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Volume 10, Issue 38, Week of September 23, 2013
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
Born
To Ride
Darlene Buyck has been riding motorcycles since 1952. The helmet the great grandmother is wearing in the photo is from 1962. (Photo by Sandy Hutchinson)
“Biker chick” collects miles, smiles on motorcycle
Tammy Robert Saskatoon Express
Sitting in the tidy, warm yellow living room of her Warman bungalow, Buyck spiels off story after story, efficiently pluckarlene Buyck smooths her Sturgis ing them from her memory and then neatly biker rally T-shirt over her black leg- filing them back again. The autumn sunlight gings and flings both arms wide for a bounces off her bright red hair as she regales hug. “Since I’ve had my operation, I can pull listeners with tales of her motorcycle travels you way closer,” she said with a laugh. to and from places like Tijuana, Lake Tahoe Laughing is something the 76-year-old and even the 1950s Las Vegas Strip. does loudly and often. Buyck has recently Beside her on the sofa is a prized red had a double mastectomy after being diagbinder, a winged logo taped across the front nosed with breast cancer in 2011. Without bearing the words Saskatoon Prairie Dustreconstructive surgery, her chest is a flat ers Motorcycle Club. Buyck has lovingly plane. clipped and saved every story, letter, invita-
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tion and picture ever printed since the early 1950s. It was old-fashioned romance that lured Buyck into her 61-year-old love affair with the motorcycle. Her first husband, Ernie Jansen, rode a bike with a small blue light on the back. Buyck would watch for it faithfully on Broadway Avenue after school. “We used to hang out on the corner of Broadway and Ninth Street,” said Buyck, reflecting on her teenage years in Saskatoon. “We’d go to the Red Robin Cafe for a Coke and walk by the boys sitting on their motorcycles, sometimes more than once.” She
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married the boy with the blue light on his bike and went on to have three sons. Darlene and Ernie became integral to the foundation and longevity of the Prairie Dusters motorcycle club. She and Ernie divorced after 20 years. She married twice more, also to motorcyclists. “Of course they were,” she said with faux outrage when asked. “If they weren’t bikers I wasn’t interested.” Today Buyck has dedicated a room of her home to her motorcycling awards, pictures (Continued on page 4)