Exit, Pursued by a Bear

By 2 p.m., the polling station started getting busier. As I folded the ballots and handed them to the voters, Keith stared at me and gave a running commentary.
"You’re so dainty."
"You’re so petite."
"You have piano player fingers."
"Your hands are really thin."
"Let me braid your hair."
But the real nightmare began when the polls closed.

Certainly, the Don Jail should be saved, but so should the semi-circular building. It is unlike anything else in Toronto, a genuine landmark and part of our history. Although architecture has regained its celebratory capacity since the heady days of the `60s, it has never recovered this same briefly felt sense of innocence and faith in what lies ahead …

The half-round is, however, "modern"; in the collective mind that doesn't signify heritage. Given what happened to modernism and how quickly it was degraded that's not hard to understand. That's why exceptional examples such as this must be saved.

In principle, I couldn’t say why I disagree with that: if architectural preservation isn’t about preserving the best examples of a period, I’m not sure what it’s about, other than preserving the character and scale of a neighbourhood, I guess.

Still, I can’t look at a building like that without thinking: ‘Quick, blow it up before some fool designates it.’ Irrational, I agree.

The plan calls for tearing down the 1960s part of the Don Jail and keeping the older part for an administrative building, which is as good an idea as any.

However, as far as I can tell Bridgepoint officials will have offices in the death-row cells and the gallows area – at abolition, the gallows were capable of handling a double hanging, like the botched Turpin and Lucas executions in 1962 – which would give the most hardened of us second thoughts about working alone in the building late at night. Either that, or they’d have the potential for really callous Halloween parties.

Years ago, I had a chance to look at the capital case files for Turpin and Lucas at the National Archives – I was working on an article proposal on a case in the same period in Alberta, which in the end never came to anything.

One thing about hangings in that period which I’ve never seen pointed out elsewhere was that it was normal to empanel a coroner’s jury before the fact, require them to come to the jail for midnight to watch the execution, march them down to watch the autopsy, then suggest they certify that the deceased died through dislocation of the neck as part of a judicial execution held on the evening of, etc., and please sign here. The inquest was wound up by 1:30 a.m. or so.

The signatures are very shaky.

This has always struck me as an honest feature to have in a death penalty system: the conscription of random witnesses from the voters lists, who must then attend the execution on pain of punishment. Harsh, but then again so is hanging people.

It was normal in Ontario and Alberta – I’m not sure about the rest of the country.