Folks in the Western world like to usher in the New Year by cracking open a bottle of champagne and raising a toast. Frank Drea was dead set on celebrating the arrival of 1978 by doing some “razing” of his own: he had plans to demolish the Don Jail.
James Francis “Frank” Drea was the minister of correctional services in the Ontario provincial cabinet at the time. He had not held the job for very long. He started out in his professional life as a reporter and columnist for the Toronto Telegram before working as public relations director for the United Steelworkers of America. After a stint in radio and television, he turned to politics. A fierce Conservative, he was voted into the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1971. However, it was only in September 1977 that Progressive Conservative Premier William Davis, as the Toronto Star’s Queen’s Park columnist Jonathan Manthorpe put it, “ushered the rumpled form of Drea into the cabinet … and the world [had] not been quite the same since.” Drea, described as a “hard drinker with the demeanor of a fighting Irishman,” started small. He immediately announced that inmates of provincial institutions would be served only tea with their breakfast in the future, because coffee prices were a rip-off. He also felt that it was a waste of money to give inmates imported orange juice when there was excellent Canadian apple, tomato, and grape juices to be had. He pooh-poohed the idea that female guards should not be supervising male inmates; on the contrary, having women around in institutions had considerably “cleaned up the act” of the male jail population.
On a more serious note, he had made the point within minutes of being sworn in that there were too many people in prisons who should not be there. Dangerous criminals should be treated firmly but fairly, and the rest, through work, should put right the damage they had done instead of necessarily being imprisoned. His plan for the old Toronto Jail was his biggest and most ambitious yet. Here’s how he explained his intentions to the legislature on November 10, 1977:
I will close the old Don Jail on December 31, 1977 … forever. I have asked my colleague, the Minister of Government Services, to have tenders prepared for demolition contracts.
I see no value in preserving the old Don Jail. To do so would require the taxpayers to pay many hundreds of thousands of dollars to meet acceptable public fire safety standards. Heat and maintenance alone cost nearly $500,000 a year. Without additional expenditures there would be a persistent pest- control problem.
It is repugnant to me that preservation would mean that the curious would line up to see four steel-enclosed death cells, a gallows where 70 persons [the actual number was 34] have been executed, and jail corridors and cells which, for more than a century, have witnessed the worst in the human condition.
Upon completion of demolition, inmates will develop and maintain a massive flower garden for the benefit of patients of Riverdale Hospital. I regard this as a far better land use….
I am sure that all Honourable Members will share my satisfaction that 1978 will see the disappearance of this notorious 112 [sic]-year-old institution.
During the jail’s controversial existence, stated the minister, more than one million persons had stepped over its forbidding threshold. The physical limitations of the building had affected inmates and staff alike, imposing unacceptable hardships on both. No jobs would be lost, he hastened to add, as staff employed there would be transferred to other facilities. Similarly, inmates would be moved to detention centres in Etobicoke and Scarborough, and, of course, to the adjacent New Don Jail at Gerrard and Broadview.
So: the Old Don would be replaced by a flower garden.
The decision to close the Old Don had been a long time coming. To recap: numerous grand juries had weighed in over the years about the actual structure and what went on within its walls. They condemned, among other things, the cheerless cells and corridors, the wretched sanitation, the poor medical facilities, the mind-numbing idleness of the inmates, the hopelessly inadequate psychiatric care, and the deficient training and support afforded to correctional officers. One such panel had famously reported that “this ancient building is an overcrowded dungeon, somewhat like the Black Hole of Calcutta.” In 1933, the Toronto Jail was referred to as “the Bastille of Toronto the Good.” Conditions in the jail were described as “filthy [and] the odour from night pails [was] pathetically putrid.”
The deficiencies of the Don had also been documented in numerous reports. The Royal Commission Appointed to Enquire into Conditions at the Don Jail, Toronto was launched in 1952 to investigate the Great Boyd Gang Escapes. It had a broad mandate to report on management, security, and staffing at the jail; the adequacy of accommodation and security in the building; and the treatment of inmates. The commission found that staff morale was low, due to such factors as poor working conditions, inferior salaries, and low status. The building was deemed inadequate and hugely overcrowded. A select committee of the Ontario government report in 1954 (the awkwardly titled Report to Study and Report upon Problems of Delinquent Individuals and Custodial Questions, and the Place of Reform Institutions Therein) stated dryly that the Don was a good example of just how outdated a jail could become. Bottom line: it provided neither proper custody nor segregation for prisoners, and it lacked the means to facilitate reform. The Royal Commission on the Toronto Jail and Custodial Services, also known as the Shapiro Commission, was just wrapping up at the end of 1977, and the report, stretching to a whopping four volumes and around 1,600 pages, would be published a few months later. This commission had been struck in 1974 to look into allegations of mistreatment of inmates, the role and function of correctional officers, service demands on the staff, and their recruitment and training.
