Today, Serge LeClerc is the elected MLA for Saskatoon Northwest, Legislative Secretary Corrections, and a sought-after public speaker throughout North America. But it wasn't always like this.

Born as a product of rape to a teenage girl in an abandoned building in northern New Brunswick, Serge LeClerc's early years were characterized by extreme poverty in the crumbling Toronto Cabbage Town district.

At 8 years old, Serge was taken from his mother and placed in the notoriously brutal and abusive St. John's Training School. He began a pattern of running away and being recaptured, receiving further physical abuse when he was returned.

By the age of 12, Serge LeClerc had developed numerous ties to the future heads of motorcycle gangs and crime organizations. He later became a feared gang leader and drug dealer, eventually becoming heavily addicted to crystal meth, heroin, crack and cocaine.

Between Serge's years of crime and violence within Canada's most-brutal prisons, he became one of Canada's most-wanted and feared criminal king-pins. It culminated in a 40 million dollar meth lab in Quebec with ties throughout the world. Serge LeClerc was sentenced to nine years in Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Quebec's super-maximum security prison.

A chance encounter with a volunteer who was distributing magazines to prisoners changed his life. In a very short conversation of about three minutes, he challenged Serge's premise that you're either an animal that walks on two legs and there is no meaning to your life and to the aftermath of your life, or that you're a creation and that you have a soul, and that makes you of great value. It can only be one or the other and if it is the latter, then your life is about choices and you have made mostly bad ones - for you and for so many around you.

Some months later, Serge LeClerc watched helplessly as a 19-year-old inmate in the cell next to his ripped up his sheets and hung himself. It was devastating as he had gotten himself into prison for buying crystal meth that came from Serge's laboratories and for Serge this starkly underlined the words of that volunteer.

Serge LeClerc considered suicide himself. But when finally faced with the choice of a road of despair or a way of hope.....he chose hope.

Serge went on to develop and assist many social organizations and ministries, most notably as the founder and Regional Director of Teen Challenge Saskatchewan. And in 2007, he won a seat in the Saskatchewan Provincial Parliament. Premier Brad Wall then appointed him as Legislative Secretary to the Minster of Corrections.

In addition, in the summer of 2008, the University of Waterloo has selected Serge LeClerc as a recipient of the 2008 Arts in Academics Award - a prestigious recognition for academic and research excellence within the field of Sociology.

Inspirational, Health, Faith & Religion