By all accounts, the Doors Open’s tour of the Don Jail this past weekend was a smashing success.
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The curious started lining up outside at 5 am to get a glimpse of the Gothic 19th-century factory of death, oppression and humiliation.
So great was the demand – what is it about the suffering of other humans that so intrigues us? – that hundreds had to be turned away.
For those unfortunate souls there’s still an opportunity to get in touch with your inner dead man walking. Bridgepoint Health, the private concern remaking the entire corner at Gerrard and Broadview, is offering tours of the jail at 20 bucks a pop, $17 for seniors and youths, $10 for kids.
Three hundred bones for the Death Row After Dark Package, where you and seven of your closest friends can take in the gallows by candlelight. Refeshments included, or course.
Need a hot place to stage a rave? It’ll cost you just $3,500 Monday to Thursday, $4,500 Fridays, $5,500 Saturdays and Holidays. Add $35 for a washroom attendant.
No doubt the Don is an architectural gem – at least, from the outside looking in. The stone Father Time face over the front door is the kind of ironic touch that the sicko in all of us can appreciate.
But for anyone whose had occasion to tour the premises under normal conditions – that is, overcrowded and choked with the fear and anxiety of prisoners – the Don’s not a pretty sight. Men were hanged here. Killed themselves here. Murdered here. Died alone in their cells here.
That Bridgepoint has decided to turn this palace of so much suffering into a money-maker while redevelopment plans for the site lurch slowly forward, may be clever, from a marketing point of view. But it still makes my skin crawl.
Is it overstatement to suggest Bridgepoint’s profiting off misery?
Bridgepoint seems eager to remake the history of the biggest hell hole in corrections in Canada into a nostalgic curiosity. Talk about tripping.
Check the promo material. The Don a model for prison reform?
“At that time it represented a tremendous advance in the public attitude toward the treatment of law breakers,’ the site says. “Until then, (as was then the world-wide custom) prisoners had been confined in appalling and inhumane conditions.” Presumably, housing the mentally ill and those awaiting the hangman in tiny, dark cells in the basement rate as humane treatment.
So appalling were the conditions that the jail has failed to meet the standards for minimum treatment of prisoners set out by the UN.
Gotta give Bridgepoint credit at least for strongly advising parents against bringing children on the “ghost” tour of the prison, “an eerie journey through the building’s seedy underbelly… not for the faint-of-heart.”
Not sure, though, if that’s just intended to entice as much as it is meant as a warning.
