The road to my next home ran along the edge Lake Ontario. I could see slabs of ice pushing onto the shore and Amherst Island, with its pretty farmhouses, floating in the distance. This place had history. Bath, Ontario was a British Loyalist town. The Loyalists had brought their slaves in chains with them. Four hundred years later, here I was – in chains.
As we neared, a guard came out of one of the little red rooftop parapets of Collins Bay and looked down on us with his binoculars. There was a rifle slung over his shoulder. He picked up his walkie-talkie, and moments later four guards walked out onto the driveway where we sat waiting.
One of them said, “They’re sure filling this place up with burrheads, ain’t they?”
“Sign of the times,” said another. “We might have another Attica on our hands any day now.”
There hadn’t been much racism in Millhaven; too many other worries there. It looked as if this was going to be different.
Brian and I shuffled in. We were fingerprinted and posed for pictures. Once again, we were issued clothing, ceramic earphones, shaving kit, mirror, toilet brush and bucket. They ordered us to sit around for the count to clear before herding us to our cells in 1-Block. Guards from each of the four blocks handed slips of paper to the head keeper, who wrote the count on a board and matched it to every inmate in the prison. Some of the guards looked at us as if we were only numbers, but one of them had just come from the gym and was still in his tracksuit.
“Do you two play basketball?”
We nodded and he smiled. “I’m trying to get a team together to play teams from the community. Why don’t you show up at practice tonight for a tryout?”
Collins Bay played in the top basketball league in the Kingston area, and I wanted to be in it.
As we waited for the count to end, I noticed two small boxes on the floor, marked with the name of a convict. I’d seen that name six weeks earlier. The boxes held the belongings of a man who had been murdered. His death was the reason it took so long for me to get to Collins Bay.
His body may have been gone, but the Ontario Provincial Police, who investigated all murders in federal prisons in the province, had not yet released his personal property,
I heard that a native prisoner had killed him over a five-dollar debt. That told me something about the dead man. Only a fool would borrow something he couldn’t pay back.
After the count was over, we were told to go to our cells. I knew I’d know some of the people in the prison, but I had no idea who my neighbours would be.
We walked down the strip to 1-Block, passing other prisoners heading for the kitchen. There were large thick grills on each block door; each cell had a thick set of bars for a door, but none of the doors were locked.
The jail was wide open.
There were only ten blacks in Collins Bay, until a tall thin Trinidadian prisoner, known as the Bible Bandit, joined us. I knew him from Alexandra Park. He robbed four banks, armed with nothing more than a Bible. The judge, a devout Christian, gave him eighteen years.
I knew his sister – everyone wanted her and no one touched her.
“This place is about to blow up,” he announced. “Maybe now that there are more of us here, we can cool it down.”
Chicago said, “Fuck these peckerheads. I’ll kill them in ways they never knew they could die.”
Chicago hailed from the Black Stonerangers, the biggest gang in North America, and he’d done three year-long tours in Vietnam. Lots of guys in prison talk loud, bragging about women and violence. I presumed, rightly, that Chicago was the kind of man who didn’t talk loud and cut real deep. We had something in common. Chicago James Edwards was in for robbing a Toronto bank. He was hunted down and arrested by none other than Bert Novis.
“Jug up!” It was time to eat.
The kitchen was divided into two sections by a brightly painted wall. There was a guard at the end of the food line. You had to pass him with your tray. The plates were ceramic, which meant they could be broken into shards, and the knives and forks were real not plastic, which meant they could be stolen and sharpened. These are things I immediately noted. However, the guard seemed more interested in how many desserts I had on my tray than the quantity of cutlery.
What caught my attention most was that there were glass bottles of HP Sauce and ketchup, as well as salt and pepper shakers on every table. Broken glass is, after all, a weapon.
The kitchen workers loaded your plate with healthy portions of fresh vegetables and meat. On the floor there were two boxes of fresh pears, donated by a local farmer. If the guard thought you had too much fruit, he’d make you put some back. Brew master inmates could make a powerful drink from a handful of fruit and some bread.
There weren’t enough tables for all 400 prisoners, so the ranges were let out in staggered formation, allowing guys to chow down and move on. I looked around for a place to sit and noticed a loose pecking order.
The blacks in the joint sat at two tables by the windows. Big Joe Reddick, a neighbour from the Projects sat at a table with some white dudes. Ernie George, a black biker who became a friend, sat with a group of Satan’s Choice bikers from London, Ontario. The Para-Dice Riders sat behind them, and a couple of Vagabonds sat at another table.
