Inside Canada's Penitentiary Museum

Since 1964, Canada’s Penitentiary Museum has been preserving the rich and complex history of corrections in our country. Located just across the street from the former Kingston Penitentiary, Canada’s first federal institution, the museum houses artifacts and exhibits that help bring this history to life.

In this episode, Museum Historian Dave guides us through the evolution of federal corrections in Canada; from its beginnings before Confederation to the present day. Along the way, we explore key milestones, shifting philosophies in corrections, and the stories behind the events that have shaped our correctional history.

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Kirstan: Each year, Canada's Penitentiary Museum welcomes over 50,000 visitors curious to explore what life was like behind bars throughout our country's history. Located in Kingston, Ontario, the birthplace of the Correctional Service of Canada, the museum is housed in Cedarhedge, the former residence of Kingston Penitentiary’s wardens. Today, those rooms no longer serve as living quarters. Instead, they're filled with artifacts and stories that bring the history of federal corrections and Canada to life. With so much history packed into one place, we thought it was about time our team visited the museum ourselves. We sat down with its long-time curator and CSC’s historian, Dave St. Onge, to learn more about the role corrections has played in shaping public safety in Canada. I'm your host, Kirstan Gagnon, and welcome to another episode of Prisons Inside / Out.

Kirstan: Dave St. Onge has always had a passion for history. At 14, he began volunteering at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes. His first paid job came in 1981 as a museum assistant at Fort Henry. Then in 1984, fresh out of high school and preparing to study history at Queen's University, Dave landed a summer job at the Canadian Penitentiary Service Museum, a dream opportunity. Now in his 41st year, Dave's dedication to the museum and to preserving the legacy of federal corrections remains as strong as ever. Here's our conversation.

Kirstan: So welcome Dave to our podcast today, thanks so much for joining me.

Dave: Well, thank you for inviting me.

Kirstan: So in a way, you embody, in mind and spirit, the history of our penitentiary system and you run the museum here out of Kingston. What does this mean for you? Why is it important?

Dave: I'm actually second-generation corrections. My father was a started as a correctional officer at Collins Bay in ‘59 and worked with the service for 31 years. It's part of our family heritage in that sense and I think it's important to preserve this history not only for Kingston, but for the country.

Kirstan: So we're here in this beautiful room, red room with crown molding, and out the window we can see Kingston Penitentiary and I understand this used to be the former residence of the wardens. Starting with the first and throughout the years we've maintained it and also now it's converted into a museum. So, tell me a bit about, as a curator, how you've set up the museum and what kind of experience do you want people to have?

Dave: Yeah, well, this, as you mentioned, was built as the official residence for the warden in 1873 so it's just gone into a little over 150 years of occupancy. I've tried to set it up in a way that looks at the position of the warden in contrast to the other side of the wall. They lived in, and they were they were, very prominent members of local society. They were very much in the upper crust of the local society and, at the same time, looking after the other at the other end of the scale, the offenders that were here in the 29-inch-wide cells.

Kirstan: Back in the day, of course, there's obvious reasons it was important for a warden to be so close to the institution, we talked a bit about communication being one.

Dave: Yeah. So that was in person, initially. They’d be sending officers running across the street and whatnot and back and forth. They also used bells, as you can imagine. Actually, the bell that was installed in the north gate of KP (Kingston Penitentiary) is now in the lobby at regional headquarters. It's from 1862.

Kirstan: And so how long has the CSC had a museum?

Dave: We are in our 61st year. It started in this month, in May, in ‘64, at the Correctional Staff College here in Kingston. Our principal at the time, Robert Cunningham, and one of the main teachers there, Murray Miller, saw the value of trying to preserve items that had been collected, actually, by the previous principal who had been warden here in the 50s. He had a collection of contraband used in training new officers and Murray, in particular, had quite an interest in history and recognized the value of that. There were still things in storage here, records going back to the beginning, in the 1830s, and various things that were on the way to going to trash and he managed to see the value and preserve those items as the basis of what we have now.

Kirstan: In this room we have a lot of different artifacts from furniture to some symbols of, I guess, evolution over time, some hats worn by officers through different periods of time. Do you just want to touch on that briefly?

Dave: Yeah, this particular room we call our international room. A lot of these items are from other countries, from delegations that have visited or where our people have gone overseas and come back with souvenirs. We have another room in the house that has a chronology of our departmental or service uniforms and inmate uniforms and it's part of the timeline. A lot of the furniture in this particular room belonged to the first warden that lived here, John Creighton, who became warden in 1870 until 1885. His family have preserved a lot of his belongings.

