THE GUELPH PENITENTIARY
By Bill Birdsell, PP/OAA, FRAIC
January 2025
I first met Tommy (not his real name) in the mid-‘80s. I was working as an intern for a large firm in Toronto. Tommy was a senior draftsperson. When I left that firm, I started my own firm and moved it to Guelph. I needed some senior drafting experience for my fledgling studio, so I enticed Tommy into following me, despite his extreme reluctance. Working together in Toronto, we had shared many a pint, and he knew I was curious about his background and the faded tattoo on his left forearm. One night after too long at the bar and too much to drink, he decided to answer my unasked question.
Tommy had spent some time at Guelph Penitentiary—originally known as The Ontario Reformatory and later the Guelph Correctional Centre. These are innocuous names but don’t let them fool you. The place had a reputation as being quite harsh. The cells in the prison were not heated or insulated until 1972, and some of the conditions made the Don Jail seem like paradise. In many ways, it was much worse than the more infamous Kingston Penitentiary. It was a holding space for many thousands and, not surprisingly, played host to a famous riot in 1952[1]. Now, abandoned (decommissioned in 2002), the prison provides the moody background for a leisurely stroll across the rolling hills among the field stone walls or a picnic beside the two large ponds, hand dug by prisoners.
The Guelph Penitentiary’s pastoral setting speaks to its curious history. It sits on the east side of town, by the Eramosa River, on several hundred acres of farmland. Built in 1911, it was designed by John M. Lyle, a talented and well-known architect, better known for his design of the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto and his involvement in the designs for the New York Public Library and Union Station. In 1926 the OAA awarded him the Gold Medal of Honour for his design of the Thorton-Smith Building in downtown Toronto. It still stands as a proud heritage building at 340 Yonge Street.
Lyle was already a prominent architect when he was chosen to design the Prison Administration Building in the Beaux-Arts style with ornamental limestone carvings and handmade oak interiors. The original 1000-acre site was planned as a large farm, according to the principles of the City Beautiful movement. The working sections of the farm contained an orchard of 1800 fruit trees, a greenhouse complex, a quarry, and several industries including a woolen mill, machine shop, tailor shop, creamery, lime kiln, broom shop and its own spur line access to the CPR mainline. This institution did a lot to establish Guelph as a significant hub in southwestern Ontario, and at its height, it employed over 400.
Despite Lyle’s excellent reputation and considerable architectural skill, his relationship with the early version of Infrastructure Ontario was tense from the beginning, and he was forced to leave the project after a couple of years over a question of fees. Responsibility for the remaining buildings fell to Provincial Government staff architects. The planning of the grounds became the purview of reformatory managers and the staff of the Ontario Agricultural College, now the University of Guelph. The construction and craftsmanship, however, represents the work of prisoners. In short, they quarried the stone, laid the bricks, milled and fashioned the wood of the interiors. They installed the bars of their own prison, all while feeding and clothing themselves.
It was more than 30 years before I met him that Tommy arrived at the Guelph Penitentiary. He had been convicted of aggravated assault—a topic which Tommy chose not to elaborate on, whether out of regret, impatience, or failure of memory. He could be easy to anger but I knew him as a contemplative man. On a cold autumn morning, he was stripped of his clothes and his dignity. He was now just a prisoner. A commodity to be warehoused. A number to be filed. He was led to a cell and ushered inside. There were two metal bunks, both occupied. Fear gripped him—a fact that was evident to the two men that occupied the bunks. One got up, approached him, grabbed him by the shoulders, gave him a shake, and then briefly explained the new reality: “Nobody cares about you. Particularly the guards. You are just a line on a list to them. Nothing more, nothing less. Don’t stand out. Don’t show fear. Don’t make eye contact. Find your place in the pecking order fast.” That was about it. The induction was over. He settled for the night on a sheet of cardboard covered by a tattered blanket. A mouse crawled over his feet while cockroaches scurried past his ears.
Life on “the range”[2] was ordered and simple. Dress. Stand at the cell bars for the count. Line up to be inspected. Line up for food. Line up for meds. Stay on the right side of the yellow line. Find your spot in the common space. Avoid the aggressive youth. Fit in. Know your place.