The Toronto crew was the biggest, followed by Hamilton and Windsor. Italians sat along a back wall and took up four whole tables. One or two natives were sprinkled here and there. The rest of the population was white and non-affiliated as far as I could tell, although most of the white guys sat with prisoners from their hometowns or neighbourhoods. In that way it was just like high school. You could sit wherever you liked, providing you gave up your seat, out of respect, to anyone who was more entrenched.
My first prison scrap happened a day after I arrived. It was unexpected. We were in the gym early, at basketball practice, at a time when most of the prison was still asleep. The basketball rolled into the weightlifting room, so I went to get it. There was one big, chunky guy in the weight room struggling to bench-press more than he could handle.
“You burrheads, keep that ball out of here.”
I looked around, not sure I’d heard right. Burrheads? Are you kidding me? The guy pumping iron was the only one there; in an instant, I decided what to do.
On the floor by the basketball was a twelve-inch weight bar. I picked it up along with the basketball, and thought how foolish this guy had been to make such a racist comment. I held the bar behind my back and dribbled the ball toward him. He was groaning against the weight and was about to say something else when I brought the bar down on the meaty part of his leg.
He dropped the barbell and it crashed into his chest, pinning him to the bench. I raised the bar over my head and looked down on him. “You ever call me burrhead again and I’ll smash your head in.”
“Okay, okay,” said the fool.
I dropped the bar on the floor and went to leave. He cried, “Man, help me with this weight.”
“Fuck you.”
Many guys whine about how bored they were, but I always thought the opposite. Like many of the smarter prisoners, I learned to forget what was beyond the walls and concentrate on my routine. I began to think of prison the way a monk might think of his monastery, as a place to learn and grow.
No matter how busy I kept myself, I knew I was rotting. I thought of my father with a couple of drinks in him turning our house into party central, with relatives laughing, dancing and eating soul food until all hours of the night. Everyone I knew on the street was living a different life.
I read, studied and pounded the heavy bag. Also, I started a chess club and played every day. White guys would fight over card games, brothers fought harder, but chess was more contemplative and didn’t lead to such aggression because it ended with “Checkmate.” In the Don Jail, most of the blacks I met who had done some time on death row played chess. At Collins Bay we played in the kitchen. You could play chess anywhere, even in lockdown just by having a tapping code to send moves to a player in another cell.
Having a formal chess club in the prison had an added benefit. Students from Queens’ University in Kingston were allowed in to play with us and that meant I got to socialize with them.
On Friday and Saturday nights, the gym turned into a movie theatre, and the entire inmate population could attend. I was surprised when Chicago walked up to me one evening and showed me a very sharp knife.
“These peckerheads can get real dangerous in a group, in the dark,” he told me, putting the knife in his waistband.
Off we went to the movies. If he’d been frisked by one of the guards, he’d have landed in the hole. I felt a little better knowing one of us was armed with more than fists.
The brothers usually sat on the stage but Big Joe from the Projects sat on the gym floor with the white boys, and Ernie George sat in the front two rows with his biker buddies.
Ernie Moore, my honey-bun-and-coffee saviour from the cells at the Old City Hall jail, had failed in his bid to have old charges dropped. Here he was the Bay’s ultimate hustler, sitting with his hippie friends, smoking weed and having a good time. Ernie was the guy you went to for a radio, a coveted job or information on the prison grapevine – anything from a smoke to a sip. He also worked outside of the institution on a work release program, providing information to the world about the Canadian prison system.
I came to learn that if the movie was good, every prisoner in the joint crowded in. Cigarettes and joints were passed, and sometimes there were small containers of moonshine or hard liquor. A boring movie sent the guys drifting back to their cells. If the movie was really shitty and only a few guys remained, those guys would be asked to allow the gym to be used for sports. But it was rare for anyone to leave the gym on movie night.
The movie that evening was 100 Rifles with Jim Brown and Raquel Welch. As soon as Jim Brown appeared, there was grumbling. Somebody yelled, “Get the nigger out of the movie!” I couldn’t tell who said it. A couple of guys stood up and left. You couldn’t tell if they didn’t like westerns or if they couldn’t stand black men in westerns.
“Lynch the black buck!”