Not to be outdone, individuals, too — city officials, correctional officers, inmates, the media, and members of the public — had repeatedly castigated the building from the very beginning of its existence.
According to the media, Drea’s words to the legislature in November 1977 declaring his plan to have the antiquated building demolished were met with applause from all political parties. But not everyone was onside. The question of what to do with the Don had reignited a long-simmering and passionate debate, the topic being whether it is better to preserve historical artifacts, no matter how dreadful, or to tear them down.
Still fresh in the public mind, as noted by Jamie Bradburn in an article entitled “Historicist: What to Do with the Don Jail,” was the fate of the old Provincial Lunatic Asylum at 999 Queen Street West, Toronto. Designed by John Howard, the architect responsible for the third Toronto jail, the building opened its doors to its first 211 patients in 1850. In 1976, the facility, by then named the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, was torn down amid huge public controversy over its social and architectural legacy. Like the more-or-less contemporaneous jail, the asylum had had a checkered existence. Initially lauded by authoritative Globe editor George Brown as “exceeding handsome, commodious, healthful and safe … a monument to the Christian liberality of the people,” it had come to be regarded as a brutal and brutalizing structure, serving simply to warehouse people with mental health or addiction problems. In this case, those who decried the pain and stigma associated with the building prevailed over the advocates of heritage conservation who regarded it as a “superbly designed and humanely planned edifice,” and the wreckers moved in. The street address was changed in 1979 from 999 to 1001 Queen Street West to symbolize a break with the horrors of the past. What remains of the old facility today is part of the old wall that once enclosed it, a former carpenter’s shop, and a storage shed, which have all been designated as heritage properties.
The Mental Health Centre was “an extraordinary building,” says John Sewell, who had joined the battle to preserve it. He was an alderman at that time, later mayor of Toronto. It was “very discouraging” when the structure was torn down.
As an indication of just how divisive things could become, an editorial in the Toronto Star of November 12, 1977, beneath the headline “Don Jail building too awful to preserve,” completely agreed with the corrections minister. The jail, a “monument to human misery,” had to come down. The paper scoffed at the various suggestions that had been mooted to utilize the about-to-be-retired building — converting it into a community centre, using it as to accommodate youth groups or Golden Age clubs, or converting it into a museum, factory, or recording studio.
Many old buildings are worth preserving. But the stench of misery will never disappear from the Don. Over 70 [sic] people have died on its gallows. Hundreds have died on its narrow cots in cramped, rat-infested cells as a result of beatings, illness, alcohol and despair.… It has been the scene of numerous murders, suicides, homosexual rapes, riots, blackmail and perversion.
Enough. To let the old pest hole escape the wrecker’s hammer would only serve to sentimentalize cruelty and barbarism. Tear it down.
On page A8 of the same November 12 issue of the Star, historian Donald Jones weighed in with a passionate call to save the Don. Granted, the building was a disgrace to the city, and over the years more than a million people had been confined in its cells under sometimes unspeakable conditions. But “history cannot be blotted out by the destruction of buildings. If the evil association of a building is a reason for its destruction there is a greater cause for the Tower of London to be destroyed than the Toronto Jail. In London, they placed the crown jewels in one of its rooms…. The building must be allowed to stand so that no one will forget how we once treated one another. The world needs visible proof that mankind has progressed.”
Determined to save the jail from the same fate as the recently demolished “lunatic asylum,” Sewell and fellow preservationists came up with a stratagem that proved to be wildly successful: a poster with a coloured photo of the façade of the jail that urged people to “Take a closer look!” at the Old Don Jail. Sewell maintains that this powerful message made a difference.
On December 18, 1977, the Sunday Star solicited suggestions from local celebrities as to what to do with the old jail. Here are some of their tongue-in-cheek offerings. This one came from lawyer Jerry Grafstein: “It’s a natural for a day-care centre, Canada’s most progressive day-care centre for children under 5 years old where we’d teach them English, French and one other language.” This was architect Jack Diamond’s recommendation: “We could turn it into the headquarters for the Humane Society and give the kittens more room. Of course, we’d have to upgrade the physical conditions. Laws protecting animals are more strict than laws protecting people.” The suggestion of John Reeves, photographer and author, was to “turn the old part of the jail into a number of rather small condominiums.” Jack McClelland, publisher, had a different proposal: “Give it to us. We’d turn it into a publishing house. We’d put all our authors and most of our editors in those cells to work. They feel it’s the same conditions they work under now anyway.”
