Free Inside: the Life & Work of Peter Collins

FREE INSIDE The life & work of Peter Collins

Ad Astra Comix 2018

“Free Inside: The Life & Work of Peter Collins” First Edition © copyright 2018 Ad Astra Comix All illustrated work © copyright Robert Collins Foreword, introduction, afterword and all written contributions are © copyright their respective authors.

Artwork on book cover is “Hummingbird”, an unfinished painting that Peter was working on in the final days of his life.

Layouts and cover design by Nicole Marie Burton Book production by Ad Astra Comix, Peter Collins, Joan Ruzsa and Giselle Dias, with special assitance from Lucy Collins, Robert Collins, and Christian Collins.

More of Peter’s work can be found online at www.lockdowngalleries.com Ad Astra Comix is a publishing collective based in Ottawa, Canada, specializing in comics with social justice themes.

For more information, visit adastracomix.com Printed in Canada Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Collins, Peter, 1961-2015, author, artist Free inside : the life & work of Peter Collins ISBN 978-0-9940507-7-9 (softcover)

1. Collins, Peter, 1961-2015. 2. Prisoners--Canada--Biography.

3. Prisons--Canada. 4. Autobiographies. I. Title. II. Title: Life & work of Peter Collins.

HV9505.C62A4 2018

365’.6092

C2018-901386-9

All royalties are to be donated to “Calls from Home”, a program of Prison Radio on CFRC 101.9 FM in Kingston, Ontario This book would not have been possible without the generous donation of Dee LeComte, collaborator with Peter Collins on CKUT’s Prison Radio Show. We are deeply grateful.

FREE INSIDE The life & work of Peter Collins

Foreword by P.W.G.

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introduCtion by ann hansen

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PRISON LIFE

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political cartoons

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Opening words (p. 19) by Chris Collins “If Shylock Were a Prisoner” (p 24) by Peter Collins “The Pathology of Rehabilitation” (p. 28) by Peter Collins Additional words (p. 61) by Rob Collins

“Resistance Art?” (p. 67) by Peter Collins

illustrated work

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PICTURES OF BIRDS

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CAMPAIGN ART

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A Mother’s Plea (p. 101) by Joan Stothard Additional words by James (p. 110), Peter Collins (p. 113), ...and Chris Collins on Pete’s final days of life (p. 117)

“The ‘Jailbird’ Series” (p. 129) by Peter Collins Additional words (p 138) by Giselle Dias Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers support art and info (p 150)

A History of Prisoners’ Justice Day (p 153) by Peter Collins Peter’s nomination for “Awards for Action” (p 164), by Anne Marie DiCenso “Awards for Action” letter to Peter (p. 168), by Richard Elliott

closing words by Greg McMaster

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afterword by Sheena Hoszko

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Peter at Joyceville

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only saw Pete painting once, obscured through scratched 8” x 4” plexi, headphones on, his shoulders loose, his eyes far away, brush just so.

He did it alone, then, requiring, I think, the quiet and security of a door with a lock to give himself fully over to the process. Looking through the work collected for this book, I remember some of these pieces in various stages of completion; bound birds and frustration bursting in silent frozen screams propped up against cinderblock and steel in Millhaven and Collins Bay. And I remember walking with Pete, training with him, laughingly trading ideas for lampooning cartoons. I remember a lot of laughs with Pete. Through that filter; I can laugh again at the fun he had, at the digs and the fuckery. At the foolishness and the release.

I hadn’t seen some of these for years and on first glance, what comes through is more than mockery and highjinx; there is anger and frustration, there is impotence and despair. But there is also hope.

So much damned hope.

From Delusion, to The Rehabilitation Workshop and even in “Annie Gurl” – Pete’s art shows people at the ends of their rope, in some cases, literally, but in other cases, despairing and ready to quit - but never doing so. Hope glints in these pieces like razorwire; inexorable and dangerous. A hope that can cut you to ribbons if you’re not careful, but which can also keep you warm and alive and maybe help you find your way. Kinda sums up Pete, too.

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I met him in ’92 or ’93 in Millhaven where I was about 18 months into a life bit. Pete had just gotten back from the SHU where he had reached Master status playing chess against a variety of opponents through the mail. I had issues with trust that my relatively short time in prison hadn’t softened. The joint hadn’t started to rock and roll yet – but it was coming.

Expecting more, expecting better from people guarantees only frustration and disappointment.

And he felt it. In Pete’s world being bound and gagged is not about the artist’s inability to do or to speak, but rather in the audience’s choice to ignore what was being said, what is being done. That didn’t stop Pete trying to explain it, though, remarkably well in short, bold strokes.

For some reason, Pete and I hit it off immediately. That had never happened for me before and it hasn’t happened since. I didn’t care for people, much. I expected little from them and so was rarely disappointed. Pete, on the other hand, always seemed to expect more from people – and no less from himself. There was little ever good enough for Pete. This can be seen clearly in his illustrations, heard in his music, observed in his interactions with people. And felt in an eye rolling, tooth grinding, belly-crunching annoyance if you were ever on the receiving end of it. The guy could be a pain in the ass, but his high expectation of me probably saved my life, ensured my release and helped me to become the (fairly) stable individual I am today. It just as probably ensured he was going to die in prison.

His Cell Profiles (Cell Profiles 2: Wasted Time & Wasted Lives, 2005) for example, will give you a good understanding of the aching tedium and the tiny inhumanities of prison – but also underscores the frightening adaptability of people, the ease with which one first copes with, then accepts, then normalizes cages and suicide and having basic privacies withdrawn. The idea of normalizing the abnormal is a theme found both overtly (How to Follow your Correctional Treatment Plan, Integrity) and more subtly (Dream) throughout Pete’s work.

Prison is twisted. It bends and breaks and turns topsy everything you think you know, but does it so softly, so slowly, you never feel your bones break.

It is notable that this is a collection of three; no one listened the first two times.

Pete had some artistic talent – gleaned doggedly through the mail and passionately practiced. His ‘real life’ scenes always seemed to me more dreamy than his cartoons and sketches of prison life. Nature scenes of swamps and mountains are often seen vaguely and from far away, or set imperfectly into old memories. It is clear some of these are copied from pictures in a book – studies in texture and color and movement. Notwithstanding, there is in these a vigor, an anima born of meticulous detail and scrupulous attention as if Pete was able to bend his will to make them new.

Pete often juxtaposed birds with bricks and barbed wire. Whether as metaphor or not, there is a melancholy in these – the subjects are lifelike, natural renderings, but in a most lifeless and unnatural setting. In these works, it is the joint, the wire and the bricks that are most clearly out of place, that do not belong – and in every one, (Hawk 1, 2011, Snowy Owl, 2011, Barn Owl, 2011, Untitled Blue Jay, 2011, Untitled Burrowing Owl with Chicks, 2011) it appears the birds are disapproving of the monstrosities of concrete and rebar and danger.

The work chosen for this collection omits some of his more self-deprecating humor – a series I remember as The 3 Idiots, panels about two convicts who were constantly making bad decisions; two convicts who could never understand why they were always in trouble did not make the cut. One of my favorites, however, untitled but which I think of it as ‘The Escape’ is included. In it, a convict while

waiting for a psych evaluation squeezes through the bars on a window, only to be hung up when the ball on his ankle won’t go through the bars. While subtly implying how far one can actually get by following their ‘Correctional Plan’, this piece also highlights the heartbreaking lack of forethought and the reactionary mentality characteristic of the angry and the hopeless.

I am well aware of the farting noise Pete would have made had he been alive to read that last sentence.

Working through this collection, it’s easy to think Pete had a problem with coppers and ‘the government’. There is no need to cite specific pieces here; his contempt for CSC and the Feds is pretty clear.

In this collection, however, pay attention to words and images that depict humanity, safety, security, assistance, care, encouragement and rehabilitation.

These ideas are important. They form the pillars of the promise made by CSC and the Federal Government to the Canadian people regarding their responsibility to those incarcerated. Pete is not attacking anything more specific than their failure to keep that promise.

Coppers make an easy target though; some of them are complete assholes. Flashlights in the eyes, keys dragged across doors in the middle of the night, bullying, violence, anger, derision and ridicule are often heaped by coppers onto convicts and their families and support network. Many of these people come to CSC because they are already broken.

Many of them – but not all of them. Some are just working off their own time from other government

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jobs. Others are trying to work their way up into a better role and bigger pension. Some just needed a job. Regardless, however, of how or why people come to the service of the CSC, that same slow twisting that happens to us, happens to them. It can’t be avoided. Et quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Pete, I suppose.

I can see how people might think Pete hated The Man. Maybe he did, especially toward the end, dying alone in Milhaven and in pain – but I don’t remember a great deal of hate in Pete.

I do remember a lot of acceptance. I recall that Pete would help anyone who asked him for help. I recall patience and precision and a wicked sharp sense of humor. I recall creation of music and art – beautiful in the act, if not always the result - and I don’t think hate and beauty can exist together on paper or in paint.

I don’t think Pete hated coppers or the CSC, – or if he did, that’s not why he drew about them. I think he was just pissed off because he thought they should be doing better; that somehow the people into whose care we had been given, had a duty to that care.

Burdensome as it may be; they had a responsibility to say the truth, not to hide it; to rehabilitate, not to repress. And Pete thought the government had a responsibility to oversee and guarantee that duty of care, to safeguard the truth, to ensure rehabilitation - but instead they chose to create fiefdoms and from them demand little more than discretion and a thick bottom line.

Time and again we saw and continue to see CSC and our Federal Government hide from the general public the truth by simply not telling it, or by telling

lies, or by telling the truth, but from an angle slightly skewed, and lives are ruined in that difference.

There are inquests and unprecedented media bans.

Wardens are fired, then quietly re-hired. Little girls strangle themselves to death while the keepers watch.

The fiefdoms remain intact. The story is spun; fear is political leverage. The public shakes its collective head but far, far in the back of that head, is the knowledge that people only go to prison if they’re bad. Twist, twist, twist.

-snapCSC and the GVT could have done better. They could have told the truth. They could have respected the rule of law, encouraged and assisted, in a manner safe, secure and humane, the people in their care.

Hell, they still can. But they didn’t. Not then, and they don’t appear to do that now, either. That’s what I think Pete hated – or hated the most: they should have done better, but made the choice to take the easier path.

There’s that word again: choice. Every piece in this collection is about choice on one level or another.

Choices of action, interpretation, truth – better cannot be done without choice.

There are some who would look at this carefully chosen collection and think Pete Quixotic; a raging, tilting madman railing ineffectively at a faceless them. I still get pissed off that my friend had to die in prison, and some days I blame him for it; blame him for being so stubborn and pigheaded; blame him for not only always having to be right, but for pointing out how they were wrong. Pete could bend his will to accomplish anything. He had a higher bed and two guitars and pencils and paper and paints and brushes

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and a stereo system we could hear from the yard. He had a computer, a Buddhist diet, and an education, formal and certified. He had a doctor’s note that excluded him from bending over during a strip search – although he advised that he would be happy to get up on a chair to let the coppers look up his ass – you know, for the sake of security. He received an award for his work educating convicts on the realities of blood diseases. Pete had persistence, brains and the ability to work the system to his own advantage.

And he died in Millhaven. Alone.

Of course he could have gotten out of prison, and I don’t wish to imply that Pete did not want to get out.

I think he did, but he chose to get out only on his own terms – and his terms were high. This was clearly a hindrance. But it was also his right and I would be doing him a disservice to wish he had been anyone else but who he was, by being less accepting of him, than he was of me. When I say that he probably saved my life, I don’t mean that in the melodramatic metaphoric sense, but rather literally.

I was on a short path to death-through-idiocy until I met Pete and he said: No. No. You can do better than that. There is another way. Choose.

This collection isn’t Pete distilled. It’s not the essence of who he was or a pure version of Peteness.

Nor are my own memories, obscured as they are now by time and no little loneliness, definitive.

These are only facets of a complex man and while they may shed some light into him, it’s not exactly the light of the Shining Torch of Truth and Justice.

The work presented here highlights the struggle of everyone bound and gagged, not just Pete Collins. It touches on prison rights, yes, but also native rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, the education of the marginalized, freedom of speech, genocide, environmental awareness and literacy, yet this is not dilettante dabbling; these themes are bound by a common thread – the ease with which a shifting of priorities and perception could make things better.

And even as I wrote that, I could feel Pete over my shoulder, accoustic guitar strapped on, silently fingering the strings and laughing.

PWG

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I remember looking at his father, and he reassured me that Pete had arranged to have these sent out of prison, and was completely aware that they would be exhibited in Kingston, a few kilometers from Millhaven penitentiary where he was imprisoned.

There was other art as well. Beautiful oil paintings of nature and traditional Indigenous peoples’ lifestyles, and water colors of birds that all subtly mourned the natural world under assault.

INTRODUCTION

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Not long after Pete’s art was on display, a prison guard came in and saw his cartoons and complained; a complaint that resonated amongst the Conservative power elite, all the way up to Queen’s Park, where the Conservative Solicitor General, Bob Runciman stood up in the Ontario legislature and questioned how a prisoner’s art with such a social critique, could be on public display.

first met Pete, although never in person, when we decided to organize an exhibit of his art work at the Sleepless Goat in Kingston in ‘05.

I quickly learned a lot about Pete through his art and his decisions regarding exhibiting his art. Ever since that first art exhibit, Pete has been a great inspiration to me. I think the story of his first exhibit here in Kingston will tell you a lot about the man.

Ten years later, Al Qaeda gunmen stormed the offices of a French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and gunned down 12 cartoonists, injuring 11 more.

In the months leading up to the attack, Charlie Hebdo had published a series of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad and various aspects of At the time, Pete had been in prison for over twenty Islamic doctrine. Millions of people, including 40 years, and had never been granted any passes, world leaders rallied in a show of international escorted or otherwise, and yet he must have harbored solidarity with Charlie Hebdo in the streets of Paris. some hope that this was possible considering that he was well past any eligibility dates, and had not Unlike Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, who had mocked incurred any institutional charges for some time.

Islam during a time of international Islamophobia, Pete had dared to mock the very powerful corporate When his father arrived at the Goat with his art in and government forces that rule this capitalist world. crates, I was a little taken aback as we opened crate Unlike the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, Pete was not after crate of large graphic art works or “cartoons” as championed by the western elites. But like the some people might call them. I think Pete’s father Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, he was attacked, not in was also taken aback, but not as much as me, because such an immediate and brutal manner, but in a slow he knew his son. These were witty, politically graphic and quiet manner. Freedom of speech does not cartoons that made me laugh out loud, and in some apply to everyone, not even in Canada. Pete must cases subtle political comments about everything have known this when he approved the display of his from the Correctional Service of Canada to the cartoons at the Sleepless Goat. nature of capitalism. Here were political cartoons drawn by a man whose sharp insight and intellect When Pete was 22 years old, he shot a cop, could match cartoonists in any newspaper in the spontaneously, during a robbery gone wrong. Later world. And yet, it was clear immediately, that by he expressed remorse for what he had done. Killing a exhibiting his work, Pete could very well be man had not been part of his plan, but that moment jeopardizing his freedom like so few other cartoonists in time would become the defining moment of Pete’s in the world. life. The prison system is designed so that whatever

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crime a person has committed, will define them and overshadow everything else they do with their life.

In prison, Pete graduated from high school and earned a college certificate in graphic art, tutored and prepared his fellow prisoners for parole hearings, organized seminars to help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, and was rewarded for his prisoner and social activism with the 2008 Canadian Award for Action from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch. He also became a prolific artist, exhibiting his work in Toronto, Kingston, Montreal and Halifax.

Unfortunately, the Parole Board would never allow the light that Pete shone on society and his fellow prisoners to define him. As Pete explained… “silence, it seems, equals ‘rehabilitated’ in Canada’s prison system.”

Through his art and activism, Pete tried to show us that finding truth in this society is like trying to find

a hidden image in a puzzle picture. Sometimes the definition of a character can only be seen if you turn the whole picture upside down and squint your eyes. Sometimes you discover that what appears right is wrong, and visa versa.

Pete died August 13, 2015 at the age of 53, in prison, due to complications from cancer. The fact he was never given a pass in over 30 years, or even compassionate leave in his dying days in Millhaven prison, is a testament to how powerful a threat his fearlessness was to the prison regime.

Prisons are held together by fear, and if everyone was a Peter Collins, the whole thing would fall apart, like a house of cards.

Ann Hansen

Peter Collins paid a high price for writing and painting in prison, but he was always willing to put it out there.

Many of his pieces dealing with the CSC, which you can find in this book, show guards and nurses as being lazy, brutal and vindictive. Policies and procedures are depicted as being arbitrary and ineffective.

One of Peter’s first pieces was made in the OCDC in 1983 or ‘84. They had him awaiting trial in the isolation cells, and he asked for a pen and paper.

He drew a window and hung it on the wall.

According to Peter, they were very angry when they saw this. The “window” was taken down and the pen and paper confiscated. This was the beginning of a 30 year struggle to get his artwork seen inside and outside of the prisons he was housed in.

I would say that Peter was just offering a fair criticism of the way things worked in Canada’s prisons, and that didn’t make him anti-authority. I think it was the authorities who became anti-Peter as he produced more and more artwork concerning life in prison.

It was never easy for Peter. He was routinely threatened and harassed by the CSC staff and bureaucracy. His artwork was vandalized and stolen and his supplies were taken by the prison guards.

In 2012 they took his desk, saying that it was a firehazard. They filled up his correctional files describing Peter as being anti-authority and pointing to his artwork as being proof of that.

Bath Penitentiary’s Healthcare lost Peter’s blood-work and missed appointments at the hospital in Kingston, meaning that his diagnosis for bladder cancer came late. They continued to mismanage his healthcare until he was told he was terminal. The Parole Board denied him compassionate release, making sure he died in prison where Bath Healthcare got his pain medication wrong and held back simple things like neck-braces and hospital beds. He died in terrible pain.

Whether or not you agree with the Corrections people it is easy to see, looking at some of Peter’s paintings, how they would not be happy.

But we can still see his paintings, and I think that was the most important thing to Peter.

- Chris Collins, Peter’s brother

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1. Extra Firm Bed

8. Wall to Wall Carpeting

15. Very Cold Tap

2. Spa

9. Long-Term Companion

16. Personal Security Device

3. Laundry Service

10. Wildlife Sanctuary

17. Sentence Veto Mechanism

4. Towel (wash hands after use) 11. Air Conditioner

18. Safety Deposit Box

5. Panoramic View

12. Emergency Button

19. Home Entertainment

6. Water Bed

13. Drink Cover (& Toilet)

20. Spiritual Enlightenment

7. Spacious Storage Unit

14. Cold Tap

21. Artistic Mural

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If Shylock Were a Prisoner

by Peter Collins (with deference to William Shakespeare)

They have disgraced me, and robbed me, laughed at my losses, mocked my gains, scorned my ambitions, thwarted my agreements, cooled my friends, heated my enemiesand what is their reason? I am a prisoner.

