The whole point of a jail is that you don’t want to go there. At least when it’s open.
Since the Ontario Reformatory closed at the beginning of this century, its property has been adopted by Guelphites as the city’s largest community park. On a nice day you can find hikers hiking, dogs walking their humans, and people fishing in one of the ponds. It’s one of the most unique features in Guelph, which has no shortage of unique features.
Understanding the potential fate of the OR Lands means understanding the complex web of ownership and intentions that have evolved over the last quarter of a century. We’ve had the Innovation District Secondary Plan, there’s a Heritage Conservation District plan in the works, and the western portion of the property has already been sold to a developer and the planning for building there has begun.
And yet, there’s a new plan. For the last several months, a consortium of community groups has petitioned the federal government to declare the OR Lands a national park, and I think they should. If there’s a hope at preserving the property for all the things that we like about it, it’s probably the only option that everyone will find acceptable.
First let’s talk about the elephant in the room, Infrastructure Ontario. Presently, what happens on the OR Lands falls under their bailiwick, including last summer’s “natural erosion” of an old stone wall. There’s also been some question about a few buildings on the property, along with a certain bridge, that may end up having to be demolished.
Although the people of Guelph have been making plans for the preservation and protection of the property for years, we don’t get to exercise any of those plans until the provincial authority lets go of the land. That means they can do what they want with only a pro forma “consultation” with the City of Guelph and its agents. More of that TINO (transparency in name only) we’ve been talking about.
I mean, the phase “natural erosion” just sounds so fake, doesn’t it? It may be that the cause of last fall’s wall collapse was the result of unforeseen factors and the impact of nature on a human-made structure due to age, but “natural erosion” has the same Orwellian swagger as a phrase like “alternative facts”, especially since erosion is, by definition, natural.
But that’s one small part of the issue, and at least now Infrastructure Ontario has pledged to fix the wall though they don’t know when. What happens when the next thing falls apart, or threatens to fall apart?
One of the buildings on the OR Lands that are not presently set to be among the saved is a building where the Native Sons met, a group of Indigenous prisoners who helped each other work through the trauma that led them to do the crimes that landed them in jail.
In that building, several of those men took part in the production of art that still adorns the walls of the lower assembly hall and though it’s hard to confirm, there’s every reason to believe that the art is still there, on the walls, waiting to be demolished or preserved depending on what side the flipped coin lands on.
The concerning thing is how difficult it is to get confirmation about any of this. Local heritage activists have been doing a great job talking to the people who were there, but the only reason we know that the murals themselves still exist is because of a video shot by urban explorers and bandmates (?) Edge of Our Youth in 2021. You may have noticed earlier this month that this is now 2024.
CBC News sought confirmation for themselves last fall, but they were denied access for safety concerns and that’s long been a part of the problem. People concerned about the condition, protection and future of these assets have been routinely waved off from their inquiries, which is another reason why people who are (emotionally) invested in the property want to have more control over its fate.
There’s still a question about what that fate will look like exactly and City of Guelph heritage planners will tell you that the heritage district plan doesn’t make the area within its boundaries untouchable, it just guides possible future redevelopment. In other words, if you want to keep the OR Lands, more or less, exactly how they are right now, we don’t yet have those assurances.
That goes double for the Indigenous history on the site because Infrastructure Ontario apparently has no interest in preserving it, and if you read the aforementioned article last fall from CBC there’s a definite tone when it comes to their appraisal of the significance of the surviving art. To put it simply, it’s pretty obvious that they don’t think it’s worth saving.
And yes, it’s hard to establish provenance of these individual works, but there’s a broader significance to history that’s being dismissing. The Native Sons program at the Ontario Reformatory was a model for other institutions across Canada; innovation before there was ever an Innovation District. Along with that is the fact that it’s a stark reminder of the outsized representation that Indigenous people have in our penal system.
In other words, preserving the origin point of the Native Sons and the artifacts that remain there is an act of reconciliation. It acknowledges the history of colonialism that led to those men being in that place in the mid-20th century, and it pays tributes to the way those men were able to overcome both their personal and generational trauma. Is that something we can trust Infrastructure Ontario to have an interest in protecting?
Probably not given the not-so breakneck pace they’ve take with the wall debacle, but then again it doesn’t mean anything to them. Or it at least doesn't mean as much to them as it means to us. That could be said of the whole property too, the one that the hikers and the dog walkers and the people fishing all enjoy. It’s already a park, so let’s make it official.