After a couple of months, he was moved to a new range. It was a quieter group of cells, but now he had to listen to two dozen snoring bodies every night. At least he was off the floor and into his own bunk. The common space was more generous. Social contact was now permitted. He was allowed to move around more freely, to take stock of and observe his fellow inmates in a less harsh light. Most were younger. A disproportionate number were black or indigenous. They had been sentenced for drugs, theft, alcohol abuse, fraud, forgery or in fewer cases than in the past range, violence. Many were unskilled, unemployed, mentally ill, poor and under-represented legally, or it was just convenient for them, and society at large, to be locked away. Many of them had an extreme lack of impulse control. They did things because they could, or they just didn’t give a damn about the consequences.
He was assigned to recreation. Clean the pool room/gym, organize the games and paint lines for courts. Most of the time, he just cut grass within the fence line. He ate what he was fed, when it was offered. He lost weight and got stronger. The work provided a few hours respite from the boredom. He was allowed an opportunity to explore some of the grounds while on his way to fetch gas for his lawnmower or deliver something. It did not hurt that he earned a few dollars each month for his commissary account. It was pennies a day, but they did add up. He was now able to indulge in chocolate bars, chips and newspapers, or to trade these things for favours or consideration. He was unique among the inmates in that he could draw, and he spent a lot of time reading—everything from the Elmore Leonard crime fiction, with its colourful, snappy dialogue, to Voltaire. He was so closely associated with his books that he was allowed to carry them with him everywhere, even during lockdowns and a cell searches. What better place to keep contraband cash than in the spine of Les Miserables. Service put a bubble around him. Once someone approached his table while he was fulfilling a commission to ask what he was drawing. That individual was promptly hustled off and sent flying with a punch as a reminder to all not to interrupt Tommy when he was working.
In short, he was allowed an unaffiliated life among groups prone to violence because he was innocuous and could be of service. Many would write poetry home to a loved one but how much better it was to have a drawing of a tornado to accompany the verse of a tortured soul. Each spring he prepared income tax forms for many that had never held a job but needed a reliable fiction to gain a few dollars on release. (One of their favorites was to pose as an itinerate disk jockey). He taught the unschooled to read and even fed answers to others during the trivia contests held by one of the guards. It distracted him from his own boredom. As a member of the recreation staff, he delivered games to other parts of the prison. Imagine the Christmas morning-like glee of a 250 lb., musclebound, neckless convict on receiving a game that might relieve the intense prison boredom. Tommy’s tattoo—the one that had originally attracted my curiosity—was a self-inflicted result of similar boredom.
Then, just like that, he was out and able to return to his family. For a while he was haunted by institutional flashbacks that would disrupt sleep and result in sudden anger at some stranger looking too intensely in his direction. Life did not return to “normal,” but over time, he did gain a quieter happiness and a humble satisfaction. He got work due to his drawing skills, and that lead him to me and his return to Guelph. Tommy did not stay with me very long. He blamed his accommodations, but I know it was the memories.
The people of Guelph have another view of this unique Guelph Penitentiary site: “Heritage Conservation District,” “Guelph Innovation District,” “The Yorklands Green Hub,” and “economic cluster focused on the green-economy and innovation sector jobs as part of a Community Energy Initiative”—inspirational names concealing a troubled past. The promoters want you to focus on the many highlights of this amazing place.
The longest dry-stone wall in Canada
Two beautiful man-made ponds
The Eramosa River, a tributary of the Grand River which is a Canadian Heritage River
More than 40 identified heritage prison buildings
A trestle bridge over the Eramosa River built of Douglas Fir
Archaeological dig revealing remnants of a First Nations settlement dating back to 900 BC
Several large quarries and a quarry amphitheatre
More than 45 different species of birds identified by an ornithologist
Maybe we should encourage the reformation of the place. Give it the dual purpose of bringing people together with a common goal to grow a community, while being a steward of these lands that hold much beauty but have also been host to a great deal of trauma. Recently I walked those grounds alone on a winter’s day with a gray overcast sky that hung with indifference above the naked branches. A cold wind swept the landscape. As the whistle of that wind through the trees chilled my body and filled my ears, eerily, I was reminded of another’s memories, and I shivered.
NOTES:
1. The Ontario Reformatory in Guelph was the site of one of Ontario's most violent prison uprisings on July 7, 1952. What started as growing unrest among inmates quickly turned into a full-scale riot, leaving a lasting impact on prison policies in Ontario.
2. “The Range” is one big common area cell, that all of the individual prisoner cells open onto. It is typically quite noisy. – https://johnhoward.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/counter-point-3-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-prisoner-in-ontario.pdf