Gaol bird tour

Historic lock-ups of Atlantic Canada

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY DARCY RHYNO

Afella down the hall is behind bars for nothing more than running his horses through town. The only crime of the women in the cells upstairs is being poor after their indebted husbands abandoned them. In a temperance town like Sherbrooke Village, ending up behind bars is as easy as pie. That’s because there ain’t no real crimes, so they gotta dream stuff up. Heck, nothin’ more than cussin’ got me locked up in this gaol cell.

But I would be lying if I said being a gaolbird didn’t have its rewards. Take the smell of fresh biscuits drifting from Mrs. Scott’s kitchen. She’s the gaoler’s wife and lives with her kids in the other half of this gaolhouse. Some are so fond of Mrs. Scott’s grub, they run around town cussing their heads off every December just for a serving of her famous Christmas turkey dinner. Catching a whiff of biscuits, I just know there’s freshly churned butter to be slathered on a couple and delivered through these bars. I’m playing the role of an 1867 prisoner dressed in period clothing including britches, bowler hat and coat; but those aromas are real. Phyllis Jack brings me some biscuits and springs me from gaol. She’s the Supervisor of Hands on History at this living history museum of 25 buildings, including shops, houses, and churches. Along with the biscuits, Jack presents me with a pound of that fresh butter. The gift is a sure sign that my sentence for criminally cussing has been commuted to time served.

The science gaol

Sherbrooke’s is just one of many historic East Coast gaols where visitors can peek into penitentiaries of the past. In Fredericton, the former gaol serves as a family-friendly science centre. Lieff Salonius, director of development and communications at Science East, shows me around. We dodge kids running from one ingenious exhibit to another, their parents barely keeping up. It’s a tight squeeze, but I fit myself into the infinity room where my reflection repeats itself forever.

“Science centre exhibits are often massive things,” Salonius says. Because the rooms at Science East were once offices and cells, exhibits here are smaller than what is typical. “As far as we know, we’re the only science centre located in a former prison. It’s just an incidental innovation, but we’ve taken a lot of the classic science centre ideas and we’ve downsized and redesigned them. Children frequent the smaller exhibits because they’re not overwhelming.”

After exploring exhibits on the top two floors, we head to the basement, ducking along narrow passageways to a series of rooms where prisoners once lived out their sentences. To keep things kid-friendly, the exhibits here are about the forensic science of catching criminals rather than the criminals and their crimes. But when asked, Salonius and other guides are happy to entertain adults with stories of billion-dollar capers, bizarre escapes, and the door nicknamed “the point of no return.”

Georges Island and the Citadel

Two national historic sites in Halifax have historic gaols. Georges Island in the middle of Halifax Harbour has a military lockup, but at one point, the entire island served as an open air prison. About 1,000 Acadians were held here before their expulsion from the Maritimes by British forces in the mid-1700s. Many died before they could be exiled. Today, their descendents consider Georges Island a sacred site for its connection to that famous tragedy.

The Halifax Citadel fortress stands guard