Has not a prisoner eyes?

Has not a prisoner hands, organs, limbs, flesh, senses, feelings, affections, passions?

Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means?

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

If you poison us, do we not die?

If cruelest calamity befall our mother, father, brother, sister, daughter or son, does it not pain us?

If the love of our life take ill, will we not ache?

And worse still, for being the more unthinkable, if our love be taken from life, will we not grieve with inconsolable grief as deep as yours, as full of torment, as anguished?

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

If you spit upon us, kick us, cast us out, call us scum, loser, incorrigible, antisocial, criminal, psychopath and condemn us defective, immoral, delinquent, villainous, duplicitous and contemptible as filthy wretched contaminant of noblest purest society-and still, for all that, as weak and overfull of cowardice, what consideration shall we entail?

call us scum to others when we can hear, swarm us, hold us down, choke us, shoot tasers into our screaming flesh, beat us nigh unto death in clumsy, official frenzied blood-lust and fury, gas us, shoot us and after all that neglect us medical ministration, what shall we countenance?

If we are like you in the rest, shall we resemble you in that?

If a prisoner wrongs you, what is the witness?

Revenge! Punishment! Judgment!

Imprisonment. Persecution. Pain.

Endless maltreatment punctuated in death.

If prisoner be wronged, What their sufferance should be by example?

Why…justice!?

Only mark: The villainy you teach, by example, will be repudiated, and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction in virtue and love.

Even as you do not, I will forgo cruelty; I will shut my eye to hateful demeanour, ignorant vengeance- and defy your hellfire on earth.

For only Omniscience can next judge thee, and yet give me still resilience and resolve to survive – nay to triumph!and strength to forgive thy cardinal sin, to dwell in forbearance, in compassion, in humility – unlike you can never know, On earth, or in another place.

If you sneer at us, chant at us, burn holes in our flesh, torment us,

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Page from “Annie Gurl”

Rehabilitation: The Correctional Bored Game ( 2005 )

The Pathology of Rehabilitation

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Peter Collins 0792S3B, April 2014

t the age of twelve I was a chronic runaway. My home life was emotionally distressed, I was unhappy, I felt unsafe and unloved, but running away didn’t make things better for me. On the street I was victimized by two male pedophiles, and this solidified my distrust of adults who I viewed as authority figures.

(CPS). That is how my Life-25 sentence started, 31 years ago. (“Life-25” is a sentence of Life without eligibility for parole before twenty-five years have been served.)

My sentence was intended to denounce and punish me while deterring others. My incarceration was intended to keep society safe and, somewhere in the mix, “rehabilitate” me. Police and prison officials were concerned that I would try to escape and had me placed in one of Canada’s two federal Special Handling Units (SHU).

At the age of fourteen, I was taken in by an older woman who groomed young boys for sex. Her home was a hive of criminal activity. The friends and associates that frequented her house included prison escapees, bank robbers, bikers, parole violators, drug dealers, and she was a sex worker, a fraud artist, and highly skilled shoplifter. I lived with her for a couple When I arrived at Millhaven maximumof years, and this experience pointed me on a collision security prison, the low, sprawling building projected the image of a college. As the transport vehicle course with society and the rule of law. got closer, it revealed the gun towers and the tall At 16, I was an angry, misguided teenager who was perimeter fences which were electrified and covered increasingly out of control. At 21, I was arrested and in razor wire. The entrance gates opened and I was charged with a series of bank robbery related crimes. swallowed up, stripped of my clothes, assigned a Before I could be brought to court, I escaped custody, number and locked in a cell. My initial SHU placement and while on the run, during a botched bank robbery, was an iron box, complete with iron walls, ceiling, bed and desk, all welded into the other with two sheets of steel I shot and killed a police officer. covering the cell window. The staggered steel I was convicted of murder, sentenced, and placed coverings over the window had half inch holes in the custody of the Canadian Penitentiary Service punched into them but were off-set to allow me to

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look outside with one eye at a time and only if I held my head off at an angle. These “windows“ provided no sunlight and no fresh air and have no business being referred to as windows. The electric heavy metal door opened and closed with a grinding, whirring smash. Through the layers of metal and concrete, I could hear the seamless metallic echoes of angry yelling, pleading sobs and tormented screams of the discarded and forgotten.

In prison there are endless reams of official policies, rules, directives, regulations and laws that need to be followed. Paradoxically, Canadian prisoners have high rates of illiteracy and mental health issues.

Regardless of ability, prisoners are expected to know and follow the thousands upon thousands of complicated rules and regulations, which are applied unevenly and often capriciously.

There are also unwritten rules that officials arbitrarily impose, but the main rule is NEVER complain. Prison administrators expect a level of compliant subservience; a “good inmate“ is quiet and willingly malleable to any official’s whim, at any time. While this official expectation assists in the short-term goal of the day-to-day running of the prison system, it has no benefit to helping prisoners become more responsible and accountable.

Prisoners also impose rules on themselves. The main rules are “don’t get involved in other prisoners’

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affairs,” “don’t look into other prisoner’s cells,” “don’t take another prisoner’s property,” “don’t inform on other prisoners,” and “don’t gossip.” All of the rules are regularly broken by both prisoners and guards, and both groups appear equally willing to turn a blind eye to almost anything if it benefits them in some way.

In the early years of my incarceration, I took no responsibility for my conduct or my crime. The process of being caught, convicted, and sentenced only strengthened my belief that I was the victim. I was still nurturing my victimhood from childhood traumas and my attitude was generally defensive, disrespectful, and confrontational.

While I was in the SHU, a significant friendship developed through correspondence. Our letters were epic tomes, hundreds and hundreds of pages passed back and forth every week for many years. We investigated ideas, challenged and questioned each other and she helped me widen my perspective and I came to realize how flawed my outlook and attitude was. Through this relationship (and others since) I learned that compassion, respect, friendship and love are the only keys to influencing positive change in people. Had her kind and thoughtful influence not occurred, my view of the world and my role in it would have been reinforced by the prison system and I would have tried to escape again. Had I not been killed trying to escape, I would have been responsible for more tragedy. As a result of her patience,

The more I learned and understood, the more I wanted to try to solve systemic problems and corruption. I saw how people were being mistreated and mistreating each other in the prison system and it disturbed me. The conditions of our collective imprisonment combined with my social awakening had the effect of politicizing me.

kindness and insight I was finally able to see that it was me that was in the wrong and who needed to change. For the first time in my young life, I was able to see that I was part of the human family called society and that I was the problem. I realized I was no longer the victim, but had become the victimizer.

I strained to change my path and be useful and do some good. When I was released from the SHU in 1987, I was having a discussion about how screwed up the prison system is. The barbershop supervisor was incensed at my critical comments and told me it made him sick how guys commit crimes and when they end up in prison, become social advocates. I asked him if the point of prison wasn’t to help us take a more positive social attitude, then what was the point? He commented that it seemed I had a lot of criticism but offered no solutions.

I realized that he made a good point. I didn’t want to be one of those people who complain but have no solutions or constructive suggestions to contribute.

I began to think about these social justice issues more deeply. I got a job in the prison library and I read as many articles, reports, and books on social issues, problems, and opinions as I could find.

I upgraded my grade-eight education and earned my high school equivalency. I started and completed a first-year political science course with Queens University.

In 1992, I began an Arts program and earned a Graphic, Commercial and Fine Arts Honours Diploma, a program which was initially discouraged by prison officials.

In prison, I found what I felt was a useful social purpose, trying to improve things. I began to bring problems in the prison system to officials inside and out of prison. I wrote to parliamentarians and social justice organizations and law societies and university criminology departments. I submitted articles to magazines and newspapers. I regularly contributed to community radio shows in an effort to raise awareness about issues in the prison system. My efforts to address systemic problems in the prison system, such as parole, case management, health care, HIV/AIDS, racism, violence, homophobia, corruption, abuse, and bullying has resulted in the development of strong relationships with community organizations and people involved in the social justice aspect of the prison system.

On the other hand, my efforts to advocate for positive change to the current system has resulted in me being labelled an administrative nuisance, “anti-authority,” and a trouble-maker. While I have not been convicted of any offences in around twenty years, the parole board stated in their recent decision that they want to see a period of time in which I can demonstrate that I can follow the rules before I can be paroled. Silence, it seems, equals “rehabilitated” in Canada’s prison system, and this explains why so

many prisoners withdraw emotionally and try to mimic doormats.

On a political level, justice and prison is working well—it is a constant source of distraction from pressing social problems like poverty, racism, sexism, classism, disproportionate wealth, corporate exploitation & crimes and environmental catastrophe.

Instead of finding and working towards real solutions, prisoners are tied to the whipping post: a villain to point at, to feel better than, to fill the role of “the other,” the enemy.

In the 1980’s, the Canadian Penitentiary Service (CPS) morphed into the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) in what was a strategic re-branding effort. The CPS had just come through a decade of violent upheavals--riots, strikes, murders, and hostage-takings that grew in number with each passing year. By 1976, hardly a week passed without a violent incident. The country’s population was increasingly uncomfortable with the stories coming out of Canadian prisons. The government took the cue and began to push the concept of “rehabilitation” in an effort to appear more enlightened than the prison systems of foreign regimes. Canada added the word “correction” right into the new title of their prison service, as if a label can change the contents of the box. Regardless of Canada’s official effort to re-brand, prison is still prison and, at its heart, prisons deal in punitive oppression. The reality is that prison is categorically incompatible with the dictionary definition of rehabilitation.

As if to prove the point, on rare occasions, excerpts from the correctional horror show ooze out from behind the Iron Curtain of the CSC. The grotesque film footage of Ashley Smith (circa 2007) shocked the nation and the ensuing Coroner’s Inquests (circa 2013, which CSC fought tooth and nail, costing taxpayers millions of dollars in CSC legal defence costs, not to mention years in delays) determined that the CSC was found to have engaged in a pattern of long term torture, assault, and abuse, which culminated in homicide of the mentally distressed teenager, by prison officials. Ashley was pronounced dead at 8:10 am October 19, 2007. The verdict of death by homicide was handed down six years after her death, on December 19, 2013.

Ashley’s crime was throwing an apple at a postal worker as a youth. She was transferred into the adult prison system (CSC) and held illegally and tortured in a variety of isolation chambers. Smith’s young life

ended in the Grand Valley Prison for Women in Ontario. Prison guards stood outside her isolation cell, watching and filming her slow, excruciating death. After the fact, in true Eichmannesque fashion, they claimed they were following orders. Their orders, if they are to be believed, were to wait until she had stopped breathing before they “helped her.”

The word “rehabilitation” rings in my ears when I ponder their conduct.

The Service constantly engages in “battles of will” or games of “correctional chicken” with prisoners.

The CSC subculture is rigid and never wrong and considers a change of course to be an admission of error. An admission of error for the CSC is to accept defeat, and CSC can never be wrong.

Former Supreme Court Justice, Louise Arbour, referred to this subculture in her 1994-1995 Inquiry into the Kingston Prison for Women. Commissioner Arbour,

speaking about the CSC complaint and grievance system, stated: “On the basis of facts revealed by this inquiry, I am satisfied that as a method of dispute resolution, the process has no chance of success unless there is a significant change in the mindset of the Correctional Service towards being prepared to admit error without feeling that it is conceding defeat.”

The Kingston Prison for Women (P4W) was closed under the weight of the Arbour Commission inquiry. The Canadian government built a series of new women’s prisons across Canada to correct the pattern of systemic abuses at P4W. The Grand Valley Women’s Prison was a shining example of the innovative changes being ushered in.

The “old” attitudes and systems simply migrate to, and populate, the new prisons. As soon as construction was completed on the new women’s prisons, CSC began to add high security isolation cells and units. The systemic cycle of excessive segregation and isolation was ramped up. The CSC created a policy titled “The Management Protocol” and this “protocol” was only applied to, and used on, Aboriginal women. The Management Protocol was protested by community groups, and the Office of the Correctional Investigators (OCI) and came under heavy scrutiny and it was eventually abandoned

by CSC. However, it should be noted that CSC only jettisoned the name; not the practice. Aboriginal women are still over-represented in Canada’s segregation and isolation chambers, in addition to the prison population at large. It is important to acknowledge that “Canada’s incarceration rate is already high when compared internationally,” and to realize that “we” (Canada) “incarcerate Aboriginal people at a rate that is nine times more than the national average,” and recognize that “among women offenders, the over-representation is even more dramatic—an astounding 33% of the federal women inmate population is Aboriginal,” as reported in the 2009-2010 OCI report.

a team of correctional officers swarm them, chain them up and strap them down in multi-point restraint equipment. Prisoners suffering these conditions are regularly left in their own filth for hours and days, neither guard nor prisoner capable of changing their behaviour to meet the other’s limitations.

Over the fence in Canada, in the face of the endless evidence, blind faith and trust is placed in the prison system. The Conservatives willfully turn their backs on social science and they are undeterred by the statistical realty that crime rates have been dropping for decades. They have a pathological desire to put more people in prisons. They pump out new “tough on crime” legislation, which regularly fails to pass constitutional muster in front of provincial and federal courts and the Supreme Court of Canada.

When it comes to putting more and more people into cramped, dirty, violent prisons it is difficult to reconcile any claim of rehabilitation or positive outcomes. As prisoners are squeezed, two at a time, into cells built for one, where they now spend more time, the word rehabilitation is truly a misnomer. The prison I am currently in has increased its population by about 100 and about two-thirds of the prisoners are double-bunked. There are two brand-new prison

The conservative default “tough on crime” attitude has added to CSC’s inability to “rehabilitate” and has increased abuse and systemic racism. The CSC’s current position on mental health care issues is just symbolic lip service. The CSC continues to be irrational, non-adaptive, and insensitive to the high needs of prisoners with significant mental health issues. Woe to those prisoners who can’t self-“fix” their mental health condition on command before a screaming guard shoots tear gas into their face as

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A panel from comic “Annie Gurl”

compounds inside this perimeter that will soon go online. We are expecting a couple hundred more prisoners. The construction has not included increases to phones, showers, bathrooms, healthcare services or visiting spaces. The recreation yard has been reduced by half, and our library has been made smaller.

Unemployment is rampant and prisoner pay levels (established more than thirty years ago, and never indexed for inflation) were recently cut by a third.

Over the last thirty years, the CSC gradually shifted the purchasing burden of many medical, hygiene, recreational, and program items onto prisoners. So while poverty has always been a serious problem in prison, it is now at a crisis point. Low pay has reduced prisoners’ ability to survive prison and reintegrate back into the community safely or effectively. The prison system appears again to be teetering on the brink of violent upheaval.

Violence in the prison system has been rising since the Harper government has imposed their illinformed and punitive “tough on crime” agenda.

According to the OCI, “In the last five years, the number of self-injury incidents in CSC facilities has more than doubled,” and Aboriginal women prisoners “accounted for 45% of all self-injury incidents”.

Personal change is not something I am saying can’t happen in prison; I experienced it and I’ve seen it in others. I have seen some people become more thoughtful, more considerate, and kind, but most often I have seen people emotionally isolate themselves. A disadvantaged early life complimented by a tour in prison teaches many people that no one can be trusted. The warped social lessons don’t just come from predatory or exploitive prisoners; they also come from prison administrators and officials who approach prisoners with careless duplicity. In these places where trust is a rare commodity, people’s humanity gets shredded.

Over time, prison warps and distorts people to the point they can be rendered unstable, violent and a danger to themselves and others (in prison or out).

People who were not dangerous become violent and dangerous, and people who were dangerous before prison have become angrier and more volatile and unpredictable. Prisoners can become so disillusioned and frustrated by their endless incarceration under dehumanizing conditions that they turn inward and slice and slash themselves horribly; cutting off their own genitals, slashing their

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throats, cutting their arms in so many places there are only bumpy trails of scar tisue left on their arms and chest.

So many people come pre-damaged from their life before prison and it spills out in many different ways.

Some create elaborate (if unsupportable) stories of wealth and success in the community, perhaps it’s to convince themselves, or perhaps it’s so they can live in a world where they can believe that someone believes they have a wonderful life, even if it is only imaginary. Others, paradoxically, adopt the ill-informed mantra of the prison industrial complex (PIC) and assume rigid conservative “tough on crime”attitudes. It may seem like a “rehabilitation,” but it is more likely to be a manifestation of a “Correctional” Stockholm Syndrome. It seems obvious that the prison system wants prisoners to become “Stepford” prisoners, but these develoments are unhealthy for the prisoner.

Our social conditioning through the education

system and the news and entertainment media teaches us that only bad people go to prison, and society is safer due to prisons. Our collective adoption of these “truths” makes it difficult for the general public to see prisoners as people; it’s so much easier to label them as misfits, pariahs, and monsters. Canadians look down at other countries’ failing “justice systems” but turn a blind eye from their own system because they blindly trust the oversight mechanisms will protect the rights of all Canadians. That confidence is misplaced.

I’ve been in prison thirty-one years, and I see no evidence of anything resembling justice coming from this system. Everything about “corrections” is approached from a punitive logic, and the “tough on crime” agenda encourages this type of short-sighted, vengeance-driven approach. This current system allows hurt and angry (victimized) people to feel as if something has been fixed by hitting it (the perpetrator) harder.

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The vast majority of prisoners are not in prison for violent crimes, and they generally come from impoverished backgrounds and have also been victimized in their own lives. They can be broken down into a variety of sub-groups of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. Prisoners generally don’t have the resources, political capital, or community support to defend themselves. Contrary to current conservative political and media hype, the rules are not bent towards providing an unfair advantage to people convicted of crimes. There is no open-door policy to get out of prison, and there never was; Canada has some of the longest prison sentences in the world. When parole hearings come up every couple of years, the process is presented as a nuisance and a waste of the parole board’s time, or worse, an affront to victims. The prison system uses psychiatric and psychological “experts” who lend their medical credentials to their prison paymasters by pathologizing prisoners.

The system has developed a medical hybrid language to lend weight to their pronouncements of risk, which are then used to justify holding someone behind prison walls. They are, in my

opinion, a correctional version of the “Dionne Warwick Psychic Hotline Network.”

