My Day in The Max
Guard tower at Kent Institution in BC. / Photo by C. Price, The Province Newspaper
As a young management consultant, I flew all over the country on assignment. But I only agreed to do this project so I could spend time at some hot springs! I had no idea how wide my eyes were about to be opened…
“These guys would kill you at the drop of a hat.”
Not what I expect to hear from the Warden, especially not the first thing he says. How about, “Welcome to our correctional facility. We run a tight ship here; don’t you worry.”
The day before, I place some final items – suit-skirts and jackets, dress shoes, hair dryer – in my luggage, which I keep semi-packed at the ready for my next business trip.
Buckled in to my window seat as we taxi onto the runway in Ottawa, I pull out the safety card to review Exits A and B, the direction arrows for the handle, count the seat-backs between me and the nearest exit (and scoff at how much good my seat-cushion might do for flotation). I listen to the pre-takeoff talk, even though I know it by heart in both official languages.
Then I sit back to forget that I’m 33,000 feet up, munch on pretzels, do some reading, and enjoy views of Northern Ontario, the Prairies, and hopefully the Rockies under clear skies. Landscapes I’ve driven through, a few lakes paddled, familiar ski-slopes in miniature.
This is to be my last trip. Not ever, just the last expenses-paid one for work. I always try to tack on a weekend on my own dime: Expo in Vancouver, Mardis Gras in Halifax, star-gazing from ‘P.A.’ (Prince Albert) Saskatchewan. My colleagues prefer to stay home with their young families, so my boss usually assigns me to the field work. Initially, I’m not enthusiastic about this task, but how could I pass on a stay at the Harrison Hot Springs Hotel?
So it is that I find myself standing, brief-case in hand, at the main gate of a maximum-security prison one summer morning. Female, age 29, 116 pounds.
The door swings open. A uniformed man in a control booth motions me to step into a plexiglass cubicle, which closes behind me. My brief-case and I are thoroughly scanned. I look to one side, where only windows separate me from several hundred yards of impossibly tall chain link fences topped with barbwire rolls. Two fences about twelve feet apart, with nothing but gravel between – what they call ‘no man’s land’.
At the far end, the tinted windows of a control tower look over me. I feel like a rabbit in the cross-hairs. Click. I am ushered in.
The Warden’s office is on an upper level with a commanding view over the inner courtyard and beyond, through wall-length corner windows. I sit facing his desk, my back to the windows, some of which have been shot-up and are under repair.
“We had a helicopter breakout a couple of days ago. Drug lord. I’m new here. What does Ottawa do? Put me in this window office! I’m supposed to hide under my desk? Like I said, these guys would kill you at the drop of a hat. Wards have separate mealtimes, or they’d attack each other in the hallways. Once in solitary, they can’t leave – or else get killed after they come out.
“You stick close to Buddy here, and do everything he says.”
I look at Buddy, standing by the doorway. His neck is wider than his shaved head, kind of like a sea lion. He’d be imposing even without the uniform and all the gear. My eyes widen a notch further.
We walk down a broad empty hallway, with mirrors mounted near the ceiling at corners. I’m to walk beside Buddy, but a couple of feet away. We proceed like that, through some automatic double-doors.
Through a side window, I see a small empty lounge room with a TV playing to nobody.
I meet the Industries Manager, in a large windowless office downstairs. This is why I’m here: to review a work program for inmates to develop skills to help re-integrate with society one day. Meantime, they can do some useful work and earn a small amount for cigarettes and such within the prison.
The manager looks across his desk at me. “This is a Max. What do the Head Office bureaucrats come up with? Making furniture. Furniture! Nails, glue, sharp materials… and the tools! They should be making teddy bears – no!” He banishes the thought as soon as it arises. “Or bed sheets…”, but I can see unfortunate outcomes from that option crossing his mind.
Being an accountant, I offer a little joke in reassurance: “well, I guess you don’t face inventory shrinkage!”
“Are you kidding me? They managed to make off with an entire drafting table. And the things they can fit in the soles of their shoes, piece by piece…”. I try to imagine how the table ‘disappeared’.
Buddy accompanies, as the Manager takes me on a brief tour of the workshop. I recognize the type of desks being made that I’ve seen in government offices, amidst mazes of padded cubicle dividers set out like a rabbit warren.
Nobody’s in the workshop today. The prison is on lock-down. I thought that would mean the inmates are locked into their cells. But in this case, it’s the opposite. They are locked out, while their cells are scoured completely. Every little thing they’ve managed to save or hide, every project is stopped in its tracks.
