The west building was completed in 1865 [sic]. Ironically, it suffered a fire in 1858 [the actual date was 1862] prior to its completion. From the condemnation it received from grand juries in later years, as well as from criticism it has received from other quarters from time to time, we may consider it unfortunate that Phoenix ever rose from the ashes on Gerrard Street.
— His Honour Judge B. Barry Shapiro, commissioner of the 1978 Report of the Royal Commission on the Toronto Jail and Custodial Services
This particular phoenix, however, had succeeded in rising from the ashes back in 1862.
And the Don Jail had so much going for it. It was conceived during a period of great penal optimism, built in accordance with the most modern architectural principles, and run on a system based on the progressive Auburn philosophy. In spite of a series of bitter controversies during the construction period and grumblings about massive cost overruns, the final product was a huge improvement over its three hellish predecessors. The people of Toronto regarded it as the pride of their flourishing city.
So what went wrong?
From the outset, the basic Auburn model with its miniscule separate cells proved to be disastrously flawed. With no toilet facilities in the cells, it was impossible to maintain any decent standards of sanitation. And, as penal practices shifted, inmates spent less time outdoors or engaged in productive work. Instead, they were confined with little classification or separation of offenders in the corridors or day rooms, each of which was eventually fitted with just one toilet and one cold-water tap to serve the needs of dozens of inmates.
Perhaps the situation might not have deteriorated so rapidly if the jail had not been challenged by the vigorous growth of the city that had spawned it. As early as the 1880s, commentators noted that the Don, built for a city of around fifty thousand people, was no longer able to cope with a population now more than three times that size. The construction of other correctional facilities made little difference. Within a very short space of time, the “palace for prisoners” degenerated into a dysfunctional, understaffed, and “overcrowded dungeon,” lurching from crisis to crisis.
Once the imminent closure of the jail loomed in the 1970s, the debate heated up as to what to do with this toxic “insult to humanity.” There were a number of possible outcomes. Tearing it down was a popular choice, as had befallen the more-or-less contemporaneous Queen Street Mental Health Centre at 999 Queen Street West. Advocates of heritage conservation won the day, and the jail remained standing. For more than twenty years, however, it looked as though the building would simply be left to moulder with minimal maintenance, perhaps to meet its end destroyed, as had so nearly happened in 1862, by the wilful or negligent act of an “incendiary.”
With the much-lauded heritage restoration of the Don and its incorporation into Bridgepoint Active Healthcare, the wheel, in a sense, has come full circle.
The players who were active in bringing about this transformation are all in agreement. In the words of Marian Walsh, who was president and CEO of Bridgepoint at the time, they renewed the site, changed “a place of incarceration to a place of healing,” and thus returned it to its reformist roots.
Most of the ghostly signs of lives lived in the Don Jail have now been taken down or painted over, including this record of his life of crime reportedly scrawled on the wall of Cell 14 by one former occupant: “John Mucumber is here for stealing two flamingos from the Toronto Riverdale Zoo.”
Gone, too, is the annex and its exit door, where, in the old days, released “cons” would scratch their names (“WILLIE T,” “JOHN CLARKE”) or sentence (“30 DYS”) before moving out to face the world again.
There is the faintest vertical strip visible on the rear east side of the central building indicating the place where a wall, long since torn down, once stood, and along which five men scampered in their quest for freedom.
But some signs and symbols are still there, preserved as poignant reminders of past suffering. Steps away from the execution chamber on the second floor are black marks burned into the wooden floor boards, where condemned men would pause to stub out their last cigarette on their way to the gallows. The gallows are no more. Frank Drea saw to that — making sure at the end of December 1977, to cries of “vandalism” from the City of Toronto’s Historical Board, that the steel and wooden structure was spirited away to an undisclosed location where it would eventually be destroyed. Within the former latrine itself, however, the grey geometric shapes of the scaffold ghosted into the walls still mark the spot where twenty-six men, sentenced to death for murder, met their fates in the infamous jail before the abolition of capital punishment in Canada.
Probably fashioned from steel and reportedly around fourteen inches in length, the original front-door key of the Old Don Jail took pride of place on the wall of the superintendent’s office in the New Don. The key was removed during the decommissioning of the jail and has been archived with other items of historical significance.
Between 1864 and 1978, according to some estimates, around one million people — old and young, sick and healthy, male and female, guilty and painfully innocent — passed beneath the grim visage of Father Time at the portal to the Old Don Jail.
These ghosts have not left the building.
“The energy of that place is still present,” says Evan Tsitsias, artistic director of the Eclipse Theatre Company and director of Kiss of the Spider Woman, the musical theatre classic that was performed in the rotunda in early 2019. Based on the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, Kiss conveys in words and music the touching story of a gay window dresser incarcerated with a Marxist revolutionary during Argentina’s Dirty War of the 1970s and 1980s.
The production was nearly three years in the making, including meetings with Bridgepoint (they were “super helpful”) and the Ontario Heritage Trust. And for five days in March, unsettling sounds of anguish and brutality once again rang out in the darkened rotunda.
“I was sometimes overwhelmed by the darkness of the space,” says Tsitsias, adding that the jail takes on its own personality, particularly at night. He used its history to infuse and inform his piece with the aim of honouring the people who died there.
This desire for respectful recognition extended to the poetic land acknowledgement developed by cast member Kelsi James, which she delivered during a short tour of the jail prior to the performance. “I researched the history of the land and its people, and spoke with [assistant director] Joe [Recinos] and with my castmates, and wrote this poem as a thank you, and a call to action,” says James.
Before we begin, I ask myself to look around
To notice my breath and my feet on this ground
And acknowledge the land that allows me to flourish
The waters and plants that sustain me and nourish.
The poem gracefully recognizes all those who have “cared for these lands and waterways,” and, in particular, the Indigenous Peoples who were the “first storytellers here.”
And what of the Don River, which has threaded its way, both literally and symbolically, through the story of the jail that shares its name? Sadly, it will never regain the pristine beauty that had early visitors and historians exclaiming with awe and delight. It is not doing too badly, though, considering the abuse it has been subjected to since British colonists first set up their tiny, ten-block hamlet of Muddy York in 1793. It is doing a lot better than when, anecdotally, it caught fire several times in the first half of the twentieth century. Or when, in 1969, an environmental group calling itself Pollution Probe held a solemn funeral for the Don, complete with hearse, coffin, flowers, weeping widow dressed in black, and the villain of the piece — a “greedy capitalist” in a top hat. Some of the wildlife is back — including birds, beavers, and turtles — and even the odd brave salmon has made a cautious reappearance. In May 2019, hundreds of conservationists, business people, and nature lovers canoed and kayaked along the river in the twenty-sixth annual “Paddle the Don” fundraiser.
Committed supporters of the Don welcomed the announcement in September 2019 that a $1.25 billion flood-protection project in Toronto’s concrete-covered Port Lands district, just about the most contaminated area of all, is finally underway. As it feeds into the lake, the reconstructed river will meander through a new valley ecosystem. And, irony of ironies, an essential part of the plan is to recreate the much-reviled wetlands that were drained and paved over all those years ago.