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“striker” in the Rockers to full-fledged membership. It was yet another sign to the police that the quickest way to graduate in the network was through murder. Seven months later, Brisebois took yet another step by graduating from the Rockers and was made a prospect in the Nomads chapter. By comparison, some former Rockers had been members of the Hells Angels’ underling gang for more than five years without yet being promoted. Being a Hells Angel was a far cry from how Brisebois had started his career as a drug dealer. At the age of 18, he had sold tiny bags of cocaine and marijuana out of rented apartments. Now, at 29, he appeared headed for full membership in the Nomads, making him a partner in a multi-million dollar drug network.
    Brisebois was not supposed to be at this party. There was a court order forbidding him from associating with known criminals, and yet here he was, arranging for several of them to bechauffeured to the party. The local police grabbed Brisebois, spread him out on a car, searched him for weapons and handcuffed him. It was perhaps the only hitch for the Hells Angels that day. Even though their leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher, the architect of the Nomads chapter, was behind bars awaiting his second trial on charges that he had ordered the murders of two prison guards, other members of the Nomads like Denis Houle, Walter Stadnick and René Charlebois partied inside with their new Ontario brothers. They had even invited a photographer from the crime tabloid
Allô Police
, to take pictures and get the word out that the Hells Angels had once again expanded. All the while, a seamstress busily sewed the winged-skull patches onto the jackets of the new members.

    Paul Brisebois is arrested on December 29, 2000.
    (Marcos Townsend, The Montreal Gazette)
    As day became night, the members of the Nomads chapter likely felt they were unstoppable. Even with Boucher in prison, the gang was clearly dominating the war. It was a conflict like no other in Quebec, with one side so fixated on supremacy over a major metropolitan city that murder was epidemic. By that point,the Hells Angels had more than 100 members spread across Quebec in six chapters, including the elite Nomads chapter based in Montreal. What would soon become public knowledge was that the Nomads very nearly achieved their desired monopoly on the cocaine market in Montreal. Now, through the contacts they had established over several years and the eight new Ontario chapters they had created overnight, the members of the aggressive Hells Angels’ chapter were planning to increase their share of markets in cities like Toronto, Hamilton and Oshawa. Everything seemed to be going as the Hells Angels willed it.
    Scott Robertson, a member of one of the now-defunct Ontario gangs, walked out of the Sorel bunker sporting his new Hells Angels’ patch, and when police asked him to pose for a picture with his leather jacket, he obliged. Mayrand, who only months earlier had moved from the relative peace and quiet of the Hells Angels’ Montreal chapter apparently to replace Boucher and assist the Nomads when it came to diplomatic issues, walked out of the bunker looking bushed. Guy Ouellette, a Sûreté du Québec sergeant who had probed the Hells Angels for more than a decade, managed to talk to him. Mayrand said he had had a long day. Sergeant Ouellette replied that his was going to be longer — he had to record how many new members the gang had. Mayrand shrugged his shoulders and informed Ouellette there were 168 new Hells Angels for the police to deal with.
    The day after the party, Maurice (Mom) Boucher searched for news on what had transpired in Sorel. From his cell in a special wing of a women’s provincial detention center, where he had been placed for security reasons, Boucher called Pierre Provencher, a trusted member of the Rockers. As the police listened in, Provencher gushed about the party. He told Boucher about