In the aftermath of the Great Boyd Debacle, Deputy Minister of Reform Institutions Colonel George Hedley Basher made it perfectly clear whom he held responsible for the chaos at the jail. Simply stated, he believed that if his orders regarding the treatment and security of the gang had been followed, they would never even have reached the window in the corridor outside their cells, let alone hack their way through it. In October 1952, he apprised the Royal Commission Appointed to Enquire into Conditions at the Don Jail, Toronto, that “it was felt the governor (Mr. Brand) had failed to insure [sic] that the special instructions were followed, the deputy governor (Mr. Noble) had failed to give a satisfactory account of his activities during the night, and the six guards had been supposed to be watching the prisoners.” Having promoted Thomas Brand, his own man, to a leadership position in the jail, Basher was now more than ready to sacrifice the new governor to save his own reputation.
His Honour Judge Ian M. Macdonell had his own (conflicting) views on the matter. “It is greatly to be regretted that Colonel Basher did not issue [his] instructions in the form of written orders, which could also have been given to his Inspectors to ensure that the orders were carried out,” he wrote in rebuke. And the choice of Brand as governor was a poor one. He had had only about six years of experience in correctional institutions, most of them in subordinate positions. He had been governor at the Don for just a month when Boyd landed back there in March. Granted, Brand had made efforts to tighten up security and had introduced other improvements, but, noted Macdonell: “I feel that the responsibility of not keeping the four prisoners who escaped under constant supervision fell upon his shoulders. I have reached the conclusion that Mr. Brand did not have the executive ability nor experience to cope with the difficult situation with which he was faced.”
Following the publication of the report in early December, Globe and Mail readers learned that the Ontario premier and the reform institutions minister “made a clean sweep of the Don Jail executive … at the same time saying they were not demoting anyone.” Brand was shunted off to the Burwash Industrial Farm, where he would, ironically, be serving as assistant superintendent under Charles Sanderson, the man he had displaced as governor of the Don less than a year previously. Completing the dizzying round of musical chairs, the new governor of the Don would be H.R. Paterson, the current assistant superintendent at Burwash. All the guards suspended during the inquiry were reinstated.
Basher and Macdonell may have clashed on who should be held accountable for the mess at the jail, but on one point they were in perfect agreement. “The time has come to think of putting up an addition to the Don jail, on vacant land on the jail property,” said Basher. “The addition should be completely modern, and should have separate cells to give the greatest security for handing the ‘more dangerous’ type of prisoners.”
“Unfortunately,” wrote Macdonell, “the jail has become in effect a miniature penitentiary … [It] has to serve as a clearing house for all prisoners of the County … [and] there is always a considerable population of dangerous criminals, of what is termed the ‘Kingston type.’” And among the twelve recommendations of his inquiry was this one: “A new security wing, capable of accommodating 250 of the more dangerous type of prisoners, should be built without delay, on land adjacent to the jail owned by the City. It could be connected with the existing building by tunnel or otherwise. The new building should be provided with safety cell blocks and other modern security measures.”
Over the next few years, nothing at all was built, and the clamour grew louder.
In early 1954, a grand jury stressed the urgent need for a larger jail and proper housing and treatment for mentally ill inmates. Mayor Lamport dismissed their views as “just a grand jury report. We’ve had that before.” But Chief Justice McRuer, the judge who had sent Boyd Gang members Suchan and Jackson to the gallows two years previously, was incensed that the complaints were taken so lightly. “If those who … [were so dismissive] saw the calibre of men who act on grand juries, I’m sure they wouldn’t continually disregard the recommendations of such bodies,” he told the press.
A year later, Sheriff J.D. Conover warned that the danger point had been reached, with sometimes as many as 525 male inmates being crammed into a space that could comfortably accommodate only 318. “The time will arrive, if it is not already here, when, for security reasons, the jail must refuse to accept any more prisoners.” According to the Globe and Mail, Sheriff Conover said that the “antiquated Don” could simply no longer cope with an increase in the city’s population. He had a good point: the year 1954 had seen the formation of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto or “Metro,” which was a fusion of the city and twelve surrounding towns, villages, and townships. In 1955, its estimated population hovered around the 1,365,000 mark.
The Elizabeth Fry Society, dedicated to helping and advocating for women and girls within the criminal justice system, strongly condemned the fact that all the women inmates had now been transferred to the Mercer Reformatory for Women on King Street West, Toronto. That seventy-five-year-old provincial institution could barely cope with the female offenders already serving their sentences there, let alone with this new influx from Toronto’s impossibly overstuffed jail. The Mercer was the first prison built solely for women in Canada. It had as its aim the rehabilitation of inmates aged sixteen and older found guilty of offences regarded as socially undesirable; for example, prostitution or having a child out of wedlock. It must be noted, however, that overcrowding, while serious, was possibly the least of the Mercer’s multiple shortcomings; over time, it developed a chilling reputation for the abuses inflicted on its inmates, such as beatings and experimental drug and medical treatment.
Finally, in March 1955, there came some good news: authorities from the recently formed Metro Toronto and the Ontario Department of Reform Institutions, which shared the jurisdiction of the Don Jail with York County at the time, were talking. Beneath the headline “$1,500,000 Jail Plan Includes Cells for 300,” Alden Baker itemized for Globe and Mail readers the few pros and many cons of the Don’s existing setup. The pros: short-term inmates kept the jail clean, and meals were “substantial, with roast beef yesterday.” Then, an overwhelming litany of criticisms. In a nutshell, not much had changed since the building first opened some ninety years previously. The place was regularly full to bursting and beyond, with up to 579 inmates “of all categories” being shoehorned into tiny cells — these inmates included “mental patients” who should not have been there at all; the toilet facilities in the cells (“a bowl”) were atrocious; other essentials such as the kitchen (“in a damp basement”), the hospital (“barren”), and the admissions area for new inmates (“a dingy dungeon-like corridor”) were appalling; and, as noted by Sheriff Conover, boys were still being intermingled with men and first offenders with hardened criminals. One difference was that there were no longer any women inmates, as they had all been shunted off to the basement of the Mercer Reformatory. And there was now a twenty-by-eight-foot corridor furnished with two wooden benches and a payphone to serve as the reception centre for inmates’ relatives and friends.
