The man who runs the Maison Orléans, a place of healing and welcoming in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, is curious. The subject being discussed – rehabilitation in a prison setting. By Colin McGregor Why ask me about this subject? Because, at the time, I am in […] See more
“Darkness, la noirceur. It’s the darkness.” We are in prison, in a common room for inmates. A kitchenette, a TV fixed to the wall, a few chairs, some couches. By Colin McGregor He’s spent 40 years behind bars. Only last week did he get permission […] See more
I awake in a sweat, dazed and disoriented. I turn my pillow over to the dry, cold side underneath, and think: a few seconds ago, I was walking along Sherbrooke Street on a sunny summer’s day, rummaging through second-hand bookstores. Not now. My eyes adjust […] See more
On a transfer bus from Cowansville to Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, in the lower Laurentians just north of Laval. It does not matter if it is day or night. I cannot tell. By Colin McGregor | File Prison In the rear, in a cage, manacled and handcuffed, all […] See more
René Girard, a writer and philosopher from France, feels that human societies are necessarily full of negative emotions. People copy others – that’s human nature – and one person’s violence and rage can multiply, can get horribly out of control. To avoid anarchy, all societies, […] See more
Note: Jean-Pierre Bellemare was convicted in 2021 of a crime committed in 2018, and is currently incarcerated. Sometimes my jailbird past seems too heavy for me to bear. Many of the folks around me see me as a successful example of a rehabilitated criminal, which […] See more
The debate over how prostitution should be handled in our society has elicited lively opinions for a long, long time. Here is the opinion of one woman who worked as a hooker for a year and a half. She wrote this 5 years ago, but […] See more
It is break time at the prison upholstery shop. We work in a large, brightly lit room with a high ceiling and concrete floors. Along one cinderblock wall, chairs are lined up, mostly facing outward. This is where we sit for the 15 minutes we […] See more
Last year, we were asked to remove all the religious symbols from the Chapel in Cowansville Penitentiary (Quebec), a men’s federal prison with close to 700 inmates. A chapel that was previously decorated with Christian symbols now became a neutral space within the barbed wire […] See more
My father, deceased for some years already, would have been very happy being in prison. Not because of the food, the filth or the confinement. But because in his salad days he was a crime reporter for the Montreal Star, a daily newspaper that closed […] See more
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