With the 50th anniversary of the 1971 riot at Kingston just days away (April 14-18), I thought I'd write something based on research I’ve been conducting over the last six months or so. Just to start, content warning for violence, obviously - there is no way to make this subject less horrible. One aspect of historical study I am most interested in are the precursors to a major event - the struggles, organizing, movements, victories and defeats that (sometimes with hindsight, sometimes without) shape a more influential and decisive event. And studying these events - especially the failures, the roads not taken, the seemingly minor - is critical to understanding why some voices and memories fade, and others take fire. This is especially difficult when writing the history of prisoner resistance, which often appears a discontinuous history, full of gaps and seemingly sudden flare-ups. In the case of the 1971 riot, two major precursor events stand out. 1) The first is the January 1967 hunger strike at Kingston Penitentiary, in which roughly 450 prisoners refused to return to their cells. It was the first major prison protest at a federal prison in the Ontario region since the late 1950s, and unlike those riots which seemingly had no goals (though the burning down of workshops makes a rather obvious statement), this one was aimed not just at bad food but issues like transfers and discipline. This strike (almost forgotten today, even by the retired guards and former prisoners I’ve spoken with who were there) certainly influenced the rioters in 1971. Without any way to keep the guards away, the peaceful strikers were tear gassed and clubbed by the riot squad until they went back to their cells, and the repercussions - loss of all earned remission, up to 90 days in solitary - were so haunting and frightening that one of the enduring demands of the 1971 rioters was for ‘no punishments’ for participants. 2) The second major event happened in January 1971, and was both an omen of things to come and a stark example of whose voices and demands would go unheard during the April riot. On the afternoon of the 7th of January, two inmates armed with knives took three officers in the Carpentry Shop captive. The hostage takers were Anthony Jack, 30, from Kenora and serving a life sentence for murder, and Ronald Turner, 17, Windsor, serving 6 years for armed robbery and sexual assault (he was actually 16 when first sentenced.) Jack was Indigenous and Turner was Black. Both were employed in the Carpentry Shop, which was on the 2nd floor of the north Wing of shops - relatively easy to isolate and hold from the outside. Using the intramural phone, the two inmates had the others in the shop evacuated and armed security pulled back. No other immediate demands were made, despite the shop being surrounded and the Warden, Art Jarvis, and the senior officers being present. Negotiations soon began over the phone, with the Jack and Turner requesting another Indigenous inmate join them, after being released from segregation, and for all three of them to be released from the penitentiary. Turner threatened to kill the hostages unless their demands were met by midnight. Likely with the recent FLQ crisis, and the flight of other political prisoners abroad, on his mind, Turner asked to phone first the Cuban embassy, and then the Jordanian embassy - specifically to speak to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. All of these demands were denied. Having spoken to several retired officers who were present, a dispute also developed between the Warden and his security staff - the latter were much more interested in shooting and killing both Turner and Jack then in the continuing and fruitless negotiations. This kind of bloodthirstiness or contempt for the lives of (especially racialized) prisoners is not surprising. Turner’s institutional history was particularly awful, and likely helped drive him to this desperate act. Only 16 when he came to Kingston Penitentiary, he was quickly transferred to Collin’s Bay - where he was assaulted physically and sexually by other inmates and unprotected by staff. He escaped Collin’s Bay, was recaptured and returned to Kingston, where he was placed in segregation and according to the inmate grapevine was beaten by guards. Turner’s case incensed some of the more conscientious inmates who later started the April riot. Billy Knight, their initial spokesman, during the first press conference of the Inmate Committee on April 15, specifically brought up Turner’s mistreatment: “I was with that boy in Collin’s Bay too …and because they [beat up] that kid over there, that kid ran away. A sex offender, but still, no one deserves that! Then they sent him back here, and then he gets involved in this mix-up. 17 years old!” Another inmate joined in: “What is he doing