Unfortunately, both hotlines are flawed, and correctional psychologists over-predict risk using Actuarial Risk Assessment Instruments (ARAI’s), thereby preventing the release of prisoners. The accuracy of these predictions can’t be proven wrong because the prisoner is not released, based on the prediction. However, The British Journal of Psychiatry (2007) published Dr. Stephen D. Hart’s paper, “Precision of Actuarial Risk Assessment Instruments Evaluation of the ‘Margins of Error’ of Group v. Individual Predictions of Violence,” which states that, “The ARAI’s cannot be used to estimate an individuals risk for future violence with any reasonable degree of certainty and should be used with great caution or not at all.” This evaluation by clinical and research experts found that risk estimates at the individual level were so high as to render risk estimates virtually meaningless.

Having watched people’s lives and relationships be destroyed by prison has been painful. I believe prison mistreats and dehumanizes prisoners, and

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teaches them that they are unworthy of dignity, respect, or human rights. It is this curriculum that convinces many prisoners that the law is not applied fairly for everyone, and certainly not for them.

After all, most of Canada’s prisoners have had lives filled with personal crisis from day one; poverty, racism, classism, limited education, and few job opportunities. In prison, the “rehabilitation lessons” administered by “corrections” are brutal and degrading and serve no useful purpose. Complicit correctional psychologists “evaluate” prisoners based on a moment in time and then narrate a story based on that moment as if that reflection is all the prisoner is, and ever was. With that approach, prisoners are just human debris dumped into high-security landfills.

If Canada was interested in dealing with the root causes of crime, they would look at the social disparity that has its roots in racism, classism, sexism, and withheld opportunity. Prison would be a last resort, not the first resort, and only violent people would end up in prison. Canada would employ the Aboriginal forms of transformative justice and healing circles to hold people accountable and work to heal individuals, families and communities that have been impacted by crime. When it comes to “rehabilitation”, I’m reminded of the saying, “The devil’s greatest trick is convincing people he doesn’t exist,” and in this case, the trick has been convincing society that “rehabilitation” exists in degrading, damaging, and dangerous prison warehouses.

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Bath Institution is a standalone medium security prison. The facility is located just east of the city of Bath, Ontario, approximately 25 km west of Kingston, and sits on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples.

The prison was first opened in 1972.

In 2016, the 'Ontario Regional Treatment Centre' located at Bath Institution evolved into the 'Regional Intermediate Mental Health Unit.'

2017 capacity: 516

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Some of Peter's cartoons about Bath prison were based on investigations of CSC staff regarding the selling prison transfers and drugs. As a result of these particular cartoons, CSC began a narrative that Peter was "anti-authoritarian" and therefore continued to be a danger to the public. In 2004, CSC set up a "censorship board" that would evaluate whether Peter's artwork was suitable for the public. No experts sat in on these meetings, only random guards, parole officers and unit supervisors.

There were no guidelines for the censorship board, so Peter never knew what would be approved or denied - although we always knew it was about his critical perspective of CSC. Thus began a 10-year saga to find ways to circumvent the censorship board and ensure his artwork was publically circulated.

In those last few months we talked about the ways in which he was able to subvert the board. He would go to elaborate lengths to ensure CSC wouldn't see the artwork before it got out of the prison. I won't go into details as there are many other artists in prison who may be using the same strategies.

- Giselle Dias

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Chapter Theme: Prison Life

Above:“Captive� Pen and ink, 2003 For the women held in male prisons in Canada, alone, unsure, unsafe, and always worried.

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Opposite: pages from Peter’s comic “Annie Gurl”

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hile the National Parole Board and the Correctional Service Canada may deny and belittle it, Peter’s transformation in prison was a miracle... mostly because of the efforts that the CSC made in trying to ensure it never happened. If I look up the definition of uncompromising I expect to see a picture of Peter...at least it will be in my head. He never gave up the fight against injustice, cruelty or hypocrisy, no matter the personal cost. A lot of people, both inside and outside the family, told him to stop rocking the boat and just do his time...I think he would have died years ago if he had followed that advice. It is completely against his character to let these things go, and it would have eaten him up inside if he had.

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Peter’s art, and writing, drove him forward…it kept him going. He needed it. I still look at his art, listen to his songs, or read his essays to feel him close to me. I will carry Peter in my soul and pass down the lessons I learned from him, and his life, to my children. I will miss him terribly, but I am comforted by the fact that he is free now, even if it means I don’t get to see him again. I hope that more people are able to see past Peter’s tragic mistakes, to see the person he became and the message of hope and love he tried to share with the world.

- Rob Collins, Peter’s brother

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Resistance Art?

Censorship in the Canadian Prison Systems

by Peter M Collins, 079283B

As I reflect upon my long-strained relationship with the unfettered power of authority in the Canadian prison systems, I can see that it played some role in the struggle for self-expression, political comment and resistance to the status quo.

Art helped me make sense of my situation. Through self-discipline, critical observation and a desire to be productive, art has helped me develop a healthy understanding of my purpose and the responsibilities I have to myself and to society as a whole. The evolution of my long, perilous ‘journey’, while contained within the confines of a room the size of a small bathroom over the course of the last 28 years has been significant.

I can clearly see that my passage would have heen far more corrosive and less interesting had I not had the drive and resilience to pursue art and self expression.

My first problems with the prison administration occurred when I was being held in isolation in 1983.

Earlier that year while being held in the detention

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center on a number of bank robbery related charges the police had told the warden to move me to the highest security area of the prison because they believed I would try to escape. Shortly after moving me to the Super Maximum Unit, I did escape. That ill-fated escape led me toward the worst decisions I have ever made in my life. In an attempted bank robbery, before setting foot in the bank, I shot a policeman. My actions ended his life and sentenced his family to a life of misery.

At that time I was not able to see how devastating and fucked up my attitudes were. I was completely self-absorbed and saw the crisis in terms of how it impacted me. I was under the belief that whatever I did was acceptable (robbing banks, escaping, etc) because I felt society generally owed me, mainly because of things that happened to me in my young life.

The imposed predicament of prison is not really a good place for self-reflection and it took me

quite a while before I was able to see that I needed to clean my lenses, and longer than that, to see my roles and responsibilities clearly.

So in the self-absorbed and self-centered world of me, in my windowless prison cell awaiting trial, I had nothing to distract myself from the endless void of waiting. I submitted a series of complaints and letters and eventually I was given a packet of coloring pencils and I immediately drew a window with a mountain scene on the cell wall. The next morning, after about eight guards had shoved me to the far corner of the cell, the warden came in, as was his daily custom. I presumed the purpose was to underline who was in charge. The warden then told me that I would have to remove the picture of the window from the cell or I would be charged. As soon as he and his troops left, I drew a bookshelf with a stereo and speakers complete with a plug hanging unplugged beside it.

When the warden came in the next day, he was unimpressed with my additional artwork and was entirely unmoved with my request to have an electrician install a socket so I could plug in my new stereo.

I lost my pencils that day. They moved me to a different cell, I was charged and placed on bean cake as punishment. (Bean cake was the only punishment left to impose because I was without any “privileges”). There would be no more drawing on the walls--except they had to eventually provide me with pencils for legal reasons.

After my conviction for first degree murder, I was placed in the SHU in Millhaven federal prison and shortly thereafter shipped to the brand new SHU in Ste-Anne-Des-Plaines. The SHU (or Special Handling Unit) is Canada’s highest security prison, specially designed by architects and psychiatrists to reduce contact between guards and prisoners and not to have any shadows and I am sure there are other features which evade my memory, at this point.

If you are interested in learning more about the SHU you can read “Prisoners of Isolation, Solitary Confinement in Canada” by Michael Jackson.

In any event, there was an art program offered, but I was denied access to the course. I eventually got my hands on drawing pencils and began drawing pictures, which were shortly thereafter confiscated

by prison guards. I filed a formal complaint and the administration argued that, since some of the pictures were of guns, it was not in the best interest of my rehabilitation to be allowed to have them. I argued that they were just pictures. I cited the pictures in the newspapers and books. I also asked for a list of what I was or was not allowed to draw. I eventually won the complaint and they returned my artwork.

After I signed for receipt of my drawings, they moved me from one cell block to another, and during the course of the move, took control of my meager possessions in order to pass them through the metal detector. When they returned my property, my returned artwork was gone. The officer produced the receipt I had signed earlier that day, acknowledging receipt of them.

I appreciated the creative effort they had put into winning the argument that they had clearly lost. So is art resistance? If it is, then both parties were using it in that manner.

I drew a few more of the pictures that they wouldn’t

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like, but they never made an issue of it again and I quickly lost interest in those kinds of drawings. I think I found oppression to be my main motivator. Around the same time, I was entering a friendship which came to change my world in many unanticipated ways, which continues tc resonate in my world. She challenged the ideas and beliefs that had brought me to the point I was at. Many of those ideas and attitudes had helped me survive some very difficult periods of my life, but the more she inquired about them, the more I came to realise that that they were flawed and I could not continue to justify or defend them.

They simply lost their merit as I began to broaden my perspective. She brought love into my world, and with that love came light and a deeper understanding that I was responsible to more than just me. She kept on chipping away at my faulty reasoning, and soon I was realizing that I was on the wrong road.

Up until this time, I was totally committed to looking at my incarceration as a temporary setback, which I would rectify as soon as I escaped. I committed to accepting my responsibilities to paying my debt to society and turning my life around.

It was at this time that I dropped my appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada because I could no longer deny my role in a crime in which I took someone’s life. It was important to me that I deserved my new friend’s approval and acceptance; she made me want to be a better person.

1 was returned to Millhaven maximum security prison in 1987, and while outside in the yard, a friend of mine was involved in a fight and was shot in the back with a hollow-point bullet which shredded his chest cavity and killed him. I drew an August 10th Memorial roster for that year’s Prisoners Justice Day, in memory of him. When we tried to get it printed, the CSC went around to all the Kingston area printers and told them that printing the poster would be tantamount to printing hate literature against public servants of Canada and so we were unable to have the protest posters printed. I was not very happy about that but didn’t know what to do about it.

I kept on drawing. In a cell search, 10 pieces of art would go missing. I would place a complaint and subsequently all of the plungers in my technical pen set would be broken (a pen set that at the time cost me about $400.) There was some animosity flowing. I was actively creating critical art and donating it to various social causes and groups.

I continued to work on art. I was doing a series that spoke to the experiences of First Nations peoples of North America.

I had just completed a big piece called ‘Stolen Land’ when the Oka Crisis exploded onto the front pages of the newspapers. ‘Stolen Land’ was taken up to the protests at Parliament Hill. It was on the front page of several national newspapers. The work was later donated and used to make t-shirts, the proceeds of which assisted in the development of an Algonquin language center. I was also told that Mr Elijah Harper, M.P. was wearing one of those ‘Stolen Land’ t-shirts under his formal attire in the Manitoba Legislature when he kyboshed the Meech Lake Accord. Just another example of art as resistance.

In 1990, my little brother Nicolas died in a motorcycle accident. This was such a horrifying experience for me, it was like a wall slammed into my face. It gave me a sense of what pain, utter hopelessness and devastation I had visited on that family. As hard as that was, I did gain some insight and understanding. I purchased a guitar and

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music courses with money from Nicolas’ insurance settlement. I wanted to do something that helped me memorialize him. I learnt to play guitar at the tender age of 31, and I played until my fingers bled.

I eventually got competent enough to play complete songs, and I have since written quite a number, most of which are protest songs. I write about war and prison and surviving (and not) in the streets... and a few lamenting-lost-love songs. I find that music is a great form of expression, so soothing to the soul.

It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Every time I play a song there is a joy in remembering my wonderful brother Nicolas--and a pleasure, to be able to make people tap their feet.

In 1991, I was able to sign up for an art course through distance education. It had taken me over 2 years to win the right to be able take the course. I was then transferred down to Joyceville medium security prison, where I continued my artistic efforts. At some point, the prison guards were conducting a major search and came across my portfolio, which included a series of cartoons lampooning their conduct.

The cartoons were part of the art course, but the guards were offended, and they confiscated all my artwork and supplies. The first reason they provided was that the materials were a fire hazard. When that argument fell apart they said it was because I was behind in my course submissions. When it turned out that I was an A student in good standing, they then said the artwork was inflammatory and I therefore was not allowed to have it.

Before this could be argued and won, I was emergencytransferred back to Millhaven, where I was held in ‘the hole’ for six months, on a variety of trumped up allegations, ranging from dealing and using drugs to murder.

I won the argument about the artwork and about half of my art and supplies were returned (the other portion remains missing to this day). For the record, none of the allegations resulted in charges. Three years later, I was cleared of involvement by the correctional investigator.

I had to force CSC to return me to a medium security prison through two motions to the Superior Court of Ontario. I recently found out through Privacy Act information sharing obligations that the police had cleared me of involvement in the murder.

This was 15 years later.

I eventually found myself in Collins Bay medium security prison at the end of 1996, where I was able to finish my art course in 1998. There was the constant censorship of August 10th Prison Justice Day designs.

Each year, the CSC imposes their unwanted opinions and directions into the t-shirt artwork process. They engage in a pattern of suppression and control of the August 10th Memorial designs.

The following are examples of design and text changes that CSC has refused:

Each prison administration imposes a variety of fluctuating objections and prisoners have to either make these imposed changes or fail to have a shirt design for the August 10th Memorial. Often, the CSC imposes these changes at the last minute in order to completely compromise availability of the t-shirts before the Memorial Day.

3) The word ‘state’ (i.e., “In memory of those who lost their lives in the forced custody of the state.”)

1) The word ‘prison’ (i.e., “In memory of those who lost their lives in prison.”)

2) The word ‘children’ (i.e., “In memory of the men, women and children who lost their lives in prison.”)

4) A signature that includes the artist’s fingerprint serial (FPS) number 5) An image of a gravestone.

6) An image of a skull.

7) An image of a flame (includes candles).

negatively provocative outcome in a prison population (i.e. language that is racist, sexist, homophobic, trans8) Lastly, an image of coiled barb wire. A CSC employee genderphobic, promotes violence, and/or promotes (Native Liaison) stated that it looks like a dream hate.) catcher and is therefore offensive to the Aboriginal community. I will note here that many social justice Unfortunately, these restrictions are nothing but the Aboriginal groups consider the CSC “Native Liaison” trivial whims of prison bureaucrats with no other position to be an illegitimate partner to the Aboriginal agenda than to damage the observation of the August community. In theory, the Liaison position was put 10th Memorial Day. The Canadian Charter of Rights in place to address the systemic racism and unfair and Freedoms dictates that persons in Canada are treatment that Aboriginal peoples receive in the permitted freedom of speech and expression, and the Canadian justice system. It has been the communities’ Conditional and Correctional Release Act confers experience that these same liaisons have been co-opted upon prisoners all those rights except those necessarily into the CSC and function as a hindrance to Aboriginal removed due to incarceration. Prisoners therefore have prisoners, their families, and their community contacts. the right to freedom of speech and expression, which clearly extends to August 10th Memorial Day designs.

While most prisoners understand there may be circumstances under which a prison administration It remains in Canada’s interest to validate and protect should have the lattitude to refuse certain images or prisoners’ legal rights to freedom of speech and text for “security reasons”. However, these “security expression. To do any less would only validate reasons” should be restricted to situations in which ongoing abusive and arrogant mistreatment and the image or text can reasonably be expected to have a censorship.Ultimately, this would underline the notion

that prisoners are considered worthless in life and death to the state.

not work, and then shut it down citing that it was too labour-intensive to manage.

The prison industrial complex has, at its heart, a vested interest in prisoners as living, thinking human beings, and the CSC exhibits an arrogant inclination to subjugate, humiliate and silence dissent for no legitimate reason. It serves no good purpose to allow prison bureaucrats to undermine the legitimate and heartfelt endorsement of our worth as human beings, regardless of our mistakes in life, whatever they were.

In any event, Bath prison has a long history of significant staff corruption, including selling transfers, paroles, drugs, and alcohol. Bath staff have been caught using CSC vehicles to smuggle alcohol across the border. There was even an alleged suicide of one of the officers “borrowing” a fellow officer’s side arm to “commit suicide” on prison property on the morning that an Ontario Provincial Police Penitentiary Squad task force was coming to arrest him.

How many would have been implicated if he didn’t die that morning? Anyway, it was ruled a suicide. There were police and CSC internal investigations but nothing ever came out of them.

I, however, did do a series of cartoons delving into the corruption scandal and I was heavily targeted for doing so.

At the end of 1999, I was transferred to Bath medium security prison, where I have been for the last 10 years. My stay here has been extremely colourful.

I had, at the direction of a psychologist, tried to start a prisoner-run art business. The prison was against the very idea that I would have such an opportunity and did everything they could to ensure that it would

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While at Bath, I was contacted by Dee LeComte, a social activist who was running a radio show called “Criminal Injustice” and she was looking for artwork. I sent some of my work to her and we developed a friendship. Dee organized an art show of my work, which traveled across Canada. When the art show arrived in Toronto it was organized by Giselle Dias, another wonderful friend and social activist. Giselle has helped me in a variety of venues regarding my artwork. Dee and Giselle really helped promote the art as a way of resisting corrupt power and supporting the disenfranchised.

The shows exhibited the corruption cartoons and illustrations, and it created some significant problems for me here. I was interviewed by CBC about it but before the interview, my parole officer told me that if I spoke to the CBC, I would stay in prison longer. I spoke to the CBC anyway and, true to her word, she left a notation on my case work records that I should stay in prison longer for having spoken to the CBC. The CSC had many high-level discussions all the way up to the Parliament Hill discussing how to punish me. There are many privacy act documents

which attest to political interest in this matter.

The cartoons that caused the most uproar were two police cartoons in which I explored the systemic racism faced by black people in relation to the police in Toronto. The Toronto Star had launched a series of articles which delved into police racism, and the Toronto police launched a law suit against the newspaper.

In the meantime, several additional incidents occurred and subsequently 3 high profile white authorities spoke on record about the fact that “there is no racism problem”. Those people were Mel Lastman, Toronto’s mayor; Julian Fantino, Toronto’s police chief; and Bob Runciman, Ontario’s Attorney General Conservative party. I believe it was Julian Fantino who stated that there are people in the Black community who make a living by “stirring up trouble.”

While these cartoons were very legitimate political commentaries, in retrospect, I wish I had not done them, because they upset the family who I had already hurt so many years ago. While I had done them in good faith, trying to make a point about the absurdity of 3 white politicians denying what is so obvious to everyone else, I was well over the line of good taste

artwork, but it has been a way for me to be able to give back to the community. In this way, my artwork has allowed me a sense of accomplishment.

