Edson area thieves...they got 'em!

[Okotok]

Good for the scumbags. Back in the 80s and before I became the upstanding citizen I am today, I had the ahem, opportunity to see the inside of one of our two years less a day prisons. The charge was driving under suspension and dangerous driving because I outran them (stopped at all the red lights) in Edmonton. They caught me with the dogs in a ravine heading for the river. After going to court and being sentenced to 30 days, I spent a few nights in the old remand center which was a dirty place full of scumbags that were all innocent of course. Food was about a 3 on the camp scale. I was then shipped off to the old prison in Fort Saskatchewan. The last hanging there was in 66 if I recall correctly and part of it is a museum now from what I've heard.


First day and orientation was a shower and delousing with the juice, which they watched and made sure you scrubbed yourself down. Gave you a mattress and pillow to carry along with a few toiletries and in my case, being a smoker, a bag of tobacco and some papers. They then led you to your cell. In my case, A range, cell 10. Reminded me of the Alcatraz movies with a couple of levels of cells above. I was bunked in with another guy. Not too bad of a guy but definitely not someone I'd hang out with on the outside.


Meals were pretty basic and definitely not luxurious. The best thing was probably the coffee in the big urns as all you got in the block was instant that you purchased at the canteen.


Money could be deposited by outsiders (my girlfriend at the time) into your account. You could then fill out a weekly order list for the canteen and they would deliver to your cell. Things like toiletries, tailor made smokes, chips, chocolate bars etc. These items were very valuable for trading and gambling purposes.


Some of the highlights were the women having to walk through our range to get to their block. It was like a wolf whistling fashion show. We also had co-ed gym nights once a week which was pretty popular with the inmates.


Saw more than one disturbing occurrence. Before I was cleared for work duty, I just hung around the cell block all day long. They opened the cells around 7:00 AM and then you could go out into the range. The after story was that a guy had given another guy his neck chain to untangle and then never got it back. I was sitting at one of the tables in the middle of the block and saw a guy wheel a mop bucket by to a cell at the end of the range. He pulled out the wringer and stormed into the cell. Apparently the guy was in the head at the other end of the block. The guy showed up a few minutes later and then the original guy attacked him with a chair at the TV end of the block where everyone watched whatever show the guards decided to put on. It wasn't a pretty sight. They sent the guy down to the "digger" which was their name for the hole. I saw him a couple of times coming up to make his one phone call a day dressed in a dress made out of what looked like a moving blanket. Probably so it was more difficult to find something to hang himself with.

After a few days, I got clearance to work. I was assigned to the root house and was making $2.00 a day that went into my canteen account. Had to sign out a little knife that I used to scoop the eyes out of potatoes. A guy would dump a bucket into the spinning peeler and then dump them on to a table in front of a few of us. We'd then scoop out the eyes and fill a garbage can. On the way out, we'd sign our knives back in and then get strip searched on the way out. Lift your nuts, bend over and display your crack, etc. Fun stuff.

Visitor days were a blast. My girlfriend could buy me a pack of smokes out of the machines they had as well as junk food. From what I heard, plenty of drugs were exchanged via various orifices and methods that likely don't work as well these days.

but a letter for a pre-release and was let out after 21 days. Headed back to camp near Anzac where I was the General foreman on a compressor project for Home Oil. The boys had taped up a bunch of reversed, D size drawings with prison bars drawn on them. Not sure how much better the Pen would be but was certainly a life experience that I never repeated and would never want to repeat. It's probably a luxurious existence to many I met in there however who seemed to like to spend winters there. Hope conditions haven't improved but I suspect the lefties have been working on it.