And the prisoners are out. They are pissed off, and they are not locked in. Buddy walks me through an inner courtyard, where men in jumpsuits lean against the far wall. They look like they’re loitering. I mean, there’s nowhere to go – they are captive in the prison, for sure, and under surveillance. But I’m in there with them, ‘at large’. My mind begins to race “are they sure they have the groups separate? How will they manage the changeover at lunch, if nobody’s locked in?”. I want to step closer to Buddy, but I keep the prescribed two feet distance. I suppose he needs room to manoeuvre, should anything stir up. Those hot-springs had better be good.
We enter an open-air corridor that leads toward the cafeteria door. The space isn’t wide enough for my liking. We walk past a number of inmates who sit on the ground leaning against a wall, their legs sprawled out. I don’t know when a female guest may have been brought through before – someone who’s not a trained and armed officer, nor a medical professional. Someone who’s not in straight-leg pants over army boots, wearing a vest or at least an ear-piece. Just me in my petite suit, nylons and flat leather shoes, toting my brief-case. I try to focus ahead and walk calmly and steadily beside Buddy. I glance over briefly once. Some watch me pass, others stare at the ground with slumped shoulders.
Beyond their general situation, the lock-down has everyone in a surly mood.
Buddy takes me through the cafeteria line. Men in smocks serve food onto plates from behind the plexiglass cover. I make brief eye contact with one server. I can’t unsee that look, nor is it easy to describe: the greatest depth of dead-flat darkness I’ve seen, like Loch Ness under a cloudy night sky.
I sit at a table across from Buddy in the busy lunchroom. The food reminds me of my university cafeteria: mashed potatoes, tri-colour veggies, and what we called ‘mystery-meat’ and gravy. Although I feel somewhat comforted by my body-guard, I also feel surrounded. The tables are full all around us, and inmates walk by our table to get to the lunch line.
I realize that I’m judging people by the colour of their outfits. Blue equals allies, and I wish I could extend a nod of thanks to the staff. Any other colour spells danger, making me feel wary.
What if any one of those men wore a guard outfit, or vice versa? The guards had to be at least as tough as the inmates, and aware of their ingenuity as well as their every move. Plus become friends to a degree, spending most of their hours ‘together’ on the inside.
For now, I’m glad for the colour-coding and hope everyone’s feeling sufficiently subdued by the aftermath of the escape. I learn that the drug lord and his sidekick were recaptured on an island in Harrison Lake, and brought back to spend more time with The Man.
Buddy brings me back up to the Warden’s office. I look forward to ending my day and getting back outside to the freedom of the mountain air, my rental car, my life. “You know, it may feel dangerous to you in here, but only ten percent of offenders are incarcerated. The rest are out in society.”
With that bon-voyage thought, I exit the building. The big doors close behind me. The guard towers watch my back as I walk to my car. I feel pretty small and exposed in the vast empty parking lot, with mountains in the distance.
When I pull in to get gas, the male attendant approaches the car and asks “how’s your day?”. I look at him differently now, in my rear-view mirror. My outlook has expanded and shrunk at the same time.
I carry on to the other two stops on my trip: a Medium and a Minimum. In the latter, the gates to the lightly fenced grounds are left open. Some inmates work as highway cleanup crews, picking up litter from ditches and medians. Once back in their trailer-style dwellings at the end of the day, should they choose to flee and get caught, they’d be sent back to medium security. What a head-game, to sit and look that open gate!
After I present my analysis to my boss, he informs me there are more site visits. The next one includes an agricultural operation and the culinary program at another maximum-security prison – this time in Quebec.
I tell my Mom I can visit her in Montreal en route. My mother, whom we dubbed ‘Bad Cop’ while growing up – insisting we walk to school through blizzards unless absolutely too sick to go – says she’ll not have me taken hostage at knife-point in a prison kitchen. Independent consultant though I am, I don’t mind telling my boss: “my mother says no”. No problem - one of my younger male colleagues agrees to go, and I’m onto my next adventure at work.
I wonder, if they were so capable to escape by helicopter, why choose to be dropped on an island – soon to be picked up and put back behind bars? Was the pilot a hero? Years later, I move to the west coast. As I recount this tale to friends over dinner, I wonder if it seems too far-fetched. But it turns out, my friend’s husband – who flew small planes out of Abbotsford on the mainland – knew the chopper pilot! He’d been hijacked.
I learned more about it all when I came across this account in a news archive, while fact-checking myself as I wrote this story!
written by Barbara L Campbell, 2024