Recently a couple of my pieces were featured on the covers of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, and in this way, I have also been able to put an artistic touch to my resistance to the prison industrial complex. Meanwhile, the CSC has squeezed and continues to squeeze art out of their prison system.

I was recently advised that I can no longer purchase drawing ink, and my geometry set was confiscated. and responsible comment, because of my offence.

In any event, there were calls that I be charged with hate crimes against the police, by Bob Runciman, of all people... who should know the parameters of hate law legislation, being as he was the Attorney General of Ontario. The prison tried to get the psychology department to link my cartoons to my index offence and somehow use that as a vehicle to rubber-stamp some [additional] punishment. My parole officer spoke to the issue at my 2006 parole board hearing, stating that I held up public officials to ridicule with my art, and that I should not be released because my artwork shows that I don’t respect authority and therefore am a danger to the public.

I continue to create cartoons (though I have been too busy with legal actions of late to do much).

All of my artwork has been donated to not-forprofit charities and social justice agencies. I produce artwork for educational purposes and fundraising events. I have never made a profit from my

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I love the ability of art to make a powerful statement that people can absorb in a couple of seconds while other forms of communication would require a considerably longer period of time and commitment to absorb. Creativity is very difficult to maintain in the prison context, but it is very important for the psyche, and it is deeply impacting on the development of someone’s character.

The Canadian public should know this so they can encourage creative activity inside their prison systems.

Editor's note Little Sister's is a Vancouver bookstore that specializes in LGBT literature. It imports most of its material from the United States, which often caused trouble at the border when material was classified as 'obscene' by Canada Customs and was thus refused entry.

The bookstore challenged the provision of the Customs Act prohibiting the importation of obscene material as well as a section of the Act that put the onus on the importer to disprove obscenity.

'Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada' (Minister of Justice) [2000] 2 S.C.R. 1120, 2000 SCC 69 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on freedom of expression and equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was held that the Customs Act, which gave broad powers to customs inspectors to exclude 'obscene' materials, violated the right to freedom of expression under section 2.

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Opposite page: “Robocalls�, (2011)

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The following is an essay by Pete’s mother, Joan Stothard.

It was part of an unsuccessful effort to get permission for her son to visit her at home, under armed guard, when she was in the final stages of cancer.

She died Oct 26, 1995.

“T

here is only one penalty provided for first-degree murder, and that is imprisonment for life without eligibility for parole for 25 years, and you are sentenced to that.”

The judge was addressing my son, but in reality he was condemning our entire family, handcuffed as we were by our love for Peter. It was Oct. 14, 1984.

A friend was waiting for me when I got home on Sept 19, 1983. She told me that the police were looking for Peter as a suspect in the shooting death of a policeman, Constable David Utman. I watched the news in horror, seeing my son coming out of a house, with no shirt on and his hands over his head, several officers’ guns trained on him. My mind reeled from this horror to the other: Two little boys had lost their father through the violent, senseless action of one of my children.

And my sadness spreads, taking in not only that family and Peter but also my other children as they struggle to balance their right to be morally and emotionally

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unencumbered by Peter’s situation with their desire and need to be there for him. We have received loving support from our families in England, but there are ramifications; we chose not to tell Peter’s grandparents about his crime and they died without knowing.

Now, as he serves the 12th year of his sentence, I am tired. There has been too much invalidated grief; too much guilt, love, resentment; too much vacilation between a determination to be “strong” and giving in to defeatism; too much empathy and anguish; horror, stress, fear and loneliness.

At the beginning of the sentence, I was numb, shocked with horror both at the crime he had committed and how he was going to pay for it. I felt that my skull could not contain the pressure of my feelings.

I have never felt satisfied with my efforts to support him; I have felt guilty for not visiting often enough; feeling too tired and reluctant to spend precious, needed days off work driving to the Special Handling Unit at Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, to Millhaven

Penitentiary or to Joyceville; often feeling resentful when I do go, always feeling guilty when I don’t.

Hating to be in the wretched prison, loathing the place, the atmosphere, the guards, the barbed wire, the electronically locked and unlocked doors and gates, the sensitized ground between the fences, the signing in, the searches. I feel guilty that I find two hours almost unbearably claustrophobic, when I know that this visit is Peter’s only relief from the stultifying boredom of his sentence.

I feel relief and grattitude if it’s a “good” visit, (i.e.

Peter’s mood is relatively “up”), but it is unbearable to endure those times when I can find no way to ease the dead weight of his pain. I have often felt anger (usually supressed) and resentment when I’ve gone all that way and he won’t or cannot do his part to make the visit “work.” On one level, I think: Why should he be expected to rise to the occasion, accepting the magnanimity of our visit, made when it’s convenient, whenit can be squeezed in, when the roads are not too icy, when we think we can handle it, when guilt has been the impetus. But on another level, I think: Dammit, I have come to this wretched place with its ghastly surveillance towers, 10-metretall fences with razor-sharp wire on top, guards who

are at once frightening and contemptible and Correctional vans circling the prison grounds like flies round rotten meat.

Physically and emotionally, the cost has been high.

For me, sleeplessness, migraine, deep fatigue, depression, utter joylessness. For Peter, times of deep anguish that he has had to endure alone.

While he was been in prison, his grandparents died, his older brother had cancer (recovering, happily, after a rough time of surgery and chemotherapy), his younger brother died in a motorbike accident, he has seen our family become almost totally fragmented and his own short marriage to a volunteer visitor ended in divorce, and now I have inoperable cancer. These are heavy emotional crises under any circumstances but must be a nightmare to endure alone in prison, and I feel so hurt for him and worried about how much sadness he can take.

Horrific incidents happen in prison that are given minimal coverage in the press. Before Peter went to prison, events such as these would have reduced me to tears, preyed on my mind, kept me awake feeling upset, horrified, impotent and outraged. Now, after more than 11 years, I seem to have become

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desensitized to a large extent to the most hideous events -- rapes, assaults, murders and suicides. I accept as normal great injustices, lies, platitudes and indifference.

The prison visitor’s experience in one of demeaning, demoralizing, barely veiled contempt. It starts with the guards’ hostility, but we are also exposed to the unhappiness of other prisoners and their visitors-children, parents, grandparents, friends, wives, girlfriends. The visiting rooms are sticky, mucky places. I feel especially sorry for the children, who must endure an hours-long visit in a very crowded room with stressed, frustrated parents. Many are tired from a long, inconvenient journey, and when they arrive, the few toys that are available are in poor shape, torn, broken or incomplete.

It sends these children a strong message: If your dad is in prison, this is what you get to play with.

Recently, I was driven by a friend to Millhaven to let Peter know of major surgery I was to have later that week. As he has been placed in isolation, where he was kept for more than four months (all allegations against him were eventually proven groundless), we had to have a “closed” visit--that is, Peter behind

glass and me in a narrow, noisy, tense corridor of cubicles with seven or eight other visitors all having to talk into tiny, low openings in the glass.

The visits officially last 2 1/2 hours, but I was told to leave after 20 minutes as there were too many visitors that day, When I explained to the guard that I hadn’t yet told Peter about the surgery, that I needed more time, his bored reply was, “Everybody has their own reason.”

He was very careful not to look me in the eye as he said this; he was ashamed, but hardened to being ashamed.

I am sure that our family is not unique in its utter lack of importance to officials at Correctional Service Canada. To me, this lack of accountability to us is frightening and absolutely unacceptable.

CSC seems not to differentiate between prisoners and prisoners’ families. Strong family ties are crucial to a prisoner’s adjustment to his sentence and to his life after release. We know this and so does the CSC. As a mother, my experience is that this sentence is vengeful, useless, destructive, hope-sapping. Peter’s release is remote. He has bleak, useless, destructive years ahead of him. Yet I have seen him try to improve and transcend his situation. I love to see

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any evidence of this; it makes me feel hopeful and relieved. I relax for a while from the relentless necessity of trying to keep him focused on the future.

I marvel at his ability to withstand gross violations of his sense of self, the endless, mindless, petty cruelties and irritations.

I would prefer to end this essay on a positive note, but right now I can’t see one. A life sentence is abhorrently merciless; it means that our society believes that the accused citizen cannot repent enough, cannot become more stable or more loving, cannot benefit from the grace of God; it condemns the prisoner and his family to a lifetime of longing and grief. The dull hopelessness I see in the eyes of many prisoners, including Peter, is, to me, a manifestation of the evil of the justice system.

Rehabilitation, if it ever happens, is a miracle. This is no comfort to me as a mother, and I rage against

the obscenely expensive, archaically inhumane and useless, faceless system we have devised and which most people do not want to know about.

The entrance to Millhaven is paved with neat, pretty flower beds. I hate these flower beds. Just a few feet away are vile isolation cells, pipes down which gas can be sent to quell any disturbance, towers from which prisoners can be shot, great suffering and fear, destructive boredom, obscene power, and hopelessness--all hidden and trivialized, disguised by colourful bursts of life itself.

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Rehabilitation (The Tools of...)

Pen, ink, and watercolour (2005)

A

nimals seems to have a sense of awareness that is For the pigeons, however, this would require Pete’s lost on people. Some of Pete’s greatest admirers were sense of ingenuity, something for which he was well the animals that instinctively chose to share his quiet, known, and often celebrated for. caring company.

At first, he secretly built a make-shift bird cage out of Egg-roll was one of these admirers, a feline friend to random scrap materials he scrounged from around Pete, and to many of us, who unwittingly benefit from the prison. We suspect the mosquitoes eventually pet therapy. Although Egg-roll was at odds with the alerted staff to the missing office window screens. And birds Pete also cared for, it was an interesting example the parts for the wooden frame were easily procured of harmony amidst conflict, and reflected Pete’s ability from the extra Corcan materials ordered by staff to to live his own life in peace amidst the war against intol- furnish the decks and docks of their cottages, complierance and inhumanity. ments of the taxpayers.

Pete’s devotion to animals extended beyond the usual pet species. And for all of his work for prisoner’s advocacy, he always found the time to not only care for Egg-roll, but also for fish, a turtle, and even pigeons and other birds. Now-a-days, a large tank would be hard to find behind the wall. But this had been made for the fish, and a smaller one for the turtle, during a time when hobby craft was a flourishing pastime for creative minds.

The modest bird house was connected to the outside of his cell window, like a miniature screened in porch, and provided inside access for Pete to treat and feed the sick or wounded birds, while outside, it allowed them the freedom to stretch their wings as they healed.

Pete always took the time to do his research, and I recall a conversation with him about meal worms and crushed cooked eggs without the yolk. It stayed with me, because I too wanted to know how to care for wounded birds. Who wouldn’t?

So, forced to remove this unobtrusive structure from his window, Pete graciously opened his entire cell to the needy wildlife. And so it became, above his cell door, upon a length of doweling, a resting place for pigeons to perch, as pigeons do, especially quietly, whenever invading officers took to searching Pete’s cell for unauthorized items and other such contraband. There the birds would sit, silent and undetected, above the doorway, as though they knew that staff were looking for them. And there they remained wide eyed and unmoving, through many searches, holding their pigeon oh-oo-oors, until the staff were gone. It brought into question the whole ‘stool pigeon’ colloquialism we’d heard for so many years, and was the source of much laughter and jesting over the incompetence, the absence of awareness that is the ridiculous reality of many CSC staff.

Sadly, as many independently-born, positive endeavours draw negative attention from administrative staff, they are usually frowned upon and quickly brought to an end.

Pete had a way of illuminating these learning opportunities. “How not to be, even when you have the power to be.” Lessons that transcended the stigmatic and judgmental Con Code, that elevated our thinking to a higher consciousness, a moral truth that was impossible to deny. This is what drove the prison administration so crazy, because it made them look so foolish in their attempts to counter his infallible insight. Just one of the ways that Pete was larger than life.

- James

Rat in Cell, Watercolour, 2006

Eggroll, Pastels (2005)

Did I mention that the cat was brought into the prison by a guard to search out mice & rats in the power plant?

Eggroll would always escape and come over to our house, looking for food and we would feed her. The next day, the guard would come around, looking for her, and when he found her he would take her back, and this went on and on for a while! Then she got wise and would hide from the guard, and he eventually gave up coming to look for her and I’ve been taking care of her ever since – she adopted our house and laid claim to my cell. She comes and goes as she pleases. * * * * This cat is the funniest little critter, she doesn’t particularly like to be touched or stroked (like many cats I suppose) but she loves to be close to people! If you are reading the newspaper, up on the table she goes and lies down in the middle of the paper. Sometimes she will follow me out to the yard and wait for me to finish my workout, then walk back with me, but with the clear understanding that we don’t know each other! She walks behind me and when I stop she stops and sits down, looking away from me.

You should have seen her the other day.

I noticed that she had an itch behind her ear and I was trying to find it for her; it was deep in the spot between where the ear meets the skull and the neck… so gently, I put my forefinger inside her ear and my thumb on the outside. It was apparent that I’d found the itchy spot, because she arched her neck and pushed her head back into my fingers, stretched back with her paws out, even started drooling! * * * * ...Speaking about Eggroll, we had built a couple of birdhouses and one was taken over by swallows. Our sweet little Eggroll took to lying on the ground below; this would drive the parents to distraction. They would dive at her regularly to drive her away. I would move her along, but couldn’t be there all the time, and eventually she caught one.

I was able to get to her before she had caused any damage, but she continued to kill the birds. I wasn’t aware of the deaths for a couple of days, until I was weeding the garden and I found the remains.

So it goes without saying that chicks were very hungry when I went and retrieved them from the birdhouse. I was able to rescue 6 of the baby swallows, but one died shortly after.

These little critters actually beat each other up in their competing for food! I’ve had to separate a couple of them. It is incredible, the amount of food that they will consume! And do they ever GROW!! I have been up every 45 minutes to an hour to feed these squeaking little bottomless pits! All while keeping little Eggroll out of it... It is very tiring!

I know that these guys will soon have to start learning to stretch and work their wings, so I am building a little aviary for them. At the moment, I place them out on a branch in my window and they all sit

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there in a group looking outside. I was watching them as they sat on the branch and a bee flew by and was investigating the scent of the flowers by my cell window, and the heads of all five baby birds moved in perfect synchronization as they followed the flight path, up, down, to the side and back again – it was the funniest thing to watch and was also reassuring: they know their source of food!

I feed them milk (for calcium) and tiny strips of beef, flies and other insects.

Swallows are insectivorous and only ever eat on the fly; they never catch food on the ground! Amazing, huh?

When I come with my tweezers and food they all scream FEED ME! With them all reaching up, their mouths agape, it simply looks like 5 targets. I can say this, I have a new-found respect for the birds that are trying to raise a family. The work was difficult for me and I can’t imagine how a couple of swallows could catch as many insects as it would take to raise this clamoring, constantly hungering brood!

These chicks actually eat the equivalent

of a steak every 2 days! I would dip the very thinly cut strips of beef in water and in this way ensure they were getting their water requirements at the same time as feeding.

Later, when I finished the aviary and tried moving them into it, they were a touch apprehensive, but soon adjusted to the fresh air and outside sounds. I have placed a bird house in there with half the roof taken off so I can see them. I placed a roof over the top of the part of the aviary that holds the bird house and they are sitting out in the sun as I write this letter. It is really neat to watch them stretching and flexing their wings, trying to fly. They appear to have no problem doing so in short bursts from side to side…though I often have to hold a stick down to the ground for them to hop on and hitch a ride to the house again.

Eggroll has been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get into the aviary. She lies there with hope in her eyes and mind, completely tuned into the goings-on the other side of the screened off area.

As the time comes for these birds to test their full ability to fly, I have taken the strongest, most aggressive one out on my hand, and I held them up. You could see they were eager and aware of the change of circumstances - and just took off.

Flying back and forth, they then landed on the brick of the building, reassessed its situation, and then dropped off the wall and took to the air - almost as if they were built to do such a thing!

From this, I knew it was the right time, and took another 2 of them out. The first of the two did the same thing: flew this way and that, then landed on the roof and sat there, trying to come to terms with the new situation and what came next.

The second was on a mission, I tell you.

Took to the air, cleared the building, and then we watched it catch an updraft and shoot up into the air, SO high, it was amazing!

The other two would not fly away… one, in fact, needed to be rescued from the roof after flying there and not moving for an hour. I carried a table out, got on it and held up a broom handle until they climbed on and came back to the aviary…clearly relieved to be going back to the birdhouse! Ah, sanctuary.

While I’m on the topic, in case you ever have the opportunity to help birds in a situation like this, you should call a veterinarian or a wildlife rescue center and inquire about the types of foods the birds need. Also you need to clean out the nest, and the best nesting material is shredded toilet tissue, NOT CLOTH – cloth can get caught on their little claws, and broken bones can occur. Anyway, I was sort of happy to see a couple of them back but, well, mixed feelings I guess. So the feeding goes on.

The next day: One more has flown the coop and did a great job of it, taking to the wind currents, flying right over the roof-then, gone!

steps behind her. In the moment of attack, she got distracted by my movement, and just missed the last of the swallow chicks as they took off, soared up, up, and disappeared from sight.

Eggroll stormed off, clearly disappointed in the traitorous behavior I had just demonstrated-- the outrage! I didn’t see her again for a while. Later I found out that she’d gone to another cell to sleep…

The last seems to prefer to sit and look out the aviary… and have food brought in.

However, in an update, I started to leave the door open and in the evening after a feeding I was sitting beside it and out s/he came and flew right to the ground about 20 yards away--needless to say, with Eggroll hot on the trail, followed by myself, running to intervene.

As Eggroll came up on the bird, I was

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“Correctional Service Canada strives to provide compassionate, innovative, patient- and family-centred hospice palliative care to offenders with a life-threatening, non-curable illness. Achieving this goal in a correctional setting presents some challenges, but CSC seeks to deliver care in a non-judgmental and compassionate manner.”

- CSC Hospice Palliative Care Committee

“Mr Collins,

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Your brother has met with his Parole Officer and the Assistant Warden of Operations.

Any concerns he may have, have been addressed.

Thank you, Scott Thompson, A/Warden, Bath Institution” August 14, 2014 In theory, a Canadian prisoner receives the same level of medical care that they would get outside of prison. An institution has a healthcare unit where prisoners can see a doctor and get their prescribed medication. If the prisoner needs a scan or surgery, they are taken to an outside hospital.

In reality, Canada does not do a good job of caring for sick prisoners. At least that was our experience as we watched my brother Peter Collins progress from being diagnosed with a manageable form of bladder cancer in the summer of 2014, to being dead in the summer of 2015.

This is a summary of the emails and correspondence we had mostly with the prison regarding Peter’s healthcare at Bath Institution.

- Written and Compiled

by Chris Collins * * * * July 21, 2014: At this point in his life, Peter had been newly classified as a Minimum Security Prisoner.

