The Road that led to Parliament

Serge LeClerc’s life was conceived in crime and it seemed he was destined to become another statistic—another life wasted by crime and its consequences.  His teenaged mother was raped after she ran away from home to a life on the streets.  She gave birth to Serge in an abandoned building.

Serge grew up fast in a rundown housing project in Canada.  At the age of 8, he joined a gang of older boys who tried to steal from the local shops in town.  He was quickly arrested and sent away to St. John’s Training School for Boys, a notoriously violent and corrupt place.  After several escape attempts and a violent outburst, he was sent to a maximum security centre for boys--he was 10 years old.  Thus began his life of crime and the many years of incarceration that followed.

His final arrest was for masterminding a $40 million narcotics lab after he was placed on the RCMP’s Most Wanted List.  His crimes also included theft, fraud, armed robbery, racketeering and bank heists.

When he arrived at the maximum security penitentiary, he was shocked to see a man who actually volunteered to visit prisoners.  “I couldn’t figure out what he was about and what motivated him,” Serge says in his autobiography, Untwisted.  The man, a volunteer with PF Canada, told Serge, “You were created a person of worth and the only thing that makes you a loser is your own choices.”

Shortly after this encounter, Serge watched helplessly as his friend, who was addicted to Serge’s drugs, hung himself in the next cell.  He felt responsible.  The incident “made me rethink my own life and everything I had done to this point,” recalls Serge.  He was now ready to reach out to God, whom Serge calls “A God of second chances.” 

He began going to chapel and corresponding with PF pen pals.  Having only a 5th grade education, he decided to take in-prison classes and did very well.  Soon he was taking college level courses.  “I was literally dazed by my own academic success,” he says.  “I hadn’t thought myself capable of completing university level courses, much less achieving high marks.”

Despite his academic accomplishments in prison, Serge felt ill-prepared for life on the outside when he was paroled.  He didn’t have a birth certificate, a social insurance number or a driver’s license, and he had never held a regular job.  Once again, it was Prison Fellowship Canada that came to his aid.  He entered PF’s pre-release programme and attended the University of Waterloo, earning an Honour’s Degree with a double major.

Hoping to help others as he had been helped, Serge took a leadership role working with Turning Point Ministries, a non-profit organisation.  He and a friend then founded Maranatha Ministries, which offered help and support to other ministries and charities, and he continued to work closely with PF Canada, starting a chapter in Kitchener-Waterloo.  His exemplary work led to an unprecedented full national pardon by the government. 

And continuing to demonstrate that nothing is impossible with God, Serge was recently elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly for Saskatoon Northwest in the 2007 provincial election, making him the first former prisoner to serve as an elected provincial legislator in Canada. 

“In this I praise God and thank the whole of the Prison Fellowship Canada family,” says Serge.