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Kingston Penitentiary, c. 1901 Kingston Penitentiary cellblock Unique architecture under dome connecting the shop buildings. Constructed from 1833 to 1834 and opened on June 1, 1835, as the "Provincial Penitentiary of the Province of Upper Canada", it was one of the oldest prisons in continuous use in the world at the time of its closure in 2013.
- The Penitentiary Opens in 1835
- Child Prisoners
- Charles Dickens' Visit
- Famous Escapes
- Infamous Inmates
- Prison Riots
- Guards and Operation Correct Zero
When the first five convicts arrived from Toronto in 1835 to serve their time, the new prison, then named the Provincial Penitentiary of the Province of Upper Canada, was not yet open for business, and so the inmates had to be held at the county jail for five days. Five months later, there were 62 inmates, including women. By 1850, there were 410 i...
There were children within KP's walls in the early years, incarcerated even at eight years old. Antoine Beauche was given a three-year sentence at KP in 1845 when he was eight. "This eight year old child received... 47 corporal punishments [the lash] in nine months, and all for offences of the most childish character," according to an 1849 commissi...
If such stories conjure up memories of a Charles Dickens novel, know that the great English writer visited KP in 1842. Dickens made a mention of it in his book American Notes, inexplicably writing, "There is an admirable gaol here, well and wisely governed, and excellently regulated in every respect."
Escapes from KP were few and far between. Two of the most famous escapes involved going over the wall with a ladder. In 1923, the man who has been called Canada's most notorious criminal, bank robber Red Ryan, led four inmates over the wall after first setting fire to a shed as a distraction. Ryan went back to robbing banks, was captured three mont...
KP has long been the place most of Canada's notorious inmates served time. Until recently, that list included Paul Bernardo, Michael Briere, Selva Kumar Subbiah, Russell Williams, Mohammad Shafia and his son, Hamed, and Michael Rafferty. This may result in part from KP being the maximum security prison where inmates who cannot be safely integrated ...
There were at least three big riots at KP. When a riot broke out in 1932, Communist Party of Canada general secretary Tim Buck was in a KP cell serving time for sedition. While guards were ordered to fire shots through the peep-hole of cells where and when they detected a commotion, they also fired seven shots into Buck's cell, which the government...
KP was a "dumping ground for bad guards," with some guards terrorizing fellow staff and inmates, according to a 1989 report commissioned by KP's warden. In 1999, at new warden Monty Bourke's request, the RCMP began an investigation code-named "Correct zero" that would use inmates as paid informants. Eight guards were fired, although one firing was ...
- Paul Bernardo: Convicted in 1995 in Toronto of raping and killing schoolgirls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French at his home in St. Catharines, Ont. His videos of his victims in captivity sealed his conviction.
- Clifford Olson: Known as the Beast of British Columbia, he was convicted in 1982 of killing 11 children. He may have killed more.
- Russell Williams: The former commander of CFB Trenton, an air force colonel, was convicted of killing two women in 2010 near the eastern Ontario base.
- Marie-Anne Houde: She was convicted of murdering her stepdaughter Aurore Gagnon, 11, in Fortierville, Que., in 1920. Her death sentence was commuted to life in prison.
Mar 13, 2021 · Kingston Penitentiary, sometimes shortened to “Kingston Pen,” in Kingston, Ontario, was Canada’s first maximum security prison, located on the shore of Lake Ontario. It opened on 1 Jun 1835 and housed prisoners guilty of offences of two years and longer, mainly from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. It closed officially on 13 Sep 2013.
Apr 14, 2021 · The inmates “beefed” about security inside KP; police brutality; prison reform and treatment some of them received from the RCMP during their arrest. Kingston Penitentiary following the 1971 riot.
Photo via WikiCommons. Charles Dickens visited Kingston and the penitentiary in 1842, and wrote in his American Notes for General Circulation, “There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely governed, and excellently regulated, in every respect.”. He went on: “Here at Kingston is a penitentiary, intelligently and humanely run.”.
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Sep 23, 2013 · If you were a reporter in the 1970s and 1980s and wanted to know what was going on inside Kingston Penitentiary, you asked Dennis Curtis. Eminently approachable and candid in a way seldom seen in ...
