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All penned up with nowhere to go
Since it’s only half past July, it would be difficult to pick an event highlight of my summer. On the other hand, it’s half past July! How the H E double digit temperatures did that happen? Whatever. Last week LOML and I did go to Kingston for the Penitentiary Tour with some of our kids. This is the second time we’ve toured a penitentiary and, who knows, it might not be the last time we get all touristy or go to prison. For those of you who haven’t toured the Pen, if you can go, do it. I don’t know what I expected when our son announced he’d bought tickets for the tour. I’m a bit of an old building lover, so it sounded like a good idea. And it was not our first penitentiary rodeo. About two years ago, LOML and I toured the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The Eastern Pen opened in 1829 and closed in 1971. Like the tourist brochure of 1829 probably indicated, the ESP was meant to be a place of reform and rehabilitation. It only took a moment to get a sense of how primitive and austere the place would have been for inmates during its operation. As a visitor, I wasn’t convinced it was really a place of reform. ESP seemed more like a place to break a person down, chew them up and, if they survived their sentence, spit them out. Eastern State Penitentiary is a historic site. For LOML and I and two of our friends, it was a ruin of cruel, cold history on a very hot July day.
The Kingston Penitentiary is about the same vintage as the Eastern State Pen. It’s an imposing structure, apparently built on a site “chosen for combining the advantages of perfect salubrity, ready access to the water, and abundant quantities of fine limestone.” From the inside, only the limestone is visible. The actual construction of Kingston Pen started in the 1830s and the first inmates were tucked into their cozy cells in 1836. I’m sure they felt a warm wave of salubrity wash over them when the doors clanged shut. The moment we walked through the cold, stone entryway and into the gathering room, I felt uneasy. I couldn’t help wondering how many people had walked through those gates on their way to months or years of separation from the rest of the world. Our tour guide, although knowledgeable, seemed far too perky and far too young to be escorting groups through the nightmare that was once Canada’s largest prison. At one point during the tour, a former warden took over and introduced the group to the segregation cellblock, a soulless section deep in the limestone belly of the monster. Both Mr. Warden and Ms. Tour Guide regaled us with the public politics of how prisoners had worked as shoemakers, rope makers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters and stonecutters in the early days. In later years the jobs changed, to keep up with the times, but the cheap, forced labour continued. The former Warden waxed on about the numerous programs and courses available to inmates to help them transition from maximum security to life in the wilds of a halfway house and then into civilized society. He made it all sound so seamless and practical. I almost bought into it all, but the emphasis was on making the group think inmates were all uneducated, and with a bit of training and guidance they’d all emerge as contributing members of their community. Kingston Pen closed in 2013. Inmates were moved to Millhaven Maximum Security Prison.
I’m not going to get into what really goes on “inside” a prison. Someone is bound to tell me inmates get what they deserve, and I’ve never been incarcerated. I do know in 1971 a riot broke out, two inmates died and much of the main block of KP was destroyed. The media was informed of a lack of recreational time, lack of work and concerns about being moved to a newly built Millhaven. Justice Swackhamer concluded that the prison was overcrowded, it was short-staffed, segregation was being used for prisoners who didn’t deserve to be segregated, because of overcrowding and lack of staff most programmes had been eliminated and the physical plant was falling apart.
On September 30, 2013, Kingston Penitentiary closed for good. Later that year, it opened to the public for tours. I’m not saying “don’t visit”. The history of the institution and the structure, itself, is worth it. I am saying we shouldn’t be blinded by any words which tidyup history to make people feel comfortable with the past.
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