The smell of brewing coffee fills my nose and jolts me out of bed. I slip on my brand new Nike Flyknits, stretch my arms over my head and crack open the window to let the cool breeze and the smell of the lake inside. From outside, the sounds of adult men talking and the crunch of gravel under their feet fills my room.
I stayed up late watching Game of Thrones the night before, and now I turn off my TV, placing the saran-wrapped remote on my metal bookshelf beside the Art of Seduction, the book I’ve been reading this week. I make my bed, organize the schoolwork I have scattered on my desk, and walk out my six-by-ten-foot living quarters into the common area.
Welcome to Collins Bay Institution, a medium-security federal prison in Kingston, Ontario.
For many people, this is what morning life in a penitentiary is like. They fix themselves coffee, wish each other a good morning, get ready for work by storing lunches in Tupperware containers, and do last-minute chores. Unlike what music videos, HBO serials and movies would have you believe, prison life isn’t all swastikas, bandanas and jumpsuits. In reality, life in prison is not full of despair. Yet in the eight and a half years I served, I learned its limits in rehabilitating inmates.
Here’s how a day typically goes: after getting showered and dressed I throw on a sweater and head toward a payphone located under a metal staircase. I wipe off the greasy mouthpiece and call my son, Markus. A guard in a jet-black Corrections Service Canada uniform sometimes greets me. “Good morning, Vivar.” I smile and greet him back.
Then I head to work. I’m a part-time school tutor, and every morning I walk to the programs building, through two metal detectors, and up a flight of steel-reinforced concrete stairs. Grade 10 English is taught in a classroom with big windows, plants hanging from the ceiling, and a big “good morning” written across the chalkboard. Ten students sit in a semi-circle around a gold-haired teacher who has wrinkles around her mouth from decades of smoking.
At lunchtime I again go through metal detectors, this time getting a pat-down because I forgot to take my keys out of my pocket. One more metal detector on my way to the mess hall and I finally get to eat. The room reminds me of a school cafeteria except it’s packed with inmates, and guards watch us munch bologna and coleslaw out of plastic trays through their plexiglass and steel enclosures.
I wear my own clothes. I bought my own TV to keep in my room for times when I need to be alone, and I read novels and play chess. I can go to school or work full-time. I take showers alone — not in the communal ones you see in movies — and I have no fears of “dropping the soap,” unless that means spilling the $6 Axe body wash I bought from the commissary down the drain.
This is what the penitentiary isn’t like: I am not in a "crew" of bearded and tattooed criminals who roam around plotting their next gang hit. I don’t smoke cigarettes, because smoking is banned. I don’t own a jumpsuit, wear a bandana or have a permanent grimace. I actually smile — really smile — a lot. This is not a place where people get jumped and stabbed every day, and although violent incidents do occur, it’s generally a place filled with respect, even humility. Men say “sorry” when they bump into me and say “respect” when a courtesy is shown, like if I hold the prison-yard door open for them. For me, prison is much safer than the streets I came from.
The day I entered Collins Bay, a castle-like structure reminiscent of a medieval Disneyland, I made the choice to use the time to recreate myself. I’ve taken college courses, joined book clubs and become a proud member of a writing group. I learned a skilled trade and formulated plans for a legitimate business venture. Earlier this year, I came out of prison a certified welder, public speaker and college graduate.
That was the choice I made. For others, however, prison is far from a perfect institution.
Canadian prisons pride themselves on encouraging pro-social values, yet they are anti-social environments by design. During my time in the pen, I couldn’t associate with other inmates, as two or more of us in a group walking around the prison track would be considered a gang. An innocent conversation with an old friend or co-accused could be misconstrued as "ongoing criminal activity.” At a certain point, my reality shrank to spending days in my cell, isolated. I began to hate people, yet every part of my soul yearned for human interaction. My only chance at parole was to live as a hermit.
Prison doesn't necessarily mean rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is not encouraged by the system. It’s something I had to earn. I was fortunate to learn a trade — getting into my entrepreneurial program was the prison equivalent to winning the lottery — and I almost went as far as getting onto my knees to beg for my college courses to be facilitated. Each year, eight out of more than 600 inmates are chosen for welding and entrepreneurship programs, which are always delayed due to constant prison lockdowns: my three-month apprenticeship actually took six months. Attaining a post-secondary degree is also difficult, as it is “not a Correctional Service Canada mandate”; imagine the challenge of getting correctional staff to facilitate an exam for free. Inmates who have not learned negotiating skills find it impossible to participate in higher education from prison.
There was a price for taking on these opportunities. My push to self-improvement was interpreted as a sense of entitlement by correctional staff. When I pitched a prison newsletter directly to the warden, I was warned not to “circumvent the system.” When I started writing a newspaper column about prison life for the Kingston Whig-Standard, I was called into the assistant warden’s office for discussing prison issues in my writing. I was serving my sentence in the way I thought society wanted me to, and preparing for the free world to which I would eventually return, but I was often questioned or held up in those efforts.
I no longer wanted to be a drug dealer, but there were times the system made me feel like that was all I would ever amount to.
Prison farms have been shut down; apprenticeship programs to become a Red Seal-certified chef or a welder have been stalled or halted altogether. Prisoners abuse prescription drugs given by their own prison pharmacy, and men will often play cards or exercise to pass the time, though they will be returning to a world where building winning poker hands and doing pushups are not employable skills.
As of this spring, I am free. Sometimes when I drive near Kingston, I see Collins Bay in my rear-view mirror. I see its gun towers, its steel and concrete reinforced walls. It often looks like there is a dark cloud over the prison, and I’ll step on the gas to get farther away from it.