The noisy and furious public debate intensified. Typical of the views expressed is this selection from the letters to the editor in the December 22 edition of the Toronto Star. “By destroying the Don Jail, we are not being practical, realistic or honest — just hypocritical, tunnel visioned and short-sighted,” vented one reader. Just retain the façade of the building, suggested another. “Let’s hear some sane and rational discussion relating to history, architecture and esthetics as to whether the Don should be demolished instead of the sentimental claptrap being thrown about at present,” wrote a third. Give us “more, not fewer, places of execution,” was the suggestion of a clergyman from Belleville, forgetting, perhaps, that the death penalty had been abolished in Canada the year before. He urged “the rapid construction of one or two additional places of execution with all due haste.” And, most poignant of all, this from a man who called the place “a disease of Toronto”: “It doesn’t matter now whether it stands, as the hurt has been done. You can tear it down, Toronto, but you still have a self-made curse — because there will always be the words: ‘Remember the Don!’”
“Take a closer look!” A hugely successful poster campaign in 1977, spear-headed by the Toronto Historical Board and city activists like John Sewell, tipped the balance in favour of saving the Old Don Jail.
This roiling conflict led the city council to request a six-month reprieve to study possible uses for the site.
On December 31, Drea arrived at the jail with a wrecking crew in tow. Retiring Assistant Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Harry Hughes was among them, as was journalist and social activist June Callwood, referred to by the Globe and Mail as “one of the most insistent Don Jail haters.” They carried silver-painted sledgehammers and took turns at taking ceremonial whacks at the cornerstone. Understandably parched from all this activity, the group celebrated by partaking of a glass or two of tea or apple juice.
Among the invitees was Ontario’s ombudsman Arthur Maloney. He wandered around the death cells with members of the media, reminiscing about the time he’d spent at the Don during his former career as a criminal lawyer. Maloney’s failed defence of the Boyd Gang’s Leonard Jackson back in 1952 turned him into an ardent opponent of the death penalty. Jackson, you will remember, was hanged with Steve Suchan in December of that year for the murder of police officer Edmund Tong.
Drea’s resolve seems to have buckled under the weight of public opinion, and he sardonically conceded that the “magnificent monument to human misery” would live on, at least in the short term. But on one point he remained adamant: the gallows had to go. Like Maloney, he was fiercely opposed to capital punishment, so there was no way that he would allow the structure to become part of a restoration project, or the bounty of souvenir hunters. Not on his watch. Ever the showman, however, he had initially said that the gallows would be destroyed publicly inside the jail on December 31. He backtracked. “There would be a danger of fire because acetylene torches would have to be used,” he told the media on December 22, the day after the gallows were spirited away. Also removed were locks and cell doors. As for the noose: “It has been gone for at least three years. You should see how many requests I’ve had for a piece of hemp.” John McGinnis, director of the Toronto Historical Board and clearly not someone on the hunt for souvenirs, was incensed: “We are just concerned about what amounts to vandalism on the part of a Government ministry. Nothing should have been taken out of there until we had an opportunity to look at it.”
Following the closure of the Don at the end of December 1977 and the influx of male inmates at the jail next door, the female inmates who had been housed on the fourth and fifth floors of the “new” building were transferred to the Metropolitan Toronto West Detention Centre in Etobicoke.
Mayor David Crombie, Alderman Sewell, and representatives from the province and the Toronto Historical Board banded together to form a committee to study alternative uses and users for the decommissioned jail. A slew of architects, developers, and preservationists was called in to serve as advisers. An earlier proposal from the Irwin Toy Company to turn the building into a wax museum had gone nowhere. Other suggestions fell by the wayside, too. This state of affairs continued into the 1980s: no decision had been made, and, it seemed, none was being contemplated.
“Don Jail may yet outlast Frank Drea,” mused the Globe and Mail on January 4, 1978 — prophetically, as it turned out. Drea died in January 2003, with the fate of the jail still in limbo. Just a few months later a proposal was put forward that would definitively answer the burning question, “What should be done with the Old Don?” But it would take another ten years for those plans to come to fruition.