Kirstan: And so, in terms of the interview today, I wanted to take us through different parts in history on a bit of a journey starting with the past and the Kingston Penitentiary in the 19th century. Could you give us a bit of an overview of when the first penitentiary opened in Canada?

Dave: Sure, yeah. The first penitentiary opened here in 1835. In 1826, a local member of the legislature, U. Christopher Thompson, realized the need for a penitentiary. That was already happening in the States at the time. In Canada, we had local jails or district jails. There was no classification, it was just everybody was, you could be a petty thief or a or a hardened criminal, you'd all be in at once. There was no rehabilitation or anything like that. It was just strictly punitive.

Kirstan: And were there any women offenders back then?

Dave: There were, yeah. Mostly for theft it seems.

Kirstan: And we put them together?

Dave: Yeah, they were, yeah. In those district jails, yeah, they were mixed. Here, the government finally appointed a commission in 1831. They went to the states and saw what was going on. They bought this land from a loyalist family and began construction. They hired the deputy warden and the master builder from New York, from Albany to come up and or Auburn, I should say, and June 1, 1835, operations began, so that's the date that that we mark as beginning of what has become the Correctional Service of Canada.

Kirstan: So who were the first federally sentenced inmates in Canada?

Dave: The first were mainly here for theft. Mostly from York in the Toronto area. The first one to be registered was Matthew Taverner, although there was another gentleman was actually the first to be sentenced in that group, but as they arrived and walked through the doors to get registered, Matthew Taverner gets number one. So the first six men arrived on June 1, 1835, three months later, the first three women arrived. They were all in for what was termed “grand larceny” at the time, theft. So, they ranged in age from 17 to 25. The 25-year-old, Hannah Baglan actually arrived here in a state of pregnancy and she was a widow. So the first warden actually recommended her parole. She was sentenced to two years and she served just over seven months and was actually released.

Kirstan: So can you explain how Canadians perceived crime back then, maybe compared to now and this notion of punishment that that comes through history, right?

Dave: Back in the in the beginning of the service, it was pretty clear cut: if you offended the law, you were a criminal and you were kind of not accepted into society. The prison terms were harsh. There's no doubt about that. Religion was a huge part of it. They felt that through moral instruction and the teaching of acceptable social habits would be your way to rehabilitate and come out of this experience as a law-abiding citizen.

Kirstan: Were there things to occupy the inmates back then in terms of activities or programs or anything to keep them employed while they're incarcerated?

Dave: I think your prison experience back then was hard labour. They had to live by a rule of silence. They expected and not to speak to other offenders. Your name was only on the register; you were issued a number on your uniform and referred to by that number. That was all part of kind of the dehumanizing efforts, you know, kind of level everybody. Everybody regarding, you know, where you might be in the criminal hierarchy if you came here, you were given a number and treated like everyone else, so it was a way to try and break that criminal social standing kind of thing. And by a forced labour they hoped that that would teach you “habits of industry” they called it back then so you’d come out as a productive citizen and if you didn't have a trade, you could come out with one and hopefully find a job and break that that cycle of criminality.

Kirstan: I'd like to explore a bit more of this notion of not speaking to one another and putting your head down. I've taken the tours of Kingston Penn and I noticed that there's graffiti on the walls. I think humans have an inherent need to communicate, so how was that done?

Dave: Yeah, and when you look at the punishment books, the main offenses for talking. There were different occasions where they could get a few words in and that sort of thing, working in the shops together. They didn't really, well, they had some time in the yard in the early days, but you were expected to just walk single file in a circle around the yard again, not looking or talking to one another. And it was a constant problem for the guard staff to try and keep on top of. Certainly at night in the cells too they could kind of whisper between counts and things like that.

Kirstan: So what would be the penalty for talking?

Dave: You get, you could get a certain number of nights in what they called the dark cell, which was the first cell on the range. It didn't have the bars on front it had a wooden door and no grill in the back, so it was literally just a dark space. You could get meals of bread and water. Usually not much more than that for talking, depending on what you said. Some of the punishment registers are interesting because they actually quote and they edit what the what they considered the bad words. In some cases, you know, if it was threatening an officer or something, that it would escalate in the punishment scales.

Kirstan: And what did they eat back then? Did the inmates make the food?

Dave: They did. they grew the food and they had steward in charge of the kitchen but inmates employed in there, and they looked at it very much as more as a fuel rather than a delicacy sort of thing. If you worked in what they considered to be harder labour you get a little more, perhaps. But it was always intended to be nutritious, things like, they’d get beef now and again. Pork, you know, potatoes and vegetables. One interesting thing in the dining hall, when they had a mass dining, that ended in about 1896/97, they'd be seated at long tables facing one direction and they had inmate waiters. And if you were finished your meal and had some leftovers you raised one hand, I think it was the right hand, and if you had cleaned your plate and were still hungry, you raised your left hand and these waiters would take the food from the guys with the right hands and serve it again to the guys so that efficiency, using it, there's no waste.