There was talk of a transfer to Collins Bay Minimum.

He used a cane to walk and had a lot of pain from a back injury. He had also noticed blood in his urine for about six months. Bath Healthcare took his blood over this period but they lost it at least once. * * * *

July 22, 2014: Peter was taken to Kingston General Hospital for an Endoscopy. There was a lot of blood but the doctors found a mass. They rescheduled to see him for surgery in two to six weeks. (see August 21).

He was taken in the small van.

July 27, 2014: Peter found out that his prison transfer

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was on hold. There was pressure from the political sphere not to let him get to minimum security.

August 8, 2014: Peter was brought to the hospital the small van again. He was told by the guards that it’s because it was easier to find parking. * * * *

August 9, 2014: Still recovering from yesterday’s trip, Peter went into the Healthcare unit, but was denied pain medication because the doctor wasn’t in. He was told to put a written request in. * * * *

August 10, 2014: Peter made an audio recording with Dee LeComte for August 10th, Prisoner’s Justice Day. * * * *

August 11, 2014: Again, pain medications were denied.

August 12, 2014: Peter had an appointment for an

ultrasound at the hospital but he was told by the nurse and the guard that they will take the small van (the wrong one) again, so Peter declined to go and missed the appointment. * * * *

August 14, 2014: The warden spoke to the deputy commissioner re: Peter’s transfer to Collins Bay, a minimum security institution, but that never seems to have went anywhere, since neither did Peter. * * * *

August 14, 2014: Emails were sent from Peter’s siblings Robert, Lucy and Chris, and a fax from Gerami Law to Bath Warden Scott Thompson regarding Peter’s healthcare issues, asking for better treatment with transportation, pain medication, etc. Robert was sent a short reply (see top) but Peter was given the real response (see August 20, 2014).

August 17, 2014: Peter was told that the next trip to

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hospital would be in appropriate transportation. He was given pain medication. * * * *

August 20, 2014: The emails we sent on August 14th were not answered directly, but Peter told Robert that the warden Scott Thompson had spoken to him about them.

Email from Robert to Arghavan Gerami at Gerami Law

: High grade (1998 WHO/ISUP consensus classification) : Grade 3 of 3 (1973 WHO tumour typing system) : In Situ carcinoma not identified : Extensive lymphatic/ vascular invasion present” Basically, Peter had aggressive, invasive bladder cancer. One of his options was the removal of the bladder and surrounding organs, plus chemo and radiation. * * * *

“Good Afternoon Arghavan, I was curious if you had heard anything back from the prison, because none of us had. They had a, well, disturbing conversation with Peter the other day. It seems they felt that our letters, yours included, were of a threatening nature, and the warden stated that he doesn’t respond to family members. They also said, with regards to the letters, that it showed that Peter had in some way reverted back to his anti-authoritarian nature, and that this could impact his transfer to minimum. I have to admit I am getting quite…upset, with their attitude and lack of a sense of accountability.

Robert Collins”

November 5, 2014: attempts to get a collapsible wheelchair

* * * *

* * * *

August 21, 2014: Peter’s surgery was cancelled due to lack of beds at the hospital.

November 30, 2014: attempts to get a mattress

* * * *

September 22, 2014: Surgery was done at Kingston General Hospital. The tumours were removed with results to come in two to four weeks (see October 21, 2014).

The next day (September 23rd) the Bath Healthcare department was not going to give Peter any pain medication until his doctor was called. He was given the medication late in the afternoon.

* * * *

November 20, 2014: Peter went to his Parole Hearing which was denied. * * * *

November 26, 2014: Peter had his first chemo treatment. He was given proper transportation and taken in a stretcher.

* * * *

December 2, 2014: Lucy wrote the John Howard Society, but never received a reply. * * * *

December 11, 2014: Mail to Peter from Gerami Law was being held back from Peter in the Visits and Correspondence department of Bath Institution.

They also misplaced his phone card.

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October 21, 2014: The doctors came back with a diagnosis. From that report (if you can read it, and I spelled the words right):

December 16, 2014: Lucy wrote that Peter said they missed his chemo last week.

“Final Diagnosis A and B. Urinary bladder, transurethral resection (deep and regular): invasive urothelial (transitional cell) carcinoma with established invasion of muscularis propria.

December 18, 2014: Warden issues directive to staff not to put Peter in shackles when transporting him to hospital.

* * * *

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December 24, 2014: Dr. Booth out of office until dec 30

From Robert to Dr. Christopher Booth, Kingston General Hospital

* * * *

Good Morning Dr. Booth, Unfortunately, Peter will not be able to attend radiation this morning. He was on his way, but the guards wanted to put him in shackles, despite a Dec 18, 2014 direction from the warden to not do that… due to Peter’s issue with his back. They do seem to be going out of their way to make this an ordeal, but I’m going to email the warden to have him reissue his directive and ensure that the staff follow it.

Sincerely, Robert Collins

January 16, 2014: Peter was sent for chemotherapy and tests. He was taken in the small van. It was around this time that Peter decided he was not going to go for chemotherapy anymore because the ordeal with the transportation was too much. * * * *

January 20, 2015: Dr. Christopher Booth wrote a letter to Peter’s lawyer Paul Quick saying that Peter had an incurable malignancy and his survival was likely measured in months.

* * * *

January 21, 2015: Peter told us that his Parole Officer Cheryl Kerr told him she didn’t think he appeared close enough to death to warrant support for compassionate release

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February 25, 2015: Robert, Hailin, Owen and I visited Peter. Unfortunately, we were given special rules because Rob “rang off” on the Ion Scanner (morphine on his glasses). So, no hugs, no leaving the table.

when he told me that he had asked a number of times for an increase in his pain management, but was denied.”

* * * *

June 5, 2015: Nurse Krista Fraser called correctional supervisor Mr. Green to report the neck brace Peter had made because it was not approved by Bath Healthcare. His X-rays came back showing a calcium buildup in his neck

* * * *

April 1, 2015: Peter’s brother Robert Collins to Deputy Warden Kathy Hinch “I received a disturbing call from my brother today.

While your doctor is on holidays, the staff appear to be mismanaging his pain medication.” * * * *

April 2, 2015: Kathy Hinch to Robert Collins “It should be noted that your brother sees health services daily for medication each morning. They advise that he has not once verbalized that he would like an increase in his medication. Health Services will follow up with the on-call doctor today about this.

Again, if Peter see Health Services daily and if he is having issues he needs to verbalize these when he sees the nurse.” * * * *

May 8, 2015: We had the first of three trailer visits.

Peter was mostly confined to his wheelchair or his bed. They wouldn’t give him a neck brace so he had made one of his own. It seemed to work OK and he wore it almost all of the time. * * * *

May 27, 2015: In an audio clip for radio, Peter said thanks to friends and family for messages. Hello to prisoner-related radio shows on CKUT, CFRC and Stark Raven. “I love you all. Good luck and I’ll see you later.” * * * *

June 4, 2015: Peter was experiencing more pain in his neck, so he went to the Healthcare department and an X-ray was given. He asked again for a proper neck brace but they wouldn’t give him one until the results came back.

June 4, 2015: Robert Collins to Kathy Hinch “I was talking to Peter today and I was concerned

* * * *

June 10, 2015: Nurse Krista Fraser to Robert Collins “I can’t speak to how long it would take to have a request actioned because there are too many uncontrollable variables. Peter sees a nurse twice a day for his pain meds, I think it would be best if he verbalized the need for an increase at that time that way it could be acted on immediately.

I mentioned earlier that Peter currently has a neck collar. Is he not happy with it? If not, he would need to fill out a 532 (he will know what this is) and submit to health care. Once funds are secured the item could be ordered.

In regards to the hospital bed, I should be receiving a quote today. He will need to submit a 532 for this as well.” * * * *

June 13, 2015: Attempts to get a hospital bed. * * * *

June 17, 2015: Denise Preston at the Parole Board of Canada to Robert Collins about a parole hearing for Compassionate Release.

“As Regional Director General, it would be inappropriate for me to intervene in any decision making processes taken by Board Members who are appointed as independent, objective and impartial decision makers.” * * * *

June 17, 2015: Nurse Krista Fraser to Robert Collins “Peter requested a rigid neck brace during an appointment with Dr. Wyatt and based on her assessment she felt that it was not medically required.

Her physical assessment included an x-ray. I cannot authorize an item that is not medically indicated by

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the institutional physician. He will have to go to inmate purchasing for this item. This also includes the “medical bed” that Mr. Collins is requesting. This type of bed is not medically indicated at this juncture in time.” * * * *

June 19, 2015: Trailer visit. Peter was in more pain.

He and his friend Giselle Dias drafted up a letter to send to Paul Quick, Peter’s lawyer

June 26, 2015: Email from Cheryl Russell, Parole Board of Canada to Robert Collins “Although I cannot provide a date when the decision will be made; I have attached a Request for Decision Registry application that you can complete and return to me. Completion of this application will provide you with access to the decision when it is made.” * * * *

* * * *

June 23, 2015: Giselle sent a letter to Paul Quick concerning Peter’s healthcare, talking about Dr. Wyatt claiming no medical indication for a medical bed or neck brace, Peter being told to deal with Inmate Purchasing, and pressure for Peter to move to the palliative ward in Millhaven.

“To suggest that Peter will need to purchase a bed and neck brace through Inmate Purchasing is essentially inaction on behalf of health care. Inmate purchasing will be closed until September 7th” * * * *

June 24, 2015: A letter from Robert Collins to Paul Dewar.

“As the cancer spreads through his bones, Peter is acutely aware that having a proper neck brace and medical bed would significantly change the ways he is experiencing pain and his eventual death.” * * * *

June 24, 2015: Letter from Peter’s lawyer Paul Quick to Warden Ryan Beattie “Mr. Collins is experiencing significant pain and nausea as a result of his deteriorating condition. I am advised by Mr. Collins that Dr. Dianna Wyatt has taken the position that there is no medical indication for a medical bed or neck brace. (As I expect you are aware, Mr. Collins has previously made a successful complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal with respect to Dr. Wyatts’s failure to recommend an accommodation that was in fact medically indicated, and that CSC was thereby held to be reckless in its discrimination against Mr. Collins: 2010 CHRT 33, affirmed by the Federal Court of Appeal, 2013 FCA 105.)

June 29, 2015: Peter tried to get an oncologist from Kingston General Hospital to visit him, but they said no. He had hoped to talk to a doctor not connected to the prison about treatment and medication options. * * * *

June 30, 2015: response from Paul Dewar (Cyndy Lee Scott) “I have spoken to some colleagues at the John Howard Society and, while they were appalled, they were sad to say that they were not surprised. They have found that palliative and end-of-life care for inmates is a systematic failure of the CSC.” * * * *

July 2, 2015: An appointment with Community Palliative Care Office in Kingston seems to be dependant on a request from the prison. * * * *

July 6, 2015: There was still no request made to Community Palliative Care on Peter’s behalf from the prison. * * * *

July 7, 2015: Community Palliative Care doctor will see Peter on 8th or 9th, according to Krista. * * * *

July 7, 2015: Peter’s sister Lucy Collins and friend Joan Ruzsa contact the Correctional Investigator, Sheraz Kausar, concerning insufficient pain medication. Nurse Krista Fraser tells Mr. Kausar that Peter needs to make a written request for a change in medication, and not go through “indirect channels”.

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July 9, 2015: letter from Paul Dewar, MP to Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety “On behalf of my constituent, I urge you to investigate this case to ensure that Peter receives the medical care necessary, not to prolong Peter’s life, but to prevent unnecessary pain and suffering.”

July 7, 2015: Peter’s friend Joan Ruzsa phoned the Millhaven Regional hospital. “…when I told her about the difficulty getting the medical bed she was shocked, and told me that the hospital has medical beds which can be transported to people’s cells in circumstances like Pete’s – all it would have taken was a request from (Bath) Healthcare.”

* * * *

* * * *

July 9, 2015: letter from Joan Ruzsa to Krista “Since Peter was diagnosed with terminal cancer in January, the people who love him have been trying to figure out the best way to advocate for him. It has been tricky, because none of the approaches we have tried seem to make any difference. Reasonable and polite requests by his family for pain management and medical accommodations have been called “aggressive”, appeals for compassion have been ignored, the excruciatingly slow pace at which things happen (or often don’t happen at all) is justified as proper procedure”

July 13, 2015: Hospital bed is delivered. * * * *

July 23, 2015: The wheelchair pad and mattress arrived. * * * *

July 29, 2015: The neck brace arrived somewhere between July 23 and July 29.

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July 31, 2015: We had our last trailer visit. It was for six days, but only Giselle was able to stay for the whole time. Peter was very weak, almost helpless and in constant pain after his twice daily trips to Healthcare and being made to get in his wheelchair for the count.

From Giselle Dias: “Our last PFV (Private Family Visit) was 6 days and unfortunately they tried to kick me out at 8am on the 4th day with only 10 minutes notice. I was able to convey to the Keeper that I was allowed to be in the PFV as they had cleared me as part of his ‘family’. I also talked to the Keeper about showing some ‘compassion’ as it was likely the last time that Peter would have time with loved ones. After an hour and a half, the Keeper allowed me to stay for the remaining PFV. Unfortunately, the stress of the situation caused Peter significant pain that day. In fact, it was the most pain that I had ever seen him in. I think it reinforces all our concerns that the amount of stress Peter was under (because of the lack of care) caused him to deteriorate more quickly.

“Adam (Peter’s care taker) said that Peter had felt the best he had seen him in a long time on Thursday after the PFV (August 6th).

August 6, 2015: Letter from the Parole Board “Having found that your risk remains undue, the Board is denying Full Parole.”

“Friday (August 7th) Peter went for a radiation treatment. Friday night he was really hot and brought an extra fan into his room.

“Saturday (August 8th) Peter woke up and could barely talk.

“Monday (August 10th, Prisoners’ Justice Day) he was in a lot of pain, could barely talk and was quite weak.

“Tuesday at 3:30AM he called another prisoner for help. They couldn’t reach the guards for 30 minutes.

At 4am the guards said he would need to wait until Healthcare staff came in. At 7:30AM they put him in an ambulance.

“Wednesday, August 12th at 3PM we received notice that Peter had taken a turn for the worse and the prison was ‘unable’ to make arrangements for our visit that night. They requested that we call in the morning to make visiting arrangements. By the time Rob called in the morning Peter had already passed away.” * * * *

August 11, 2015: Peter was taken from Bath Institution to the Millhaven Palliative Care unit. * * * *

August 13, 2015, about 2am: R.I.P. Peter.

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The Jailbird Series

by Peter Collins #079283B

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or reasons not really known to me I have always enjoyed drawing or painting birds. There is something about them... how free they are to go wherever they want to. They travel across this whole planet enduring incredible cold and brutal heat, they navigate great bodies of land and water finding their way with nothing but their innate sense of direction and purpose. I cannot think of how many times I wanted to be taken away with them.. a hopeless pipe dream.

During my years in prison, I often found or was given injured or parentless birds to either repair or raise. My lovely sister, Lucy, sent me portions of medical books for birds and I developed first aid kits to ensure I could help and feed them properly. I could not even begin to accurately count how many birds I have assisted, and for the life of me I cannot recount all of the different circumstances. Seagulls, sparrows, swallows, blackbirds, crows, all sorts of songbirds, pigeons, killdeers, even a redtailed hawk, among others.

The crow and the killdeers were the noisiest. In any event the challenge and pleasure of helping a disadvantaged bird to find the sky again So, as the years has been one of of the most rewarding went by, I would always feelings for me personally. There is take notice of the different something beautiful about being birds that frequented the able to help something that prisons I was in, and as I without you would painted political paintings and wildlife not survive. paintings, somewhere along the way, I envisioned the combination of the two poles: the birds representing freedom and beauty and the prisons representing ugliness and chains of imprisonment. The juxtaposition of these paradigms made me think they would make a compelling series of paintings.

The more I look at the paintings, the more I would like to continue to create paintings that represent the many different birds that visit all the different prisons across this planet, bringing with them, on the wing, the hope and promise of something other than imprisonment.

Dear Peter,

O

n August 13 th , 2015 Peter Collins died alone he was taken away in an ambulence. It was the other in Milhaven Prison. prisoners in his unit that kept him company for those four long hours while he waited for medical assistance.

Peter learned he had terminal cancer in January 2015. We had hoped that he would be granted a All Peter wanted was to be rehydrated. compassionate release from prison so he could be surrounded by the people that loved him in the final When he was finally transferred to Milhaven weeks of his life. As Peter’s cancer started to progress palliative care unit it took several hours for his he made it clear that didn’t want to go to the family to find out he had been moved. Despite his palliative care unit in Milhaven. He was acutely aware family’s (and my) clearance into Bath prison for Private that the conditions of the palliative unit would only Family Visits (PFVs), we were denied access into accommodate limited, cramped visits with family Millhaven prison to be with Peter in his last hours. and he knew that he wouldn’t have access to his art One of the nurses told me that he was lucid at times supplies or other minimal comforts in the last days of and that at some point he tried to get up. Healthcare his life. staff found him crumpled on the floor and we still don’t know how long he had been lying there. He had This is why we know that Peter was desperate and lost over 60 pounds and considered himself a “shell of in agony on August 12 th when he asked one of the a man” that he used to be. other prisoners to call for emergency healthcare at 3am. Peter loathed having interactions with This image is hard to reconcile with the man I met Correctional Service Canada (CSC) guards or staff in 1996 at Collins Bay Prison. At the time, I was and would never have called for assistance if he wasn’t 23 years old and I was just beginning my work with in excruciating pain. It took healthcare until 7am to prisoners. I had heard that Peter was an amazing artist finally show up in his cell and another hour before and was helping other prisoners in a variety of ways

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including tutoring students, helping people with parole hearings, advocating on behalf of other prisoners health care needs, and working on issues of HIV/AIDS in prisons. I was meeting with Peter because I was working with the Prison Arts Foundation and we wanted to know if he would be willing to offer art classes to other prisoners. I remember walking into the room and seeing him sitting at a table and when he stood up to shake my hand I was both intimidated and in awe of this man standing in front of me. Peter had a strong physical presence and intensity that commanded a certain seriousness to the task at hand. I could never have known that that meeting would have led to one of my most meaningful friendships that spanned almost 20 years.