The men on the floor laughed nervously, but the brothers were dead silent. In the middle of the movie, Jim Brown took Raquel Welch into his big arms and kissed her. She seemed to melt into him. Ten more men stood up to leave.
Chicago said, “Get her, Jim! She’s gonna love that black stick!” Down on the floor, someone shouted, “Fuck you!” A few more guards came in and took positions in the gym. Things settled down, albeit nervously.
Suddenly, in the darkness, I noticed a glint of metal – a knife, flashing in our direction. I froze as it sailed over everyone’s head and caught in the curtain behind us. I picked it up and slid off the stage, making my way down onto the gym floor.
Chicago and the Bible Bandit followed me. Within a few minutes, the rest of the brothers joined us. I showed them the knife. None of them saw it flying through the air.
“Listen, if someone sticks me I can stick them back,” I told them. “But sitting up there like ducks in a shooting gallery is just fucking stupid.”
So, in effect, we desegregated movie night. The stage actually had the best view and from then on it was first come, first served. Idiots still yelled out in the darkness when there was a black actor, but from then on, people seemed to accept that we were going to sit where we wanted. Short of a riot, there was little they could do about it.
Eventually, our ranks swelled to twenty, some of them Vietnam veterans, the most blacks in any prison in Canadian history. How times change. We didn’t all like each other but if a beef began over racism, we were all in it together.
Joe DiNardo was eventually transferred in from Joyceville to work in the kitchen. He promised Chicago a kitchen job, and within a couple of weeks there was Chicago, dressed in whites, grinning as he handed out plates.
Contrary to the concerns of the administration, there wasn’t a single episode or snide remark. The guys in the kitchen took pride in their work; many of them earning certificates that would be useful on the street.
DiNardo and Chicago took care of me, slipping me treats when they could. Sometimes we cooked for ourselves, which was easier than you might think. The trick was to turn an iron upside down, and to use a tin ashtray as a frying pan. We stole spices from the kitchen, now and then bribing a guard.
In a way, we were in the vanguard of the slow-food movement. Most of our food came fresh from prison farms to prison tables. We got it within minutes from its picking or plucking, thanks to the work of convicts in the farm camps.
During the summer, all the guys made little metal devices to keep their cold-water taps running, so they could chill their pop and prevent food from spoiling. I wrote a letter to the warden asking that we be allowed to order a small fridge to keep our pop cool, rather than running the taps and running up his water bill.
My plan was sensible but it backfired. He ordered his guards to be more aggressive about taking our water tap devices away from us.
Our reaction was to clean our toilets spotlessly, so that we could fill the bowl with cans of pop, jars of milk or plastic bags full of meat. Some guys never pissed in their toilets, disciplining themselves to use the one in the first cell on the range, which was usually left open for those locked out of their cells during the day. Some guys wouldn’t let anyone sit down on the toilet for a second, even if the cell was crowded. Others covered the bowl with cardboard, draped it with a towel and used it as an end table.
There were occasional attempts at escape. Amusingly, while on his way to Kingston General Hospital for some minor treatment, Richard Anderson persuaded his guards to pull over so he could throw up. He bolted, jumping into Lake Ontario so that he could swim across to freedom. Poor Richard thought that Amherst Island, a mile offshore, was American territory. He thought wrong. In any case, he only made it ten yards in the water before they reeled him in.
We were allowed to paint our cells any colour we wanted, so I painted mine black, including the sink and the toilet. I painted colourful stars all over the walls with fluorescent paint. With newspapers and glue I created planets and hung them from the ceiling using thread. At night, I’d turn on my black light and my cell would become a three-dimensional universe.
I also used my metal shaving cup as a candleholder, concentrating on the candle while I meditated, creating a world within a world while I did my time.
The days flickered by, one by one. I was bothering no one and letting no one and nothing bother me. People came and went. Some left without a word, their empty cells instantly occupied by someone else. Others had farewell parties. Soon, Big Joe and my cousin, Wade, left the institution for the street.
My books about Buddhism taught me that nothing was forever – not my friends, not the prison, not even me.
Sharon was coming up regularly – it was always nice to snuggle up to her and do the touchy-feely thing – but in a world without women sometimes it was easier to do without. Also, our visits were becoming more and more strained.
From the first months I spent in the Don Jail, I heard rumours that she was unfaithful to me. I worked hard to push those thoughts aside, reasoning that she was a teenager like me and, in her place, I would probably be doing the same thing.