Kirstan: So, how many inmates would Kingston Penitentiary house?

Dave: Back in those days in the 19th century, it's between six and eight hundred, typically in the population.

Kirstan: So it grew quickly.

Dave: Yeah, well, the cells were, were small. They had a lot more individual cells and in the same buildings we have today, basically. But by the mid 1900s, the counts actually are showing higher than that. They're getting up over a thousand. The highest I've seen is in 1959, they reported 1240 in the population, but that included the Prison for Women and Joyceville, which was new at the time and considered a minimum annex to KP initially.

Kirstan: So why do you think that is? Did we have more crime?

Dave: Well, I think the wars had something to do with that coming off of, certainly after World War One, there was there was a spike in population, you know, returning soldiers and job shortages and then you get into the Great Depression. And then World War Two, it drops a bit as guys are going overseas, men are going overseas. Then following the war they're coming back and there's another elevation in the populations here.

Kirstan: So tell me a bit about that, after the war, what did you see in terms of change?

Dave: Well, prior to the war, there had been a royal commission to examine the penitentiary system in Canada, it became known as the Archambault Report, which was released in 1938. That commission went across the country talking to inmates and staff and they really analyzed the system. They had 88 recommendations. But then that was published in 1938 and in ’39 the war broke out, so that was basically put on hold for the duration of the war. And then after that, some of these recommendations started to be implemented. The first commissioner was appointed in ‘47, for example. They introduced socialization programs, some sports and recreation and entertainment and the prison publications and press, all designed to give opportunities for offenders to work together towards a common goal.

Kirstan: So did we have inmates contribute to the war effort itself?

Dave: Yeah, everything switched the war effort during those years. They manufactured uniforms and tents and bedding. We have quite a few files about them making what we term “swagger sticks” for officers. You know, they carry the stick with symbol of the rank and whatnot.

Kirstan: We toured the room downstairs where there were some equipment that, used to be used for punishing inmates and the philosophy was quite different back then. There was even a box with a small hole in it where, I believe, inmates used to be transported by ship, and then another station, if you will, where there was lashing.

Dave: The corporal punishment, yeah.

Kirstan: So I'm just curious, because I think that struck me as a sign of progress, like, look how far we've come…

Dave: Exactly, yeah.

Kirstan: …in terms of the respect for human beings and human rights and evolved our thinking, so take me through that a bit.

Dave: So that's, like what I call the punishment and restraint room and it that contains items of, the tools of the trade, you might call it, from back in the day. Some of it’s replica. We have two replicated devices from the 19th century. One is the water bath punishment, which is interesting. I’ve recently found an academic study of that practice and it was started in the states, you know, United States. Early on our warden in 1853 visited Auburn, New York, and witnessed one and thought this is a good way to get away from using the whips, the lashing. And it involved a bench where the offender would be secured through a form of stock with the barrel around their head and then, high above, would be a larger barrel would be filled with ice water and that water would be controlled by an officer and basically a column of water would fall into the barrel and submersed their heads while it drained. But being ice water, it caused a headache, ice cream sort of headache. The feeling back then was if someone's being violent, their blood is boiling. So the way to change that is change the body temperature so douse them with ice water and you've corrected that.

Kirstan: And did it work?

Dave: Well, they used it here for about four years until the one that it was based on in New York caused a fatality. We didn't do the death penalty in the federal pens, there were two exceptions early on out west, but that's not what the intention was so they stopped it here. Apparently, a doctor, somewhere along the way, realized if we looked at this device, no one had showers in their homes back then, they had a bathtub, and the hygiene wasn't as recognized as it is today or was practiced as much as it is today. So he felt if you put warm water through this device and added soap, you could improve hygiene. And that evolved into our household shower, believe it or not, humble beginnings. And the box, you mentioned the transportation box, that ended up being used as an early form of solitary here. You’d be locked in that up to up to nine hours. if you're acting up.

Kirstan: And just to be clear to our listeners, we don't use any of that today.

Dave: No, no, no, no, that's again, kind of the measure of how far we've come that those things are here and not out there in the institutions.

Kirstan: When you go through the museum downstairs, there's a room where you can really see inmate ingenuity in action, really. It's almost palpable because, you take away everything from someone, but there's some of them are still smart and educated and have had careers. Some have done some horrible things, but they can, basically, develop ways to occupy themselves if we don't occupy them, right?

