The Don Jail was a

jail A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are imprisoned under the authority of the state, usually as punishment for various cr ...

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario, Canada, located to the east of the Don River, on Gerrard Street East in the Riverdale neighbourhood. The original building was completed in 1864 and was reopened in 2013 to serve as the administrative wing of Bridgepoint Active Healthcare, a

rehabilitation hospital Rehabilitation hospitals, also referred to as inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, are devoted to the rehabilitation of patients with various neurological, musculoskeletal, orthopedic, and other medical conditions following stabilization of their ...

located adjacent to the jail. Prior to its adaptive reuse as part of a healthcare facility, the building was used as a provincial jail for remanded offenders and was officially known as the Toronto Jail. The jail originally had a capacity of 184 inmates, and it was separated into an east wing for the men and a west wing for the women.

History

The 'Don Gaol' was built between 1858 and 1864, with a new wing being built in the 1950s. Designed by architect William Thomas in 1852, it was constructed with a distinctive facade in the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style, with a pedimented central pavilion and vermiculated columns flanking the main entrance portico. It is one of the oldest pre-

Confederation A confederation (also known as a confederacy or league) is a political union of sovereign states united for purposes of common action. Usually created by a treaty, confederations of states tend to be established for dealing with critical issu ...

structures that remains intact in Toronto. The Don Jail is the only jail to have been officially designated the Toronto Jail, yet has rarely been referred to as such outside official circles, with the facility more commonly known as the Don Jail or 'The Don'. The first King Street Gaol, the second King Street Gaol and the Toronto Central Prison were all colloquially known as the Toronto Jail, and the Don Jail likely earned its unofficial name to distinguish it from these other facilities. In 1952, the jail was the subject of the first ever television news report on the

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...

English-language network when the Boyd Gang, a notorious group of bank robbers, broke out of the facility for the second time. The news anchor was future ''

Bonanza ''Bonanza'' is an American Western television series that ran on NBC from September 12, 1959, to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 431 episodes, ''Bonanza'' is NBC's longest-running Western, the second-longest-running Western series on ...

'' star Lorne Greene. In 1974, James J. Benko was the youngest bank robber to escape from the Don Jail at age 16. New Don Jail

An adjoining, modernist east wing was built in 1958. When the original Don Jail building ceased to be used for housing offenders in 1977, the east wing remained in operation as the Toronto Jail (retaining the ''Don Jail'' moniker). The east wing continued to serve as a jail until December 31, 2013, when a new facility, the Toronto South Detention Centre, was completed on the site of the former Mimico Correctional Centre.

Living conditions

Originally designed as a reform prison, and once dubbed the "Palace for Prisoners" because of its progressive approach to the wellness and living conditions of inmates, the reputation of the Don Jail soured over the years due to overcrowding and other factors. The jail's bad reputation contributed to the closure of the historic jail building in 1977. The east wing was constructed to house 276 prisoners, but at the end of its service its "rated capacity" was 550, and its average prisoner load was about 620. In addition, as a "short-term" jail, it was not designed with adequate visitor facilities, exercise areas, telephones, lawyer meeting rooms, showers, or even laundry facilities. However, the average stay was 30–90 days, and many prisoners were kept there for months. It was often overburdened by a large number of arrested persons awaiting arraignment. Courts took judicial notice of the deplorable conditions at the Don Jail. In ''R. v. Smith'' 003O.J. No. 1782, Justice Richard Schneider set a precedent in this regard by crediting persons serving time in the facility awaiting trial with three days against their sentence for every day spent in the facility, as opposed to the "2-for-1" pre-trial custody credit typically given during criminal sentencing in Canada at the time. In ''R. v. Permesar'' 003O.J. No. 5420, the same judge noted that the prison failed to meet the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners set by the

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. These conditions were also brought to light by a controversial article appearing in the ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part of Torstar's Daily News Brands (Torstar), Daily News Brands division. ...

'' after

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

Linda Diebel was smuggled into the prison by Dave Levac, a sympathetic Ontario MPP. Mr. Levac faced censure by the Integrity Commissioner for bringing in the reporter, whom he led Jail officials to believe was a member of his staff, as part of his entourage.

Capital punishment

Before

capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...

was abolished in Canada, the Toronto Jail was the site of a number of

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

s. Starting with the execution of John Boyd in January 1908, hangings at the jail took place in an indoor chamber, which was a converted washroom, at the northeast corner of the old building. Previously, condemned men had been hanged on an outdoor scaffold in the jail yard. The indoor facility was seen as an improvement because outdoor executions were quasi-public (at the hanging of Fred Lee Rice on July 18, 1902, crowds had lined surrounding rooftops to see something of the spectacle) and because the condemned didn't have to walk as far. The best-known Canadian hangmen, such as John Radclive, Arthur Ellis and Camille Blanchard, hanged men at the Toronto Jail. The Toronto-based hangman Samuel Edwards, who worked during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

, carried out his first execution there in July 1931. Twenty-six men were hanged on the jail's indoor gallows. The jail saw three double hangings: Roy Hotrum and William McFadden in August 1921; Leonard Jackson and Steven Suchan in December 1952; Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas on 11 December 1962. Turpin and Lucas had each been convicted in separate murders, and their executions were Canada's last before capital punishment was abolished. In 2007, human remains were found on the jail's grounds during an archaeological assessment.

Transformation into a hospital facility

The Don Jail has long shared its site with a hospital. The original House of Refuge was built in 1860 on the same property as a home for "vagrants, the dissolute, and for idiots". The House of Refuge became the Riverdale Isolation Hospital in 1875 during a smallpox epidemic, and later evolved into a hospital for those with chronic ailments and/or needing rehabilitation. When the newly named Bridgepoint Health (now Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital) demolished the 1950s-era Riverdale Hospital building to replace it with a new 10-storey facility, the historic Don Jail building was extensively renovated to serve as the administrative wing for the hospital, a process which included the removal of "150 years worth of grime" from the exterior. About 20 per cent of the former jail's heritage interior was preserved, including the centre block's half-octagonal rotunda featuring

clerestory A clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey; from Old French ''cler estor'') is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye-level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both. Historically, a ''clerestory' ...

windows, as well as original iron railings and balconies supported by griffin and serpent cast-iron brackets. The punishment and death row cells, and the former gallows tower (where an outline of the timber framing remains on the interior walls), were also preserved, to remain behind closed doors except for occasions such as Doors Open. In 2008, the City of Toronto's heritage preservation staff and some Councillors wanted Bridgepoint Health to retain the steel bars on all of the old jail's windows. Fearing that the barred windows were incompatible with the hospital's objectives of openness and well-being, Bridgepoint Health was able to convince City Council to only require that grilles be maintained on the windows not serving patient rooms or staff offices. The east wing was formally decommissioned on January 6, 2014, at which point it too was transferred to Bridgepoint Health and demolished in March and April of that same year. The site of the former east wing will become landscaped open space and will potentially be used for a future expansion of the hospital facilities. The grounds of the former jail are being landscaped into a city park to be named Hubbard Park after William Peyton Hubbard. The former Don Jail Roadway has been extended and renamed Jack Layton Way after Jack Layton, the late leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada and former Member of Parliament for the area. The prison and hospital also served as the location of the fictional Dyad institute in the Canadian TV show '' Orphan Black''. The rotunda of the jail was also used as a set for The Cell Block bar in the movie ''

Cocktail A cocktail is a mixed drink, usually alcoholic beverage, alcoholic. Most commonly, a cocktail is a combination of one or more liquor, spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as juices, flavored syrups, tonic water, Shrub (drink), shrubs, and ...

'' (1988).

References

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