In my many discussions with Gate Lepine, he tears up fairly often. Here's a man who lived a full life and has some scars to prove it. Yes, he enjoyed a long and loving marriage with his beloved wife Jean. But the three men closest to him hurt him deeply.
Understandably, he's reluctant to talk about these troubled souls and the impact they had on his heart. But once in awhile, as he and I are reflecting on life, his mind drifts to one of these sad and tragic figures in his life.
His brother Ray is a case in point.
"My brother did a lot of time. Half his life he spent at the penitentiary, robbing banks and it goes on and on and on. At the end, he was working with the cons and with the law - he was working both sides. It all caught up to him.
He got caught in Quebec City. He couldn’t do time any more. If he went back in the pen, they’d kill him. His name was rotten right across the country for the inmates. He had worked with the other side. So he was stuck and on the run, hiding all over Canada.
That day, he couldn’t take it no more so he jumped over the cliff in Quebec City. He hung onto a tree with a hand and he let go yelling and he went right down to the tracks in the bottom. The cops called me right away and told me all this. We had to bring the body to Ottawa and fix it as best as we could. It was a hell of a shit on my parents and on myself. It was a bastard.
I didn’t go too deep in my book. I’m telling you some stuff but don’t want to share too deep. Some of it, but not that he worked on both sides. He was a rat in the end. He can’t survive no more. Can’t survive on this side or the other side.
On the other hand, we could go there and say he was caught on both sides. It would help a lot of kids to read about this. It’s a hell of a god damn place to end up. 51 years old and you take your life.
There are things about this I wouldn’t mention but people can read between the lines.
He was on the run across Canada, growing a beard, changing his looks. It was like that movie, The Fugitive. Same thing. Same shit. A lot of people were after him, if you know what I mean. He carried a gun with him. I couldn’t see him anymore because I didn’t know who would follow him. He’d come in my house here in Ottawa but I’d always wonder who’s following him. So I had to put the stop to it.
So he lost his family because the family was scared. This is dangerous god damn shit here. There’s drugs involved. It goes pretty deep. The mafia was involved in that. Canadian mafia.
I know quite a bit. There’s a lot of stuff I’m not telling you.
He escaped from Kingston. That was quite a story. His picture was in the Montreal Gazette, front page. “Escape Convict - Dangerous”. They found him in the cottage at the Thousand Islands. He had broken into a cottage and stole a boat. The cottage belonged to a doctor, was full of booze. He started drinking in there. They surrounded the island. He came out. They had spot lights on him with guns and everything, wearing shorts and holding a bottle of whiskey. He said “shoot you bastards”. They put the handcuffs on him and put him back in jail.
You see this in movies.
This all started when he was 11 or 12. The booze at home and all we went through. That’s were it comes from.
I went another road, my own road. I got my own education in the streets. I was out of school. I could have ended up with him or worse and could have died many god damn times. I kept struggling. I was always kind of a loner and my little boat on the river and of course, the music saved me. That’s where the songwriting comes in. You take that away and I probably would have ended up in jail. Maybe Tom too. That’s what saved me, the painting, the poems, the songs. The songwriting was not for me to be a star. It was to save my own god damn soul.
All my songs are my life. I write everything down. They’re most of them true songs. I know what I’m talking about when I’m writing a song. I was my own psychiatrist.
But my brother, he start stealing cars and it went on until he robbed a bank and that was the end. When we moved to Mountjoy Township, that’s when Ray went bananas. We grew up in the taxi stand. We lived in the back. Mom was making sandwiches and dad was running the taxi stand. And here we are trying to go to school and we’re involved with all this bootlegging and fights and cursing.
Before the move, I was doing great, getting a good education. I was in Scouts and the church was involved. I was in the choir. And then we moved.
I had to get tough or get beat up. It got to the point where nobody would touch me."