Particularly disturbing was the lack of proper facilities for the sick. “We badly need a fifty-bed hospital,” said the jail physician, Harry Hills. “Many men in the cells are entitled to a hospital bed.” Chronically ill inmates and those found to be sick on arrival were sent to a specific corridor in the jail.
The dangers lurking in this situation were underscored by a 1955 report from the National Sanitarium Association. A recently introduced program to X-ray all prisoners on admission had revealed thirty-four cases of tuberculosis over the previous six months. This translated into one individual with active TB for every 187 inmates.
The arrival at the jail of Lloyd Nashkawa brought simmering anxieties to the boil. A twenty-two-year-old transient fruit picker accused of stabbing a fellow worker to death in Jordan, Ontario, Nashkawa was in an advanced stage of the disease. “He’s quite ill and should be in a sanitarium,” complained one of the jail staff. “I think it’s a disgrace.” Basher, as deputy minister of reform institutions, refused a request from Toronto mayor Nathan Phillips to have Nashkawa moved to a hospital for proper care and treatment. According to Basher, the head of the TB division of the health department had assured him that the man was being properly isolated and adequately treated in one of the death cells at the Don. The mayor shared the staff’s concerns: his reports had indicated that the accused was a danger to the 120 personnel and 400 inmates in the jail.
Site plans were ordered by the Metropolitan Executive Committee for the proposed addition to the jail, with costs to be shared by the province. In August 1955, Metro Toronto Council approved the construction of a new wing along the eastern wall of the existing building, to consist of cells, a modern kitchen and a hospital, and administrative offices. Barnett and Rieder of Kitchener, Ontario, were named as architects.
By October, costs had risen by an estimated $326,000, but there was no turning back. When the new wing was officially opened in November 1958, the outlay had jumped from the original $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. In purchasing power, this would be roughly equivalent to $17,830,000 today. At that stage, according to a Globe and Mail report, the five-storey addition provided accommodation for 236 men and 60 women (the Toronto Daily Star put the latter number at 65) awaiting trial or transfer to other institutions. This would increase the joint capacity of the two Don jails to around 620.
At the opening, Ontario Minister of Reform Institutions Thomas Ray Connell announced that hard work and military-type discipline were the very best therapy for prisoners. He also deplored the amount of tax money required for the administration of justice. Back in the 1860s, it cost seven cents a day for each inmate. Almost a hundred years later, this amount had risen to forty-five cents. The good news, though, was that the Christmas dinner menu that guests were shown at the spanking new building included chicken soup, roast pork, vegetables, and an English-style pudding, in contrast to the stale bread, oatmeal, and weak tea served to prisoners when the Old Don was first opened.
By March 1956, the construction of the new Metro Toronto Don Jail, just east of the old one, was well underway. The jail was officially opened in November 1958.
Colonel Basher did not have much opportunity to weigh in on the pros and cons of the long-awaited extension. Within a year of its grand opening, he was himself in the firing line, although he indignantly denied it. “Eyewash,” he said of rumours that he was resigning as deputy minister of reform institutions because the department had been severely criticized for its lack of progressive methods. He was actually retiring. “I will have had forty years’ service with the department by the end of the month,” he told reporters. “You can’t go on working until you drop.” His departure was followed by a major departmental reshuffle — in line, according to George Calvin Wardrope, who had just succeeded Connell as reform institutions minister, with a policy of working toward a more humane and less punitive penal system in Ontario.
A few days later, the Globe and Mail published a glowing “Tribute from Basher’s Army.” The writer, G.M. MacLachlan, described himself as a former comrade-in-arms and wished Basher health and happiness in his “well-earned retirement from many years of arduous detail for the people of Ontario in reform work.” He added: “Colonel Basher is probably the only CO [commanding officer] in the army of the late war about whom his men composed a song. No one ever dared sing it in his presence during the war.” But now, when veterans got together, they invariably belted out a rousing rendition of “We had to join up. We had to join old Basher’s army.”
In October 1960, newspapers were publishing a different kind of tribute: sombre obituaries of Colonel Basher, who died at his home in Whitby, Ontario, at the age of sixty-nine. In praising Basher as always fair and just, his ex-executive assistant and successor in office, J.A. Graham, delivered this homage: “The Province of Ontario, and especially this department, has lost a devoted servant and experienced adviser. Speaking more personally, I feel acutely the loss of a very dear friend.”
George Hedley Basher had come through the fire of two world wars: he had been formed in and by the military. He was a committed proponent of both capital and corporal punishment. As governor of the Don Jail, his command had been based on rigid discipline and strict adherence to the rules. Soon after moving into the Ontario government as deputy minister of reform institutions, he had attempted to regain direct control over the facility by putting an end to the more relaxed governorship of Charles Sanderson and replacing him with his own protege, Thomas Brand. These machinations had backfired. And by the late 1950s, the penological pendulum had swung, as pendulums always do. The old, harsh, military-style regime had moved into a more benevolent phase, where there was no place for a hardliner like Basher.