Canada’s oldest and most notorious penitentiary is closing its doors, marking the end of an era in the country’s colourful corrections history.
The imposing limestone building of Kingston Penitentiary sits on the edge of Lake Ontario, encircled by high walls entered by few apart from hardened criminals and those who guard them.
For nearly 200 years, the maximum security prison for men has been home to some of the country’s most infamous criminals from Clifford Olson to Paul Bernardo to Russell Williams.
But its cell blocks will soon be empty.
Over the next two years, the federal government will shut the doors of the penitentiary and its regional treatment centre, and move its 346 inmates – 44 per cent of them serving life sentences – to newly renovated and expanded facilities.
In announcing the closure, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the 421-bed, aging facility is too costly, has poor sight lines, and simply doesn’t work anymore.
“Institutions built in the 19th century are not appropriate for managing a 21st century inmate population,” he said.
But even after it no longer houses convicted criminals, the Kingston Penitentiary will guard a rich history.
“Kingston Penitentiary opened in 1835 and it was a prison before there was a Canada,” said Rae Gately, who spent part of her 23 year career in corrections at “KP.”
When it first opened, the facility was one of three inaugural penitentiaries in the emerging nation that would become Canada.
Located near the lake to ensure a water supply, the prison was nearly four kilometres away from Kingston, Ont. and housed just six inmates when it opened in June 1835.
A place of punishment
It was in the days when imprisonment was about punishment. Early prisoners in Kingston would have faced restrictive food rations of bread and water. Convicts weren’t allowed to speak or even gesture to each other from their tiny, barred cells. Punishment included flogging, solitary confinement, darkened cells, submersion in water and spending time locked in an upright coffin.
Research done by Canada’s Penitentiary Museum records that an eight-year-old inmate name Antoine Beauche, sentenced for pick-pocketing, was given 47 lashes within nine months.
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At the time, the prison doubled as tourist attraction, allowing visitors to pay a fee and see the life of a convict first hand. Even English writer Charles Dickens visited, and described it as “well and wisely governed.”
But a history of incarceration written by Correctional Services Canada said the penitentiary was a “place of violence and oppression.”
“What exactly has gone on historically behind its limestone walls has been something of a mystery,” said Steven Maynard, a long-time resident of Kingston and a lecturer at the Department of History at Queen’s University.
But Maynard said that historical documents plot a trend from retribution like hard labour and torture to rehabilitation over 180 years.
Reform from within the walls
Kingston’s big house erupted into violence in 1932 with a string of prison riots that thrust prison reform onto the agenda.
A Royal Commission established in response to the riots called for a prison commission to manage the penitentiaries and for an independent parole board, but the Second World War blocked any progress on the issue.
Again on August 15, 1954, 200 of the 1,000 inmates in Kingston Pen rioted and set fire to the old prison, burning its central dome, which was later replaced by a flat roof.
The riot set in motion reforms like the establishment of the National Parole Board and the Office of the Correctional Investigator.
Gately said she personally has seen KP evolve as time passed. By the time she was working at the facility, it had been upgraded and functioned well. In fact, there is no double-bunking in KP, despite the problem.
“There are always issues any time you are trying to keep people where they don’t want to be,” she said. “But I never found my safety to be an issue.”
Still, Gately said she can understand why Toews is raising concerns about sight lines and safety.
Home of heinous criminals
One thing that hasn’t changed is that the prison has always held those who have committed the most heinous crimes against Canadians.
One of the first infamous inmates was James Donnelly, an Irish immigrant who murdered Patrick Farrell over a land dispute in 1957. He was sentenced to die, but ended up spending seven years in the Kingston Penitentiary instead.
Clifford Olson, who killed 11 young people, was also housed in the penitentiary until he died last year. Current inmates include murderers Paul Bernardo and Russell Williams.
Toews said all maximum security inmates will be transferred to a maximum security facility elsewhere.
Part of the community
While there is public fascination about Kingston Penitentiary and its hardened criminals, for residents of the prison city it’s simply a reality.
“Nearly all Kingstonians live in the shadow of KP,” Mayrand said. “KP is so intertwined with Kingston’s identity that its closure will tear a big hole in both the historical and present-day fabric of Kingston life.”
While there may be a hole, the impending closure of the Kingston Penitentiary will hardly change the city’s prison town reputation.
There are eight other institutions in the city, which employs thousands of people. Over 450 people work at Kingston Penitentiary and the federal government said most of them would be transferred to the region’s other prisons to prevent them from having to relocate their lives.
While Kingstonians won’t all be sad to see the KP inmates go, one thing many say they want to see stay is the building itself.
The building, officially designated as a national historic site, sits on a piece of lucrative real estate in one of Kingston’s most affluent neighbourhoods. The city’s Olympic harbour is just outside the walls and Queen’s University has purchased the neighbouring shuttered women’s penitentiary.
“I would hate to see the building disappear when it closes,” Gately said. “It would be really nice if it is something that at some point and time could be maintained from a historical perspective.”
Dave Grier, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 40 years, said there is no question the prison will remain standing thanks to that historic designation.
But repurposing a centuries-old prison is a challenge, especially if its bars and cells would have to be preserved, he said.
One idea, both Grier and Gately like is to have it become a museum. America’s infamous Alcatraz has been transformed into a booming tourist attraction, and Kingston already boasts other historic sites.
“That would be something that would of course not need too much change to the penitentiary. They could just pull down some of the walls,” he said.
Correctional Services of Canada said no decisions have yet been made about the site’s future, but Toews said the community will be consulted.
“I want to see (Corrections) working with the community to see how those sites, those facilities can developed and utilized,” he said.
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