In 1983, Peter killed a police officer in the midst of robbing a bank. The automatic sentence for killing a police officer in Canada is a Life 25 sentence. This meant that Peter’s first opportunity for Full Parole was 2008. Since Peter never applied for Canadian citizenship, he would have been deported to England upon his release. In theory, CSC states that if a prisoner abides by prison rules, completes their correctional plan, cascades from high to low security, demonstrates ‘remorse,’ has an understanding of their ‘crime cycle,’ and has a good release plan then a prisoner should be granted parole. With the exception of being approved for a minimum security prison (camp), Peter had met all of this criteria by 1998. CSC was adamant that he would never be transferred to a minimum security prison because he was deportable (despite other deportable prisoners being transferred to camp).

This was the main catch 22 Peter found himself in.

He was deportable so CSC didn’t want to place him in camp and because he couldn’t get to camp then he wouldn’t be released. As time slowly crawled by, Peter became increasingly frustrated by CSC’s inaction in terms of his case management as evidenced in many of his cartoons! Some of his critiques of case management are shown in his Motivational Slogans series, his commentary on Correctional Plans and his Rehabilitation cartoon.

and he ran away. While on the street he was raped by men on two separate occasions, once by a teacher and the other time by a priest. Throughout these same years, Peter was rescuing stray animals and helping seniors shovel their driveways. Like most of us, Peter was multidimensional and all of these experiences influenced the adult he grew into.

What Peter experienced as a child does not diminish his accountability for his actions as an adult. That was never Peter’s position. He was horrified by what he had done, the life he had taken, and the impact of his actions on everyone involved.

Peter didn’t know if there was ever a way to make amends for killing someone but he knew that he had a responsibility to try. And he always tried.

Unfortunately Peter’s experiences in prison were steeped in years of conflict with the CSC staff over not accommodating his disability, mismanagement of his case files, unsubstantiated charges, not getting his mail, inadequate healthcare and a number of other issues.

Peter was often anxious about having any interactions with CSC staff whether it was to pick up his mail, going to healthcare, ordering art supplies, talking to his parole officer. He knew that any interaction with staff could result in a baseless allegation or charge that he would spend years disputing.

Eventually Peter would prove that CSC was wrong and another allegation would emerge. We used to talk about these manifestations as a game of Whacka-Mole. Each time we would disprove one accusation another one would pop up. It was never ending.

Peter’s art intertwines with every aspect of his prison experience. His art was one of the many ways in which he articulated his thoughts and feelings. His art was one of the things he loved to do more than anything else. In fact, in the end, it was all he wanted to do. Because of the physical pain he was in, he could no longer write or sit for long periods of time. He spent most of his time in bed where he had rigged up a system where he could lie down and draw.

I imagined it was similar to what Frida Khalo created Despite CSC’s refusal to see the many ways in which when she was bedridden from a bus accident.

Peter had changed over the years Peter remained committed to his own personal growth. Peter became However there is nothing romantic about this scene a more compassionate, loving, thoughtful person of ingenuity. Peter spent most of the 32 years in despite the system not because of it. His personal prison rigging up systems to accommodate his transformation happened gradually. He often talked own disabilities. It was astonishing what he could about how angry he was growing up. He struggled at create to meet a need he had that CSC would not home and was put into foster care. While in foster accommodate including a neck brace, knee brace, care, Peter experienced sexual abuse by the father elevated bed, desk, chair, bed pan etc. Peter’s

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logistical ingenuity was another form of art that he engaged in – the art of trying to get his needs met when it seemed the odds were against him. Peter spent a great deal of his time advocating for disability justice for himself and others. In 2008 he won the Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights through the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch.

His efforts were acknowledged on an international scale and it meant a lot to him on a personal level.

Peter valued nature, animals, and creatures above humans. He thought people were ruining the world through greed, capitalism, colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. Peter was an ally in struggle for Indigenous self-determination and land defense. In one of his early immigration hearings, he told the court that he would not stand up until the “original people of the land were present.” Peter created artwork for T-shirts during the Oka Crisis (Stolen Land). He created art about Broken Treaties well before other allies/activists were engaged in solidarity work with Indigenous communities. The Aboriginal Strategy painting is a commentary on the over-incarceration of Indigenous people as a result of the ongoing colonization.

Indigenous struggles were often central to Peter’s work.

I recently spent time in a four-day fasting ceremony; I thought a lot about Peter while I was there. I thought about how Peter travelled across most of Turtle Island before he went to prison at 21 years old. He loved nature and animals. In the Introduction of this book, PWG talks about how the prisons looked out of place in Peter’s Jailbird series. I have never considered that perspective before. As I sat outside in nature I could see what PWG meant. It IS the prisons that are out of place, not the birds. As I sat amongst the trees, I could see his artwork differently. Paintings of where he had been, where he wanted to go, places he had seen in books, birds he had rescued or his cat Eggroll or his pigeon Henry. Peter would hang his artwork in his cell or around the unit at Bath prison and it brought some beauty into his life or was at very least it detracted from the prison walls.

When I participated in private family visits with Peter and his family, he never wanted to go outside even on the most beautiful days. When we were outside you could not pretend that you weren’t in prison.

The view of Barbed Wire Fences, Guard Towers

and the sounds from the Firing Range nearby brought At the end stages of life I think most people consider the stark reality of prison life to the forefront. the meaning of their lives. This was no different for Peter. He had killed someone and spent every day During one of our visits I told him that I never got knowing there was nothing he could do to change used to going into prisons (even after 24 years). that. He knew that he had irrevocably devastated Each time I would get this sick feeling in my stomach. It the police officer’s family and his own family and was the feeling of being under constant surveillance and he had a great deal of shame and regret for that. never knowing when a guard or staff member was going What was most important to him was that he tried to to exert their power maliciously. The unpredictability be a better person. He wanted to be as compassionate of staff is extremely unnerving. and caring as possible and he wanted to make a positive change for those around him.

Peter expressed that this is how he felt every day for the 33 years while he was in prison. It was in that moment Peter was strong, resilient, funny, brilliant, kind, that I realized that he had never surrendered to the gentle and loving. He always stood up for what conditions of his imprisonment. He had an he believed in no matter what the consequences. indomitable spirit.

He lived with integrity. Peter was ten years past his parole eligibility dates and had met all of CSC’s Peter dreamed of getting out of prison one day and requirements for his release. He had achieved living in the country. He wanted a tiny place with little so much on a personal level and had developed or no electricity, no car and to exist with the smallest meaningful relationships with so many people around carbon footprint. Peter wanted so little for himself him. upon his release. His advocacy on his own case and his tireless fight for the rights of others meant that CSC He had a loving family, good friends and a strong would never allow him out of prison. CSC wanted to community. Yet Peter still died a slow and silence him and punish him for speaking truth to painful death in prison. power.

Alone.

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Giselle Dias

"A caged man is a spirit trapped in steel--leave him alone and his spirit becomes one with his cage-it's all he knows. Motivate him, nurture and socialize him, and his spirit soars.It's only then that the man realizes the difference between him and his cage-the reasons for it. Thus, allowing him to finally be free from it."

- Pelican Bay Hunger Striker, Oct 11, 2011

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n the summer of 2011, prisoners of the security housing unit of the Pelican Bay State Prison launched a peaceful, collective protest in the form of a hunger strike on July 1. According to the prisoners, this action was a necessary response to the draconian and anti-human institutional policies implemented by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

It was this issue above others that galvanized a great deal of support from prisoners in Pelican Bay, who declared, “We are not asking for anything special in our treatment, only the due process of the law that has been enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”

Under the premise of routing out “gang activity” in California prisons, Institutional Gang Investigators had begun using this new tool of designation to isolate and torture prisoners through the process of active/inactive gang status reviews.

The hunger strike officially ended on July 20, 2011, with CDCR claiming to have met with some prisoners and acquiesed to their modest demands. Despite this supposed capitulation, the conditions that spurred approximately 6,600 prisoners to go on a hunger strike for 3 weeks across 13 California prisons largely remain.

Prisoners of colour were targetted in particular, with Black Power and other crtical race theory literature being characterized as gang-related material. This is particularly laughable when we consider the prevalence of white supremacist organizations and prison gangs in the US prison system.

Indeed, the hunger strike was “a fundamental plea that our humanity and dignity as men be respected.”

Peter Collins commemorated this historic collective action with a number of illustrations. Like Pete’s “Jailbird Series”, they highlight the unnatural and horrid quality of living things forced into confinement.

Further Reading: Booklet: 'News & Letters reports from the Pelican Bay State Prison hunger strike, 2011' To order a copy, please contact: News and Letters Committees 228 S. Wabash #230 Chicago, IL 60604 USA www.newsandletters.org arise@newsandletters.org 312-431-8242

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August 10 (15) Pen and Ink, (2002) In memory of everyone who has died while being held against their will

August 10: A History of Prisoner’s Justice Day

by Peter Collins

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very year as August 10th approaches, a sense of loss settles on prison populations as we all come to terms with knowing that more lives were lost this year and consequently there are more prisoners to be remembered. Some of us have lost close friends and loved ones and our anguish is more acute as we reflect upon and deal with the grief, pain and loss.

Increasing social awareness amongst prisoners, ex-prisoners, family, friends and community activists means that persons dying while in custody are remembered, missed and honoured. There are many different efforts both inside and outside prison walls to create the conditions under which the disadvantaged prisoner community, friends, loved ones and supporters can create meaningful remembrances.

AUGUST 10th MEMORIAL ORIGINS

guards. Prisoners, some of whom were stripped naked, were forced to crawl on the ground while they passed the official gauntlet of power. They were kicked, punched, gassed, beaten with clubs, and thus Millhaven was baptised in a legacy of violence. As a result, a Royal Commission of Inquiry was commenced, chaired by Justice J.W. Swackhammer.

One of the responses to the Swackhammer report was that Solicitor General Warren Allmand appointed Ms. Inger Hansen as the first Correctional Investigator (CI) on June 1st 1973. It should not go without notice that many of the concerns of the CI remain outstanding problems.

In the mid-1970’s the Canadian Penitentiary System (CPS) experienced a series of riots, strikes, murders and hostage takings; “that grew in numbers and size with each passing year. By 1976 the prison explosions were almost constant; hardly a week passed without another violent incident. In the 42 years between 1932 and 1974 there were a total of 65 major incidents in federal penitentiaries. Yet in two years – 1975 and 1976 – there were a total of 69 major incidents, including 35 hostage-takings and involving 92 victims...”

In 1971, the harsh atmosphere of Kingston Penitentiary produced one of Canada’s bloodiest riots. Before the riot was over, two prisoners died, some prisoners were tortured, 5 guards were taken hostage, and part of the prison was destroyed. As a result 86 prisoners alleged to have been involved in the riot were shipped to the newly open prison, The resulting 1976 MacGuigan Inquiry and Millhaven Penitentiary. When the prisoners Report to Parliament was a damning indictment of the arrived in chains they were brutally beaten by the Canadian Penitentiary system and while Canadian

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legislators had created oversight and pressure release mechanisms in the federal prison system, prisoners still struggled against horrendous conditions and many died. For those who suffered and died we owe respect – indeed homage. Who could deny that we owe much more to those many souls who trudged some lonely and dangerous prison yards and halls and whose lives and deaths softened paths for us?

contemptuous move, they purposely transferred him to a “work range”. Eddie predictably refused to work and he was thrown back into the hole. While there, his case was again “reviewed” by the Segregation Review Board (SRB), and they gave assurance of Eddie’s imminent release to a non-working range. Eddie was told repeatedly by guards in the days and weeks following the SRB that his release was going to happen “that day”, but they never actually fulfilled The first August 10th Memorial Day was held in the promise. This pattern of attrition eventually 1975 to mark the needless death of Eddie Nalon, accomplished its goal to break Eddie. who had died on August 10th, 1974. Eddie’s death was defined as suicide by the coroner’s inquest, but On August 10th, 1974, Eddie Nalon succumbed to the it was noted that the prison guards had disabled psychological torture imposed on him, and slashed the emergency buttons in the punitive isolation his wrists; he would be released on that day one way areas of the prison. Something not mentioned during or the other. As Eddie’s blood drained out onto the the coroner’s inquest was that the Millhaven guards isolation cell floor, the guards not only ignored the regularly ignored the emergency buttons and often emergency alarms (through their purposeful sabotage), disabled the buttons in order to avoid interruptions which had, by this time, been pressed by all of the to their nightly card games. In this particular case, prisoners on the isolation range, who could hear Eddie Eddie was part of a grassroots prisoners’ movement was dying. The guards continued to ignore them, these to improve working and living conditions in the isolation prisoners who were screaming for help and prison setting, and had committed to stand firm banging on their cell doors. with his counterparts and refuse to work. In an effort to break this movement and the spirits So loud was the banging and screaming that prisoners of prisoners standing up for their rights, the in “administrative segregation” heard their efforts Millhaven administration placed certain prisoners to get medical attention to Eddie and they began in isolation. to smash things and scream in their cells to get Eddie medical attention. All this effort proved futile.

As such, for refusing to work under degrading, slave labour conditions, Eddie experienced an endless The guards, whose post was located between the cycle of long-term isolation and a punitive diet segregation and isolation cell block, heard the regime, which was punctuated every 30 days by banging, heard the screaming and the pleas for help, Millhaven changing the official designation of and simply played poker until the end of their Eddie’s incarceration from “punitive segregation” shifts, when they finally did a security walk, and to “administrative segregation”. ‘discovered’ Eddie, dead.

Eventually, Correctional Services Canada (CSC) Before long, in 1976, Robert (Bob) Landers, was agreed to release Eddie from isolation, but, in a placed in punitive isolation as retribution for his

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continuing efforts to get better living and working conditions for prisoners. Bobby was working with other prisoners in Millhaven to arrange a work stoppage to protest the intolerable prison conditions and to call public attention to the treatment they were receiving. In the manner typical of the Millhaven administration, prison guards perceived the efforts to generate positive change for prisoners as a danger to their status and used punishment to deal with the prisoner’s efforts to form some kind of union. Back in those days the CPS had recently been compelled to accept the formation of Prisoners’ Committees at each prison and there was considerable animosity between the Guard’s Union and the Prisoners’ Committees and Prison administrations. There were often running conflicts that escalated into serious incidents with each side blaming the other. Bobby and others were thrown in the hole in a move designed to stymie efforts to improve working and living conditions. Prisoners, who were also in the hole, heard Bob calling out to guards that he was in trouble and experiencing serious chest pains.

After some time passed, a guard actually did show up in front of Bob’s cell and asked him what he wanted.

Bob explained and pleaded that he needed to go to the hospital but the guard just told him to wait for the nurse to do her nightly rounds.

When the prison nurse did show up she didn’t conduct a real assessment, and simply refused to have him brought to the hospital, telling him to wait until the doctor came in the following day. That night, after scrawling his symptoms on a piece of paper, Bob died from a heart attack in those same isolation cells.

It turns out that the emergency button alarm and all the subsequent banging and screaming from other prisoners were ignored by the guards in favour of their nightly poker game. At the coroner’s inquest it was established by a heart specialist that medical negligence killed Bob and he should have been in an Intensive Care Unit and not in solitary confinement.

Special Handling Unit (SHU) guys had refused to go back into their cells at the end of their exercise period. While this may (or may not) have been part of an orchestrated diversion for the escape attempt it had resulted in a police presence around the SHU yard which was in the front area of the Millhaven compound. When Glen and the others got out into the yard behind the Millhaven compound they became aware of the police presence around the prison. Most of the prisoners abandoned the escape plan and went back through the window into the prison. Glen and one other prisoner decided to try push the issue and managed to pass the first fence when gun shots and warnings to lie down rang out into the night. The other prisoner dropped to the ground while Glen sprinted toward freedom at whatever cost and hit the fence. Glen never made it across the second fence and subsequently lay, between the perimeter fences, bleeding from bullet wounds.

The prison guards refused to pick him up and get him medical attention, later stating it was too dangerous because the SHU prisoners were out of their cells in the yard. It is true that guards had repeatedly told the SHU prisoners who were in another area of the prison – (beyond sight of the other ongoing events) – that they had to go into their cells so the guards could pick up a wounded prisoner. The SHU prisoners did not believe the guards and speculated that the gun shots they had heard indicated someone may have escaped. If they went into their cells it would have facilitated more staff being deployed to search for the escapee(s) and therefore they refused to go in. It is relevant to consider that the SHU yard is a secluded prison yard within a prison yard and that it is several football fields (in distance) away from where Glen was lying severely injured. In addition to the huge separating distance between the two areas there were no less than four 20-foot high razor wire topped fences and 5-manned gun towers between them. Also in order to underwrite the incredibility of any safety claim

In 1977 - Glen Thomas Landers died after being shot off the perimeter fence and left to bleed to death.

Glen was also serving time in Millhaven when his brother Bobby died the year before. Glen had to struggle with being around the same guards who had allowed his brother to needlessly die, alone and suffering. Within a year Glen and a group of other prisoners had planned to escape Millhaven. They managed to cut the security bars over a window in the common room area. However, on the night that Glen and the others had decided to escape, the

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preventing staff from picking up Glen, it was observed that the SHU yard was surrounded by armed Ontario Provincial Police and armed CSC Guards. Further, the double perimeter security fences allow a security vehicle to drive between the fences so they could have driven up and picked Glen up instead of letting him bleed to death.

As time goes by we begin to think of people as historical and we don’t pause and consider their lives and their feelings, their desires, hopes and dreams. I was recently speaking with Barbara (Bob and Glen’s younger sister) and she told me how poetry and drawing were very important to her brothers. After all these years she and her family still had questions and still struggle with the heavy weight of loss and sorrow.

care, for meaningful education, for job training, for dignity, for purpose, and to live free of inhuman degradation, humiliation, violence and death.

On August 10th 1975 all prisoners held in Millhaven stayed in their cells. Prisoners committed to observe a day of fasting and non-violent work and non-cooperation in memory of Eddie Nalon. The entire prisoner population refused to eat, work or speak to prison guards. No prisoner ate, because those who died could no longer eat. No prisoner went to work because those who died could no longer work.

No prisoner spoke because those who died could no longer speak. This was the first of thirty-three annual peaceful and silent observations of lost lives.

