Guelph Reformatory
For many years, my hometown had a minimum-security prison colloquially called the Guelph Reformatory. It opened in 1911 and was decommissioned in 2001. It occupied a large piece of ground in the city’s south end - over 200 acres, or 81 hectares. The prison is closed now, but the cell block and Administration buildings, which are antique structures, remain. I hope they are protected as heritage buildings, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t. The grounds are still open to the public, although access to the buildings is limited to security people.
The City purchased some of the land from the Ontario provincial government and began redevelopment. But the City has not purchased the majority of it. The majority of the land is up for sale to interested commercial developers. I know the buildings have been used as a movie set; Blindness (2008, directed by Fernando Meirelles, starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo); Cell 213 (2011, directed by Stephen T. Kay, starring Eric Balfour and Bruce Greenwood), and Season 4 of the reality show Canada’s Worst Driver (2008).
Now, I belong to a Facebook group if citizens, or former citizens to share memories of growing up there, and memories and stories about the Reformatory are not infrequent. Many people seem to reminisce about the Guelph Reformatory. But memories seem to always revolve around the land and the gardens, and the surviving building. The grounds. No one ever reminisces about the incarcerated men, about the human misery behind the bars and walls. It seems hypocritical to me, but some might even question the propriety of remembering the details of the felonious miscreants who were housed there. But to assume that attitude is to dehumanize offenders, which isn’t right. The notion that some Guelphites are exceedingly proud of our city’s miserable aspects is funny - even funnier that the cloud of unknowing of their nostalgia hides the basic facts even from themselves.
For many years, the inmates there carefully landscaped a beautiful garden, which was easily visible from one of the adjacent streets. For some time the gardens were a popular site for shooting wedding photographs. Some people eulogize the beautiful, well-kept grounds, while making little or no mention of the incarcerated men who created them. The deteriorating remains of the once proud grounds are still there. But nostalgia for the Reformatory seems misplaced to me. First, nostalgia is a kind of mental illness. It’s selective memory. Second, the nostalgia ignores the reason for the Reformatory’s existence: housing criminals. People claim to want to share fond memories of the city, but they don’t want to share knowledge of the criminals. It’s a disservice to Reality, I think.