailty to him, and he did make
a statement to us that all right, all right, you
have me and I have Parkinson's. So we took control
of him on the bus. The two of us escorted
him together, obviously to ensure that he didn't try and
run away from us, and then put him into our
police car. Had a conversation with regards to what his
(15:41):
rights were and the fact that what he was under
arrest for. I do recall vividly saying to him that Roger,
I'm very disappointed in you, and I just I expanded
on that just where I knew him from, and his
response to me is that a lot of people are
(16:02):
disappointed in him.
Speaker 10 (16:07):
So I was at the time, I was doing my
masters in.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Toronto, Roger's nephew Todd, and I was.
Speaker 10 (16:14):
Just listening to the radio and the I think it
was like the twelve noon news came on and.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Carol was arrested yesterday near this downtown department store.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
A few minutes earlier, a gunman wearing a Halloween mask
robbed the store and briefly held a store clerk cost it.
After the whold up, Carl made his getaway on a
transit bus.
Speaker 10 (16:35):
Roger Carroll, you know, famous Governor General as Award winner,
just been arrested for robbery in Ottawa, and my heart
just sank. It was it was just it was one
of the worst things that I think I had ever
heard in my life. You know, my uncle, who I
(16:56):
had always looked up to, who was bigger than life me,
you know, a celebrity, seemed to have been a success,
had won such a prestigious award. I was so proud
of him for so many years, and then this all
came crashing down, just very surprisingly, and it was it
(17:19):
was crushing.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Sue found out from one of her siblings what had happened.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
And I was devastated. It was like, it was such
a blow. It was such a blow. At the moment,
I was very angry at him, extremely angry, and the
person I should have been angry at was myself.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Sue wasn't mad at Roger about the one hundred dollars.
She was mad that, after a lifetime of loyalty and
encouragement and love, that he could just call her up
and take advantage of her like that.
Speaker 5 (17:54):
And as the old saying goes, the straw that breaks
the camel's back, that was it. I said, I am finished.
It's like a piece of me died right there. So
I thought, You'll never never pull that on me again, never, never.
I couldn't believe that he did that to me.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Roger found himself behind bars for the first time in
over thirteen years, and it was just like old times.
He was immediately caught trying to pry open a window
covering and was sent to a different prison, where he
quickly got into a fight with another inmate that left
him with a broken hand. Roger wrote about what happened
(18:43):
next in the afterward to the final printing of Go Boy.
Speaker 9 (18:46):
One night, I attempted to escape through one of the
windows in the men's room. I was caught and placed
in a padded room by the orderlies. While one of
them came in to give me my medication. I again
tried to make a break for it. I failed and
wound up in court Rockville for attempted to escape and assault.
I picked up another nine months of time. In autumn
of nineteen ninety three, at the age of fifty six,
(19:08):
I was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment for the
robbery charge. After a very lengthy.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Trial, Roger was transferred to Hull, Quebec, the same town
he'd lived in when he was first paroled when Goboy
came out, but this time instead of the halfway house.
He was in maximum security when one night, the guard
(19:35):
who was supposed to be watching Roger fell asleep.
Speaker 9 (19:39):
So I took my chance and in darkness, scaled the
old concrete wall, ripping my hands and torso to shreds
as I tried to untangle myself from the coils of
razor wire. Unknown to me, the guards were holding a
union meeting that night. It looked like a nighttime football game,
with me at one end of the yard and thirty
or so guards at the other end advancing on me.
(20:00):
I was a bloody mess as I jumped from the
high wall to the roof in a very dramatic display
of willpower. During all of this, inmates who were watching
from the barred windows of the cell blocks were encouraging
me by yelling, go boy, go boy. Little did they
know that the two officers from the cruiser were on
the other side of the fence with their arms open
wide waiting for me to jump.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Sue fully stopped talking to Roger in the aftermath of
his relapse as robber. When Roger got married during a
stint in prison, Sue was not there. She continued to
meet up with her other siblings for their weekly Tim
Horton's coffee, like they always had. Some of the siblings
did a better job of keeping track of Roger than others,
(20:52):
but he was no one's favorite topic of conversation because
the news was always bleak. They'd heard that the Parkinson's
had become so severe his wife Barbara needed help to
look after him, and he wound up in a care home.
