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