Arthur Milnes
Northern News Services

NNSL (Nov 25/98) - Words like hate and anger aren't part of the vocabulary of former Yellowknife resident Ed Leonard -- despite being kidnapped at gunpoint and held captive for 106 days by South American communist guerillas.

"I'm not mad at them," he said in an interview Monday from his Creston, B.C. home. "I enjoyed them. We joked and laughed with them in the bush...The guerillas didn't treat me bad. For the last two months we didn't walk. We just sat under the trees, ate beans and rice and played cards."

Leonard, whose late father, Ed, arrived in Yellowknife to work in Giant mine in the late 1940s, was serving as a drill foreman with Terramundo Drilling when guerillas, brandishing pistols, took him captive June 24.

Leonard had only been on the job one week when taken. After walking through the mountains for 40 days, they stopped while the guerillas awaited word on whether the $2 million ransom placed on Leonard's head would be paid. It was later dropped to $500,000.

He was released Oct. 6 after his boss, Norbert Reinhart, rejected the advice of Canadian government officials and offered to trade places with his employee.

"He said (when they met on a southeastern Columbian mountain trail): 'Your shift is over. It's time for you to go home and I'm going to take your place,'" Leonard said.

The guerillas were from a communist group called FARC, Leonard said.

He also said the FARC members he came into contact with were not very old.

"We had one young lady who was 16 and had been a guerilla for three years," he said. "...Just like the Indians around Yellowknife, they have a rough life...They (guerilla leaders) get the kids into a communist kick."

Leonard said youth from the countryside end up in Columbia's cities and are forced to work as prostitutes or other jobs which offer little hope. Turning to communism, he said, makes them think they are taking part in a worthwhile cause.

"Maybe the higher ups," he said when asked his feelings about his kidnappers. "But not the younger people."

Leonard left Yellowknife in the 1960s, but his brother Doug still lives here.

Though now 60, Leonard says he will continue to work in mining despite the experience of being kidnapped.

He last travelled to Yellowknife for his mother's funeral seven years ago.

Reinhart remains in captivity, Leonard said.