One time, when Sue's little brother, Gaston was in town
from Carolina, three of the siblings decided to go and
(21:14):
check on him to make sure he was okay.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
And they said, aren't you coming? And I said no, no,
And it was very easy to say no. It's just
my heart was saying no. And they said, oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So they went.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
But when they came back, Gaston looked shaken and he
said to Sue, you.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Know what, you were smart not to go. I said, yes,
Oh what happened? Well, he said, the good news is
he's got a roof over his head and they're feeding
them and he gets medicine. The bad news is, I
don't even think you knew me.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
And this is when something changed in Sue.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
So I thought, okay, I better check into this. So
I made a call to the establishment and they said, oh, yes,
we've got him here whatnot? And he falls a lot,
and when he's not falling, he's sleeping. So I thought, hmmm,
it was the start eat at me. So I take
the bull by the horns and I thought, I'm going
(22:17):
to go and see him. So I drove myself to Plantagenet.
When I saw him, he was sleeping in a wheelchair
and he was kind of slanted. Half his body was
out of the wheelchair with his leg straight out, and
his head was just plopped to one side. I recognized him.
(22:39):
So the one of the workers there woke him up,
and I stood in front of him and she said,
do you know who this is? And he looked at
me and he said Susie, which made me feel very good,
and so I said, how are you, Roger? And it's
just like I had spoken to him the day before.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
The two of the caught up over a shared treat.
Roger had been living there for a while and he
said that everyone there was pretty nice, but the big
problem he'd been having lately was with gravity.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
So he starts showing me his legs, which was absolutely terrible,
great big scabs from falling. He had a carpet in
his room, a small area carpet falling, so it's like rugburns.
So anyway, this shook me up big time.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Sue did her best to just enjoy the company of
her brother and keep things light. But once she got
back into her car, she knew what she had to do.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
And I thought, there's no way. There's no way I'm
leaving him there. There's just no way.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
It was like the switch that had turned off, and
Sue finally was flipped back on. When she got back
home to corn Law, she immediately hit the pavement.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
I did my legwork and I visited three four establishments
in Cornwall because I wanted to see them for myself,
and I knew the waiting list was at least two
years everywhere, so I went and presented myself to each place,
and I said, you know, you get used to seeing me,
because you're going to see a lot of me.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
We all need a sister like Sue.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
Just within the month, we got him into Sandfield Place,
which is a very nice nursing home, wonderful staff, very
patient and good with Roger and funny. So we used
my elder brother's car and I drove his car and
he came with me and we went to get Roger.
So one more time, we're taking Roger home.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
First introduced to Roger's story where my friend Rob slid
me a copy of Go Boy across a table in
a cafe, and Rob was introduced to Roger's story back
when he was still a kid in the eighties.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
I actually picked up a copy of the book at
the library. I didn't know anything about it. I think
the cover caught my attention and so I took it home.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Rob was immediately grabbed by the action of the book,
the bank robberies, the fights, but most of all, the
prison escapes.
Speaker 7 (25:30):
Where I'm from in Kingston, Ontario, basically it's a prison city.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It framed out his bedroom window was one of the
very prisons from Go Boy.
Speaker 7 (25:40):
From my house growing up, I could see Colin's Bay
pen attention, and they call it Disneyland because that has
this sort of big castle looking thing out in the front.
So it was just it's always been in my backyard.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Rob would read about the escapes in Go Boy again
and again, and when he'd glance out the window toward
Colin's Bay, raw up an escape plan for Roger. In
his imagination.
Speaker 7 (26:04):
If he could get over that back wall, through the
farm field, over the train tracks, through the conservation area,
he could come up from the bottom of what my
street was and go up my hill. I could leave
snacks out on the side. I had this all map that,
and I'd written it out, and I had a little
map and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
When Roger's second book, Bingo came out, Rob was such
a well known fan of Rogers someone got him a
signed copy.
Speaker 7 (26:30):
It was autographed, and honestly, I thought it was like
Wayne Gretzky, he had written a hockey stick for me.