This first step of many turned into an internationally recognized non-violent, non-denominational These deaths: Eddie Nalon’s in 1974, and Bob remembrance of people who, while being held against Landers’ in 1976 and Glen Landers’ in 1977, their will, had died in the state’s hands. mark the passing of respected men who stood up against a dangerous and unaccountable prison These prisoners wrestled with the implications of their system. Epitomised by their living struggle and their fellow human beings and fellow social exiles dying in deaths is the remarkable strength and courage of the prison. There would be no legitimate public inquiry, human spirit. They are remembered for their great no public memorial, and certainly no public outrage effort and the price they paid wrestling for some marking these individual’s deaths. They were just semblance of justice. These incidents combined to gone and another prisoner now filled the empty solidify the prisoner population in Millhaven and cage. Families and loved ones of the dead prisoners they prepared for and stuck to their decision to would be left with horrific thoughts and imaginations continue the annual August 10th Memorial Protest, of their loved ones last tragic moments in a lonely, peacefully, silently, in observation. It is commonly dark and dangerous prison cell. There would be understood that the early efforts of these long suffering no comfort for families and loved ones who saw a prisoners helped provide both the glue and the impetus person they loved forced into the confines of a for others to join together and strive toward prison never to be seen again, left only with the solidarity and struggle for human rights, for health horror of imagining, and at times knowing, the worst.

In 1976 the Odyssey Group formed in Millhaven.

Howie Brown has been remembered as one of the instrumentally motivating and unifying people around the August 10th Memorial, Prison Justice Day. Howie Brown was one of the men in the hole beside Robert Landers when he was dying. His outrage, sense of loss and enduring efforts combined with a core of men serving time inside along with their families, loved ones and community supporters, worked together to champion the plight of prisoners.

In the 1980’s the Infinity Lifers Group was born and the academic community from Ottawa University became increasingly involved with what was going on in the prison setting. At the 3rd International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA) Howard Davidson, who was teaching prisoners in Western Canada, brought forth 3 papers written by prisoners.

Robert Gaucher, a criminologist concerned with the self-reinforcing (and delusional) careerist manner in which the academic and professional community excluded input or contribution from the actual subjects of their work (prisoners & the criminalized) became mobilized. After the 3rd ICOPA, Gaucher & Davidson worked together with many others across Canada and beyond to create a forum in which prisoners’ voices would no longer be silent. Their combined effort and concern resulted in an editorial board and resulted in the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) which was born in 1988 and continues to be an outspoken forum about prison, by prisoners.

people hostage in order to avoid being placed in segregation. After a 41 hour standoff, the guards stormed the prison and killed one of their own officers.

Claire continued to advocate on behalf of all prisoners and joined the newly-formed Citizens’ Advisory Committee in 1976. During one particularly nasty prison riot that showed no signs of dissipating, Claire went inside and spent 80 hours with the prisoners, ultimately helping to find common ground through In any discussion about the prison experience in which a negotiated settlement could be achieved.

Canada, it is important to include Claire Culhane.

Claire was born on September 2nd, 1918. Claire Four days later, Claire was banned from visiting was a mother, grandmother and a great grand- prisoners. This ban only served to strengthen her mother; she was a nurse in Vietnam during the USA outrage and resolve and she began to organize police action/war in the 1960s. She was a union on a national level, she went on to stage sit-ins at activist and social activist, unfettered by the national warden’s offices and chained herself to the gates of the boundaries of any country. Claire was one of the British Columbia prison and even to the gates of the founding members of the Vancouver-based Prisoner’s Canadian Parliament where she staged a 25-day Rights Group. She had been under surveillance by protest! She wrote several books and commenced the CIA, the FBI and the RCMP due to her protesting book tours. With uncompromising work, she agitated efforts to stop the Vietnam War. In 1974, Claire and forced accountability and change where she could. began to teach women in the Lakeside Regional Claire’s relentless efforts tore open the curtains; she Prison for Women on a volunteer basis. was a wrecking ball to the secluded and secretive In 1975, Claire joined in demonstrations outside world of the prison industrial complex; she was the several BC facilities, protesting inhumane living prison bureaucrat’s worst nightmare, and truly, she conditions inside Canadian prison. This wave of was the prisoner’s angel. protest came in response to an incident on June 9th of that year, when three prisoners took 15 Eventually Claire’s visiting privileges were reinstated.

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Claire was an amazing and tireless social justice advocate whose efforts were remarkable on many levels and for many causes. Claire spoke out loudly, and acted out against Canadian prison conditions and prison abuses. “We can only proceed, individually and collectively. To make whatever improvements are possible in our respective areas of concern, sustained by the hope that others are doing the same.” (Claire Culhane, ‘No Longer Barred from Prison: Social Injustice in Canada’) Much to the amazement (and dismay) of friends and family, Claire continued fighting the CSC and supporting prisoners, even on her deathbed, Claire passed away on April 28th, 1996 at the age of 78. She will always be remembered by the many, many prisoners she helped with her kindness and concern, her relentless courage, and rock-solid integrity. Claire is truly a Canadian social justice icon.

FAMILY, FRIENDS & LOVED ONES Families and friends often feel socially ostracized when a loved one and their family are publicly shamed and humiliated, both with the crime and the ensuing media reporting. The sense of exposure and condemnation by society is magnified under the disturbing lens of modern 24-hour media organizations. Family members and friends painfully recount how many relationships collapse as friends and community abandon and distance themselves from the families of prisoners. It is understood, by prisoners, that their incarceration is not the only hardship that comes from imprisonment. The residual effects touch non-incarcerated people in negative ways that are both varied and extreme.

Children deal with the loss of a parent and single parents struggle with raising children while their partner is in prison. These circumstances often mean they have to rely on state assistance, which is a complex difficulty in itself. Suffice to say that when these difficult and hope-sapping circumstances end with the prisoner dying before the end of their sentence all of the hardships are amplified.

Empirical social science evidence shows that the majority of prisoners come from economically disadvantaged childhoods, with experiences of significant trauma (such as physical, psychological or sexual abuse), and/or experiences of racism, sexism, or other structural oppressions. A majority have experienced interruptions in their education, and/or are suffering from emotional/intellectual development issues. Many have been damaged by exposure to psychiatric facilities, residential schools, reformatories, or have been ‘state-raised’, through Children’s Aid Societies. These socially isolated and damaged prisoners, finding themselves (once again) rejected by society, decided to call attention to their humanity, their struggle and their sorrow.

The deep sense of loss and the human need to belong stirred in this group of secluded and disadvantaged people resulted in a pro-social, life-affirming and life-respecting memorial observation on August 10th, 1975, organized by the Millhaven prisoners as their form of social protest.

It is relevant to note that prisoners who die in Canadian prisons and whose bodies are not “claimed” by someone, are buried without a name or gravestone, just a small marker with a number on it. In life and in death, we are reduced to a lonely number by the prison system.

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AUGUST 10th MEMORIAL DAY - 1975

CENSORSHIP OF MEMORIAL DESIGNS

In the initial hours of the August 10th Memorial, the first anniversary of Eddie Nalon’s death, CSC was caught off guard. The silent protest came as a shock to prison guards and administrators. The regimented “cattle call” for prisoner feeding commenced with a P.A. loud speaker announcing it was time to pick up the first meal of the day. The electric cell doors simultaneously crashed open - but not one prisoner walked down to receive their allotted portion of food, ready to be shoved through a slot in the wall. While the 1975 Memorial Day went by peacefully, CSC was extremely alarmed, and obviously felt threatened by this demonstration of prisoner solidarity.

In each prison, there are usually one or more prisoners who create PJD designs and submit them to the prisoner committee and then through an evaluation and selection process. Dependent on how the population runs it, the prisoners choose amongst themselves which design they want for that years PJD image. The image is then given to the prison’s “Social Development Department” to be forwarded to a printer. Once completed, each individual prisoner pays for his or her shirt.

The CSC failed to recognize and respect the prisoners’ memorial as a positive affirmation and respect for the sanctity of life. The CSC began to take steps to sanction prisoners for their participation in the work stoppage and protest. These sanctions occurred in a variety of ways, i.e., prisoners were placed on report, charged for not going to work, deducting earned remission, delay of family visits, mail was withheld or ‘lost’, access to the yard or recreation was delayed or denied, placements in solitary confinement increased, support for parole or transfer was removed, and medical attention was denied or delayed.

As the August 10th Memorial Day or Prisoners’ Justice Day (PJD) spread across Canada and took hold in every prison, members of the community outside began to hold candlelight vigils in most major cities to commemorate those people who lost their lives in prisons. With this, the CSC had to stop visibly punishing prisoners for observing the Memorial day (PJD), though they do continue to interfere.

Each year, the CSC insinuates/forces their unwanted opinions and directions into the process. They have made it increasingly difficult to meet senseless bureaucratic and erratic standards of needlessly imposed censorship. The CSC continues to engage in an active pattern of unreasonable suppression and control of the designs. Each prison administration imposes a variety of fluctuating restrictions, which force prisoners to make design alterations to meet the prison administration’s criteria. The new “approved” design is then sent to CSC Regional Headquarters, and even to CSC National Headquarters, where any number of unnamed prison bureaucrats impose their conditions of censorship upon the images and words contained within the designs. The prisoners have to either make these imposed changes or fail to have a shirt design for the August 10th Memorial. Often, the CSC imposes these changes at the last minute, in order to completely compromise the shirts’ availability before the Memorial Day. OUR OBLIGATIONS AS PRISONERS It is imperative that, as prisoners, we remember that some prisoners absolutely have to eat due to illness,

age and/or other conditions and it would be wrong to direct or expect anyone to compromise their health to observe August 10th. It is important to remember that HIV/AIDS and cancers create conditions in the body that waste muscle tissue and as such it is exceedingly important that people enduring these illnesses need to maintain a regular source of nutrition. Further to the above there are many medicines that require food to ensure proper absorption. The failure to eat is detrimental to many others due to other medical conditions. As intelligent, concerned and aware prisoners we should be working together as individuals and groups with our respective committees and groups to ensure that people who are ill and require food do not go without food on August 10th. We need to work together and make sure that prisoners have access to pre-packaged high nutrition food bundles for those who need the assistance, and in this way prisoners will know that we recognize their situation and support them, and they will not have to experience the uncomfortable feeling of getting food from the prison administration on August 10th Memorial Days.

INTIMIDATION & RESPECT Notwithstanding legitimate health issues, it is important to note that it would be, and it is, a very sad commentary on everyone when one tries to force another person to observe a solemn day of mourning.

Education and understanding will better serve everyone in the effort or desire to foster respect and observation of the day. Fear and intimidation practices expose a bully’s cowardice and pathetic (albeit unwitting) allegiance to the obscene power and control practices of the prison industrial complex.

Intimidation is counterproductive to honouring those people who have died, and frankly, it is disrespectful to the August 10th Memorial Anniversary and all that it stands for.

As we experience and share our heartfelt sorrow for

those who have passed and we observe our common experience and the link we have to such incredible and enduring suffering, I hope it awakens or renews our personal commitment and responsibility to help those we can help today, and to try to improve the road for the people who will come behind us.

GETTING INVOLVED We should collectively and individually strive to keep in mind that the August 10th Memorial is more than just about remembering. There are 364 other days in which struggles continue both in the prisons and in the community. In the community people are searching for solutions and calling out for changes in the justice system. Families and friends are out there banging on the other side of the walls to help put an end to the prison violence, the social inequity and racism and the neo-conservative (so called) “law & order, get tough on crime agenda” which drives longer prison terms, longer mandatory minimum sentences, all the while reducing parole and community based alternatives to prison. On the back of this article is a listing of contact numbers and addresses that you can use to get involved with ongoing efforts and help create a more cohesive and comprehensive union of concerned people. One person can change everything so if you want to help you will be a welcome addition to these combined efforts for social change.

We need to be aware of, and resistant to, the overreliance on prison as a solution to social problems and the completely absurd premise that putting people in cages is going to ‘rehabilitate’ them and make society safer.

The imprisoned segments of society are not typically expected to be socially conscious by the larger (and free) segments of society. However, the adversity of prison can have a variety of effects upon the human psyche. In a best case scenario, the prisoner becomes more thoughtful, compassionate and concerned

with the wider state of affairs, despite the personal degradations, dangers and violations they experience in prison. Prisoners accept that they are burdened with the legal sanction of imprisonment for their role in whatever crime they committed , but in Canada (at least) that does not include a death sentence, and for those who do lose their lives while serving their sentence it is socially desirable to allow the prisoner population to have one day out of 365 to pay their respects to the many people who have lost their lives while incarcerated.

AUGUST 10th GOES INTERNATIONAL During the course of the August 10th Memorial observation the anniversary has come to be observed in a wide variety of countries, such as Britain, Ireland, and Scotland, Australia and the USA and others. It is in the interests of societies everywhere to mark this solemn day and consider their role in the ongoing human tragedy of imprisonment.

In Canada, the Vancouver-based “Prisoner’s Justice Day Committee” hold August 10th Vigils in front of a bench dedicated to Claire Culhane which is located on the SE corner of Trout Lake Park in Vancouver.

The Toronto-based “Prisoners Justice Action Committee ” holds August 10th vigils and protests in front of Toronto’s decrepit Don Jail, built between 1862–1865. The Don Jail marks the location where Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas lost their lives on December 11th 1962 in the last officially sanctioned Canadian executions. The Don Jail was condemned and slated for closure for over 100 years but is still used to hold prisoners in overcrowded and extremely deplorable conditions. Is there an active community group organizing August 10th Vigils in your community? If so, get involved! If not, then this is an

opportunity for you to create the place, create the agenda, put a call out, get involved – the power of a motivated individual is unstoppable and it is contagious!

There are many community-based groups who continue to carry the torch and strive to support and help prisoners, and to educate the public about what is really going on in prisons. There are also a number of community-based, academic and grassroots organizations who work toward prison abolition and helping prisoners, such as “Stark Raven Radio”, “Joint Effort”, “Upping the Anti”, the “International Conference on Penal Abolition”, “PASAN”, “Critical Resistance”, and “Rittenhouse”.

WHO IS REMEMBERED ON THE AUGUST 10 MEMORIAL DAY? In Canadian prisons the prison populations are multifaith, multi-cultural and multi-belief. So it is always important to be attentive, inclusive and respectful to the wide variety of beliefs of our own population. The optimum platform, if at all possible, would provide an opportunity for every belief and thought to be shared, including music and their ceremonial diversities.

Whatever happens it is self evident that no person, official or priest collecting pay from any prison branch of any government should be selected or permitted to conduct any August 10th service no matter how concerned, supportive, kind and thoughtful they are as individual people. The August 10th Memorial observation has come to include those who died in or at the hands of state-run prisons, residential schools, in slavery, Nazi death camps, in transport, internment camps, psychiatric hospitals, jails, reformatories or while being arrested, tazered, restrained or held in a US-run secret torture prison, or any of the variety of

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different ways human beings lock other human beings up. Whether deemed an “enemy combatant” or a “prisoner of war” they are remembered. Regardless of gender assignment, sexuality, color, race, nationality, personal beliefs, crime, disability, language, religion, political beliefs, weight or age; if they died while in the forced custody of any state then they are who we remember and mourn on Prisoner’s Justice Day – the August 10th Memorial Day. The August 10th Memorial Day recognizes prisoners who die in a community hospital beds after being moved from a prison just before death - a state trick to sidestep the mandatory coroner’s inquest of a prisoner’s death. This official practice skews the accuracy of Canadian prison death rates and avoids damning testimony about abusive prison conditions, disease, negligence and medical mistreatment. It has become generally accepted that many people who leave the prison experience alive have been so terribly damaged by the experience that they never actually get back on their feet and they never get their lives back and while they die in the community as “free people”, their lives were destroyed due to exposure to the prison system, and they should be remembered as prison victims on the August 10th Memorial Day. As prisoners each of us has to choose for ourselves what the August 10th Memorial Day means to us and how it should be observed. At different times in our lives it will touch us in different ways. As we experience the death of friends and family, or come to terms with our own responsibility for someone’s

death, the meaning of life and death will reach us in significantly different ways. How family, friends and concerned community members honour and observe August 10th also has to be a personal choice. If people want to use the day as a political forum, or as a quiet day of personal or group reflection, or a day of fasting, let us be thankful for their respective support and let’s celebrate the diversity and the commitment and concern that everyone brings. We need to respect each other’s journey and we need to rise above the thoughtless and arrogant conduct of the CSC and other prison systems and refrain from judging and condemning each other.

There is already far too much negative judgment and condemnation going around, and it is never useful to anything or anyone.

Justice is a beautiful word, full of hope and meaning, such as reconciliation, fairness, harmony and so on. Our modern society with its heavy focus on social control through reprisal has warped “justice” to be synonymous with punishment, retribution and pain.

There can be no justice when prison is society’s first and indeed only response to social problems.

Millions of people ar in prisons today across the world. When wrongful convictions resonate throughout global justice systems and while secret trials are held there is no justice. When the color of your skin assigns you a higher chance of imprisonment and higher rates of execution there is no justice. When addicts are held in prison for the crime of being an addict there is no justice. When psychologists and psychiatrists foretell future criminal

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behaviour based on forced testing conducted under coercive prison conditions and then through the test results extend someone’s imprisonment; there is no justice. When Prisons are used as a social control tool upon the homeless, poverty stricken and mentally ill there is no justice. When prisoners are denied essential life saving harm reduction prophylactic devices and medications there is no justice. When people are imprisoned for sex trade work there is no justice. When women are imprisoned for defending themselves there is no justice. There can be no justice while children are imprisoned.

August 10th is now the International Memorial Day for people who died while in the forced custody of the state, whether they were transgender, men, women, or children. Whether they were labelled criminal or political and whether medical negligence, beating, abuse, disease, old age, shock treatment or experimentation killed them, we solemnly remember.

Whether it was a heart attack, overdose, shooting, gassing, asphyxiation, stabbing or state execution that killed them, we remember. Whether starvation, electrocution, hanging, murder, or suicide stopped their hearts, we remember. Prisoners and their families, friends and loved ones observe their suffering and their passing.

Whether there were Christians shoved into the mouths of lions, or Jews shoved into ovens, or Muslims forced at gunpoint into Abu Ghraib or Guantanimo Bay or Buddhist monks imprisoned in Tibet; if they died today, yesterday, 200 years ago or 1000 years ago they are the lost souls with whom, as prisoners, family and friends of prisoners: we share a common bond in the human family. This day of silent, peaceful protest and remembrance is a personal occasion for prisoners, families, friends and concerned community members to mark the love, the humanity and the value of those who were held in chains and lost behind the fences, bars and walls.

Fires and candles have been lit since time immemorial to remember people who have died; in these troubled times we consider the human struggle and find a place in our hearts to mark their passing.

“We can’t change prisons without changing society; we know that this is a long and dangerous struggle. But the more who are involved in it, the less dangerous, and the more possible it will be.”

There is no natural death in prison and there is no exclusion from the August 10th memorial if they died in custody.

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Till the walls fall, the bars bend, the chains rust and the locks break, we will remember.

