Rise and Reform

Recently, I took a tour of the Old Don Jail, located at 550 Gerrard Street East in Toronto. It was active from 1864 to 1977, and was reopened in 2013 to use as an administrative building for the Toronto Bridgepoint Hospital, located right next door. The jail was restored, and much of it is now used for office space. In fact, there are only 6 single cells on display for people to see. 

While the building is used as office space now, the historic areas are mostly left untouched and are free for the public to visit between the hours of 9:00am and 5:00pm, Monday-Friday. 

Walking through the front doors of this building, it is obvious that it used to be a jail. While you will be able to see a lot of hospital signage- and potentially a hospital employee walking around- the historic structure still remains. 

The cells were small and were built to only accommodate one inmate at a time, though they often housed 1-3 people. 

The segregation cell was used as a punishment for inmates- devoid of all light, as there were no windows, but was twice the size of a regular cell. This was seen as a serious punishment at the time, but since the normal cells were so small and housed so many people, having that space all to yourself was later seen as a positive thing. 

Inmates at the Don Jail were unsurprisingly tasked with things like laundry, mending clothing, and hard labour such as breaking rock. What you might not know is that inmates who committed minor crimes were also tasked with maintaining the grounds of the Riverdale Zoo, which is known today as Riverdale Farm, home to cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, chickens and more. 

Much of how this jail operated is now seen as inhumane, however our prison system hasn’t really come that far since then. We still have a lot of work to do before the criminal justice system in Canada will actually be seen as humane.

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*all photos and videos in this post were taken by me at The Old Don Jail in Toronto.