Walter Stadnick

Wolodumir "Walter" Stadnick (born 3 August 1952), also known as "Nurget", is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster who was the third national president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in Canada. Stadnick is generally credited with turning the Hells Angels into the dominant outlaw biker club in Canada. The journalists Michel Auger and Peter Edwards wrote that much about Stadnick is mysterious, ranging from what is the meaning of his sobriquet "Nurget", to how a unilingual Anglo Canadian from Hamilton became the leader of the then largely French-Canadian Hells Angels. In 2004, the journalist Tu Thanh Ha wrote that Stadnick is "a secretive man little known to the public", but "he is one of Canada's most pivotal organized-crime figures."

Wolodumir Stadnik was born on the "upper side" of Hamilton atop of "the Mountain", as locals call the Niagara Escarpment, to a family of Ukrainian immigrants. His parents were Andriy and Valentina Stadnick, who lived at 98 East 16th Street, in a working-class neighborhood known for its high rate of petty crime. In elementary school, he changed the spelling of his surname to Stadnick and preferred to be called Walter rather than Wolodumir. As a child, he regularly attended the local Uniate Catholic church and was described as quiet and well-behaved. One former teacher said about him: "He clearly had a great deal of natural intelligence, but he was impossible to motivate. It was almost like he didn't want to succeed".

As a teenager, Stadnick was known as the resident drug dealer at his high school, and by 1970, he was already known by his nickname "Nurget". It remains a mystery why Stadnick's nickname is "Nurget"; one Hamilton police officer says it goes back to his high school days when as the neighborhood hash dealer, Stadnick always had a "nugget" of hash to sell. As a high school student, he began a lifelong practice of dressing flamboyantly by wearing bright jewelry such as rings and chains. Stadnick did well in auto shop at the Hill Park Secondary School, but was otherwise an indifferent student. Those who knew him in high school considered Stadnick to be a "tough little guy" who, despite his short stature, was known as a fighter. He was very ambitious; joining a biker gang as a teenager in Hamilton called the Cossacks, who were noted for their habit of growing their hair long and drilling holes in their bike helmets, through which they would run their hair. Stadnick named the gang the Cossacks as a reference to his Ukrainian heritage.

On 23 October 1970, Stadnick was arrested after a police officer found LSD tablets in his pocket. Stadnick was charged but made bail. Subsequently, Stadnick was arrested a second time for the possession of hash with the intention to distribute. On 6 January 1971 when the preliminary hearing was held to decide whether Stadnick's case would go to trial or not, Stadnick's biker friends showed up and misbehaved in court, leading the judge to expel them from the courtroom. Outside the courtroom, Stadnick's biker associates began to swear at and threaten one of the policeman scheduled to testify against him, leading to a brawl in the hallway. Standick was convicted of drug possession with the intention to sell.

Stadnick was initially friendly with his future archenemy, Mario "the Wop" Parente, the president of the Hamilton chapter of Satan's Choice outlaw biker gang, but the two reportedly fell out when Parente vetoed the 5'4 Stadnick's attempt to join Satan's Choice under the grounds that he was too short. Satan's Choice were the most powerful outlaw biker club in Ontario in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1973, the Hells Angels offered Bernie Guindon, the national president of Satan's Choice, the opportunity to have his club "patch over" to become Hells Angels, an offer the Canadian nationalist Guindon promptly rejected, saying he rather keep his club Canadian. Unable to join Satan's Choice, Stadnick instead joined the Wild Ones outlaw biker club in 1977. As the Wild Ones were more a senior club than the Cossacks, being allowed to join was a step-up for Stadnick. Stadnick was known for being quiet, for never smoking or doing drugs, and for drinking in moderation.

One Satan's Choice biker, Cecil Kirby, who first saw Stadnick at a bikers' convention in Wasaga Beach in 1977, recalled that Stadnick seemed to be trying too hard to pass himself as a "hardcore" biker, remembering: "I didn't like him. I thought he was a sort of a poser." Kirby described Stadnick as someone who kept "rock star hours" as he was up late and rarely got up until after 1 in the afternoon. On 1 July 1977, Parente, with the rest of the Hamilton chapter of the Satan's Choice club, "patched over" to join the Outlaws who wanted to expand into Canada. On 5 December 1977, the Popeyes of Montreal, generally considered to be the most violent of all of Quebec's many outlaw biker clubs, "patched over" to become the first Hells Angels chapter in Canada. On 17 February 1978, a biker war began between the Outlaws and the Hells Angels. The conflict was started when the Hells Angel Yves "Apache" Trudeau shot two Outlaws in Montreal, killing one.

By 1978, Stadnick had become the leader of the Wild Ones. In the 1970s, outlaw biker clubs were very much subordinate to the Mafia and other organized crime groups like the West End Gang who employed outlaw bikers to do "dirty work" that they did not wish to do themselves. The Wild Ones worked as subcontractors for the Mafia, being used to bomb businesses that refused to pay extortion money. A Hamilton police detective, Ken Roberston, who investigated the bombings, stated: "It was quite a sophisticated operation". Another Hamilton police officer, John Gordon Harris, said of Stadnick: "He was a little short guy. He certainly wasn't the most visible member of the gang. He was just a face in the crowd. He was almost invisible – but he did have a head on his shoulders." The journalists Julian Sher and William Marsden called Harris the "nemesis" of Stadnick who pursued him from the 1970s onward. The private detective Alex Caine, who met Stadnick several times, described him as "a vindictive little man with the charisma of a hockey puck" who appeared to be trying to over-compensate due to his diminutive stature. The journalist Peter Edwards wrote that Stadnick seemed to have a Napoleon complex as despite his short stature that "there was something undeniably huge about the man." The Wild Ones were considered to be one of the lesser outlaw biker clubs in Hamilton, and the Outlaws chapter tolerated their existence as they were not seen to be a threat.

In 1978, Stadnick contacted Yves Buteau, the national president of Hells Angels Canada, to discuss having the Wild Ones "patch over" to become the first Hells Angels chapter in Ontario. John Gordon Harris of the Hamilton police told the journalist Jerry Langton: "As soon as the Wild Ones began to associate with the Hells Angels, the Outlaws told them they shouldn't do that. And they probably shouldn't have, as it led to several deaths." The Hamilton chapter of the Outlaws started killing the Wild Ones, and after five members of the Wild Ones were killed during the course of 1978 and 1979, the gang disbanded. Harris stated that as the Wild Ones kept being killed: "A lot of them are thinking, 'you know what, maybe I don't want to be a biker anymore.' But the hard-core ones, they're still thinking they want to be Hells Angels. I think Stadnick thought, 'this will never happen to me. I'm too smart for this. The ones we're losing were the careless ones.'"