Like it was like it was the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Rob eventually went off to film school, graduated, and then,
like all Cinophiles from that era, he got a job
at Blockbuster Video. When one day Rob thought, I wonder
where I could find a copy of the Go Boy movie.
He'd never seen it, but he remembered vaguely reading a
news story about how there was this big budget film
(27:00):
adaptation in the works. So he searched the Blockbuster catalog
and the library.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
I started looking for it. I couldn't find it anywhere.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So one day he called up the publisher of the
book and.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
I said, where could I see the movie of this book?
And he's like, well, there is no movie.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
How could there not be a movie. Rob's like, it's
one of the most cinematic books I've ever read.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
And I said, if someone was to make the movie,
how would you go about doing that? And he said, actually,
Roger holds the film rights to this. So that was
my introduction of like, oh, so it's available and I'm
a new film school graduate and oh maybe this has
actually got a good plan.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
So Rob thinks, great, I'll just get in touch with Roger.
Speaker 7 (27:45):
Unbeknownst to me at the time, Roger had been he
has sort of been getting in trouble in and out
of trouble later on in his life.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
And he was currently serving time in prison. So Rob's like,
I'll just give him a call in prison.
Speaker 7 (27:59):
Growing up in prison, I should have known how to worked,
but I didn't, And so I phoned the institution that
he was in, saying, basically, hi, is Roger there? You know?
Can I speak to Roger care on please? And they're like,
we're not running a hotel here, sir.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
But then a short time after that I.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
Got to collect call, but my wife picked it up
and then she comes and says, and we just had
our babies were quite young at the times, like newborns.
And she goes, I don't know what project are you
working on, but why are we going to collect calls
from prison?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So that started it. Roger continued bouncing around to different places,
both in and out of prison, when finally the timing
worked out so that Rob could go and meet him
and his wife, Barbara, not knowing what sort of condition
he'd find Roger in.
Speaker 7 (28:48):
I knew he had Parkinson's disease, and I knew that
his voice was quite raspy and stuff, and I d
heard interviews that he'd done, but I didn't really know
what to expect when we saw him. So me and
some friends at the time I went up to visit Roger.
We came in and out of nowhere, like Roger just
I don't know why, but it's like he wanted to
show me that I still got it. And so he goes,
(29:09):
I can bench press one hundred pounds, and I'm sure
you can't. And then he went out and sort of
stumbled onto this bench press that he had just outside
of his door and did ten of the fastest bench
presses of one hundred pounds I've ever seen anybody do.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Rob was thrilled to discover that Roger was still Roger.
Speaker 7 (29:26):
And then when he was done, He's just sort of
stands up and I was like, Hi, I'm Rob. That
visit was amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
In subsequent visits, Rob got to know Roger's family and
his sister Sue, who, after they'd reunited, continued to look
after her brother back in Cornwall.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
He was in a nursing home. His health was really improving.
It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And one day with his camera, Rob tagged along for
a drive with the two siblings.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
We went for a drive literally down Memory Lane, and
it was really nice because it was sort of brother
and sister doing Remember Whens.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
There's the church Roger used to sneak out of the
woods where Roger would catch squirrels, the fishing spot where
he'd hide from the truant officer.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
And then at one point we were driving along, Sue
and I both saw we were passing a TD bank
and so Sue says, oh, Roger, don't get any ideas
and he didn't see it at first, and he goes
what And he looks over and he goes, oh, yeah,
I've never done a TD and you could just see
the wheels are really like Okay, I can still do this.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Driving around with Roger and Sue as they gently roasted
each other in the way the siblings do. Rob was
struck by this thought. In the grand spectrum of ways
that Roger Kuran's life could have gone, even given everything
that happened to him, this really was one of the
best paths available. A journey of unbelievable highs in Lowes
(31:00):
leading to a final chapter near his family, safe with
lots of friends and lots of people to tell his
stories to.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
But he just seemed more calm and at peace. He
seemed happy, which was which was nice to see one
of Canada's most notorious criminals and one of its most
celebrated authors has died.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
He was seventy three. It's hard to accept that Roger
Kuran eventually did die. It seems impossible that as his
mortality closed in he didn't find another way out. I
guess if it's possible for someone like Roger Kuran to die,
it could happen to anyone.