The snuggling came to an abrupt end when Everett came up to visit me. He said Sharon had told him that she and I weren’t a couple anymore, so he figured that, since everyone else was taking a shot at her, he might as well make his move. He didn’t think it would be an affront to our friendship, but he’d also heard from someone that I wanted to whack him.
I was hurt by the news, but in my world you had to respect a brother who manned up and went face to face with someone over a woman.
Really, I couldn’t blame him.
The next time Sharon came up, I confronted her. She swore Everett was lying, but the damage was done; it was officially over.
Brian had the same problems with his girlfriend Cathy, who had just given birth to his daughter. He showed us pictures of the little girl every chance he got. Unfortunately, his girlfriend was into drugs, and she was messing around with many of the people in our old crew.
I began to understand that if your woman is young, good-looking and on drugs, expecting her to be faithful was a fantasy. This was especially true around the guys in our crew who were trained from childhood to be players and manipulators.
The old-school convicts always said, “Get rid of your bitches when you take a pinch. It’s better for both of you that way. When you get out, the girls aren’t burdened by years of guilt. You aren’t burdened by jealousy, and getting back together is easier to do.”
That old-school attitude changed a few years later when private visits were allowed and couples could spend a weekend alone, once every few months, in a trailer sitting in the corner of the prison yard.
My problem was finding a way to meet women in a world where there were very few. I picked up a couple of pen pal magazines and spent all my canteen money on stamps, writing to something like a hundred women all over the world. I included pictures, of course.
I was tall, handsome and athletic, dressed in prison greens with a big smile on my face, willing to write anything to get a response. Within a week, I began to get letters and pictures in return, restoring my ego and building back my confidence.
I became bolder and bolder, sending some of the women erotic letters ten pages long. I got the responses I wanted from women who wanted to have fun and who didn’t mind that I was in jail for robbery.
One woman, ten years older than me, came to visit from New York State. She wanted sex, and she made no bones about it, grabbing me in a quiet corner of the visiting room. The guard on duty had to tell us to be more discreet or he would cancel the visit.
At a social event in the prison that allowed family participation, I saw an opportunity. I gave the chairman of the inmate committee a carton of smokes in return for his office keys, and the American woman and I had a chance to bump and grind for a few minutes. Lucky me.
She wrote a few more times but ended the relationship, telling me that she was only interested in using me for sex. Since I couldn’t provide that more often, there wasn’t much point in visiting.
Her rejection didn’t slow me down. As long as I had a few stamps and the nerve to reach out to strange women in strange countries, I’d never be lonely again.
After a time, I came to the realization that most people resist change of any kind. They wanted to get up at the same time, eat the same food, watch the same shit over and over on TV, play the same sports or games, and return to their cells each night the same way they had the night before. Any unwanted change in the rhythm of prison life just pissed people off. But there was a rogue element among the staff that relished tension, because tension meant unrest and unrest meant overtime.
In a way, the society of guards was parallel to that of inmates – the more seasoned ones would sometimes intimidate the newer ones into giving up their overtime. Now and then there were fights in the prison parking lot and it wasn’t unusual to see a guard with a black eye or a split lip.
I never had to stab anyone in the joint but I had my share of fistfights, usually with people who made racial comments or with idiots who thought I wouldn’t fight because I was so young. I was never afraid to fight because a sharp knife cuts a muscled man as easily as it cuts a skinny little addict. It was your willingness to face death that earned you the respect of others.
As for conflict with the guards, there were good ones and bad ones. At times, it was like gladiator school. Bad guards had to fear razor blades stuck to the levers used to open the cell doors. They also had to be aware that sometimes those levers were smeared with shit.
If a guard spotted a narrow hole dug into a prison wall, he or she had to stick a finger in the hole to check for contraband. There were occasions when the hole held a needle and sometimes the resulting finger prick was from a needle tainted with HIV positive blood.
A prisoner who had been making noise in solitary confinement bothered one female guard –a rarity at the time. She tried to shut him up, but whatever she said or threatened didn’t work so she maced his dick.
I don’t imagine that you’ve ever had your dick maced, and mine never was, but I can tell you that it burns so much that it is a medical emergency. Her payback? Everyone pissed or shit into a bucket, and the slop was stirred and kept on hand until the right moment. When she walked by she was doused with five sticky gallons. Yes, it was her turn to scream.
I was still a teenager. The tension was getting to me, and I missed Owen, so I put in for a transfer to Warkworth. It came through quickly and easily.