Pubdate: Wed, 07 Sep 2011
Source: Cowichan News Leader (CN BC)
Copyright: 2011 Cowichan News Leader
Contact:  http://www.cowichannewsleader.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1314
Author: Peter Rusland, Cowichan News Leader Pictorial

SOMETIMES YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED: THE CORKY FONTANA
STORY

Daryl (Corky) Fontana's epiphany began while looking down the barrel
of a lawman's gun in the snow-covered wilds of Washington State.

The Duncan homeboy's April 2010 bust, with three others hauling
marijuana into the states, started a year-long emotional thaw in jail
he said turned his life around.

"A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders when I was arrested," he
told the News Leader Pictorial in his first interview about his ordeal.

"I'm so sorry for the hurt I caused those around me," said the father
of three, "but I have no regrets."

That's because Fontana's arrest, and stretch in an American
medium-security prison, snapped a crippling mid-life crisis then spat
him out a changed man.

"You don't always get what you want," he quoted from the Rolling
Stones ' hit, "but sometimes you get what you need."

What the former Playground gym co-owner needed was a way out of a
physical and financial vice that was slowly squeezing the life out of
him.

"The Playground was suffocating me," Fontana said about the pressures
of running the Duncan business he opened in 2005.

"It was my commitment to something we started, and wanting to finish
that -- and ego was attached.

"You're so focused on results, you forget the journey."

Fontana was on a strict path to peak fitness while guiding clients
toward their health goals. Enter irony.

"I became the thing I was helping people break out of," he explained
of his blind drive toward success in business and brawn.

"I wouldn't back off. I wasn't listening to my own
heart.

"It was a tough three years leading up to my arrest. I broke
hard."

Fontana and the other men were each busted for backpacking 30 pounds
of weed into the Washington park from Vancouver.

They'd been promised $10,000 apiece.

"That hike was as hard or harder than doing the Ironman," the former
marathoner said. "I was 'Why not?'" Fontana, 38, said of his deal with
destiny.

"It wasn't the money -- I was disillusioned with society and myself. It
was a rebellion; the $10,000 would have only plugged a hole for me for
about three weeks.

"It was so much for so little."

His big payoff was the arrest that shocked Fontana into the
life-change he dearly wanted.

"I'm not ashamed to say 'I screwed up' -- many people feel this
way."

Seattle judge Marsha Peckman seemed to sympathize.

She heard his regret, and need to keep his business afloat. Fontana
was sentenced to eight months in jail for conspiracy to distribute
marijuana.

He also received two years supervised release to be served through
Canada's probation system.

Fontana's prison sentence was soft compared to the year-plus-a-day
penalty recommended by U.S. federal authorities.

Ready to pay the piper, he arrived on Nov. 15 at Pennsylvania's
Moshannon Valley Correctional Center -- on foot.

"I walked in on my own," he said of his "self-surrender" trip by plane
and bus before refusing a van ride to the jail.

"That was very symbolic for me."

Proudly reporting on time for prison time also snubbed what he saw as
skewering by the press.

"An example was made of us. With page two of the Globe & Mail, they
couldn't just give us a tap on the hand."

He'd spent the previous five months mentally preparing for his ordeal
in the slammer.

Fontana's plan for prison life was basically a defensively polite
one.

"I'd trained like a warrior my whole life and learned to take care of
myself, but for a month I just sat back.It took me a while to warm up
in there."

Cold reality in Moshannon saw 1,200 cons -- some wealthy -- doing time
for everything from drug smuggling to fraud.

Some had connections to the mob and Columbian drug
cartels.

Fontana kept his distance from the other inmates -- a collection of
Dominicans, Jamaicans, Columbians, Mexicans, Cubans, and a few Canucks.

"They're all very manipulative -- I worked my way into my environment
slowly."

He filled his time reading, meditating, writing and
training.

"I stuck to myself until I found a natural connection with the right
people.

"I did yoga with one guy for four months before trust was
established."

His rock-hard bunk was twinned by lousy chow in the privately run
federal pen.

"It was brutal food compared to what I eat as a health nut. Fresh
vegetables and fruit were minimal."

So was direct contact with the outside.

"Mail was it," Fontana said of his cellblock without cellphones or the
internet.

He was grateful for snail mail from Cowichan.

"I had a big fan club in the valley."

But his fellow jailbirds didn't join.

"There are tons of rats and snitches in there because they want to
earn less time. Some guys are in for 10 years."

It was a fishbowl with steel bars.

"No privacy, none," Fontana said of his open dorm, 60-man pod with six
showers and three toilets.

His training schedule spanned the yard and a recreation room with
crude equipment compared to Playground's modern gear.

"We made some weights that were garbage bags filled with
water."

Eventually, he coached the cons he felt at ease with.

"Many inmates were decent people who took the wrong
turn."

Fontana ducked conflict with tact, and respect for the array of
religions inside.

"You keep to your space but make it known you're willing and ready to
drop your gloves."

But he saw violence when push finally came to shove between a Cuban
and a Columbian con.

"There was lots of blood around. They were transferred out, and the
next four or five months were more relaxed."

The guards lent tension with routine shakedowns, though they respected
Fontana's bodybuilding prowess.

He ticked the days off toward June 13.

"I meditated on that date everyday."

Freedom saw Fontana released to U.S. Immigration agents. He crossed
the border at Niagara Falls, bused it to Halifax, and flew to
Vancouver in the throes of the Stanley Cup riots.

But repentant Fontana had no appetite for trouble after his
self-described "sabbatical" stuffed with personal awakening.

"What a lesson. This is the most centered I've been in the past 10
years," he said on the sunny patio of his quiet home off Riverbottom
Road.

"This is where I need to be, this is my community."

Back working as a personal trainer, he's opening a new fitness studio
called Core-Qi in Maple Bay's former fire hall.

But his blue bracelet saying 'Pray strong' is a clue to Fontana's
life-altering ordeal.

"Let go and do what you must to take care of yourself," he said,
advising counselling, rehab or other help to bring troubled folks back
from the brink.

"Take yourself out of the environment that's making you sick and
change to where you're happy.

"The universe does deliver." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.