Speaker 11 (31:50):
Great.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
This is Roger's niece singing at his memorial Roger's headstone
that was picked out by Sue. Is in the shape
of a hardcover book, and it reads on its cover
Roger Goboy Koran, Governor General's Literary Award, nineteen seventy eight.
He can go see it next time you're in Cornwall.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
I think he'll be remembered in a loving way, and
I believe that. I don't think. I don't think anyone
that's known him will well think of him differently. We
remember Roger because he was such a vivid character. And
if you can say this about somebody who did the
things he did.
Speaker 7 (32:38):
He was a nice person. He was a nice company.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
He was a good company to be around.
Speaker 12 (32:44):
He was charismatic, he was full of energy. He was
hyperactive essentially all the time. But it seemed like a
very happy person. He seemed very positive, enthusiastic.
Speaker 6 (32:55):
I always found something positive out of everything that was negative,
no matter how negative, I'd manage to stubbornly to twist
it around and find something positive out of it.
Speaker 8 (33:03):
He would endure as the prison writer of his generation.
The story he told was quite remarkable and quite unique,
and it's a redemption tale. It had all those elements
of vindication and success and defeating the very system that
represses everybody. I think that's why it's so resonant.
Speaker 10 (33:24):
I think my uncle Roger's story brought the light on
what was happening in Canadian prisons at the time that
ninety nine percent of the population knew nothing about. And
I hope that some of my uncle's books helped reform
prison policy and public policy in some way that has
(33:47):
benefited prisoners.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Roger will be remembered for his moment in the limelight
and his story about the power of the written word.
But the thing that I'll never forget is his unest
sable will. The world tried to civilize and change and
control him, but he couldn't be contained. You could put
(34:11):
him in a cell in a hole, but.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
You couldn't capture him.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Walls couldn't confine him, Labels couldn't define him. His story
proves that stubborn belief in yourself can get you anywhere.
To hear of his prison escapes, his creative journey, and
his insane physical durability forces you to rethink what is
(34:38):
humanly possible. In Roger's world, it is possible to escape
from an inescapable place. It is possible to turn a
bag of jelly Beans into an award winning piece of
literature after his crimes as an older man. It seems
(35:03):
like it gave the people that were so inspired by
him fifteen years earlier, permission to dismiss his whole story.
That it was supposed to be a story of rehabilitation,
and when he returned to a life of crime, the
whole thing was deemed to be worthless. But that's to
miss the point.
Speaker 12 (35:24):
The most powerful message was that offenders aren't just defenders.
You know, a person isn't a robber, a murderer, a thief.
He's a human being that at some point in life
did these things. But that's a small part of his life.
He's much more than that. He's much more complex than that,
and he or she also as far more to offer
(35:45):
than that. And so the message really was that there's
tremendous power in human beings.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
If he was able to go to you know, cities
across the country and speak to groups of kids, and
if he and one or two kids in that audience
who were on a slippery path, if you changed one life,
I mean, that's that's huge.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
He had a story to tell that it's a story
that really catches you, and the people just got really
caught up in the in the story. They just come
away with wondering, you know, how did he get through that?
Speaker 13 (36:22):
All that frustration, all that hate, all that voice within
me to be heard, all came up that through my fingers,
into the pan and into the book. And now that
it's between the covers, I think of it as not
my voice, but the voice of many other inmates and candidate.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Roger's story shows us that creativity can transform, you can transport,
you can.
Speaker 7 (36:45):
Be your escape.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
And if creativity can't get you where you need to go,
that's what the hacksaw Blade in your Shoe is for.
(37:14):
Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership
with iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written
and hosted by me Sam Wellins. Our producer is Rob
Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer.
(37:36):
Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedemant, 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
(37:56):
Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Excerpts from Roger Kuran's book
Go Boy, read by Jamie Kavanaugh, and special thanks to
Damian Kerns for helping us restore some of the archival material.
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam
hoff and Matt Cher. A special thanks to our operations
(38:19):
team Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dingle.
If you enjoyed Go Boy, please rate and review the
show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Go
Boy is dedicated to the memory of Bonnie Heinrix.
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