Dave: A lot of that contraband there is for convenience items really as well. The cells initially when they were first renovated in the 1890s, they introduced plumbing, but it was just cold water. Cold water and a toilet and a ten-watt light bulb was the big advance in the 1890s. But they wanted to sometimes to have hot water. So, they figured out ways to take the current from the ten-watt bulb, put it in their metal mugs full of water and heat the water that way.

Kirstan: So postwar, what was the other significant milestone in terms of prison reform?

Dave: After the war? They had the implementation of the Archambault recommendations and then the Parole Board was established in, I think, ’59, replacing the Ticket of Leave Act. Then the Penitentiary Act was revised in ‘61 and that that was sort of a sweeping renovation of the rules and regs of the system.

Kirstan: So earlier we were chatting about a riot that occurred in the past. Can you tell me a bit about that and why did that come about?

Dave: We had three major riots here, a number of smaller uprisings. But 1932, 1954 and 1971, probably the most infamous of them. In ‘71, that went on for four days in April of ’71. At the time, the plan was to close KP and replace it with Millhaven. There were complaints here about, you know, admittedly, the place some of the cells still had the 1890s furniture in them. Staffing was short here, there was a shortage. Some administration were doing two or three portfolios and so, just necessity, some of the programs were cut. The rumor mill had it that Millhaven was going to be ultramodern, audio and video bugged and there'd be no privacy, so there was the anxiety of moving into an unfamiliar situation as much as they didn't appreciate where they were. So, when the first few inmates were shipped over to actually help clean up on the construction over there, that kind of sparked the a few of the population to take a hostage coming back from recreation. They ended up with six officers and control of the main building. There were a little over 600 inmates in the population and not all in the one building. There were about 500 in the main. So, once they took control from the staff, this handful of guys that started, were like, ‘okay, now we're here, what do we want, what are our demands?’ so they called everyone into the gym and just tried to get a handle on what the important issues were. It kind of got it out of their control. Factions developed within the population and they started infighting and preparing to, what they thought would be a hand-to-hand battle, basically, with the guards. And that went on for four days. It got quite out of hand. The military were called in, surround the site. The last night, it was five offenders broke into the protective custody wing, took 13, inmates into the dome, tied him to chairs and proceeded to have a mock trial and actually tortured them in front of everyone else. And that, bloodshed really kind of snapped that mob mentality as much as the military being on the site. One inmate stepped up and took over in negotiations and he was credited with helping to end the thing. Following that, eventually the Office of the Correctional Investigator was established in ’73. Inmate committees were established across the country in the institutions to act as a liaison between the population and the administration and try to address issues as they arose.

Kirstan: So it was an important moment to pivot to different methods of working through issues. I'm also interested, as you're leading on this museum here and curating it, when you have an opportunity to discuss, interact, with visitors coming through, what interests them the most? What surprises them?

Dave: We get the most comments about the art room, actually, back to what we started talking about in the beginning. People are impressed with the art that we have. People come in with this preconception that comes largely from television and movies, a lot of American influence, that people that are in these places are thugs and coarse and whatnot. But when they see the quality of the artwork and how intricate some of it is and whatnot they're really opened, it really opens their eyes.

Kirstan: Some inmates used to sing as well, right?

Dave: Yeah, oh yeah. We have a display of a radio show that was broadcast out of Kingston Penn in the 50s. I found some recording some 16-inch LPs that were called radio transcription discs that were in our collection. I had conversations with older members of our community who remembered the show and tried try to describe it to me. But they were half-hour variety shows that broadcast on Saturday evenings in the summers from ‘52 to ‘55.

Kirstan: And so over the years, right now in federal custody, we ask inmates to further their schooling if they don't have a high school diploma to do that. Was that always a thread throughout history?

Dave: Education? Yeah. Even in the beginning they'd look at the population and if anyone was able to read or write that have inmates tutoring others that eventually became officers teaching until the 1850s, they hired their first, headmaster, or teacher, and that started to formalize the education. It was very difficult in the beginning because they only had short periods of time in their in their day that they could sit down and try and learn how to read or write.

Kirstan: Well, thank you so much, Dave, for your time today. I really appreciate the little historical overview and best of luck with the summer season.

Dave: Thank you, appreciate it.

Kirstan: Thanks.

Kirstan: Thanks again to Dave and the rest of the staff and volunteers at the museum for helping us put together this episode. Canada's Penitentiary Museum is open from Monday to Sunday, May 1 to October 31, and admission is free. That's all for today's episode of Prisons Inside / Out. This has been a production of the Correctional Service of Canada, and I've been your host, Kirstan Gagnon. Thanks for listening.