A pair of brothers who live in Kingston, and who were incarcerated decades ago, are wondering why former offenders are not tour guides inside the decommissioned Kingston Penitentiary while former correctional service officers are.

Donny Hogan, 69, and his brother James, 61, were originally from Fort William (now Thunder Bay), and since they have been released from prison have become advocates for inmate rights and have spoken out on the past treatment of prisoners in Canadian institutions.

The brothers say they could be informative tour guides and provide a different perspective of life behind bars but were never offered the opportunity to be tour guides.

“Me and my brother would jump aboard if they let us in,” Donny said. “We could tell them a lot more than the Queen’s (University) students are telling them.”

The students just go off a script provided to them, said Donny, who never spent time in Kingston Penitentiary but served almost 10 years in institutions east and west of Ontario until 1973.

Last month, the brothers participated in a teach-in at Queen’s University on prison entertainment and redevelopment that included a discussion on why there are no ex-offenders acting as tour guides in Kingston Penitentiary.

“I think all the people that went on tours so far have been lied to,” Donny said. “The people are making money off the suffering and the death of a lot of them that died in the prison here.

“We can tell the truth and we can give people their money’s worth. There’s hundreds of thousands of people who have walked through there who haven’t heard the truth, and the truth will set them free.”

James Hogan, 61, spent some time at Kingston Penitentiary back in the 1970s, as well as at Millhaven, Collins Bay and Joyceville institutions.

He spent a total of 11 years incarcerated, including time at institutions out west. He was released about 20 years ago.

He said there’s a lot of “ghosts” inside prisons.

“We don’t like to look at our dirty laundry here in Canada, but Canada has a lot of dirty laundry,” James said.

People need to know what life was like in prison, he said, and how the inmates had to fight for better rights.

“Anything the inmates ever got, they got through violence, they got it through riots, death and blood,” he said. “And that’s the only time changes were ever made, unfortunately.

“That’s why we’re still not in the ball-and-chain era, breaking rocks.”

Kingston Penitentiary tours began in 2015, about a year after the prison was decommissioned.

The tours have been a big fundraiser for the United Way of Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington.

In the first full season of the tours, operated by the St. Lawrence Parks Commission, 60,000 people walked through the site in 2016, generating $640,000 in profit, which was split equally between the United Way and destination marketing Kingston’s tourism industry. It was calculated that the penitentiary tours had a regional economic impact of $4.7 million.

In 2017, the tours generated $4.3 million in revenue after 105,000 people went through its iron gates.

In the 2018 season, 67,500 people went on the tour, generating a net profit of $1.47 million.

Justin Piche, associate professor in the department of criminology at the University of Ottawa, said that without having former inmates provide information on tours, the tour guides are providing an establishment narrative and not providing both sides of the story.

“For the most part, with very few exceptions, most of these sites focus on what’s happened in the past. Obviously they’re heritage and historical sites, but they do so in a way that doesn’t acknowledge the violence of incarceration that continues in the present,” he said in an interview.

“You hear from the perspective on institutional staff, institution administrators as well as the ministries, so you get the official version of events, but prisoners are often absent from the discussions.”

Piche and Kevin Walby, of the criminal justice department at the University of Winnipeg, have been doing research on tourism sites at closed penal institutions in Canada for more than 10 years.

The men and some of their research assistants have visited about 40 places across the country that have some type of prison tourism.

Kingston Penitentiary is the largest prison tourist site in the country, Piche said. He said offenders serving minimum sentences or on a work-release program could provide perspective during the tours.

Organizers of charitable events inside closed prisons, Piche said, such as the Rockin’ the Big House concert last month, set themselves up for criticism by not asking for input from ex-offenders.

Piche said organizers could have had former or current offenders who are musicians perform at the event along with the other musical acts. At least, he said, organizers of charitable events or tours in a prison setting should invite offenders or ex-offenders into the planning process to exchange ideas.

“If the KP tours are to go on, they would benefit tremendously from the input of current and former prisoners as tour guides,” he said.

Piche said there’s a precedent in Canada for the practice. A former prison in Trois-Rivieres, Que., has former officers and inmates working together as tour guides.

Calls for comment on the hiring practice were made to the local United Way offices and Correctional Service Canada. Both asked that inquiries be directed to the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.

Geoff Waycik, director of historic sites for the parks commission, said in an email response to the Whig-Standard that due to privacy issues, he couldn’t confirm if any ex-offenders have been hired to be tour guides.

Waycik said there are no impediments to hiring ex-offenders beyond normal hiring practices.

“SLPC does not ask for private information not relevant to direct job requirements, and the Human Rights Code in Ontario protects against discrimination in employment based on record of offences unless there is a bona fide qualification that would prevent hiring the individual,” he said.

“The positions at Kingston Penitentiary do not have any such requirement.”

Waycik agreed that ex-offenders would have unique perspective on the operation of the prison they could share with visitors.

Piche, who took a tour of Kingston Penitentiary on last month, said the pro-establishment narrative hasn’t changed much since he first toured the decommissioned prison when they were first offered as a United Way fundraiser a few years ago.

“Talking about imprisonment without the voice of prisoners seems ridiculous to me,” Piche said.

But he added that it would be a choice of the ex-offenders to re-enter an institution to work there.

“Whether someone would choose to put themselves back behind the walls is their choice,” he said.

With a file from Elliot Ferguson

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