It all started in my grandparents’ trailer on the Pabineau reserve in Bathurst. My sister Melanie was renting the place at the time. She rented the spare bedroom to our cousin Greg. We were in our late teens. Drugs and alcohol were our medicine and gangster rap was our motivation. My cousin Ryan and I were the muscle – we were always fighting. Whether it was with the low rental kids from Bathurst or each other, we always put them up.
My sister was dating a man in his forties. He was connected with the Hells in Montreal and ran Bathurst and most of the Acadian Peninsula with yayo [cocaine] and grass. Melanie rolled with him and his bikers, the Road-Riders.
The kids uptown organized a crew terrorizing the low rentals and most of the city. They had small-time connections but were respected by the weak, which was many. They called themselves the East-Siders. Their colour is blue and they were known to attack in groups.
Life was getting heavy, we needed our own clique. After a few bottles of vodka and beers, Mel, Greg, Ryan and I decided to call ourselves Bloodline. The name was fitting since we were all related through blood. Black and red are our colours. We started tagging up the trailer with spray paint. We went on ventures around the reserve and tagged, shot up street signs and abandoned houses. We tied red and black bandanas on our BMX’s and cruised around the city in packs.
Others rolled with us too. Dillon was there for most of it. I felt sorry for the guy because Ryan was always picking on him. I guess that made him tougher today.
Nathaniel came back from Montreal and moved on the reserve. He was in-tune with street level gangs in Montreal and clicked with us right away. Nathaniel was a little younger than us but could be trusted. Today he’s serving a three-year sentence in Springhill Federal Correctional Center for armed robbery.
A lot of the kids from the reserve and some from the city wanted in. We couldn’t trust them but gave them the job to rep Bloodline. We pretended that they rolled with us and they looked up to our crazy ways. I feel sorry for those kids now. They are still playing gangster and serving long sentences in the fed or provincial county.
Melanie’s boyfriend entrusted her with his stash and she kept most of it with her. If she could sell it, she was allowed, but she could not take any unless she paid for it. So Mel cut it. Greg and I were making homemade beer at the time, so when we got our brew at Wine Kits we picked up a kilo of lactose. This was perfect for cut. No taste, no smell, just pure white stuff. Mel would take an eight-ball out of the ounce and replace it with lactose. She liked her rock; she would cook it into crack. We all smoked it. The more cocaine her man sold, the more he would stash at her place.
Greg was getting pounds of weed to sell and had customers coming from all over. Ryan smoked the stuff like a chimney. The rest of us just got paranoid from it, so we never bothered.
And then Big-T got out. He finished serving a few years in the fed from a large drug bust back when I was just a punk. He sold everything. Melanie started getting ounces of PCP and flipped it in the trailer. We loved PCP. We called it digital world because every time we were on it we would be messing with electronics in the trailer.
Every day we were high. We drank every second day or when our hangovers were gone. We all dropped out of high school and knew nothing but reserve life. None of us had jobs or were old enough to collect welfare, so we hustled.
We were drug dealers. Young kids with no direction but to make money and stay wired. We hardly ate, but we wouldn’t buy food anyway. I remember living off of sliced cheese and ice cream cones for a month. Why we had so much cheese and ice cream cones, I don’t know.
Ryan and I slept on a couch in the living room. We were the trappers. When traffic would pull in the driveway, we would go out and greet them. We would run inside and give either Greg or Mel the money and get the stuff. Whatever they wanted we usually had.
Mel’s boyfriend kept his firearms in the trailer. We would get wasted and shoot them off. I scored a 30-30 for 50 bucks off Ryan and a 4-10 off my dad. We felt bad ass. We had piles of drugs, guns and money. What else could a reserve kid ask for?
We wore baggy clothes, bandanas and ball caps. Not because we were skinny, but it was our style. We imitated our favourite rap artists and pretended to be street thugs. We were Bloodline. The only known reserve gang in New Brunswick. Nobody messed with us but the East-Siders. They would act tough in groups but would never fight one-on-one. Bloodline and East-Siders still beef today.
***
I now sit in my Fredericton apartment reflecting on my messy past. I ask myself: Why have I made it out? It was a shot in the dark when I applied to the University of New Brunswick. When I was accepted as a mature student I thought little of it. I didn’t believe in myself enough to think I could go there and excel. Now I’m at St. Thomas University, studying journalism. I figure I got some stories to tell, some stuff that people should think about.
I would like to say that Bloodline is a thing of the past – I’m not that guy anymore – but tattoos never come off. The young kids, who looked up to us
then, are now the heavies back home. Things don’t change where I come from.
I feel guilty that I left the reserve and all the young kids left in it with negative influences. When I can fully clear the negatives of my past, I will return home. I will teach the kids that young thug’n is a dead end street.
I am the lucky one. I made it out and have a story to tell. My family is still living that story.