in a federal prison – 17 years old – with hardened criminals. What does a boy, a young boy…what is he doing in a federal prison. It’s ridiculous!” During the January 7 hostage-taking, Jack and Turner would repeat that their major concern was “race” and that, growing frustrated, they would not negotiate any further with “Whitey.” Their hstility to the penitentiary staff and distrust of white people shouldn’t be a surprise. On one hand, the last half-decade befoore 1971 had seen the popular growth of campaigns for Black and Indigenous civil rights, the rise of Red Power and Black Power, the growth of immigration from the so-called Third World, the collapse of the confinement system of reservations. On the other hand, in the 1960s there was an enormous expansion in the number of racialized prisoners in Canadian prisons. The staff of penitentiaries, whether custodial, industrial, classification or treatment, almost completely white, and remained as institutionally and personally hostile and excessively violent toward non-white prisoners as they had for decades before. Negotiations stalled. Over the next day, conversation continued sporadically while Jack and Turner took turns playing euchre with the hostages. Eventually, Deputy Warden Doug Chinnery and Rev. Goss selected three trusted inmates* – all of them either Indigenous or Black - to negotiate face to face with the hostage takers, under the correct assumption that Jack and Turner would be more willing to listen to them. These three men all knew that this posed a serious risk, marking them out as 'stooges’ or 'stool pigeons’ and that the promise of early release was an uncertain reward to depend upon. Nonetheless, according to the investigation transcripts, they were not so much interested in helping the administration as in saving Jack and Turner. *I’ve not shared their names because they were never publicized at the time. Although they were commended for their efforts, the inmates were unable to convince Turner and Jack to surrender. However, Jack did request the help of an Indigenous social worker, Mildred Redmond, from Toronto, who quickly came to Kingston. Although tensions were considerably loosened by her arrival, and Redmond and all the inmates were finally talking, no final resolution had been arrived at when the hostages themselves broke free - the distraction of the negotiations allowed then overwhelm Jack and Turner. Soon after, 25 guards stormed the building and dragged Jack and Turner to solitary where they remained for many weeks. Many aspects of this event – the taking of hostages, somewhat vague but expressly political demands and the intervention of outside negotiators – would be repeated again on a much larger scale in April 1971. It also seems to have directly influenced the planning of the April hostage takers. During the post-riot trials, one prisoner later testified: “I overheard three or four inmates… They were discussing a previous attempt to grab hostages, how it had failed, and how this time they were going to pull it off.“
Turner and Jack barely took part in the April riot - their voices were drowned out by the larger concerns of the more prominent rioters, despite Knight’s anger at their treatment. Both Turner and Jack were, however, protected by some of the rioters from violence by other inmates. And it is not as if racialized prisoners did not share the grievances of the other rioters - against long sentences, prison staff and police brutality, lack of connection with the outside world, overcrowding, humiliating conditions - but other frustrations over race were sidelined.
The results of the two events couldn’t be more disparate. Although the federal penitentiaries did, several years later, attempt to make the first halting, clumsy efforts to redress issues of 'race’ (as understood by white bureaucrats in Ottawa) by recognizing the Indian Brotherhoods, hiring (very small numbers) of Indigenous and Black staff, allowing Elders into the prisons, this all had little to do with those mostly forgotten hostage taking. The April riot, on the other hand, much larger and more devastating in scale, produced a panicked reaction that led to almost immediate and enormous changes that still form key parts of the modern federal correctional system. Unfortunately, there’s a real lack of documents on the aftermath of the January hostage taking. I don’t know, or really want to pry into, what happened to Turner or Jack. I don’t know anything more Mildred Redmond, either, who sounds like a really impressive person. As is typical in these histories, the names of the guard hostages - Lloyd Bramley, Cass Turner and Allen Marsden - were far easier for the ex-guards I interviewed (and museum staff) to recall, compared to Ronald Turner and Antony Jack. Photos are from the Toronto Star, January 9, 1971. A1.