Awards for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights C/o Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network 1240 Bay Street, Suite 600 Toronto, On Canada, M5R 2A7

April 28, 2008 Dear Committee Members; I am writing on behalf of Prisoners’ with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN) and would like to nominate Peter Collins for the Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. PASAN is a community-based organization working to provide advocacy, education and support to prisoners on HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C related issues.

PASAN formed in 1991 as a grassroots response to the AIDS crisis in the Canadian prison system.

Today, we are the only organization in Canada exclusively providing HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C education and support services to prisoners, exprisoners, young offenders, and their families. We are called upon by corrections services both provincially and federally to consult on issues of HIV/AIDS and prisons.

Peter Collins is a prisoner at Bath Prison in Kingston, Ontario. Peter has been involved in fighting for

the health and human rights of prisoners for most of his 25 years in prison. I began working with him in 2000 when he received training to become a peer education counselor. Peter’s commitment to HIV/AIDS, HCV and harm reduction has been exemplary and we have been grateful for his commitment to the issues and to our organization. Peter has been available to people in prison at Bath institution who are HIV positive in order to provide them with information on HIV/ AIDS and support dealing with their illness. He has also provided many prisoners with information and education on HIV and HCV so that they can learn how to prevent the spread of the virus. Pete has also designed pamphlets, created logos, and contributed numerous articles and drawings to our quarterly newsletter Cell Count. Cell count is a prisoner driven initiative that is distributed to over 1300 prisoners, agencies and individuals across Canada. Peter’s

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artwork has graced the cover of Cell Count on numerous occasions and always receives a positive response from our readers. Peter co-authored an article written on tattooing in prison entitled Driving the Point Home: Tattooing in Prisons, a document that was used by Correctional Services of Canada to assist in the development of research for the tattooing pilot projects. Peter’s commitment to health in prisons has led to his participation on two advisory committees coordinated by PASAN staff.

He continues to advise PASAN staff on issues related to prisons that help inform workshops, presentations, media interviews and consultations with CSC. Peter has been an invaluable resource to our agency and we therefore would like to see him publicly recognized for his work.

It is important to mention that Peter’s work has come with great cost to him and his potential release. His work on the fight against HIV/AIDS has led Correctional administration to try and find ways of undermining him and at some points targeting him for speaking out. Peter has had numerous allegations made against him and they have tried to remove him from his job as Peer Education Counselor.

It was through Peter’s hard work and determination that Bath Prison finally received a Peer Education Office with a key and mailbox for request forms. The original office was slated to be set up across from the security office, which would have interfered with the privacy of prisoners who wanted to access peer support. Peter was adamant that this was not acceptable and refused to work in the office until a new location was chosen and set up.

Although this process took many years, Peter did not give up the fight and remained committed as a Peer Educator while working from his own cell. Peter used his own computer to draft flyers, and create documents to condemn CSC’s lack of commitment to harm reduction policies. His computer was later confiscated (for speaking out against Corrections) and he continued his work on a typewriter. Peter told CSC that he would no longer be able to act as Peer Health Counselor under the current conditions (no office, no computer, no printer) and argued that under CSC policy that Bath Prison needed to have these things in place. A new office was built this year and Peter has begun to distribute pamphlets and harm reduction materials and set up audio equipment for people to access. Peter has been able to advocate for the hire of another prisoner who was previously unable to secure employment within the prison. This prisoner that has been hired is a client of PASAN, is Aboriginal with HIV and has significant mental health issues. Peter has given this individual an opportunity for meaningful employment and has been mentoring him with regards

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to educating others on HIV prevention. Peter has also been active in advocating for prisoners’ health needs and has met with health care staff, HALCO, HARS and PASAN to try and get health issues resolved for prisoners at risk for HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. Peter offers on-going counseling and support to prisoners living with HIV/AIDS and HCV.

direction. When it was time to provide feedback on the document, Peter thoughtfully reviewed it and provided key input, he was part of the decision for the title of Hard Time and he created the cover design.

Peter’s work has been so significant that he has had several offers for potential contract positions upon his release.

Peter is very well read with regards to policy documents written by PASAN, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Ontario Medical Association, WHO guidelines, UNDOC and other Human rights legislation. He works hard to keep up to date with this information so that he is a better advocate, support person and educator for his fellow prisoners. Peter has done numerous media interviews to speak out about the lack of harm reduction tools within CSC and has strongly advocated for needle exchange programs. He was even told by administration that if he continued to meet with the media that there would be repercussions.

Peter played a key role on the advisory committee for PASAN and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network document entitled Hard Time: Promoting HIV and Hepatitis C Prevention Programming for Prisoners in Canada. The document’s focus changed significantly from its original intent and Peter was a strong influence in encouraging PASAN to try and work with CSC and corrections differently. In a time that we felt we may have become too ‘soft’, Peter supported our efforts to engage in this project and move forward in a new

Beyond Peter’s work commitment to HIV/AIDS, he has also contributed to PASAN and other organizations financially. Despite the fact that Peter only makes up to $6/day, he has made significant contributions to our agency. Peter has donated well over 200 pieces of artwork that we have been able to use for fundraising events for our organization.

Peter’s contributions have allowed us to have additional monies for our weekly drop-in that supports HIV positive ex-prisoners living in the community and needing a place to go for a meal. His artwork is displayed throughout our office and visitors coming into meetings at PASAN have purchased many pieces of his work.

Should Peter be given the Award for Action on HIV/ AIDS and Human Rights, we believe that it will strengthen his position as Peer Education Counselor at Bath Prison. If his work is recognized by the community and well-respected organizations such as the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch, it will be more difficult for CSC to continue targeting him for the work that he is doing. An award such as this may also help the

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National Parole Board to recognize his commitment as worthwhile and not just a way of trying to ‘play’ the system. The National Parole Board may take his potential contract employment with PASAN, CHALN and Penal Reform Trust (upon his release) as genuine and may be more willing to release Peter into the community. Peter will be going in front of the National Parole Board in July and is hoping to be granted parole for deportation to England where he will continue the fight against HIV/AIDS in prison.

Peter may not be able to attend the CHALN AGM to accept the award but his family lives in Ottawa and I am sure would be thrilled to accept on his behalf. I am not sure that people in his life recognize all the hard work that Peter has done while he has been inside.

His family and friends often wanted Peter to be silent about injustices going on inside the prison because they could see how much suffering Peter endured to bring these issues to the forefront. It certainly would have been easier for him to be quiet, not speak out and do his own time. Circumstances might be quite different for him now and he may have been released many years ago. Peter’s commitment to prisoners’ rights and prisoners’ health would not allow him to remain silent and he has chosen to suffer the consequences of that decision. Unfortunately, Peter’s father has recently been diagnosed with cancer and will not live for much longer. This award would be a tribute to his entire family for their enduring support of Peter’s commitment.

PASAN has high hopes that you will honor Peter with the Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. We believe that prisoners receive so little recognition for the work that they do and we know how important that this recognition would be for Peter and the work that he so strongly believes in. It is difficult to know if the potential for this award will enhance visibility and public awareness of issues in prisons. Unfortunately, as you are aware the public is not very sympathetic to prisoners and therefore it may be difficult to attract additional resources. However, if prisoners are made aware that they may be eligible for this type of recognition and support, they may also want to engage in the work to fight against HIV/AIDS. This challenging environment makes it so much more important that prisoners doing the work are recognized.

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Thank you for your consideration,

Anne Marie DiCenso Executive Director, PASAN

May 27, 2008 Mr. Peter Collins Bath Institution P.O. Box 1500 Bath, ON K0H 1G0 Dear Mr. Collins:

Re: 2008 Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights It gives me great pleasure to advise that you have been selected as the Canadian recipient of the 2008 Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights.

Established in 2002, this award is given jointly by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch to one Canadian and one international recipient.

The Awards highlight outstanding contributions that decrease vulnerability to HIV/ AIDS and protect the human rights and dignity of those infected and affected, in particular work that is of direct relevance to marginalized individuals and communities.

Prisoners are, of course, one of those groups at greater risk of HIV and a group whose health and human rights are often disregarded or dismissed. Both the Legal Network and Human Rights Watch have a long history of concern and advocacy for the rights of prisoners to have access to the information and tools they needed to protect against HIV infection, and the right to adequate care, treatment and support for those living in prison with HIV. We are, therefore, pleased to honour your efforts to defend and promote these rights.

This year’s Canadian award will be presented at a ceremony in Ottawa on the evening of Monday, June 16, 2008 at a public reception to be held in conjunction with the Legal Network’s Annual General Meeting.

Specifically, the ceremony will be held between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. at the Delta Ottawa Hotel and Suites, 361 Queen St., Ottawa, ON K1R 7S9, tel.

(613) 238-6000.

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Your work on HIV and human rights will be introduced by a representative from the Prisoners HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN), after which you would be presented with the award and make some remarks and take questions from the audience. We are also currently preparing a slide show featuring you and your art work as a backdrop to the ceremony. We very much hope you and your family will be able to join us in person for the ceremony.

I can be reached at the Legal Network office in Toronto at (416) 595-1666 (ext. 229) or, while in Ottawa for the award ceremony and Annual General Meeting, on my mobile number 416 898-3313. I look forward to hearing from you.

Again, congratulations on his well-deserved recognition of your work for the health and human rights of prisoners in Canada.

Sincerely,

Richard Elliott

Executive Director

cc: Laura Raftis, Parole Officer National Parole Board Mick Collins

“Scales of Justice”

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“3 Monsters”

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Certain Days is a wall calendar featuring artwork and writing by prisoners and people on the outside. It is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers in Montreal, QC, Hamilton, ON, and New York, in partnership with three political prisoners being held and proceeds from the calendar are used for direct support work for political prisoners and social justice struggles in the U.S. and Canada.

Over the years, Peter’s artwork appeared a number of times in the Certain Days calendar. Although he wasn’t politically active before going to prison, he became Canada’s foremost prisoner-activist, using his visual art, writing and radio interviews to give voice to issues from Canada’s prison system, to HIV, to the epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous women. Since Peter also worked with Montreal’s Prisoner Correspondence Project, and was interviewed on CKUT’s prison radio show often, it felt as though he was an active part of the prisoner justice community in this city, even though he was many miles away. We miss him, and continue our work towards a day when no dying prisoner is denied compassionate release, and when no one hasmedical care withheld as a reprisal for speaking truth to power.

Anyone who would like to find out more about the calendar, or to contribute in the future -- prisoners and non-prisoners alike -- is encouraged to get in touch: online: certaindays.org

by mail: certain days c/o QPIRG Concordia 1455 de Maisonneuve blvd O. Montreal, QC H3G 1M8

End the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC) is a prison abolition group based in Kingston, Ontario.

Peter produced this artwork for them in 2011.

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The Prisoners’ Justice Film Festival is a growing coalition of activists and grassroots organizers on the lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabek, Huron-Wendat, and Attawandaron Peoples (also known as London, Ontario). We believe that policing, borders, prisons and institutionalization do not make our communities safer or more secure. We believe in working to build safe, healthy communities based on Nation building, sovereignty, social justice and self-determination. For the past 5 years, we have been working together to raise awareness of and opposition to the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC).

Through the use of films, documentaries and workshops we wanted to bring people together to start a dialogue about the PIC, alternative forms of justice, facilitate multi-issue movement building, and launch a local anti-PIC movement.

We recognize that almost all social movements intersect with the struggle against the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) which is essentially an anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-ableist, feminist, LGBT liberationist, intersectional freedom struggle.

Peter made this logo with pen and ink for PJFF in 2006. For more information about the Prisoners’ Justice Film Festival please go to www.prisonersjusticefilmfestival.ca

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Pete was a long time contributor to the Prison Radio Show in Montreal. He would most often record news segments that were relevant to folks in the federal prison system. He kept listeners informed about changes in CSC policy, ongoing lawsuits against CSC, and different ongoing struggles on the inside as well as offer political commentary and insight.

The Prison Radio Show seeks to confront the invisibility of prisons and prisoner struggle, by focusing on the roots of incarceration, policing, and criminalization, and by challenging ideas about what prisons are and who ends up inside.

Prison Radio is dedicated to programming that is directly collaborative with people who are currently incarcerated. This is in the interest of forging stronger ties between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people, ensuring that prisoners have direct control over their representation, and that our understandings of prisons be informed by those who live inside their walls.

The show can be heard in federal prisons and provincial jails in the Montreal region as well as a few prisons in Upstate New York. prison@ckut.ca

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PRS c/o CKUT 3647 University Street Montreal, Quebec H3A 2B3

I

struggled for months on how to write a proper tribute, a meaningful memorial for Peter Collins; a man I considered to be a friend, confidant and inspiration. It took me awhile to get my head around the fact I will never see Peter again, exchange letters with him or work on a variety of projects together. Whether we are citizens, prisoners, activists or humanitarians, we have all lost a precious voice who reminded us we are all one of a kind; humankind. Fortunately for us, Peter’s work, life and inspiration lives on through his amazing art work and literary prose. More importantly, Peter Collins lives on through his family and the multitude of friends who admire the man Peter strove so hard to become.

Peter and I truly did ‘walk a mile in the other mans shoes’. We were both very young, convicted of a similar high profile offense and as a result experienced the absolute worse a broken criminal justice and correctional system has to offer. Although Peter and I did not traverse the darkness together, we understood we were kindred spirits for having survived quite similar journeys. But Peter did much more than survive, he literally flourished by giving a voice to the voiceless, by standing as an example of what can be done with hard work and determination and truly served as an inspiration to a litany of community based organizations. Peter Collins was our bright light in the darkness, our light house on the top of the hill to show us the way through the many storms.

My memories of Peter are many, but some of the more vivid are those when no words were spoken.

Peter and I would be sitting in a room of 20 or more people, mixtures of citizen volunteers and fellow prisoners, working on one project or another. As the chatter in the room would pick up and personal debates would start, Peter and I would just look at each other and without saying a word knew exactly what the other was thinking. He already knew the end game and what needed to be done to get us there. The only question his eyes would ask me is “Are you going to wrap this up so we can move on to the next point, or am I?” Throughout this inconceivable journey known as a Life Sentence, it has been my privilege to have worn many different hats through involvement with Inmate Committees, John Howard Society, Exceptional People’s Olympiad, Lifeline Inreach etc. Without thebackbone and unrelenting support of men like

Peter Collins, these various positions would be nothing more than meaningless titles, pedestals for windbags that get nothing done. Often times Peter would be the first person I, and many others, would turn to. No matter how much he had on his plate, no matter what personal dilemma may have befallen him, Peter’s response was always the same “What do you need me to do?”

Three days before Peter passed away I stood in the Chapel of Beaver Creek Inst. (med) and did my best to educate 80 men on what Prisoners Justice Day was about, what it really meant, why we fast and pay homage to all those lives who have passed before us. On August 10th, 2015, ‘my best’ was to read aloud what Peter Collins had written about Prisoner’s Justice Day from an older publication sponsored by the Prisoner’s Justice Day Committee in Vancouver, B.C. Even as Peter Collins lay in his bed, calling an end to his last battle with the material world, he served as an inspiration to me and everyone present. And yes, I let every man in that Chapel know who Peter Collins is, that he would be passing soon, what he means to me and what he should mean to them. There were a few men present who knew Peter personally.

The tears in my eyes brought tears to their eyes and we held our heads high and shed those tears with pride.

A couple of weeks later, as word of Peter’s passing filtered through the prison system, different groups of young men approached me on the walking track to share their condolences that my friend had passed. I didn’t know any of these young men by name, but they had been present at the Chapel during the Prisoner Justice Day service. Which brings me to my closing point: I am a firm believer in an old saying that goes something like this “We actually die twice. Our first death is when we physically pass on from the world as we know it. Our second death, and final death comes when the last person speaks our name.” That’s right people, by sharing our memories and appreciation of Peter Collins we are keeping Peter’s spirit and inspiration alive. I assure you Peter’s name will be spoken as long as I am alive.

Rest in Peace my Friend. I will see you when I get there. No doubt we will have much to discuss.

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- Greg McMaster

“I learnt to play guitar at the tender age of 31, and I played until my fingers bled. “

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I’m writing this letter today to express my gratitude for your art practice. When I first saw Great Horned Owl and Field at your memorial in Montreal, in the fall of 2015, it was in a beautiful gold frame with a white matte background, perched on a wooden easel. It was the first time I had seen your work in person, rather than digital images or Prisoner Justice Day flyers. Having just graduated from art school and feeling disillusioned by art world vapidity, I was drawn to the stark imagery and charged political content of your work.

I want you to know that people, on the inside and out, continue to fight against Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) and the inhumane treatment of those in conflict with the law. As of the witting of this letter, a class-action lawsuit has been filled against CSC on behalf of those detained in solitary confinement in the province of Quebec, where I live.

Arlene Gallone, a black woman held in the hole in Joliette for extended periods, is the spokesperson for the legal case. So much of your work is about drawing attention to those targeted by CSC — people of colour, Indigenous people, people with mental health problems, and people living in poverty. I think it’s important that we are hearing more about the violence of CSC.

Great Horned Owl and Field stays etched in my mind — an owl balancing on a fence, with a prison far away in the background. I love how the prison is out of focus and dissolving into the landscape, as if a snowstorm rages in the distance, wind swirling. The brushwork is detailed, deliberate, patient. I’ve since wondered about the owl — has it just left the prison grounds? Will it fly over and perch on walls and window sills, like the birds in Peregrine Falcon and Wall and Sparrow by the Window? Unlike other paintings in your Jailbird series, the owl looks out directly to the viewer, making eye contact, as if waiting for an answer.

Many Montreal-based collectives and orgs that I think you are familiar with — The Prisoner Correspondence Project, the Termite Collective, Solidarity Across Borders — continue to be very active in pushing back against borders and prisons.

Many new projects have emerged as well. From my perspective, there seems to be an increase in the number of people mobilizing against the prison regime, both locally and globally.

Two weeks ago I saw Robert Hillary King, member of the Angola 3, speak at Concordia University to an auditorium filled to the brim; people were hanging onto his every word. An audience member asked Robert how, after 32 years in prison (29 of those years were spent in solitary), he rid himself of the prison after being released. He pointedly responded that although he was in prison, the prison was never in him. As a Black Panther, his political beliefs were key to his survival on the inside, bringing him a bigger context for his own suffering. During the talk, I often thought of you and the conversations you two could have had — on politics, books, and the things about prison life that those on the outside will never understand. What it means to resist. Or maybe you two would just shoot the shit about the crappy mid-February Montreal weather.

Most importantly, I want to share with you, Peter, that people continue to value your artwork and its messages of resistance. Your dedication to speaking from inside prison is invaluable in dismantling a system that renders people invisible. We will continue to hold up your work and make sure that you are not forgotten.

In Sol, Sheena

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