by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

The interim President and leading candidate to head anglo rights lobby group Alliance Quebec might be a man of God, but in the tradition of St. Augustine and the prodigal son, he's had to overcome a slew of youthful misadventure along the way.

Reverend Darryl Gray, 48, who has headed the Union United Church since arriving here from Nova Scotia eight years ago, says having a history doesn't have to be a barrier to success. "Yeah, I inhaled. I did a lot of things in my life, a lot of things I'm not proud of and would never repeat. Those who attend my church know all about my past. I go into the prisons as part of my ministry. I don't speak to them from an attitude, I speak from experience, and I think experience in a lot of cases makes a difference," he says.

While serving at an army base in Korea, the 19 year old shoved and kicked a military policeman in a race riot at Camp Casey. "We had problems with the MPs that jacked up some black guys down in the village and it wasn't right, and far too often I found myself in the midst of things. These young brothers, lots of them Vietnam veterans, were saying, 'No more,' and that's what the mentality was at that time." Gray says he nonetheless received an honourable discharge after five years of service.

In 1974, Gray was busted at Fort Knox, Kentucky, for marijuana possession and served time in a violent prison in Tallahassee, Florida. In 1976 he was charged with breaking and entering a store in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He was fined and received probation. "I didn't even go inside the place. I was really an accomplice after the fact."

Settled down

"I realized that I could do better with my life, that I didn't need to follow the crowd, that we make mistakes and we learn from our mistakes," says Gray. "There's a song we sing at the church, it says that a saint is just a sinner who fell down and got up."

Gray, the son of a Canadian mother and an American navy man, was born in Boston, went to elementary school in Nova Scotia, attended high school in South Carolina and university in Georgia, where he earned a political science degree from Benedict College in 1983. He then worked for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition in Kansas, where he served eight months as a state senator. He was ordained Minister 18 years ago and, after attending his grandfather's funeral, he stayed on in Nova Scotia for a few years where he ran a black community newspaper. But the well-travelled Gray says he's here to say. "This is my home, I'm not going anywhere."

Gray has the endorsement of outgoing AQ president Brent Tyler. "He's a great man who speaks from the heart. He has a finely honed sense of rights, especially as it applies to discrimination, and he knows what it is to promote a human rights culture and that's what we desperately need in Quebec."

Speaking from Chicago, where he is on a three-city religious revival tour, Gray says he wants to quickly double the 1,500 AQ membership and wants language police to lay off. "I think that sometimes the policing of the sign law is done with an air of discrimination and with an air of arrogance. If we're talking about enforcing a law many find unjust, there is a more diplomatic way to do it."

Gray also wants to work to stop English schools from closing and wants more minorities involved. "The political parties are mostly controlled by white males," he says. "The reality for the black folk is that, being black and English, we're fighting on two fronts."

He also wants English speakers, many of whom are older and were never encouraged to learn French, to get respect. "In this province they should be able to be served in English. They've given so much to this province and they should be treated accordingly."

Gray's leadership challengers on May 29 might include Giuliano D'Andrea, former AQ East Island chapter head who is fighting in court to undo his expulsion from AQ. D'Andrea, who seeks a cosier relationship with French authorities, says he's been "campaigning like crazy." If reinstated, D'Andrea plans to run against Gray for president of AQ on a platform of "Clean it up, carve it up and close it down."