William MacAllistYou can't be a little pregnant and you also can't be a little involved in criminality. You're either in it all the way or you're not.

William MacAllister said as much this morning during a National Parole Board hearing at a federal corrections institution in Laval where he was questioned about why he has spent much of his 65 years behind bars. The panel of two parole board members, Odette Gravel-Dunberry and Gilles Roussel, granted MacAllister full parole, a freedom he hasn't experienced in 15 years. Gravel-Dunberry, the NPB's regional vice-chairman in Quebec, described it as "a major decision." This is in part because MacAllister, who received a life sentence for his role in the September 1973 holdup of a Brink's armoured truck, violated his parole twice before.
Claude Vienneau, 35, a Brink's guard, was shot and killed during the $270,000 robbery. Another Brink's guard was wounded. MacAllister was convicted by a jury who found him guilty of attempted murder. During the late 1970s, MacAllister was at the forefront of several protests for inmates' rights. He also let the parole board down twice. He was paroled in 1981 but was convicted of drug smuggling in 1987. In 1994, he was deported to the U.S. for conspiring to smuggle 5,000 kilograms of cocaine into Canada through Florida, all while he was out on parole for a second time.
"We believe there are some changes," Gravel-Dunberry said today. "We believe you are motivated to change your life and stay out of prison."
While MacAllister went over the long history of his criminal ways he said he no longer recognized Montreal's organized crime scene. Before the fatal bank robbery MacAllister's criminal associates were a tight-knit group of like-minded people. He had grown up hoping to be a professional hockey player but admired the gangsters from his neighbourhood.
"Back then, they were your friends, people you could trust," MacAllister said of the robbers he committed crimes with.
Tougher sentencing made the prospect of robbing banks very unattractive by the time MacAllister was first released in 1981. By then organized crime in the city changed its focus towards drug trafficking.
"Now it's all about backstabbing. It's cut-throat and full of liars. It's garbage," said MacAllister who still insists he was roped into his last conviction by a Quebec lawyer he claims was working as a police informant.
In that case he was extradited to the U.S. for conspiring to smuggle 5,000 kilograms of cocaine into Canada through Florida and served eight years behind bars in U.S. penitentiaries, which he describes as much tougher than those in Canada.
He returned to Canada in 2002 but was immediately arrested when he arrived because of his life sentence.Since then he has been granted leave privileges and was released on day parole last year. According to Correctional Service Canada, MacAllister no longer associates with known criminals and he recently married. But before granting MacAllister full parole Roussel asked him how he will do things differently this time around.
"I will be straight up with you. If I wanted to return to criminality I would have been long gone four or five years ago," MacAllister said in an apparent reference to how he could have easily escaped while at a minimum-security institution.
"You can't be a little pregnant and you also can't be a little involved in criminality. You're either in it all the way or you're not. I am no longer involved in criminality."